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

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Tolkien’s experiences in World War I. It’s the core of one of Tolkien’s most famous quotes and one of his saddest: “By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.” Only 22 years old when the cascading series of events of the summer of 1914 led to what was first called the Great War and in retrospect World War I, Tolkien seemingly had an advantage with some prior officer training and the ability to stay out of the war to finish his studies, but starting in 1915 he joined all of his friends from pre-university days in serving in the British armed forces for the duration of the conflict. Due to a case of trench fever after his time in the horrific 1916 engagement called the Battle of the Somme, much of his later time during the duration was spent on home duty with his wife and first son, but by that time, many of those friends were already gone. While he specifically resisted too much biographical interpretation of his work, there’s simply no question that his experience at least shaped part of Tolkien’s life from that period forward. What can be said of the early work that Garth introduces as Middle-earth coalesces, and is it a case where his friends’ love for it was maybe not too wise but too well? How does that passionate friendship itself play out in their interactions and letters and more, and how much of it seems to be a hangover from their school days and what they felt they could actually say? Is there something about Tolkien’s small-a anarchism that grows out of his experience as an officer in the war, among other things? And exactly how hard was it to track officer luggage back then?

Jared’s doodle. A dead land indeed.

Want to read more about Jared’s Worldcon time? Head to his Patreon!

Oriana’s forthcoming film once again!

Ian McKellen Gandalfs up once more.

If you want to read more about The Rings of Power, well, there’s this. If you must.

D. J. Taylor’s The King Under the Mountain, if you want to check it out.

Thomas Pynchon has indeed appeared on the Simpsons.

That Eagle and Child Easter egg. And Emma Mackey’s amazing costume.

That famed Tolkien quote about his friends and 1918. (And why that preface exists to start with.)

World War I. Between that and the flu epidemic hot on its heels, no wonder people wanted to party in the 1920s.

The casualty statistics from the war sadly say it all.

John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War – worth a read.

The other members of the core friendship quartet: Christopher Wiseman, Robert Gilson and Geoffrey Smith. (Wells for boys!)

The Battle of the Somme looms large in the UK perspective on the war.

Gas gangrene – you don’t want to have it.

More on the OTC, or Officer Training Corps.

A little more on the USS Abraham Lincoln’s travails this past summer…

Tolkien, the biopic. A mixed effort but the wartime scenes were good.

So if you’re wondering about the mustaches…

Our Adventures of Tom Bombadil episode is as close to a Tolkien poetry episode as we have.

Radiohead did indeed start off as school pals. But the ultimate ‘public school kids form a prog band’ story is that of Genesis.

Luke Shelton did indeed write a piece on how the ‘mythology for England’ line is overblown in discussion.

“Lions led by donkeys.”

The still famed major World War I writers from the UK: Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Vera Brittain. 

Hilary Tolkien. It’s entirely possible he just was very low-key in general. (There is this posthumous publication from a few years back, though…)

Our episodes on Turin and the Fall of Gondolin.

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: bodies. Tolkien is, putting it plainly, not the most dedicated writer when it comes to the physical forms we all inhabit – his contemporary D. H. Lawrence would have had some things to say about it had the subject ever come up, say. But at the same time, he did have quite a few thoughts over the decades – never in a completely organized or systematized sense, but certainly strongly influenced by his own Catholic beliefs – about the distinction between soul and body in Middle-earth, or to use his own Quenya terms for them, fëa and hröa. Centered for the most part in discussions around and about the Elves, with their fates bound more strongly to Arda in the legendarium as a whole, this distinction and its implications, teased out in varying ways, contrasted strongly with the murkier fate of humanity’s own souls, leading in turn to much in the way of the deep background of Middle-earth’s history. How did Tolkien account for how the fates of the dwarves in the eyes of elves, if at all, and how did the Elves conceive of death in general when it was first encountered happening to men? What are the problems in assuming that there was a clear throughline of Tolkien’s thoughts on these subjects across time, especially given how they’ve been organized and presented posthumously? Can further evidence in how physical presence was memorialized in different ways among communities of men in Arda suggest something in terms of how Tolkien considered what the ‘right’ way to remember and honor such remains were? And did hobbits have hairy chests indeed? (This came up among more than one of us independently.)

