By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. Tolkien

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: “What feels like Tolkien?” One way that any number of works of art, whether books, most obviously in a fantasy genre, games, visual art or of course dramatic adaptations of his work has been described, marketed as and more is that something ‘feels’ like Tolkien, a sense of a particular atmosphere or vibe that acts as its own qualifier. But then again, what exactly does that mean, and in what contexts can that be seen to mean something more specific than just a vague sense of appreciation. There’s no one answer to be had in the end, but there are various ways to explore the topic and consider possible framings. What does Tolkien’s Catholicism mean in terms of how his work might be described and considered, and how might his work differ from the assumptions and projections placed onto it as a result? How does Tolkien’s gift for describing the natural world shape assumptions about what kind of writer he is seen to be or taken as, and what are the possible parallels to be made in the work of others? What are the ways in which movie and TV adaptations of Tolkien’s work inevitably change how it is presented and shaped via the written word, and are there better equivalents to be found? And can Terrence Malick just squeeze in the time and do that Silmarillion adaptation Oriana dreams about, assuming she can write the screenplay?

Jared’s doodle. Perhaps the trick for feeling like Tolkien is pipe-smoking.

That Ansel Adams knockoff shot Ned mentioned. It DID work rather well.

Various reports on The War of the Rohirrim footage at NYCC are out there – here’s io9’s.

Philippa Boyens clarifying the whole Hunt For Gollum/two films thing via Empire.

The stupid ‘Grand-Elf’ thing from The Rings of Power. Dear heavens.

The War of the Rohirrim 'tapestry’ – if you insist.

Much thanks to everyone for all the responses to our Bluesky question for this episode!

If you’ve not seen a Terrence Malick film, do yourself a favor. Have a taste. 

Our Sword of Shannara episode. Woo boy.

Ralph C. Wood is a professor of theology at Baylor, so, that noted, but his reflections on Tolkien and melancholy feel appropriate given Tolkien’s beliefs and experiences.

Evelyn Waugh! Graham Greene! Of an earlier generation, G.K. Chesterton! (There are plenty of other Catholic writers of Tolkien’s time of course.)

William Morris! James Branch Cabell! Lord Dunsany! E. R. Eddison! Robert E. Howard! (And again, plenty of other fantasy writers of an earlier time out there.) Then there’s Frank E. Peretti, who has a more, shall we say, specific approach.

The Lev Grossman ‘hey kids did you know?’ book review mentioned. Ease back, guy.

Wells For Boys! (More about that. Also you should absolutely be checking out all the work of Julio Torres at this point.)

We learned about this after recording, but Angela Collier’s video from last year about finally ‘reading’ Lord of the Rings via Andy Serkis’s audiobook is a good watch.

Our episode on the Rankin-Bass Return of the King. That was a thing.

Our episode on the Scouring of the Shire.

Marlon James’s 2019 Tolkien lecture.

Our episode on resisting Tolkien.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Growing out of a suggestion from Tolkien’s beloved aunt Jane Neave for a stocking stuffer of sorts in the wake of The Lord of the Rings’s initial success, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil was released in time for the Christmas season of 1962 and became a low-key success, much to Tolkien’s own surprise. Consisting of a variety of poems both from his Middle-earth work as well as older individual poems reworked as needed to take on a more in-universe feeling as necessary, and accompanied by illustrations from his favored artist for his own work, Pauline Baynes, it intentionally didn’t aim for great heights in Tolkien’s own estimation. Regardless, by being officially in canon, it has its own somewhat curious place in the legendarium, if perhaps the lightest of all such efforts. What new perspectives are gained on the character of Tom Bombadil and his universe as a result? What themes recur once more even in these seemingly short works that build on his overriding artistic and aesthetic obsessions across all his literary output? How strange is it that after working against Victorian visions of elfdom and fairies as being far too sappy and cute he ended up showcasing just that in some of the work in this collection? Is Tolkien actually that successful of a poet as it stands or is he someone who knows the tools but doesn’t always demonstrate the gifts? And no inclusion of “Goblin Feet”? C’mon, it had to happen.

Jared’s doodle. Plus the original source material.

Hurrah for Rose City Comic Con and Jared’s panel appearances there!

Sight Unseen filming went as planned – keep an eye out for more news in the future!

The interview Ned mentioned was with Travels With Brindle – a good time!

