Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Arnor and Angmar. Only half-referenced in the Jackson adaptations, the long-gone realms of Arnor and Angmar don’t have much place in the original Lord of the Rings text itself – in fact, Tolkien didn’t fully introduce either of them by time and set a firm sense of what exactly they were until much later in the overall revision process, including the development of the appendices. Arnor was the northern equivalent of Gondor, a realm in exile founded by Númenor’s refugees, but one that slowly fractured and then faded away or was conquered bit by bit. Angmar was the realm doing most of the conquering, set up and ruled over by the Lord of the Nazgûl in the guise of the Witch-king, though after his final conquest of the remains of Arnor, Angmar itself was soon after destroyed via an invasion from Gondor. But while centuries have passed since both their ends, the realms have a strange, at times unsettling impact on the characters and situations in the main text. What was the legacy of both kingdoms as it affected Aragorn in particular, as well as the remnant of peoples he found himself leading, even at times at a great distance? How did the sense of history in England itself in terms of lost kingdoms and mysterious ruins play into what Tolkien imagined for both realms? Was the nature of Angmar always just a matter of convenience, and what does it mean that it seems to be drawing on numerous different peoples and species? And if nature abhors a vacuum, how much did the nature of fandom contribute in terms of fan work talking about both of them? (Answer: quite a bit.)

Jared’s doodle. (And be sure to check the follow-up post on part of the inspiration.)

The Ursula K Le Guin 2025 Prize! And indeed Jared is among the nominees. (Per his suggestion, check out Rakesfall.)

The Maine International Film Festival is about here and here’s the Sight Unseen screening information. (Plus check out Oriana’s article in MovieMaker cowritten with her husband and creative partner on the film!)

Meantime, Ned and his musical side turn up in podcast episodes on Suede and Oasis (for the latter, the segment he’s in starts around forty minutes in, and here’s the segment’s host and producer Melissa Locker’s book on Oasis fans including him, And After All).

The Rings of Power casting news du jour. 

Embracer now calls itself Fellowship Entertainment. Of course.

Alex Scopic’s article for Current Affairs, “How The Right Abuses Tolkien.” (And as ever check out our Silicon Valley episode.)

Simon Tolkien’s article “Finding Your Way Into Writing Fiction As J. R. R. Tolkien’s Grandson,” as shared via LitHub.

Arnor and Angmar – they’re places both!

It’s true there’s not as much pre-Columbian architecture in the US, but it’s worth noting what remains – here’s a useful initial guide.

Fanwork on these places? Consider Annúminas and Carn Dûm… Plus, our Karen Wynn Fonstad/Atlas of Middle-earth episode.

The Sceptre of Annúminas – more important than the city itself.

The Chieftains of the Dúnedain in Arnor, ruling over…something. But what, exactly, is unclear. (Though per this note, some scattered information emerged in some of the posthumous publications.)

Gilraen? She’s awesome. 

If you REALLY want to get into some fanfic on Aragorn’s family background, there’s this…

Ah yes, Tora Bora. Great.

Our episode on allegory and applicability.

Witches and ducks. Look, you know the scene. (We assume.)

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: The Atlas of Middle-earth, created by Karen Wynn Fonstad. First published in 1981 and then in a revised edition later as more posthumous material was released in The History of Middle-earth series, Fonstad’s detailed and extremely well thought out depiction of Middle-earth across eras became something of a definitive work over time. Combining Fonstad’s own academic and technical training as a cartographer with her own deep appreciation and love of Tolkien’s work, it sought to cover everything from the climates and geology of Middle-earth to closely-read details of buildings, cities and battles in the legendarium as a whole. At the same time, while Christopher Tolkien openly appreciated the work via comments and testimonials, it perhaps acquired the patina of being an official publication when it is more accurate to consider it as a deep example of fanwork instead, with Fonstad unable to work with the since-deceased Tolkien himself and ultimately creating her own elaborations on the texts at many points throughout. Are her textual essays and summaries the core of the book itself, or would it be the actual maps and charts that define it as an atlas to start with? What other examples of in-depth and notable fanwork from its time, whether regarding Tolkien or other creative endeavours, can be compared to what Fonstad created? Does the atlas in the end fully succeed at its stated brief or can it be seen instead as something that reaches for it but doesn’t quite fully succeed? And are the mountains in California in fact actually purple? (As Timothy Olyphant once said to Oriana, yes, yes they are.)

Jared’s doodle. Salut to a dedicated artist’s spirit indeed.