Jared’s doodle. Make sure you take the right measurements.

Synchronization rights! They’re a thing.

Enjoy some Jackie Jormp-Jomp and some Jackie Johnson while you’re at it.

That demi-podcast Patreon thing Ned mentioned is now live – at least this pilot episode of it, sorta.

Sawles Warde! It’s not Middle-earth or anything but it is Tolkien, at least in translation.

Hooray for protesting Gandalfs. And the reason why they were.

Bodies! You might have heard of them somewhere. (No, not those Bodies.)

Enjoy some Drawfee.

Fëa and hröa – not the same, but somewhat different.

Joel Osteen and St. Francis of Assisi – not the same, but VERY different.

Our Nature of Middle-earth episode.

St. Paul and the flesh? There’s a lot out there.

Le Guin and Taoism? There’s a lot out there.

In the world but not of it? There’s a loooooot out there.

Our episode on the dwarves.

Our episode on The Road Goes Ever On.

Our episode on death. (A very early effort, we hadn’t worked out episode formats yet!)

Brandon Sanderson – some have opinions.

You can find those Christopher Tolkien recordings as part of this collection.

A piece discussing the ‘restless dead’ in Greek mythology.

The Odyssey – you might have heard of this film.

Our episode on the Valar.

“Bartleby, the Scrivener,” a rather well known story.

Gnosticism! Take it for a spin if you want. 

There are specific thoughts about relics in Catholicism of course.

The Valley of the Kings had been known again for a while prior but 1922 brought a big step forward – the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

The Tomb of Elendil.

The rather…intense consideration of Isildur’s body by Elendil is in The Lost Road. (Our episode on it.)

A misquote from Ned – it of course should be ‘controversial yet so brave.’

Sapir-Whorf for ya.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Tolkien’s invented writing systems. The graceful lettering of the Tengwar, easily Tolkien’s most well-known writing system, is now a calling card for his work in general on the level of the Ring itself, Bilbo, Gollum and more besides. Less well known but nearly as broadly familiar is his runic system, the Cirth, with both featuring in somewhat but not totally thorough descriptions in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings itself. In keeping with his invented languages, it certainly makes sense that there would be a non-Greco-Roman style alphabet or two to express them, though in the same way that Tolkien invented more than Quenya and Sindarin, writing systems were a regular passion of his and many further examples have since come to the fore, showcasing that this was a part of his creative life in general. What about the description of the writing systems in The Lord of the Rings itself was inspiring, but at the same time, what was frustrating and incomplete about it? How do the systems work as a particular kind of artistic or community signal, whether in terms of formal adaptation or in the many worlds of fan art? What are the possible kinds of sources or comparison points to the systems when it comes to real world systems, and what were Tolkien’s own particular linguistic goals and feelings that lay in their creation? And have your hosts, whether in the past or present or both, regularly made use of the writing systems one way or another in a variety of casually random everyday things in life? (Oh yes, yes we have.)

Jared’s doodle. From such small acorns!

The Mythopoeic Awards for 2026 were indeed announced – alas, Jared didn’t win, but Michael Drout’s recent critical overview of Tolkien, The Tower and the Ruin, did win their scholarship prize.

Pre-order Jared’s new book! You know you want to. 

Oriana’s new documentary Let’s All Go To The Movies! does indeed have a merch store – and there’s also a teaser trailer up, check it out! 

The Mountain Goats’s John Darnielle did indeed love the documentary goal – and here’s that Jedi song.

The Rings of Power season 3 teaser. A Deadline report on it and some other Comic Con news. There’s more out there. We’re weary. Again, our episode on the first season. 

The Tengwar! The Cirth! They are, how to put it, rather of note. 

Now, beyond those two? There’s Sarati, for example, among others to be found at the link to Arden Smith’s piece on writing systems at the Tolkien Estate’s site.

Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar are very much there for your deeper dives.

Learn some phonology! Graphemes, abugidas and abjads.

Beyond Bree still thrives!

Watching the World Cup via Telemundo was the only way to go.

Our episode on A Secret Vice.

Polish Tengwar, you say?

Tolkien’s handwriting via an enthusiastic but interesting analysis.

The Ring inscription in Tengwar – rather well known, to put it mildly.

The West-gate of Moria aka the Doors of Durin from The Fellowship of the Ring.

Some writing systems! Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Georgian, insular script from Ireland.

Some specifically created-by-someone writing systems: Hangul, the Korean script created by the specific command and help of Sejong the Great, the Armenian script, created by Mesrop Mashtots, and the Cherokee syllabary, created by Sequoyah.

The Book of Mazarbul, and specifically Tolkien’s own illustrated depictions of its pages.

Bronze Age collapse! (And yeah…the characters in the Odyssey wouldn’t know to call it that.)

A collection of images showcasing the little bugbear that Oriana mentions that she has with the Lord of the Rings film.

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: rereading Tolkien. Tolkien was certainly aware of the power and pleasure of rereading familiar texts, and in a famous passage Frodo and Sam speculate about later hobbits might read and reread their own story from a future book. Talking about our own experience as rereaders – all of us having done so multiple times soon after we first read Tolkien, and then on a more measured but still regular basis in later years – also led us to invite our listeners to contribute their own experiences as well, making this perhaps our first at least partially collaborative episode yet (and we thank everyone once again for their thoughts, they were really great to read!). Does the fact there’s always a ‘you could/should be reading newer or unfamiliar work’ impulse kicking around have an impact on rereads, or does that prove to be less of a factor than might be guessed? How does one’s own personal experiences over time change or transform what we see in the text, or lead us to reconsider things we hadn’t felt directly before? What particular moments in our lives can prompt a reread or make us talk or think more directly about how a reread of Tolkien in particular can be just what was needed at that moment? What further perspectives did our listeners bring to this question, ranging from the sense that not everything will ever be fully understood to the experience of being a parent? And how great were Jared’s illustrations for his just-concluded reread via his Patreon? (Pretty great, of course!)

Jared’s doodle – and yes, check out his Patreon for the full LOTR reread details!

Oriana’s Kickstarter for her and husband’s documentary film, Let’s All Go To the Movies!, on independent theaters! Pitch in, it’ll be great. And here’s the Instagram for the project.

The Mythopoeic Awards finalist list for 2026, and Jared is indeed on it for The West Passage.

The Pope’s Magnificat Humanitas – and yup, Gandalf is quoted. The Thiel rebuke was immediately considered. (Again, our Silicon Valley episode.)

The Rings of Power season 4 production is happening. If it must.

Anya Taylor-Joy announced for The Hunt for Gollum. Seren, you say.

Rereading! There’s a lot out there. Here’s that Hazlitt essay for a start.

More modern takes on rereading: “On Rereading,” “The Pleasures and Perils of Rereading,” “Even Better the Second (or Third, or Fourth...) Time: In Praise of Re-Reading.”

A couple of pieces specifically on rereading Tolkien: “On Re-reading The Lord Of The Rings 50 Years Later,” “Thoughts On Re-reading The Lord Of The Rings.”

Our episode on the Red Book of Westmarch.

Abigail Nussbaum’s LOTR reread starts here.

Our episode on death. 

Our episode on Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring, with one of Ned’s rereading stories.

The UCLA Library undergraduate book collection award might not be going now, it seems, but there is a very cool Library Prize for Undergraduate Research at the least!

Neon Hemlock, if you’d like to check them out.

Some responses on Bluesky to our request for thoughts on rereading, from faybarra and Søren. (And building off of the latter’s excellent choice of quote from Merry reflecting on Middle-earth’s presence and ‘weight,’ our episode on land.)

Homestar Runner! (Enjoy the radio episode.)

Roseanna Pendlebury and Edward Morland, whose emails we quote, have their own Tolkien reread going, with Roseanna’s thoughts starting here.

