Shows
By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienSome People Flip Houses, They Flip KingdomsJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: marriage. Tolkien himself was the child of an apparently happy marriage, though one that met with tragedy when first his father and then some years later his mother died while he was still a boy. His own marriage to Edith Bratt lasted for decades until her passing some years before his, bolstered in turn by his strong Catholic faith. When it comes to how he portrayed marriage in both his Middle-earth and other work, there’s a wide range of depictions of what marriage can be, but at the same...
2025-10-0652 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienHow to Maximize Your Joint SlayJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: the Inklings. Growing out of an undergraduate discussion group of that name in early 1930s Oxford, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis helped form the initial core of a further regular group that met in Lewis’s college rooms and at a favored local pub through the late 1940s. Members included Lewis’s brother Warnie, a great friend of Lewis in turn, Owen Barfield, at a later date Tolkien’s son Christopher and most notably a transplanted London writer who Lewis became a massive supporter of, Charles Williams...
2025-09-0155 min
Deep Cuts: The GameSeason 2 episode 31: Do your research , JeffOn this episode of Deep Cuts: The Game, Jeff is joined by co-host Alex Young and special guests Ned Raggett and Andy Martin for a cinematic deep dive filled with laughter, insights, and a few surprises. Together, they explore stories of dreamers chasing impossible visions, the struggles and triumphs of family, and the beauty found in flawed but passionate art.Ned (1) InstagramAndy(1) Instagram
2025-09-0149 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienA Mean Girl Nuclear BombJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: dragons. Thanks to the appearance of Smaug in the book that first brought Tolkien to wider fame, dragons haven’t merely been associated with him in general but have found their way into wider modern fantasy as a whole, especially in the European tradition of the mythical beasts that he was deeply familiar with. Later writings further fleshed out the sense of how dragons operated in Middle-earth, especially via the cruel Glaurung in the stories that made up The Silmarillion, as well as providing an amusing counterexample outside the lege...
2025-08-0457 min
Hyphenate with Randy RandallHyphenate Halftime Ned RaggettRandy and Aaron talk about last week's interview with Ned Raggett.
They also dissect this week's Sci-Fi classic 1995's Hackers.
2025-07-2149 min
Hyphenate with Randy RandallHyphenate Ned RaggettRandy interviews music journalist Ned Ragget about his decades spanning career in writing as well as his work in the library system.
Go subscribe to his Patreon to read more of his writing.
https://www.patreon.com/nedraggett
https://nedraggett.wordpress.com/about/
2025-07-171h 24By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienIt Seems Like It Sucks Up ThereJared, 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...
2025-07-0753 min
Litter On The Breeze - A Suede PodcastDefinitely not The London Suede - with Ned RaggettLitter On The Breeze - the podcast about the music, the stories and the fans of Suede - returns with an episode in which we make another journey Across The Pond, on this occasion to spend time with the writer, thinker and all-round great guy Ned Raggett. We hear about how he became a Suede fan in the States, the things he had to do to be able to remain a Suede fan in the States, some of his dealings with the band, and helps us pose a question that only you can answer!(The podcast begins w...
2025-06-061h 17By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienObsessive (Complimentary)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 build...
2025-06-021h 04By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienYou’re Always Left On Read by Manwë!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 equall...
2025-05-0557 min
The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & ReviewsMélangeNed Raggett joins us to close out our coverage of the second semi-final for Eurovision 2025. This week, we approach the entries from Australia, Serbia, Denmark, Austria, Israel, and Georgia.
Ned Raggett
Ned Raggett writes a lot, is a denizen of social media, and more things besides. He has written for Pitchfork, the Guardian, The Quietus, Rolling Stone, The Wire, Shfl, Bandcamp Daily, Freaky Trigger, OC Weekly, Nashville Scene, Seattle Weekly, SF Weekly, SF Chronicle, KQED Arts, Vice, Careless Talk Costs Lives, Plan B, Loose Lips Sink Ships, FACT, Red Bull Music Academy, Fake Jazz and...
2025-04-2959 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienDon’t Misgender the Eagle!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 Ho...
2025-04-071h 19By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienI’m Starting the Pink Umbrella MovementJared, 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 th...
2025-03-0350 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Is Not a Political PodcastJared, 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 de...
2025-02-0353 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienIt Was Like a Looney Tunes Ham!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 re...
2025-01-0600 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienTrying to Hold On to SomethingJared, 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 o...
2024-12-0253 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienPassive ReferenceJared, 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 answe...
2024-11-0455 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienIt’s Kinda Like Ron Swanson Winning the Woman of the Year AwardJared, 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 acco...
2024-10-0850 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienI Would Take Crappy Fluorescent LightingJared, 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...
2024-09-0254 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Weird Wet ManJared, 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 h...
2024-08-0552 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienI’m Not Even in Japan, I’m in a Different Country Entirely!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...
2024-07-0152 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienOnce Upon a Time There Was a Little BunnyJared, 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 a...
2024-06-0358 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienAre We the Baddies?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 na...
2024-05-0652 min
The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & ReviewsPulling FocusNed Raggett returns to helps us wrap up our coverage of the second semi-final for Eurovision 2024. Which entries are legit snacks? Which songs left us hungry for more? How did we manage to bring food into every discussion?