The Locus Awards nominations list, including Jared for best first novel.

The Hunt for Gollum announcement switching to December 2027. Whatever works for you.

The interview with the Rings of Power actors. They try, they do.

Our episode on fanwork.

The Atlas of Middle-earth! Easily found many different places.

The NY Times ‘Overlooked No More’ obituary for Fonstad.

The WPR piece about preserving Fonstad’s archive.

Karst! It’s out there.

Mm, yeah, Mensa and IQ and all. Here’s a piece to consider.

Beyond Bree! Still going, good to see it.

Other Fonstad atlases for Pern, The Land, Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms.

The Encyclopedia of Arda. 

Our episodes on cartography and land.

The Civil War history book Ned mentions was The American Heritage Picture History Of The Civil War by Bruce Catton, published in 1960 and still considered a strong overview of the conflict via illustrations and accompanying notes and essays, as well as the maps in question.

The Klingon Dictionary by Mark Okrand.

Pauline Baynes’s “A Map of Middle-earth.”

Journeys of Frodo by Barbara Strachey

The Maps of Middle-earth by John Howe and Brian Sibley

Our episode on resisting Tolkien and The West Passage.

The manuscripts and maps for the Peter Jackson adaptations were done by Daniel Reeve.

The artist Ned mentions who did 1980s/90s fanzine illustrations in a style suggesting actual manuscripts from Middle-earth was Tom Loback. His map of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad can be seen in four parts at the bottom of this page featuring some of his work. 

You’ve likely heard of Timothy Olyphant.

Plan 9! (The group.)

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: monarchy, through the lens of Aragorn as king. It’s an interesting tension throughout Tolkien’s legendarium that while his foundational stories of Middle-earth have kings and queens, princes and other ruling monarchs at the core of organized societies, whether men, elves or dwarves, his ideal society of the Shire lacks them entirely. Further, as king, Aragorn not only honors their desire for relative isolation but even forbids himself from entering as the ruling monarch from the line that granted the land to the hobbits to start with. It’s equally notable as well that Aragorn seems to step from being the leader of a small society of men on an almost tribal level to seamlessly being a ruler of a massive geographic and political area, when so much of what he does is based around individual action and interaction. All this leads to thoughts on how Tolkien himself felt about monarchy in general, whether his own imagined ideal state of such a ruler or how he depicted representatives of monarchy in his fiction. What are the examples of monarchy Aragorn could have drawn on from both his own familial background and the societies before him – and how successful in the end were they? What does it mean to be a monarch and how is that signified via symbols and ritual – even extending to the Eagles? How does the fact that not every society in Middle-earth – not even including the Shire – clearly have a monarchical setup work, and what does it say about the wider structures of Middle-earth in general, even as it is organized ultimately by the Valar via Eru’s viceroy, Manwë? And what kind of garb should a monarch have? (Fabulous, obviously.)

Jared’s doodle. More serene a portrait than some…

Sight Unseen’s Instagram! And catch Oriana in full jog.

Jared’s up for the Astounding Award at WorldCon! (Scroll down near the bottom of the page.) Here’s more details on voting and all.

Ned’s recent Eurowhat podcast appearance. “Milkshake Man,” indeed. Oh and here’s the Serbian philologist. 

Wisconsin Public Radio’s story on scanning and preserving the work of Karen Wynn Fonstad.

Monarchy! It’s a thing! (It’s not a GOOD thing, though.)

Letter 52 from Tolkien’s collected letters, as well as Letter 144.

Ah yes…tax policy.

Thorongil, in brief.

Medieval English monarchy and medieval French, in brief.

Our episode on The War of the Rohirrim, which had (invented) elements of Rohan’s political society.

1930s English fascism? Oh it was out there…

Our episode on The Lost Road.

Our episode on Aldarion and Erendis, which featured Aldarion’s father Meneldur.

The High King of the Noldor! (Sadly, low survival rate.)

Chieftains of the Dúnedain.

Our episode on orcs.

The New Shadow, the famed short LOTR sequel fragment.

Tides of History by Patrick Wyman – a very good listen! – took a look at the Indus Valley civilization a few years back.

The Sceptres of Númenor and Annúminas.

The Crown of Gondor, along with the, well, let’s call it distinct drawing by Tolkien. (Relatedly, the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt.)

Aragorn’s crowning – and his deep breath before turning – as adapted in Peter Jackson’s The Return of the King.