Our episode on evil.

That Tumblr post about the German insult about ‘hobbyless behavior.’

Seth Mowshowitz, who we also quote via their email, can be found on Bluesky via his musical project, Fold. (Relatedly, our episode on Tolkien as children’s author.)

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the late 14th century Middle English poem Pearl. Surviving solely in the same manuscript as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and presumed to be by the same anonymous author, Pearl has long been valued as another scarce surviving example of a poem from that period from the North-West Midlands dialect of Middle English. Its subject matter, at once theologically didactic, imaginative in its language, extremely technically complex and often obscure and strange in its portrayals of grief and redemption, clearly appealed to Tolkien, who worked on a modern English translation of it that was published posthumously along with Sir Gawain and Sir Orfeo, along with accompanying notes and details. It has remained one of his own least-known works even as part of that wider collection, but does offer a variety of unexpected connections to his own beliefs and creative preoccupations. How tough exactly is this particular dialect of Middle English to understand, and how did that impact what Tolkien was trying to do in his translation? What does the exact obscurity of the relationship between the narrator and the titular figure mean in terms of possible interpretations of the poem? What further parallels and points of inspiration can be teased out in particular about the poem’s dwelling on death, grief and memory and how those subjects are explored in Tolkien’s written work? And just how exasperated does the pearl maiden sound after a while?

Jared’s doodle. And one of his finest examples of it yet, even.

The Roxie! SF’s own. (And here’s that Aquarius Records documentary.)

Sight Unseen! We’ll say it again!

Stephen Colbert talking about his Tolkien film among other things, plus separate comments from Peter Jackson.

Jackson’s comments about the Tolkien estate and possible further adaptations.

The Rings of Power season 3 release date news. If you care.

Widow’s Bay: it’s awesome.

Jackson and the Amazon driver. 

Pearl! As much as we know about it.

Our previous episodes on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo.

The Consolation of Philosophy, it has a legacy.

There’s a lot of Middle English poetry out there, but in comparison to the actual amount that was made or creative work that was spoken or sung, not as much as we could want.

The Alliterative Revival! It happened, but it didn’t quite last.

Richard II doesn’t have the best overall rep…

French in the 18th century isn’t what you think it might be.

Dr. Julia Martins had a recent short video on conceptions of historical love of children and grief over loss.

Our episodes on The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (where “Errantry” was collected) and The Road Goes Ever On.

Separately, our episodes on land and Smith of Wootton Major.

So about Christ’s side wound…

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Fëanor and his s—head sons. (We get a little spicy in this episode.) One of the original characters of Tolkien’s legendarium right from the days of The Book of Lost Tales, Fëanor is simultaneously one of the absolute core figures in the entire decades-long creative effort and yet, due to his only being mentioned once or twice in casual fashion in The Lord of the Rings, one of the most strangely obscure for even much of Tolkien’s wider audience. Yet without his family history, his dreams and desires, his actions and fears, and ultimately both the expressions of his greatest gifts and the consequences of his numerous horrific crimes, all in the belief that he was doing what needed to be done, the story of Middle-earth as we know it and as it exists as backstory for the characters in The Lord of the Rings simply would not exist. No less than Fëanor, his seven sons – often of varying personal qualities – have their own roles to play, even if some of them were ultimately more sketched out by Tolkien than others. What essential elements of the populist and demagogue can be seen in Fëanor’s wildest moments, and what resonances then and now can be drawn? What roles did the women in Fëanor’s life play, whether as mother, wife or relative, and given how they all eventually shut him out, how much of his life seemed to be shaped by being a guy among guys in contrast? How much would his sons have pulled the take-back card if they knew exactly what they were getting into? And exactly how obsessed and/or grief-ridden do you have to be to cling to a specific pronunciation just to stick it to everyone else?

Jared’s doodle. No question Fëanor was a sword guy.

Enjoy a Tower of London hoodie! (And yeah, the ravens are a thing.)

The Ursula K. Le Guin In Your Spare Time podcast.