Pulling Focus Summary
Welcome back, Ned Raggett! (0:47)
🇳🇱 Netherlands - Joost Klein - "Europapa" 🇪🇺 (2:18)
🇦🇹 Austria - Kaleen - "We Will Rave" 🪩 (10:53)
🇬🇷 Greece - Marina Satti - "ZARI" 🎲 (19:08)
🇮🇱 Israel - Eden Golan - "Hurricane" 🌀 (26:29)
🇬🇪 Georgia - Nutsa - "FIrefighter" 👩🚒 (29:21)
🇦🇲 Armenia - LADANIVA - "Jako" 💃 (37:23)
Final Thoughts (45:11)
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2024-04-2350 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienWhat Is It with Straight Men and Red Hair?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 i...
2024-04-0158 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienTolkien Dropping BarsJared, 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 st...
2024-03-041h 00By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienI Physically Recoiled from the Book at That PointJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Silicon Valley’s
misinterpretation and fetishization of Tolkien. Tolkien of course lived in a
time where computers were mostly huge rooms containing one machine or two that
he doubtless considered little more than another example of why the industrial
age didn’t suit his mindset on many fronts. But in the half-century since his
death the PC era up through smartphones and TikTok have made the industry one
of the biggest and most influential in the world – which is the problem. The
issues discussed are hardly limited to them but two...
2024-02-0554 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienWhat an Absolute Nightmare This Man Would Have Been to Work WithJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Letters of J. R. R.
Tolkien. Following the publication of his official biography of Tolkien,
Humphrey Carpenter worked with Christopher Tolkien to edit and present a
selection of Tolkien’s letters across the decades, originally appearing in
Containing both a large swathe of personal detail about his life as an
aspiring academic and young father, then an established professor and finally
an increasingly popular author, it also presented a large amount of background
information on Middle-earth via his exchanges with publishers, writers and
readers, including some long lett...
2024-01-0858 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThere’s No Rule That Says a Girl Can’t Kill the Witch-king!Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss their collective choice of topic: Peter
Jackson’s version of The Return of the King. It’s been twenty years since
the conclusion of Jackson’s three-film effort to adapt the entire Lord of the
Rings was released, and it was easily the biggest profile release of the
series, coming in with massive interest and attention, setting a variety of
box office records in the process along with gaining widespread critical
acclaim. It all resulted in a series of worldwide film awards and honors
culminating with a famed clean sweep of Oscar wins including best p...
2023-12-041h 50By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Long Defeat Is Maybe Going on a Little Too LongJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: the Noldor. Also
termed the Deep-elves and, in early versions of the legendarium, the Gnomes –
thankfully changed given unavoidable associations – they were one of the three
ethnicities of the Eldar in general, the first Children of Iluvatar. As
compared to the serene Vanyar and the many generally lower-key societies of
the Teleri, the Noldor were the ones most driven by the desire to create and
to learn about the world in general, though these tendencies, exacerbated by
Melkor in his Valinorean captivity and the internal family strife of their
royal...
2023-11-0757 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThere Was a Lot to Remember Here and I Don’t Remember Most of ItJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Notion Club
Papers. Written in 1945 during a creative pause in completing the final
third of The Lord of the Rings, The Notion Club Papers found Tolkien on
familiar ground, creating a set of purported notes from regular club meetings
among a group of Oxford professors much like himself and his fellow members of
the famed Inklings. While not advancing beyond a couple of drafts and far from
complete, the papers tell first of a professor who, due to a discussion on how
spacecraft would work in science fiction, av...
2023-10-0256 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Pleasures of the Robot DancehallJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: The Lost Road. In
1937, Tolkien agreed to C.S. Lewis’s suggestion to try to write the kind of
stories they enjoyed but didn’t see good examples of to their liking. Lewis’s
efforts turned into what has been termed the Space Trilogy, starting with Out
Of The Silent Planet. Tolkien’s goal was a time travel story called The Lost
Road, but outside of a few chapters and some potential outlines, it never got
any further, with the success of The Hobbit and his resulting focus of
attention...
2023-09-0455 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienWorking on the Group Art ProjectJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: land. By default
the Middle-earth legendarium is about a place that never was, however rooted
in the actual planet we live on, and the range of details from sweeping
mountains and vast continents to small roads and fields evident throughout the
cycle of stories is a key part of what has made Tolkien’s work so vivid and
loved. Both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are specifically about
journeys as the key plotline, where characters move into spaces that they’d
only heard about dimly or not at...
2023-08-0753 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Weird Paranoia Paradise VibeJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: The Fall of Númenor.
Published in fall of 2022, The Fall of Númenor is the most recent posthumously
published collection of Middle-earth writings, acting as an overall guide to
the Second Age of Middle-earth, with its key defining moments in Tolkien’s
legendarium being the fall of the titular kingdom of the Dúnedain and the
subsequent Last Alliance’s temporary defeat of Sauron. Given that most of the
material the book draws on comes from a wide variety of other posthumous
Tolkien publications, it can serve as a guide a...