Yeah yeah, Rings of Power. We’ll just note this and this for now. (And if you’d like to revisit our earlier thoughts on the first season, take the plunge!)

Some of the scattershot word on The Hunt For Gollum being two films. We’ll see.

The War of the Rohirrim trailer – there’s a lot going on in there.

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil! Very easily found if you want to read it yourself.

Our episodes on Tom and the Red Book of Westmarch, as well as The Lost Road, the new edition of his letters and Tree and Leaf, which covers his essay “On Fairy-Stories.”

“Goblin Feet” is sure a thing.

Poems and Songs of Middle-earth has been reissued in various ways digitally and in larger compilations. A striking artifact.

Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha.

Inflection! Declension! Iambic pentameter!

“Too many notes.”

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: the Avari, and the Elves who never completed the journey to Valinor. From the start of Tolkien’s legendarium, there was always a key factor in the story of the Elves, namely that not all of them followed the summons of the Valar to live in Valinor. While many, like Thingol’s people, were initially of a mind but found themselves unable to complete it, many others never chose to leave the area of their birth or else turned away at various points in the journey westward. Some eventually became part of the shattering tragedies of the First Age, but many others never were directly involved or else became part of larger struggles against Sauron and his servants in later ages and newer realms and kingdoms. Never featured as central characters in Tolkien’s work, they nonetheless remain a submerged but still present part of the whole story of Middle-earth, perhaps raising more questions than Tolkien ever provided definitive answers for. What was the relationship between these groups and the returned Noldorin exiles over the ages, and how did those perceptions shape their intertwined histories? What does it say about how Tolkien considered groups that could be called ‘fringe’ cultures, not part of any formally recognizable government or organized group and yet clearly possessed of a distinct culture and ethos? How does the story of the Avari and similar groups in contrast to those who journey to Valinor tie in to Tolkien’s thoughts about how the Valar’s good intentions may in fact have ultimately been grievous errors? And can we all talk about Jared’s lovely new cat? (She is quite beautiful.)

Jared’s doodle. And if you’re thinking that seems a bit familiar…

The collected poems are indeed about here…

Initial word on the Australian production of the musical.

There is too much Rings of Power stuff. In general. But here’s the last two trailers for season two, as well as Rufus Wainwright singing the Tom Bombadil song. (Semi-related to which, trailerization.)

The Avari! (But not just them.)

The dolphins in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy are absolute faves.

Our episode on The Nature of Middle-earth.

Our episode on the Valar.

Our episode on the Orcs, vis-a-vis their possible origins as Elves.

Our episode on the Noldor, who are verrrrrry self-conscious in terms of status.

“When there’s too much drama at school.” (Vine, we hardly knew ye.)

Eöl! (Whether he’s actually an Avari or not…)

Our episode on Ghân-buri-Ghân.

Punctuality in Venezuela? There’s actually a piece about it.

The term Ned was trying for was the Sleep of Yavanna.

Helicopter parents and overparenting. You never know…

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Aragorn. Whether it was encountering him like Tolkien first did, showing up much to his own surprise in an inn’s common room in Bree and then wondering who or what this character was, or having a moment when Viggo Mortensen swung those doors open in the Peter Jackson version of The Two Towers, the many-named Ranger and eventual ruler of the reunited kingdoms of the Dúnedain, with his carefully revealed backstory of seemingly impossible love and seemingly impossible odds to start with would be, in other hands, the hero of The Lord of the Rings. But the fact that he is clearly more of a secondary protagonist at most rather than the key central figure, and one whose own motivations and conclusions are more often than not kept hidden from readers or suggested by implication, makes him a more strangely compelling figure than a standard hero would be instead, despite the efforts of critics and interpreters to shift the perception otherwise over the years. What did we individually think of Aragorn when we first encountered him in any version, and what did that suggest to us about where the story might go? How do critics attempting to center him in their reads of the story go about it, and what does that suggest about what they think is the ‘right’ way to tell a story like The Lord of the Rings? What do the differences in Tolkien working from the model of a mortal man falling in love with an Elf princess between his youth and his later years suggest about how he treats or thinks about the subject of love? And just what was it with the early 2000s and movie heroes maybe looking and acting a certain way no matter the context?

Jared’s doodle. (Mind you, there is also the alternate doodle.)

The West Passage once again! Get it! And/or the audiobook! 