The Eurowhat! Or rather, The Eurowhat? And their Patreon with Ned’s guest appearance is here.

Low Cinema! And here’s the trailer for Revelations of Divine Love.

Sight Unseen will be out for rental or purchase in a couple of weeks!

And indeed Jared is up in his second year of eligibility for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer.

Yes yes, Colbert, Tolkien film, Shadows of the Past. 

Meantime here’s that Hunt For Gollum casting news.

Our episode on The War of the Rohirrim. 

Fëanor! Well, he’s a lot, he is. (And then there’s the shibboleth because of Míriel and so forth.)

Nerdanel probably had a lot of thoughts about everything that played out, that’s for sure.

Our episode on the Avari.

The Kinslaying at Alqualondë and the Burning of the Ships, they’re the red lines for sure.

The sons of Fëanor have their own black marks against them – more on that in our episodes on The Children of Húrin and Beren and Lúthien.

You likely know The Dodo. They’re designed to be known.

And yes, Maedhros is indeed very interesting!

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Hobitit, the 1993 Finnish TV miniseries adapting The Lord of the Rings. Broadcast over nine half-hour episodes, Hobitit grew out of a live stage adaptation of Tolkien done for an open air summer theater series in Helsinki in 1988 and 1989, which garnered much attention in its own right. By the time of the series, though various live action attempts of adapting Tolkien for TV had happened before, Hobitit became the first full non-radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings anywhere in the world, though one with a specific focus on the story of Frodo and Sam in particular rather than every element of the overall narrative. Though a notable success upon initial broadcast, with a repeat following four years later, the series has never been reshown since due to licensing issues and possibly more besides that, leaving viewers since to rely on circulating online copies, sometimes available with subtitles, even as Peter Jackson’s films achieved firm pride of place. What elements of the overall production clearly carry over from the original theater version of the adaptation, and what in particular stands out as best among them? Is it possible to look past the evidently limited budget for the series to get a best sense of what the creators were attempting to achieve? What elements of the story, especially between Frodo and Sam as central characters, stand out as the most potentially successful in an admittedly up and down production overall? And just what the heck is going on with a fair amount of the music anyway?

(Quick note: the Colbert film news broke after we recorded this. We’ll talk about it next time!)

Jared’s doodle. Props for you if you recognized the specific film art reference.

Yup, seven years since we kicked off with this. Time, it flies.

Jared’s post sharing the announcement of his new book Where Fire Reigns. (And if you want to indulge in those Silver Call thoughts.)

Jamie Campbell Bower on the Rings of Power. Have a good time!

That Kate Winslet Hunt for Gollum report. Er. 

Ben Child’s Guardian piece in response to said Winslet news.

Ah yes…sexy Shelob. SIGH.

Hobitit! At least, a Wikipedia page about it. (Your best bet for a watch is to see what’s at the Internet Archive at present…)

Those non-English radio productions of The Lord of the Rings: Der Herr der Ringe and Pán prsteňov.

Non-English TV productions preceding Hobitit: Sagan om ringen and the Russian Hobbit and Khraniteli.

Finnish outdoor summer dramas and theater – it’s a thing!

A little something about Suomenlinna.

Ryhmäteatteri – very much still going to the present day.

The 1988 Finnish TV documentary footage of the live stage production being prepared and rehearsed, as hosted on Yle, the eventual broadcaster of Hobitit.

Tove Jansson’s Hobbit illustrations are well worth your time.

Murnau’s Faust is a fine experience in its own right.

The BBC Chronicles of Narnia series was a notable effort from the time.

Skrillex hair, you say.

The Lost Boys from Hook (the 1991 film) did have notable hair…

Lucille Ball as the wicked city woman in I Love Lucy – a great scene! But not the best thing to base an Aragorn wig design on.

That 1982 Scarlet Pimpernel is a fun watch. And hey, Ian McKellen’s in it!

Versts!

Alexsandr Ptushko’s Sampo, his 1959 adaptation of the Kalevala, is really worth a watch.

Frank Reynolds in a Thea wig could easily be an episode.