2023-07-0358 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienLooking Kinda GrossJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: Sir Orfeo. The
Orpheus myth is one of the most mysterious ones in the open-ended collection
of tales that make up what is termed ‘Greek mythology,’ something that Tolkien
would have learned about by default as part of his standard late
Victorian/Edwardian education. But his particular exploration of that myth
wasn’t via one of those texts, but a translation of a Middle English poem by
an anonymous author, itself based on a Breton source, that fused elements of
the most famous Orpheus story – trying to win back the love o...
2023-06-0552 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienLaCroix WormtongueJared, Oriana and Ned appear live in Portland at Passages Bookshop to
celebrate fifty episodes of By-the-Bywater and to talk about Oriana’s choice
of topic: Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit. To say that there was
almost immediate speculation about whether or when Jackson would also adapt
The Hobbit following the smash critical and commercial success of his Lord of
the Rings films is to understate; over the following years there were further
lawsuits, broken agreements, studio questions, planned directorial choices
that mysteriously fell through and more besides that seemed to indicate it
would be the biggest case...
2023-05-011h 06By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienSome Kind of Horrible Subpar D&D Fop Who Just Shows UpJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: the Rankin-Bass
adaptation of The Return of the King. When Rankin-Bass’s 1977 adaptation of
The Hobbit was shown on American network TV, the animation studio was already
well into planning a further effort adapting The Lord of the Rings in some
form as a sequel; the positive attention and ratings success of their Hobbit
doubtless made them think they were on the right track. But when Arthur Rankin
Jr. confessed in a 2003 interview that their version of The Return of the King
was “not a very good film,” that was...
2023-04-031h 21
The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & ReviewsCapsaicinWe welcome back Ned Raggett to discuss five more entries from Eurovision Semi-Final 1. How has the running order affected our thoughts on Serbia, Portugal, Azerbaijan, Czechia, and Finland?
Capsaicin Summary
Serbia - Luke Black - "Samo mi se spava" (1:47)
Portugal - Mimicat - "Ai Coração" (9:57)
Azerbaijan - TuranTuralX - "Tell Me More" (16:11)
Czechia - Vesna - "My Sister's Crown" (24:41)
Finland - Käärijä - "Cha Cha Cha" (30:26)
Final Thoughts (48:14)
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2023-03-2853 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienIt’s Important to Get Really into JewelryJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: worldbuilding.
Tolkien is so heavily identified with the concept of worldbuilding that a map
of Middle-earth represents the topic on Wikipedia, and his impact in both
fantasy and beyond regarding how a world that is not this actual globe we live
on is perceived and presented has continuing afterechoes that don’t look to
disappear anytime soon. At the same time, what exactly worldbuilding IS is a
hardly an agreed upon formal standard anywhere, and the amount of work that’s
been put into developing a story setting in any...
2023-03-1359 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienHe’s Just A Gross Little Guy!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Gollum. For all
the high adventure, heroics great and small and world-shattering consequences
and much more that exists in Tolkien’s legendarium, arguably the most
fascinating character he created in the end is his most racked, ruined and
miserable, first encountered as a mysterious slimy creature living and lurking
in a subterranean lake with only one thing of particular value to his name.
Tolkien’s introduction of both Gollum and a magic ring into this world was, to
borrow a phrase from the narrator of The Hobbit, a turnin...
2023-02-131h 02By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienBad Performance Review as an Actual Plot PointJared, Oriana and Ned start the new year with Ned’s choice of topic: the
short children’s works Roverandom and Mr. Bliss. Tolkien has been described
as a children’s author both with praise and disparagement over time, but a
more accurate way to put it is that while he was busy working on his cycle of
early Middle-earth stories with its high drama and tragedy in the 1920s and
1930s, he was also a loving father to four young children who often made up
many stories and tales for them. The Hobbit itself has strong roots in this
a...
2023-01-161h 02By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Film Is ChoppyJared, Oriana and Ned continue our own epic trilogy with a look at our
collective choice of topic: Peter Jackson’s version of The Two Towers.
Turning 20 years old this month, The Two Towers built on the success of the
previous year’s The Fellowship of the Ring, becoming another holiday
blockbuster and continuing the overall story, as well as introducing the wider
world to a variety of striking performances, among them Bernard Hill as
Theoden, Miranda Otto as Eowyn and most famously and indelibly, Andy Serkis’s
compelling performance as Gollum, further interpreted by the Weta digital
effects team t...
2022-12-061h 37By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. Tolkien(Various Sighs and Groans.)Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about the inevitable: the first season of The
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Ever since By-the-Bywater began, the
show’s creation, filming and buildup to its release has loomed large in our
news reports and there were inevitable questions about it the more information
was surfacing. But there was always hope that it could in fact succeed and add
to the notable if admittedly varied canon of Tolkien adaptations already
created over time. Suffice to say that there was a lot of heavy promotion, a
whole amount of attention and there ar...
2022-11-011h 24By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienLittle Broccoli TreesJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: cartography. To
say that maps help define Middle-earth is to understate; besides the famous
map featured in The Hobbit and also given as a key visual element with the
book itself, one of two Tolkien drew for it, his own many other maps of
Middle-earth he created over time, finalized for publication by Christopher
Tolkien both before and after his father’s death, establish a visual sense of
what Middle-earth ‘looks’ like in a broad sense, to the point of spawning
numerous atlases, charts and online explorations of that wid...