Our episodes on Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: the 1981 BBC radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t the first time through when it came to a radio version of The Lord of the Rings, even on the BBC itself, but Brian Sibley’s magisterial 13 hour version of the book became the most acclaimed adaptation in general of Tolkien’s work until Peter Jackson’s film sequence, and it remains for many both a generational marker and a gold standard for translating the text into another medium. Performances by the likes of Ian Holm, Michael Hordern, Robert Stephens and a young Bill Nighy remain among their most well-known and remembered, and the sheer depth that the series was able to dive into with its characters hasn’t been equalled by any other version of the book before or since. At the same time, it had to deal with the self-evident limitations of audio drama in general, while not all choices made were necessarily the most effective, even considering the original time and place of its creation. Are there problems with the medium itself which can potentially limit enjoyment or appreciation of what’s being done? What are the differences between the movie and radio adaptation in terms of showing quieter and more unsure moments among the characters from the original text? How did the dynamic between Holm and Nighy as Frodo and Sam play out the relationship between the two characters in this specific version? Can the musical score by Stephen Oliver have its place of comparison next to Howard Shore’s famed work for the Jackson films? And yeah…what IS with that eagle falsetto?

Jared’s doodle. Radio, live transmission (well, taped).

The Crawford Award! Pretty awesome! Hurrah for Jared! Read The West Passage!

More on the Tolkien letters to Donald Swann going up for auction.

The 1981 BBC Lord of the Rings radio series via the Internet Archive; various other versions are floating around, on CD, cassette or streaming.

Our episodes on various earlier adaptations from that general time – the Rankin-Bass Hobbit, Ralph Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings, and the Rankin-Bass Return of the King.

BBC Audio, the current home for their radio efforts and well beyond. Plenty to explore!

Wikipedia’s entry on the 1981 radio series. Separately, some more from there about the earlier BBC radio adaptations – the 1955 one, as well as the 1968 series adapting The Hobbit.

Brian Sibley’s page links to a wide variety of general efforts – take a spin! 

A few actor pages to explore: Ian Holm, Michael Hordern, Robert Stephens, Gerard Murphy, Michael Graham Cox, Peter Woodthorpe, David Collings, Peter Vaughan and of course Bill Nighy.  (Plus, on the technical side, Elizabeth Parker and Stephen Oliver.)

Skye Butchard’s essay in The Quietus on the series – this is paywalled for subscribers, we should note, but we do encourage you to subscribe!

The original Star Wars trilogy radio series! Not kidding! They’re a fun listen.

Bill Nighy as Slartibartfast, a great performance indeed. And all hail The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy in general in all its variations.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: Lobelia Sackville-Baggins. Introduced casually as a relative of Bilbo’s at the end of The Hobbit – one who Bilbo has a mutual unappreciation society with thanks to some missing spoons – Lobelia appears at the start of The Lord of the Rings as something of a chief antagonist, a status-obsessed hobbit eager to claim Bag-end first with her husband and then, after his death, their son Lotho. As part of Frodo’s plan to leave the Shire he happily sells Bag-end to her and departs on the eventual quest to destroy the One Ring, only to discover upon his return about both Lotho’s role as a puppet of Saruman slain by his orders as well as Lobelia’s reaction to Saruman’s ruffians that leads to her imprisonment, resulting in the end in her change of heart towards Frodo and the society she kicked against. At once a brilliantly memorable example of a pointed portrayal of the petty bourgeoisie and a surprisingly gentle moment of redemption after grave loss, Lobelia is a minor character on the one hand but one with surprising depths on the other. What does it mean to resist destructive forces in a society, and is Lobelia’s seeming to come around late in the game on that front both an example of privilege and finally reaching a breaking point? Can comparisons be made to some of Tolkien’s other older women characters in his works, in particular the Minas Tirith nurse Ioreth, in how such figures are generally portrayed in a generally male-focused society? What does it say about Lobelia that she arguably is one of the few people who could compare experiences with Frodo at being imprisoned without hope due to the forces that Sauron and Saruman seek to exploit for their gain? And did Wormtongue really make a meal out of Lotho in the end?

Jared’s doodle. You’ll pry it from her cold dead hands, you will!

Amazon’s formal Rings of Power season 3 announcement via TheOneRing.net

Also from TheOneRing.net, their report on the Australian debut of the Lord of the Rings musical. 

The Wheel of Time season 3, heck yeah. (Listen to Tar Valon or Bust!)

