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

I was looking for a Tolkien podcast during lockdown that wasn’t a read-along, and this by far and away the best one! Lord of the Rings is frequently mischaracterised as a tale of good and evil, but it’s so much more interesting, dealing with issues of environmental destruction, imperialism, coercive power and authority and the small acts of resistance that may, for a while, make things better. This podcast is a good mix of scholarly critique and pop culture commentary, without getting too bogged down in the fandom. Keep up the good work :)

Whizzed through all the episodes over a couple of days. Very enjoyable wide ranging discussions!

This is so disappointing. I thought I’d finally found a decent podcast about Tolkien: a haven from the solipsism and over-interpretation that runs rampant through every other Middle Earth podcast I’ve sampled. But no, talking about the Istari (the wizards), the hosts first insisted that they are defined by JRR’s Catholicism, then that Gandalf is (sigh) Christ. They cited a Tolkien letter in which he says emphatically that this was not true as evidence that it is. Bizarre and ridiculous, I could take no more.

Tolkien was not CS Lewis. He built a fantasy world drawn from the world he grew up in, from the non-Christian mythologies he absorbed, and from his linguistic studies. This podcast came highly rated, but it is so shallow and wrong-headed that I’m moving on.

The road goes ever on and on in search of a decent Tolkien podcast. I’m beginning to doubt one exists.