Oriana’s Kickstarter for Sight Unseen hit its goals and then some! Hurrah!

Want to read Ned on David Lynch, Dune and sound? Here’s the issue.

When Ned chatted with Zach Schonfeld about Nicholas Cage. Fun night!

A nice preview story from the Chicago Sun-Times about the musical staging, along with a YouTube preview clip showcasing some of the specific design and more. (And word about the planned New Zealand staging.)

Rings of Power reports and things and whatever. Whatever! (But yeah check Ben Daniels out, he does good work.)

Aragorn! He’s a guy, you might have heard of him.

Our episode on the Rankin-Bass Return of the King – and Aragorn in that is the definition of generic guy.

Gilraen, Aragorn’s mother, would be someone we’d love to have seen more writing about, that’s for sure.

Ned got the historical figures wrong there in the Bridgerton comment – it was Caroline of Brunswick who had the big split with George IV. 

Given that he’s long dead, sure seems like Paul H. Kocher’s Wikipedia entry is written by someone on his side.

Our film episodes once again: on Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings and our Peter Jackson episodes.

Robert Stephens. Good actor!

The whole Stuart Townsend thing is still being debated. Who can say?

And yes…Viggo broke his toe.

Le samouraï really is a remarkable film and Alain Delon is absolutely amazing in it.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: resisting Tolkien. With Jared’s long-awaited and happily long-hyped-by-us debut novel The West Passage due later in the month, we wanted to celebrate that by picking an appropriate theme that tied that together with our general focus. There’s long been a stereotype that fantasy was so forever changed and codified by Tolkien that seemingly everything that followed in its wake was essentially marked by it, sometimes in outrageously obvious fashion. But the truth has always been that as much as Tolkien left an impact, there have been authorial voices in the field from his time to now that have advanced critiques or demonstrated by example that there’s a much wider range of possibilities, something that the 21st century has shown in particular even as Tolkien’s profile exploded to new heights in the wake of the live action movie adaptations. With Jared answering questions about how he considered his own work and creativity as a longtime reader not trying to simply reinvent the wheel, we look more closely at our own thoughts as readers and writers about where Tolkien functions for us as an example to not specifically emulate, or to maybe even push back upon at points, if in a sublimated fashion. Also there was a LOT of news of Tolkien adaptations in general that’s come out and we had things to say, sometimes in a very pained voice.

Jared’s doodle. And if you’re wondering who these figures are it’s because…

The West Passage is here! (Or about here but definitely here this month!) Order locally or through Bookshop or the like, please. And as Jared says at the end of the episode, Seattle-area folks, please attend the release event on July 17th at Third Place Books Ravenna!

Jared’s The Sewers of Paris appearance. (Look for future appearances on Turn The Page and Dragonmount.) 

Oriana’s short film Kickstarter! Check it out! Support it if you can, or at least spread the word!

The new paperback version of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil is out in August.

TheOneRing.net with reports from Annecy on The War of the Rohirrim panel as well as a separate interview with Philippa Boyens.

The Rings of Power season two teaser trailer. Yup. Sure is.

Vanity Fair’s piece showing Tom Bombadil is going to be in The Rings of Power. What?

Variety’s piece on The Hunt For Gollum. 

Edmund Wilson! Influential? Sure. Pleasant? The jury is out.

“Oo, Those Awful Orcs!” was rather high profile. (W. H. Auden’s much different piece was as well.)

Guy Gavriel Kay and his work is well worth checking out.

“Epic Pooh,” Michael Moorcock’s 1978 essay out on a tear against Tolkien and others.

China Miéville has had some thoughts on Tolkien, indeed.

Definitely pick up the republished Ursula K. le Guin collection The Language of the Night, where “From Elfland from Poughkeepsie” can be found.

George R. R. Martin’s comment on Aragorn’s tax policy, originally from a 2014 interview from Rolling Stone, can be found here.

“If Tolkien Were Black,” a Salon piece from 2011 featuring David Anthony Durham and N. K. Jemisin.

Marlon James’s 2019 Tolkien lecture “Our Myths, Our Selves.”

The full Terry Pratchett quote on Tolkien with the Mt. Fuji comparison.

Gormenghast forever! (If you will.)

David Lynch and evil, there’s a lot out there. (This essay looks at his famed Hiroshima-and-after episode from Twin Peaks: The Return.)