As noted, The War of the Rohirrim is now on Max – here’s our episode on it.

Lobelia Sackville-Baggins per Tolkien Gateway. (We object to the character portrait.)

“Welcome to the resistance.”

Our Scouring of the Shire episode, as well as our general Shire episode.

Jane Austen! George Eliot! Charles Dickens! Thomas Hardy! They’re worth your time.

Moms propping up idiot sons? Wouldn’t know about THAT. 

Vita Sackville-West had some understandable concerns with Salic law.

Ioreth! She rules of course. (And Zamîn, though we don’t have as much from her.)

A BBC report on the Dutch teens who seduced Nazis precisely to get ‘em killed.

Salut to the Umbrella Movement and everything in its wake, including as happened in Seattle.

Amazon and James Bond and whatever.

And yes, for our next episode, this might be your best listening option in advance…

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: despair and hope. It is a remarkably stupid and cruel time in the world lately, for reasons we need not spell out. (And indeed in the week since we recorded this episode, it has somehow gotten worse.) So granted our mood hangs heavy, but then again, as Tolkien himself said in one of his letters, he was conditioned by the idea of ‘the long defeat’ in his own Catholic perspective from the start. Despair is certainly something Tolkien had a sense of how to portray, whether via Gandalf’s famed description of it as a tool of the enemy or the utter self-destruction of figures like Denethor and Turin. At the same time, there’s the remarkable aspects of how hope works in his legendarium, whether it can be in the naming of a person as a promise to the future or when Sam looks up on a dark night in Mordor to see a star shine in the heavens, a beacon in the midst of everything awful. What are the ways in which despair functions in the history of Middle-earth, and how is it weaponized by the forces of Morgoth and Sauron in multiple ways? Are there distinctions in terms of how despair plays out between Men and Elves, and how does the latter’s lack of knowledge of their own ultimate fate potentially factor into their own experiences? Is hope the key counterbalance to despair, or is it more the realm of action, whether Gandalf’s visits to the soldiers of Minas Tirith or the decisions by Merry and Pippin to scour the Shire? And what drives us all these days when it comes to finding hope or the focus to continue even when things aren’t the best?

Jared’s doodle. Beyond it all, somehow, the sky.

A little about the screening of the Japanese version of The War of the Rohirrim in the UK.

Storm Éowyn! 

Greta Gerwig’s Narnia movie is getting an IMAX run at least.

Tár was a heck of a film.

Holding space – it’s not new!

Chernobyl is well worth the watch.

The Spouter-Inn on The Return of the King – and Ned’s bonus episode with them.

Letter 195. (Plus our episode on the letters.)

“There is always hope.”

Gorlim – poor guy.

Our episode on the Noldor.

Our episode on Aldarion and Erendis.

There’s a number of pieces and papers out there on suicide in Tolkien’s work – here’s a recent Mythlore one from 2023.

Estel (as person and as concept)

Our episode on Sam Gamgee.

In terms of The Lord of the Rings and The Big Lebowski, there’s kinda this…

Our episode on The Nature of Middle-earth

Míriel, one of Tolkien’s saddest and quietly intriguing characters.

More on ‘the purse’ in our episode on Galadriel.

Our episode on allegory and applicability.

The NY Times ‘Overlooked No More’ obituary for Karen Wynn Fonstad.

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Announced three-and-a-half years ago as a fast-tracked theatrical production by Warner Bros., the Kenji Kamiyama-directed anime film resulted from a combination of factors: a desire by the studio to maintain certain rights building off their release of the Peter Jackson-directed theatrical films, an interest in working in the increasingly familiar and popular world of anime well outside of its Japanese origins and the participation of Phillippa Boyens and others from the original Lord of the Rings theatrical trilogy. The resultant fusion, drawing on a story Tolkien including in the appendices to the original book regarding a civil war in Rohan two centuries before the War of the Ring, received a slightly delayed release in December 2024; while it’ll yet take time for any full reputation to take hold, initial opinions – including among your podcast hosts – can best be described as mixed. What story choices were made in terms of expanding on the original Tolkien tale, especially in terms of establishing the character of the otherwise unnamed Héra? How did the production’s decision to adhere closely to the design established in the theatrical films play out, and was there anything positive to be gained from that? Where did the examples of a specifically anime-derived form of staging and presentation occur and how did that impact the overall film? And do we really have to talk about the bumbling page or whoever that was? (Honestly, we didn’t.)

Jared’s doodle. When carrying out vengeance, be sure to wrap up well.