2022-10-0357 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Isn’t Freaking Redwall!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: food in Middle-earth. As Jared says in his introduction, he was reminded of the subject
when a semi-viral Tolkien tweet went around again claiming that The Lord of
the Rings is in its various parts like the stereotype of recipe blogs: a
lengthy and seeming rambling introduction to an eventual meal. But that’s not
in fact the case, and the wider question of how food – and appetites and
hunger in many different forms – is described by Tolkien in Middle-earth as a
whole raises some interesting questions in turn. (W...
2022-09-011h 02By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Jock Who Joins the Glee ClubJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Legolas
Greenleaf. Not originally planned as a member of the Fellowship – the honor
was going to go to Glorfindel, who helps Aragorn and the hobbits evade the
Nazgûl en route to Rivendell – Legolas ended up as a classic retcon character,
introduced as the son of Thranduil, the Elvenking featured in The Hobbit, even
though no such character was ever mentioned or described in that book. A
brilliant archer who makes light of burdens, literally can walk on snow and
isn’t above teasing his suffering companions – but someone who...
2022-08-0155 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienDude, Just Make a Language!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Tolkien’s essay “A
Secret Vice.” Originally prepared as a lecture called “A Hobby for the Home”
for an Oxford literary society in 1931, “A Secret Vice” is now regarded as one
of the two most key essays, along with “On Fairy-Stories” of Tolkien
essentially reflecting on his own work and what drove his creative interests.
His training and work as a philologist grew out not only an interest in
languages in general but in creating them for his own interest, and it’s long
been clear that his early development of t...
2022-07-051h 03By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThese Aren’t My Questions, I Translated ThemJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Red Book of
Westmarch. It’s hinted at at the end of The Lord of the Rings when Sam
reviews some title pages – a device carried over into the Jackson movie
adaptations – but the appendices and part of the introduction both make it
clear that the published story is meant to be a translation from Bilbo and
Frodo’s own handwritten memoirs, covering The Hobbit as well, and thus Tolkien
in this conceit is not the author of the text but its translator and editor
instead. It fits withi...
2022-06-0655 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Rings of Power BrokerJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: initial thoughts
on what evil is in Tolkien’s work. The sweeping arc of The Lord of the Rings
in particular is understandably thought of – though very often simplistically
reduced to – a basic good versus evil clash, a black and white split. But as
more and more of Tolkien’s work over the decades has been published over time,
up to and including last year’s The Nature of Middle-earth volume, it’s clear
that he himself thought that what evil exactly was in his created universe
took on many forms...
2022-05-0254 min
The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & ReviewsHimboNed Raggett returns to discuss that last six entries of the second semi-final for Eurovision 2022. Will one of the boys with emotions be able to overtake Sweden’s melancholy? (No. The answer is no.)
Himbo Summary
Romania - WRS - "Llámame" (2:56)
Poland - Ochman - "River" (9:21)
Montenegro - Vladana - "Breathe" (17:03)
Belgium - Jérémie Makiese - "Miss You" (22:45)
Sweden - Cornelia Jakobs - "Hold Me Closer" (28:05)
Czech Republic - We Are Domi - "Lights Off" (36:08)
Eurovision 2022 Review Series
Semi-Final 1 Part 1
Semi-Final 1 Part 2
Semi-Final 1 Part 3
Semi-Final 2 Part 1
Semi-Final 2 Part 2
Semi-Final 2 Part 3
Auto-Qualifiers Avail...
2022-04-2646 min
Who Cares About the Rock Hall?Calling Voters w/ Bob Merlis, Gregg Geller, Bill Adler, Ned Raggett & Miles Marshall LewisJoe & Kristen call up five Rock Hall voters to see who they're choosing on their ballot this year: Bob Merlis, Gregg Geller, Bill Adler, Ned Raggett, and Miles Marshall Lewis. This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
2022-04-151h 19By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThey’re Just Some Solarized DudesJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Ralph Bakshi’s
animated film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. A heavily promoted effort
at the time due it being both the first ever version of Tolkien’s work done
for film as well as due to Bakshi’s notable reputation as the most well known
American animator since Walt Disney and Chuck Jones, the 1978 movie was a
reasonable success but not a smash, and the fact that it was only the first
half of a planned two-film sequence – but not marketed as such – led to
confused aud...
2022-04-041h 35By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienDivine Background RadiationJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Valar. For a
legendarium that is clearly monotheistic at base, down to the opening lines of
The Silmarillion essentially being a variant of the Book of Genesis, Tolkien’s
creation – and account of creation – has a class of similarly immortal beings
present from the beginning as well, and while you can call them a version of
angels, in many ways they are absolutely not like such beings as theologically
understood. Indeed, for all that they are termed as ‘the Powers’ in Arda, much
of what we know about them s...
2022-03-011h 19By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienDo the Hobbits Have H.O.A.s?Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: the Shire. The
homeland of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and many of Middle-earth’s hobbits in
general, and the entry point for nearly every reader to Tolkien’s imaginative
geographical and creative landscape, the Shire often seems like an idyllic and
nostalgic English utopia, an untroubled land where the beer is good, the
family trees are all spelled out carefully and there’s not much to worry about
aside from the occasional wolf or Orc raid over the centuries. Yet Tolkien
himself said he didn’t view it as a utopi...