The Poppy War is the first in a series by R. F. Kuang, while Tasha Suri was the British fantasy author with a South Asian background Ned was thinking of.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White, his famed Arthurian retelling. 

Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Lord Dunsany, all worth checking out. But Lloyd Alexander and Prydain, DEFINITELY check that out.

Stephen King, you might have heard of him, who can say? (This piece delves a bit into his own admitted Tolkien fandom and The Dark Tower.) Also Ned got it wrong a bit, The Stand is clearly a post-disaster story but not post-nuclear!

John Crowley is well, well worth your time.

And yes, if you want more info on the book event Ned is ‘in conversation with’ in August in San Francisco, here ya go!

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: allegory and applicability. In a much-referenced section from his introduction to the second edition of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien wrote: “I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned – with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author.” It’s been a point of discussion ever since in both specific Tolkien critical discussion and general fandom circles – and we’ve certainly referenced it quite a lot over the years – with the distinctions between the two terms and what they are meant to further represent not always clear or universally agreed on, even as readings of Tolkien across the map consider what Middle-earth and its inhabitants consider widely varying perspectives on what the work can be said to represent. What were the evident divisions between Tolkien and his friend and colleague C. S. Lewis on allegory in their work, and how did both of them speak about it and each other’s approach in turn? Where does Tolkien’s perceived modernism – and potential postmodernism – factor into how he was stated to consider allegory in writings beyond the famous quote? How is his seeming hostility to allegory squared with his most overtly allegorical work, “Leaf By Niggle”? And what part of you is a little bunny, or is the little bunny you – or are you a middle manager? 

Jared’s doodle. Much will be explained when you listen to the episode itself.

The return of the original Jackson LOTR trilogy to the theaters: cool. The fact it’s in the crappy 4K version: not as.

Bernard Hill’s passing is a damn shame. Here’s just some of the many reactions.

Allegory! Maybe you remember the English or literature class where you first heard the term, or maybe it was somewhere else, or…

C. S. Lewis knew allegory? And used it in his Narnia books? The deuce you say.

Vermeer’s work is also known as The Art of Painting, and it’s well known indeed.

Our episode on Tree and Leaf, including both “On Fairy-Stories” and “Leaf by Niggle.”

Letter 109 from the collected letters, as summarized by Tolkien Gateway.

Animal Farm! It’s pretty well known, it is. And boy is it allegorical.

It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis sure did get some new attention in recent years. Wonder why?

The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Faerie Queene, oh they thrive on allegory! And they thrive on not being Catholic, the latter especially.

Our Beowulf episode.

Letter 241 from the collected letters, again via Tolkien Gateway.

Ah, smol beans. 

Allegory versus myth? There’s a lot of randomness out there.

On the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius is one of the most well known works in the general field – and boy is it allegorical. (Our friends over at The Spouter-Inn did an episode on it.)

The Tolkien versus Lewis cartoon on allegory. It is pretty great.

Greta Gerwig and Narnia…we’re still wondering about that.

The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis are out there.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: the Rohirrim. As personified most clearly by three key members of its royal family – the elderly but reenergized king Théoden, his passionate, driven niece Éowyn and his equally loyal and fearless nephew Éomer – the people of Rohan come across in The Lord of the Rings as a noble people, proud but warm-hearted, willing allies to both surviving members of the Fellowship after its breaking and to their long-time geopolitical partner Gondor, whose Stewards long ago gave the land that became their kingdom to them. Yet more than once in the narrative there are signs that this was not a universally welcome situation to other peoples of the area, as well as moments that seem to suggest a casual cruelty – or much worse – at the heart of the Riddermark in its history, something further underlined by the short history of the nation Tolkien created for the book’s appendices. With a key story from that short history soon to be dramatized via the anime production The War of the Rohirrim later this year, a look into these complexities is well worth considering. What are the possible connections to Tolkien’s own understanding of imperialism and colonialism, both as he directly experienced it and in the larger context of his legendarium? How do the jarring moments that suggest something darker in Rohan’s ruling elite and its soldiers play out across the centuries, and is there a wider complicity with attitudes that adaptations like Peter Jackson’s put more to the fore? What kind of possible wish fulfillment was Tolkien looking for in creating the Rohirrim, as he discussed it himself in his letters and other conversations? And just how wound up is Helm anyway if he can kill someone with one punch?