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: Donald Swann’s song cycle The Road Goes Ever On. A member of the hit comic song duo Flanders and Swann in post-WWII Britain and beyond, including the US, Swann’s own interest in The Lord of the Rings, encouraged by his equally interested wife, resulted in a short song cycle for voice and piano drawing on various shorter poems from that text. But this wasn’t a simple example of early fanwork – this ended up being a full collaboration with Tolkien himself, who approved of most of Swann’s work except one song he suggested his own melody for, along with contributing calligraphy, art and short essays to the published songbook of the cycle. Further, Swann’s own recording of the cycle with singer William Elvin on the album Poems and Songs of Middle-earth was itself accompanied by Tolkien’s own readings of his poetry – in all, a demonstration of Tolkien’s own enthusiasm for this extremely rare artistic collaboration based on his work. Yet The Road Goes Ever On has only had extremely low-key interest from even dedicated readers or listeners since, seen as a very strange curio now completely overshadowed by Howard Shore’s majestic work for the Jackson films. What were the circumstances that brought Swann to fame and his ultimate connection with Tolkien? How was it that Tolkien found a resonance in Swann’s work as a whole, and how does this square with wider perceptions of what his work was meant to ‘sound’ like to readers? Is there something ultimately to both the cycle and the published book as a whole that has value even beyond the music itself? And do any of your hosts actually like this at all? (Spoiler: …not really.)

Jared’s doodle. It’s worth the read, of course.

There was indeed a lot of snow going on over in New York City!

No Drag Race Wetwang yet, but Tolkien in the wider franchise and beyond? It’s out there!

McKellen on Colbert did indeed have some Hunt for Gollum news. As such.

Yeah that whole Palantir and DHS and ‘committed hobbits’ thing…garbage. And then there’s the nicotine patches. Again, our Silicon Valley episode.

Nazgul the dog! Clearly the greatest good boy of the year.

The Road Goes Ever On! And, relatedly, Poems and Songs of Middle-earth.

The famed Milton Waldman letter.

Donald Swann! He did a lot in his field, really, most famously Flanders & Swann. 

William Elvin, the singer on the Poems album. Honestly there’s not much out there about him, but he had a career.

The France Musique webcast of Le Royal Gondor Orchestre performing Christophe Dilys’s arrangement of the song cycle. Separately, a short profile and interview with Dilys on this; please note it is entirely in French.

Light entertainment – it’s a term! In the UK at least.

Beyond the Fringe, the Goon Show, there’s a whole history of UK comedy backstory there.

One of Fry and Laurie’s regular show closing bits.

Caedmon Audio is indeed still around, as a HarperCollins imprint.

The report from last year about Tolkien’s letters to Swann.

Mary, Star of the Sea.

Swann’s performance of “I Sit Beside The Fire” from the 1967 CBS studio broadcast of a Flanders & Swann review.

Heavy mithril, indeed.

Our episode on the 1981 BBC radio version of The Lord of the Rings.

James Partridge’s podcast episode on The Road Goes Ever On.

The Oh Hellos, and their albums Dear Wormwood and their Christmas efforts.**

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: warriors. As we all know, one way or another, war has been an ever present part of human societies over the millennia, and so there are warriors, fighters, soldiers, whatever term suits. Add in Tolkien’s own experience as an officer in World War I and little surprise that his legendarium from the start has armed conflict and battle as part of the overall arc of their many stories, published or not. But while war is present, at the same time it’s notable how Tolkien does or more often does not tell what are often seen as ‘typical’ stories of war, whether in terms of old folk tales and myths or more modern portrayals and considerations of what it means to fight and how. How do the books differ from the Jackson adaptations in terms of centering war and warriors, and how are parts of the book transformed as a result? What ultimately are the vocations of people seen to be warriors in The Lord of the Rings in particular, or in contrast are those who find themselves in war, and how do they conceive or process what they experience or do? Are there particular patterns over the legendarium’s historical time cycles as to how war and warriors ends up being part of seemingly ideal societies? And what is Tolkien’s ultimate message to those who find themselves as warriors and how to consider what they experienced?