2022-02-071h 01By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienI Ain’t No Big City Philologist!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Tree and Leaf.
Published in 1964 in the UK and the following year in the US, Tree and Leaf
was Tolkien’s first major post-Lord of the Rings publication but was itself a
republishing of two earlier non-Middle-earth pieces: “On Fairy-Stories,” an
essay on the subject revised from a 1939 lecture and 1947 anthology, and “Leaf
by Niggle,” a short, explicitly religious story for a Catholic publication in
Anthologized and separately published since, they’re at once totally
separate but sometimes strangely complementary pieces that serve to illuminate
Tolkien’s interests beyond...
2022-01-181h 04By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienPerry and MippinJared, Oriana and Ned talk about our collective choice of topic: Peter
Jackson’s version of The Fellowship of the Ring. Released twenty years ago
this month, there’s simply no question regarding the sheer force of the impact
that the first part of the massive effort to create a three-film adaptation of
The Lord of the Rings had. It squarely placed the story directly into more
mainstream popular culture, transformed the nature of the longtime fandom and
appreciation around the books, and became the anchor point of any number of
adaptations and interpretations since. But besides fond memories of a...
2021-12-171h 34By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienHe's Being Ganged Up On By These Mean Little Jerks!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Sam Gamgee. For
all that Frodo Baggins is the Ringbearer and makes something close to the
ultimate sacrifice for the fate of the world—at least right until the very
last moment—it’s Sam, son of Bag-End’s gardener who seems to only join Frodo
at first to help take care of a new house in Buckland, who ends up being the
key figure in The Lord of the Rings that helps Frodo on the quest and who
remains most grounded in the whirlwind of fates surrounding his steps...
2021-11-011h 15By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThere Was So Much Math!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: The Nature of
Middle-earth. The newest official Tolkien book is anything but a cohesive
volume, instead being a collection of remaining unpublished writings from the
overall Tolkien archive about Middle-earth, written mostly in the late 1950s
and late 1960s, with a heavy focus on more philosophical and generally
foundational concepts and aspects of Tolkien’s creation. Edited by Carl
Hostetter with the full approval of Christopher Tolkien before the latter’s
passing, it’s at once detailed scholarship and the source of a variety of new
wrinkles and outright...
2021-10-041h 06By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Family That Fights Together Stays Alive TogetherJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: The Fall of
Gondolin. One of the three ‘Great Tales’ that formed the key heart of
Tolkien’s earliest work on Middle-earth with the Book of Lost Tales, the story
of the hidden Elf refuge that was destroyed in an evening of primal violence
after a betrayal remained one of the most powerfully resonant for the rest of
Tolkien’s creative life. Referred to in other works and in various mentions
over his lifetime, it only surfaced in redacted form with the original 1977
publication of The Silmarillion. Christopher Tolkien’s...
2021-09-0758 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienAlways Around to Do the Bare MinimumJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: the Eagles.
Most familiar to Tolkien readers via the lordly and imposing figure of
Gwaihir, identified as the Lord of the Eagles in both The Hobbit and The Lord
of the Rings, the Eagles have a recurring role in many of the stories of
Middle-earth, acting as emissaries, guardians, intercessors and figures of
warning or doom. They serve the Valar, their leader Manwë in particular, but
often seem to be following their own particular code of living. However, a
recent tweet based off a Polygon article about them in...
2021-07-3048 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienIs He Hot Or Is He Tall?Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: The Children of
Húrin. The final posthumously published form of one of Tolkien’s original
creations from the Book of Lost Tales, the 2007 book, edited and retouched
slightly by Christopher Tolkien, The Children of Húrin primarily tells the
story of the oldest child, Túrin. One of Tolkien’s most compelling figures,
Túrin not merely verges on the antiheroic but at points nonheroic,
simultaneously a figure driven by vengeance and justice for his losses and
those of his family but ultimately causing the death and destructio...
2021-07-021h 16By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Brita of Middle-earthJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: Lothlórien.
Following the necessary but still disastrous journey through Moria, the
Fellowship of the Ring is able to evade pursuing Orcs to journey to this
forested Elf realm, itself thousands of years old as an organized society but
ruled in recent years by Galadriel and Celeborn. Their experiences there are
among the most personal and mysterious of their journey, at once a chance for
recuperation but also a stay in a place that is seemingly out of time’s
general flow—and, per various comments by Galadriel, increas...
2021-06-011h 03By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Work of Repair After the StormJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: the Scouring of
the Shire. Both the title of the penultimate chapter of The Lord of the
Rings and the event it refers to, the Scouring depicts what happens when
Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin return home after all their adventures, only to
discover familiar places changed beyond recognition, not to mention the spirit
of the Shire in general. Ranging from family reunions and stirring moments of
bravery to guerrilla warfare and final scenes of at times surprising horror,
it’s a remarkable elaboration on the idea that—unlike...
2021-05-0458 min
The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & ReviewsSatan’s GlowupNed Raggett joins us to discuss the heaven and hell aspects of Eurovision Semi-Final 1. Who knew that 2021 would be Satan's pop culture year?
Satan's Glowup Summary
Welcome back, Ned Raggett!
