Mythgard's Exploring The Lord of the Rings

A wonderful reading of the best book of the twentieth century. The slow pace is worthy of Treebeard. Narnian points many hidden gems out. LOTRO is a great medium within which to “Explore the Lord of the Rings.” I hope to catch up and listen to the Grey Havens.

Many of the podcasts I follow give great overviews of whole eras of history or types of literature in a half hour. It is harder to find deep dives into topics beyond the barest introduction. This podcast scratches that itch for the lotr, one of my heart books.

This is a podcast for the extreme Tolkien fan or the insomniac! If you are looking for a community of like minded LoTR nerds who enjoy deep dives and literary analysis, word etymology, alliteration, medieval history, rabbit trails, and tangents, you SHALL PASS! Once you’ve binged the near decade worth of broadcasts, you, like the Nine Walkers, are invested in a quest to see it through to Mt Doom, or as far as you may wish to go. This journey is not for the faint of heart, but if you choose to invest, you will find a community of thoughtful, witty, fun, and friendly fans, who will come to feel like family. Perfect for interesting background conversation listening during daily tasks, or falling asleep at night. This is genuine Tolkien fandom at its finest: people who love Tolkien and talking about Tolkien, no matter how many episodes we spend on Weathertop. Thank you, Dr Olsen, and all the participants who make these broadcasts so much fun.

Professor Olsen is excellent in his examination of the Lord of the Rings. Top-notch. So why am I not rating this higher? Well, it’s the seemingly pointless satisfaction on his part that the examination of the text of the corpus will take the next thirty years. At least. And he’s thrilled that he’ll be dead before he’s done - it doesn’t make him think of being a bit faster. Moreover, if you’re not someone who lives in US eastern time who either doesn’t have a job or isn’t a night owl, you’ll be behind. Anyone who has to or wants to be in bed before 9 is an afterthought to anything Signum does, since Professor Olsen pointedly is a night owl. The podcast version is also an afterthought, uploaded in bulk weeks behind whatever gets uploaded to Youtube - Signum doesn’t seem to respect those of us who don’t want to watch that. The explorations of relevant parts of Lord of the Rings Online at the end of the broadcasts are interesting, but the podcast is very poorly balanced, and Professor Olsen’s compatriots in this part, either Druid’s Fire or “Vellory” (I have no idea how to spell that) are respectively inaudible or muffled and very hard to understand. Considering how long it takes Signum to upload these, it would seem that more editing is in order. So: great on its subject. Needs a lot of structural work on sound balancing, editing (I agree with those who complain about ums and lip smacking and such; that’s what you get with an unscripted live show, but it could be edited better), and recognition that Professor Olsen will be dead long before he reaches the end of the Return of the King.