Nosferatu was indeed seen by all of us. It certainly does look fantastic. 

Remember, you can hear The Greatest Podcast Ever Recorded if you join our Patreon…

…but anyone can hear The Spouter-Inn talk about The Return of the King, and here’s Ned’s bonus episode appearance too!

That Screen Rant report on season three of The Rings of Power. Noted.

“Casual Viewing,” the excellent report on Netflix and streaming’s impact by Will Talvin at N+1.

Jason DeMarco, he’s a good guy! And a music nerd as noted!

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim – there’s a lot of info out there, if you want to delve further.

Kenji Kamiyama absolutely has a major rep, as does Sola Digital Arts. (And if you want to know more about the history of anime…)

Helm Hammerhand – yep, Helm’s Deep is named after him. (Then there’s the unnamed-by-Tolkien daughter…)

Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino and Lorraine Ashbourne! They’ve done a lot of things.

Hedda Hopper – a definite presence. (This season of You Must Remember This is excellent.)

Tamora Pierce, if you’d like to learn more.

We did touch on the Japanese connections to the Rankin-Bass productions in our episodes on them.

Rivals, if you’d like to check it out.

Wells for Boys, once again!

If not Korrasami, perhaps Carol.

The Secret of Kells approach would have been interesting!

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Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: nostalgia. As a formal linguistic and technical term, nostalgia itself is only a few centuries old, but the sense of idealized pasts, ‘things were better then,’ and other forms of trying to escape, actively or passively, into a place that’s supposed to be far superior than the present has been noted in various forms for millennia and more besides. That there’s evidence of nostalgia playing out in various ways in Tolkien – most commonly, but not solely, in the Middle-earth legendarium – is perhaps axiomatic, given his own small-c conservatism on many fronts. But at the same time, a deeper dive into how these impulses are discussed and presented in his formal work shows that whatever patinas and idealizations he demonstrated, he also conveyed a certain unsureness with it as a solution or safe space for his characters and societies on a wider level. What memories do your hosts have of the times they first started reading Tolkien heavily and how do they regard them now? How do different societies like the hobbits, the elves and the men think about the past with regard to their presents, and what are the different lenses through which they experience such issues? Where does nostalgia play out in the non-Middle-earth works, as well as in his own direct writings in his letters and elsewhere? And do Middle-earth’s denizens in fact write fiction of their own?

Jared’s doodle. In Lothlórien nothing lingers but the memories…

The War of the Rohirrim is just about here.

Paris Paloma’s theme song “The Rider.” 

Kung Fu Tea would love it if you had some of their Riders of Rohan Lemonade.

Ah yes the Dune popcorn bucket. Yes.

David Macaulay’s Motel of the Mysteries really is wonderful. Here’s a great 2021 article and interview.

That Ed Sheeran “Watchtower” with Devlin. (And the Battlestar Galactica connection. There’s your nostalgia!)

“To Cuiviénen there is no returning.”

Our episode on Silicon Valley has plenty of tie-in with ideas of nostalgia.

1983, a better time? Yeah, tell that to these people or these people or… (There was a minor TV movie of note that year too.)

Ned got the films slightly wrong – Comfort and Joy IS a great Bill Forsyth film from 1984, but the John Boorman film is Hope and Glory from 1987.

Bullroarer Took, orc-slayer and golf-inventor.

Our episode on the Scouring of the Shire, the restoration of Arcadia.

Our episode on the Adventures of Tom Bombadil as well as our episode on Ghân-buri-Ghân and the Drúedain.

Digenes Akritas, a noted Byzantine epic poem.

David Lynch and dreams – that goes deep.

Our episodes on Farmer Giles of Ham and Smith of Wootton Major. 

E.R. Eddison did not serve in WWI, but C.S. Lewis and Tolkien certainly did. 

Separately, Ned’s glitching a couple of times on his literary references: Robert Graves’s autobiography title is specifically Good-Bye To All That, while “You might as well live” concludes, not a Dorothy Parker story, but a poem, “Resumé.”

George MacDonald was an early literary love of Tolkien’s, but it didn’t last…

Steven Universe IS awesome.

I Saw The TV Glow is ALSO awesome.

Strange but true: the original Battlestar Galactica series novel adaptation The Cylon Death Machine has elements throughout featuring the Adama character reflecting on a series of adventure stories he loved as a youth – an internal nostalgia!

We trust you’ve all picked up a copy of The West Passage by now!

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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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