@nedraggett | By the Bywater | Ned's Patreon | Bandcamp Daily
Eurovision 2021 Semi-Final 1 Part 2
Slovenia - Ana Soklic - "Amen" (2:54)
"Verjamem" at the 2012 Eurovision Semi-Final (YouTube)
Sweden - Tusse - "Voices" (9:59)
Black Widow trailer (YouTube)
Cyprus - Elena Tsagrinou - "El Diablo" (17:46)
Tacos El Diablo (Oxnard, California)
Norway - TIX - "Fallen Angel" (23:58)
Hit Parade: Bat Out of...
2021-04-0645 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienYou Can Have Well-Written Music in a Kid’s Movie!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: the 1977 Rankin-Bass
version of The Hobbit. Produced by the Rankin-Bass team and animated by
Japanese animation studio Topcraft, 1977’s The Hobbit was a widely promoted
effort for mainstream American network TV. As a result, it gave Tolkien’s work
its highest profile in the US to that point, winning awards and eventually
prompting a further Rankin-Bass sequel drawing on The Return of the King.
However, it swiftly became more of a cult classic curio, more known of than
known, deemed a product of its time and the attendant limita...
2021-04-051h 36By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienRadagast is Scrappy-Doo!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Istari. Also
known as the Five Wizards, the cohort of Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast, and the
two mysterious Blue Wizards, these beings are superficially some of the most
easily understandable characters in Tolkien’s mythology: old men who know
magic and can cast spells, very much in a long standing mythological and
folktale tradition. But while Gandalf may have made his debut in The Hobbit as
just such a character, over time, as with so many other elements in his work,
Tolkien deepened his background and that of his...
2021-03-151h 06By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienHella Problematic in So Many WaysJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Orcs. While not
the only ‘bad guys’ in The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s wider mythology by
a long shot, they’re generally the most common, appearing in everything from
the earliest versions of the Book of Lost Tales to the final years of his
reconsiderations and potential revisions. But ultimately the Orcs themselves
may also be the most mysterious, their exact origins and place in Tolkien’s
wider cosmology unclear, their own culpability potentially up for question in
the face of manipulation and lies at the hands of...
2021-02-0856 min
theFIVE10 PodcastEpisode 17: theFIVE10 Podcast with Zach Carothers of Portugal. The ManWith their peculiar name and remote place of origin, Alaskan experimental indie pop band Portugal. The Man are an unlikely success story. After heading southward to the musical hub of Portland, Oregon, the group -- co-founded by the duo of John Gourley and Zach Carothers -- delivered a series of unique, artfully crafted independent albums throughout the late 2000s, touring hard and eventually signing a deal with Atlantic in 2010. The band's diligence paid off during their major-label tenure with each subsequent album gaining them a wider fan base and increased acclaim. On 2013's Evil Friends, they forged a collaboration...
2021-01-2137 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienNot Just Because I Like Cooking and Eating!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Smith of Wootton
Major. A short non-Middle-Earth novella published in 1967 and illustrated by
Pauline Baynes, Smith is a kind of a fairy tale literally about Faery, a realm
which only certain people can visit. Smith, indeed a blacksmith from a sort-of
medieval English town called Wootton Major, is one of those people, having
received a magical silver star in his youth as part of a major ceremony based
around the town’s Great Hall and its function as a place for fabulous feasts.
But while Smith alternates his adul...
2021-01-121h 00By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Princess Bride But with SantaJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: The Father
Christmas Letters. Literally a hundred years ago this month, Tolkien began
what would be a running series of letters into the early 1940s where he wrote
to his children in the guise of Father Christmas at the end of each year.
Never meant for publication or even sharing beyond his immediate family, the
many letters, collected and republished since his passing a number of times,
grow over the years from brief notes to increasingly elaborate creations,
featuring original artwork, created languages, and multi-narrator stories and
adventures fr...
2020-12-051h 04By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienShe Does It All!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Éowyn. As
likely the most prominent character in The Lord of the Rings who’s a woman—and
certainly the most prominent human woman, hands down—Éowyn and her journey in
the story always has a central position in any discussion of the book, someone
who grapples with any number of personal disasters and wider societal
expectations to end up playing a key role in the book’s epic arc. At the same
time, her final choices after that shattering confrontation with the Lord of
the Nazgûl have led to q...
2020-11-0357 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienA More Robust Line of SuccessionJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Boromir, Faramir and
Denethor. Uniquely in The Lord of the Rings, the fractured family dynamic
between the Steward of Gondor and his two heirs is also one of politics on a
grand scale, with all three reacting to the growing threat to the land they
rule or are heirs to as well as trusting to a slim hope of salvation. But, of
course, how each of them views that slim hope and what has to be done to see
it come true is its own issue that divides th...
2020-10-121h 03By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienSpeak Softly and Be a Big StickJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: the Ents. Like
many elements of The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard appeared suddenly in the
course of Tolkien actually writing it, and he himself wondered more about the
unusual creation he had introduced to his already long-standing legendarium
and how it fit within the whole. But whatever the impulse, Treebeard and his
people, seemingly the last defenders of a vanished world of trees and forests,
became one of the most beloved in the entirety of the book, though also one of
the most curious and, as the st...