Jared’s doodle. It says it all. (If you need a little context…)

Look, we know we keep saying it, but you really can preorder The West Passage, and you should!

Rose City Comic Con! Happening in September! Go see Jared!

The redone revival of the Lord of the Rings musical comes to Chicago, so check it out for more info. (And don’t forget our episode on the original production.)

A report on Paul Corfield Godfrey’s planned Lord of the Rings opera from TheOneRing.net

The Rohirrim! There’s been a lot thought and written about them.

The War of the Rohirrim is due later this year indeed, after having its original March opening date changed due to last year’s strikes.

Our Ghân-buri-Ghân episode, with more on the Druedain.

The Dunlendings kinda really just get the shaft throughout history.

When you’re talking the Roman Empire and then the Anglo-Saxons, the Welsh did go through a lot.

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is truly, truly wonderful, funny and essential. All hail Diana Wynne Jones!

Cirion and Eorl and the Friendship of Gondor and Rohan is the specific chapter in Unfinished Tales. Ted Nasmith’s second painting of the key scene is his favored one, but the first one works too.

TheOneRing.net’s summary of the Annecy panel last year.

Helm Hammerhand. He’s…well, he’s got anger issues.

“FATALITY!” 

And yes, Shōgun was pretty goddamn great. Anna Sawai in particular.

The Habsburgs did at least escape the Romanov fate. (Karl is the current head.)

Our Éowyn episode!

The rider who encountered Théoden en route to Helm’s Deep was Ceorl.

Not the exact Anglo-Saxon horse head Ned was thinking of but this one from a Staffordshire find is quite something. And then there’s the Sutton Hoo burial mound and what was found within…

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Terry Brooks’s debut novel The Sword of Shannara. Released in 1977 after the author had been working on it for almost a decade, The Sword of Shannara became a massive publishing success for its then-new imprint Del Rey Books, helping to establish the viability of fantasy literature as a steady and profitable part of the book business as a whole, as well as starting Brooks’s continuing writing career with a bang. At the same time, more than a few voices said in response to that success and the book itself that it was pretty clearly using The Lord of the Rings as a model, its own author having now been conveniently dead for a few years at the time of publication. This, as it happens, is a massive understatement – and more to the point it is an absolutely awful book, the success of which seen through the eyes of nearly fifty years later is almost impossible to imagine given both the expansion of the field in general and the fact that Tolkien is no longer solely the lodestone for young writers to look towards. What makes Brooks’s work so remarkably un-Tolkien-like despite taking on many of its trappings, and are those trappings used well to start with? How does Brooks’s desire to create a rollicking adventure story/page-turner play out in terms of actual story dynamics, character development and other rather important things a good book should have? How do the key themes of Tolkien in general not apply – or rather, get heavily misapplied or transformed – in Brooks’s vision of a post-apocalyptic fantasy world? And do Jared and Oriana still wish Ned ill fortune for having made them read this? (Audibly so, yes.)

Jared’s doodle. If only the book were this exciting.

Five years indeed! If you want the full story of how we all got started, as mentioned, Ned talks about that in the introduction to our live episode aka Episode 50 from last year.

The big news about The Collected Poems of J.R.R. Tolkien, as reported on by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, its editors.

The not-so-big, in fact really annoying, news about The Rings of Power Season 3 already being worked on. Lovely. Really.

The Sword of Shannara! It’s a book! Sure is a book!

Dan Sinykin’s 2023 Slate article “The Man Who Invented Fantasy,” which details Lester Del Rey’s career and role in bringing Brooks to wider attention as part of his overall plans for Del Rey with his wife Judy-Lynn. So now you know who to blame.

The Brothers Hildebrandt being recruited as the illustrators was a good move from a publishing point of view, especially then.

Gene Wolfe’s defense of Brooks is in his essay “The Best Introduction to the Mountains.”

Our Dennis McKiernan/Silver Call duology episode.

Our episode on the orcs. Gnomes they are not.

Brooks’s TED talk “Why I Write About Elves”.