Jared’s doodle. Make sure you have all parts to claim a warranty.

Jared’s Patreon, which we all encourage you to sign up for for his Lord of the Rings reread and much more!

The Patriots won, BTW. You might have heard about that. Bill Belichick, in contrast, did not.

TheOneRing with various hoo and hah on Aragorn recasting rumors.

Stuart Townsend on Shetland? Not bad, really.

Chalamet and his Christmas movie power. It’s there, it seems.

War! It sucks but it exists, so there are warriors.

The opening essay of Bret Devereaux’s series on ‘the universal warrior’ and differing definitions of what a warrior can be.

There’s no exact central web page about Ned’s dad’s service but there is this…

Faramir’s quote about not loving the sword for its sharpness.

Our orc episode.

Our Aldarion and Erendis episode.

Mablung and Damrod, the two Gondorian soldiers Frodo ends up in conversation with. (In slight contrast, Beregond.)

The quote about Sam and the dead Haradrim soldier; in the movie, it was given to Faramir.

Robert E. Howard and E. R. Eddison were all about warriors. To a fault.

Our episodes on the Rohirrim and Ghân-buri-Ghân. 

Our episodes on the Noldor and the dwarves. 

Michael Drout’s new book The Tower And The Ruin.

Our episode on the Silver Call Duology.

Support By-The-Bywater (and our network) on Patreon, and you can hang out with us in a friendly Discord.

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Bovadium Fragments and Tolkien as environmentalist. Published in November 2025, The Bovadium Fragments are a short, academically-minded collection of comedic observations on a then-current civic-planning debate in Oxford revolving around car routes through and around the city. Tolkien, never one for cars in general, used it as the basis for something along the lines of the linguistic history jokes in Farmer Giles of Ham but in a much different context – and honestly with much less interesting results, however one might agree with his larger points. But besides being the final posthumous project that Christopher Tolkien edited before his own passing, The Bovadium Fragments also raises the larger question of Tolkien as an environmentalist as such – or at least one seen to be an environmentalist given his well known love for trees in particular. But in terms of his own general work and writing, calling him an environmentalist writer and thinker in both a past and current sense might not be the best framing for what he does. What elements of Tolkien’s personal and academic history fed into the creation of The Bovadium Fragments? How ‘on the ground’ is Tolkien’s own perceived environmentalism in general, or is it something more seen at a remove? What elements of industrial culture overall shaped Tolkien’s experiences – even those seemingly closest to his own most profound encounters with nature? And how much Latin do you have to know to deal with the fragments anyway?

Jared’s doodle. Charon’s got a sweet ride for himself there.

The Lord of the Rings is back in theaters! If you want to go! You don’t have to!

Netflix, Warner Bros., etc etc.

Tolkien’s desk selling for crazy money is…strange.

The Bovadium Fragments, if you’d like. 

Our Farmer Giles of Ham episode. (And our Mr. Bliss one.)

The Tolkien trees quote and its proper origins.

Our Silicon Valley episode.

Clyde Kilby’s entry in Tolkien Gateway.

David Macaulay and his Motel of the Mysteries. All his work is well worth your time.

Northwestern! It’s a school, you see.

Inspector Morse and Lewis (not C.S.) – and remember, “It’s a rave, Lewis!”

Robert Moses is, how to put it, well known in history. (And it was indeed Wadham.)

“Town and gown” has probably always been around in history. (As has “NIMBY.”)

Our episode on The Fall of Númenor.

The extinct British megafauna via the University of London.

Our episode on the Ents.

Indigenous North American agriculture, as discussed by the National Farmer’s Union.

Our episode on Ghân-buri-Ghân.

Our episode on Tom Bombadil.

Our episode on Lothlórien.

A short piece discussing Romantic/19th century ‘back to nature’ impulses.

A good Reddit thread (really) on 19th century nature tourism.

Recent Seattle flooding – not good, on many different levels.

Charon’s obol.

The original Futurama riff.

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