2020-09-111h 06By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienA Bad Thing That Bad People DoJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: imperialism. As a literal citizen of the British Empire at birth in a colonial holding of what would eventually become South Africa, Tolkien’s life was directly shaped by both the seeming omnipresence of empire and its simultaneous retreat and reshaping over the course of his life. But while his creative work shows many strains of considering what an empire is and how imperialism could be seen in it, his own personal unease with empire shows in views that are complicated in many ways. What does his legendarium show as e...
2020-08-101h 01By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienTurn Off the Dark LordJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: the Lord of the
Rings stage musical. Growing out of a failed German attempt to stage a
version of The Hobbit in 1997 and eventually turning into a high level and
high budget production that ran in Toronto in 2006 and London in 2007, the
musical attracted both a lot of attention and a lot of talent, from future
Tony winners to regular standbys on the London stage and beyond, not to
mention a remarkable combination of composer A.R. Rahman and the Finnish avant
garde folk group Värttinä on the...
2020-07-091h 24By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienA Weird Faerie Sex GameJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight and Tolkien’s posthumously published translation of said poem.
Written around 1400 by a still anonymous author in the West Midlands region of
England, Sir Gawain has long been one of the most notable works of late
medieval English literature, and Tolkien both worked on a scholarly edition of
the poem with his colleague E.V. Gordon first published in 1925 as well as
developing the translation which he finished in the early 1950s, and which has
since become his most well-known work on the...
2020-06-121h 00By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienBut...Faramir! He’s such a good boy!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Tolkien
adaptations! Reworking stories in one form or medium of art into another is
pretty much part of human history in general and Tolkien’s creations, even in
the modern world of copyright and licensing, are no different. Everyone knows
about the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies, sure, but there’s been
plenty of other adaptations done and there will be more to come—and the
questions of how and why (and more) continue to be relevant. We’ll talk more
about specific artworks and productions in the fut...
2020-05-071h 03
The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & ReviewsWhat is Poptimism?Music critic Ned Raggett joins us to discuss rockism, poptimism, and why Eurovision songs are worthy of critique.
What is Poptimism? Summary
Welcome, Ned! (1:00)
Newsdesk: Eurostream 2020, Eurovision in Concert, Europe Shine a Light, Blas Cantó duets with Kelly Clarkson (4:32)
What is "poptimism"? (12:36)
Poptimism vs. Rockism (23:56)
The Rise of Eurovision in the US (34:15)
Links
Where to find Ned: Twitter @nedraggett | Patreon | By-the-Bywater
333Sound (33 1/3 Project)
The Reconsideration of Abba, a Band Beyond Taste (Pitchfork)
Special Guest: Ned Raggett.Support The EuroWhat? Podcast: Eurovision News & Reviews
2020-04-2158 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThat’s Why You Have Scrolls!Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Ned’s choice of topic: Dennis L.
McKiernan’s Silver Call Duology! Originally conceived in the late seventies
and then published in the eighties, it is clearly meant to be a sequel to The
Lord of the Rings in practically every aspect but name. Or rather, names, a
lot of which are infelicitous at best, to Ned’s amusement and Jared and
Oriana’s loud annoyance, in this, our longest episode so far. (Also, frankly,
our sweariest—not constantly, but those with younger household members should
take a little care!) Is this the most (exce...
2020-04-101h 21By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThings You Can Snag Your Mind OnJared, Oriana and Ned talk about Jared’s choice of topic: fanwork! Whether
fiction, artwork, music or more, fanwork as we understand it in modern decades
has strong partial roots in Tolkien’s explosion of American popularity in the
1960s, and beyond any official adaptations or variants is a vast universe of
creativity, successful or perhaps less so. What are the lines between general
artistic interpretation and ‘fanwork’ as such, especially in the history of
Western culture in particular? How is the stereotype of fanwork being grounded
in slash scenarios and headcanon shaped by wider perceptions? Could Tolkien’s
own creati...
2020-03-171h 05By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienI Found that Personally UpsettingJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: the Dwarves!
Tolkien drew on Norse mythology and related traditions when he introduced the
Dwarves almost from the beginning of his Middle-earth writing, and the many
Dwarves in The Hobbit all have names drawn from such mythology as well.
They’re one of the most distinct peoples Tolkien created, influencing endless
portrayals since then, yet much like their own history in Middle-earth,
there’s a lot we don’t really know about them except very particular
instances. Do what degree, if any at all, did Tolkien, unconsciously or not,
draw on...
2020-02-111h 05By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThe Wheeler-Dealer Dragon!Important note: this episode was recorded before Amazon’s formal cast
announcement
and the death of Christopher
Tolkien . We’ll definitely have much more to say on both in next month’s
episode!
Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Tolkien’s short mock-medieval novella, Farmer Giles of Ham. Published in 1949, though mostly
written off and on over the 1930s, it was Tolkien’s first creative publication
after the release of The Hobbit, though appearing some years before The Lord
of the Rings itself did. Set in a happily ahistorical and anachronistic jumble
of an early med...
2020-01-2054 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Flash, This Sublime ThingJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: magic. It may seem
strange given that one of Tolkien’s most central and indelible characters,
Gandalf, is a wizard, but magic plays a more understated role in Middle-earth
than it might seem on first blush. Starting with the famed exchange between
Galadriel, Frodo and Sam about whether her mirror is magic—a question
Galadriel seems not to understand—we consider magic’s role as an at once
strong and yet sublimated element throughout Tolkien’s Middle-earth work. What
does it mean that Gandalf often seems reluctant to do anything mag...