You want to watch The Shannara Chronicles? Enjoy. Without us.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: Beowulf. The famed Old English poem, the longest extant poetic work in general preserved in that language, almost accidentally survived over the years until it became more widely recognized in the 1700s, including surviving a fire. It has since become a cornerstone of studies of English literature, telling the story of a heroic Geat warrior who defeats two monstrous presences on a visit to an afflicted Danish kingdom, and who in later years as an aging king slays a dragon at the cost of his life and, it is strongly implied, his kingdom’s. Tolkien knew the work thoroughly and regularly taught it in his academic career, leading to both a prose translation and various notes and commentaries that Christopher Tolkien presented and edited for a 2015 publication. But besides the notable connections that can be made between the poem and elements of his own legendarium, Tolkien has a further place in Beowulf scholarship thanks to his most famed academic work, the 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and The Critics,” which single-handedly reframed the poem from being primarily seen as a historical document to being considered as a remarkable work of imagination. What are some of the key differences between Beowulf’s world and ethos and Tolkien’s own reworking of it into his legendarium, in terms of character, society and more? What points does Tolkien bring up in his lecture that provides a deeper insight into how he was not only arguing for the Beowulf poet – whoever it might be – but also placing his own work into that lineage? How do the portrayals of the various monsters Beowulf faces differ, and what in particular makes Grendel’s mother such a fascinating character? And how many moments per episode are points raised and then suddenly realized to be maybe not accurate? (Sorry about that.)

Jared’s doodle. Gotta be careful with dragons.

Ooooooh boy, the angst this Fellowship of Fans post unleashed in some corners when it came to Rings of Power rumors. (On a side note, RoP’s Morfydd Clark is in the new two part Agatha Christie Murder is Easy adaptation on Britbox and is unsurprisingly really good!)

The whole Matthew Weiner spoiler-war thing re Mad Men was a thing. Was it ever a thing. Here’s a sample.

Beowulf! You might have heard of it. Plenty of translations freely available, and of course there’s Seamus Heaney and Maria Dahvana Headley and etc. And yes there’s Tolkien’s too.

“HWAET!” (Tolkien allegedly really loved to get his students’ attention by delivering this full on.)

If you haven’t read “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” we really do encourage this. (And picking up the full essay anthology too, key pieces like “A Secret Vice” and “On Fairy-Stories” are included among others.)

Kennings are very cool. (But please avoid ‘whale road.’)

Imagining Tolkien delivering this to the other Beowulf critics is something wild to think about.

There’s a wide variety of pieces about the women of Beowulf out there; here’s one that provides a general summary and consideration about them.

If you’d like to see the Nowell Codex, head on over to the British Library, physically or virtually.

We’ve mentioned E. R. Eddison before. Definitely NOT Tolkien.

The full historical background that Beowulf draws on is definitely there, though treating the poem as a history itself is not the way to go. Here’s a useful piece tackling the history as such.

The Geats aren’t around as such anymore, and there are reasons for that…

It’s not directly mentioned in the episode but Tolkien did write and lecture about one of the ‘side’ stories in Beowulf, with the results published in the book Finn and Hengest.

Did we mention we’re not impressed with Silicon Valley’s take on Tolkien?

Grendel’s mother is, no question, awesome.

Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon” – definitely not Smaug.

“Sellic Spell” really is interesting, and may be the most notable part of the volume it’s published in.

Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead! (But avoid The 13th Warrior.)

A last little bonus: didn’t bring it up in the episode but Ned remembered seeing Robert Macneil’s 1986 documentary series on PBS The Story of English back when it first ran, and the second episode, “The Mother Tongue,” has a brief bit discussing Beowulf and how it might have been performed as a song, as well as a separate section on the impact of the Viking invasions on English as a language led by noted Tolkien scholar and academic descendant Tom Shippey.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Silicon Valley’s

Jared’s

Queen Margrethe bows out, and hey, why not enjoy

One of various pieces on Margrethe’s Tolkien

We share TheOneRing.net’s

Never invent the torment nexus.

Peter Thiel. Great. Just great.

Techno-fascism!

Palantir Technologies.

Palmer Luckey. Another piece of

Ah, Ready Player One and

If you want to know our thoughts on “The Greatest Adventure” and more besides,

That whole taking your money with you when you die thing, jeez. Mother Jones

The Last Ringbearer aka

Wicked the book is

Tim Alberta’s book, which probably isn’t

Tolkien Gateway has some of the further details from Unfinished Tales on

The TechCrunch article about Anduril Industries’s rather paranoid geopolitical

Quick reminder about our orcs

Blood in the Machine by Brian

Thiel buying his New Zealand

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