2019-12-161h 04
Hit Parade | Music History and Music TriviaThe Bridge: Genre v. Generation, ’80s to ’10sIn this mid-month mini-episode of Hit Parade, host Chris Molanphy is joined by Ned Raggett, freelance music writer for All Music Guide and The Quietus and expert on the ’80s U.K. bands celebrated on the most recent full-length episode of Hit Parade. Chris and Ned discuss what they call the “holy quartet” of British postpunk bands—The Cure, The Smiths, Depeche Mode and New Order—and Ned weighs in on the challenge of what to call this wave: Is it goth? mope-rock? Do these bands actually constitute a genre, or more of a generational cohort? Also, Chris quizzes a Slate Pl...
2019-11-1527 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienWho Let This Happen?Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Tom Bombadil.
Famous—or more probably, infamous—jolly Tom is one of the most unusual
characters in The Lord of the Rings, dropped in wholesale, along with his
partner Goldberry the River Daughter, the threatening Old Man Willow and the
bone-chilling Barrow-wight, from a playful English folklore-tinged poem
Tolkien wrote years even before The Hobbit was published. And, well, boy, does
he sing a lot—and caper. What’s he even doing in Middle-earth to start with,
and how does he, or doesn’t he, fit with the entire logic of the...
2019-11-131h 06By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienCrypto-magical in Their Own WayJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: Ghân-buri-Ghân.
Briefly featuring in The Return of the King as a leader of ‘Wild Men’ who
offers to help the Rohirrim on their ride to Minas Tirith, Ghân-buri-Ghân is
on the surface seemingly little more than a caricature on several levels: a
stoic ‘tribesman,’ perhaps even a noble savage with all that implies. But in
both his sharp, sometimes very darkly sardonic responses to the Rohirrim and
in the further backstory that Tolkien then created for Ghân-buri-Ghân’s
culture as a whole, Tolkien explores some very...
2019-10-2255 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. Tolkien“Strider! What’s Up, Man?”Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: friendship!
Friendship in Middle-earth is a key part of many different characters’ lives,
and how it both plays out in stories and simply exists in its own right is
well worth considering, from the primary friendship of Frodo and Sam to many
other examples throughout the legendarium. How does Tolkien’s own
socialization in Edwardian England shape both the friendships of his own life
and his portrayals of it in his writing? Is his near-exclusive focus on male-to-male friendships potentially alienating? What are some counterexamples of
the strong friendships he por...
2019-09-2453 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienThis Mysterious Færie QueenJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Galadriel. Even if
she’s not actually Cate Blanchett in platform heels, she’s tall and blonde,
and she seems to have a total drip of a husband in Celeborn. If he’s wise,
she’s definitely wiser, and once introduced into the legendarium, Tolkien
himself didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with her backstory, quite
literally changing details just a month before he died. Among our discussions:
what did Galadriel and Celeborn do all that time when they were hanging out at
the Elf havens in Gondor? I...
2019-08-261h 02By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienA Series of Small WoundsJared, Oriana and Ned discuss Ned’s choice of topic: “ Aldarion and Erendis:
The Mariner’s Wife.” An incomplete effort written in the 1960s and edited by
Christopher Tolkien for 1980’s Unfinished Tales, “Aldarion and Erendis” is
possibly the most unique story in Tolkien’s Middle-earth legendarium: a
serious and ultimately sad domestic drama about a failed marriage, mixed with
the origins of world-changing events. Why is it notable the Númenoreans
initially work with wood and not stone? How does the fact that there are
protagonists and antagonists but ultimately no heroes shape the story’s
impact? And above all else, whe...
2019-07-301h 10By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienManwë, You’re Not My Dad!Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: Melian. The wife of
one of the three original Elves in the legendarium, she herself is not an elf
but a Maia, one of the divine figures in that universe. So what exactly does
that make her? An emo kid with a fondness for dark forests? An alien figure
looking around at all the Children of Iluvatar that surround her? Or does she
really just like nightingales a lot?
Show Notes.
Jared’s doodle this episode:
Melian.
Need to know more about Bryan Cogm...
2019-06-2848 minBy-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienTuor Is JUST a Guy!Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Oriana’s choice of topic: Death. Not all of
it, but a fair amount. Where exactly does free will come in for those in
Middle-earth? What lies behind Tolkien's conception of death as ‘the Gift of
Men’ which the Elves lack? What happens in the philosophical dialogue between
Finrod and Andreth on death and fate? And just what is Tuor’s deal anyway?
Plus, a mention of when a dragon and a farmer thought death was just a bother.
Also we had some thoughts about the Tolkien biopic. It...could have been more
memorable.
S...
2019-05-241h 03By-The-Bywater: A Podcast about All Things J.R.R. TolkienIt’s Finally Out in the World!Jared, Oriana and Ned kick things off with an introduction to the podcast,
recent developments in Tolkien news and adaptations, and how they all learned
about Tolkien to start with. Treks to central Finland, developing languages as
a teenage writer, initially trying (and failing) to read The Lord of the
Rings, and slightly suspicious cover illustrations are all on the agenda.
Show Notes.
A quick sampling of Tove Jansson’s illustrations for The Hobbit. Be
sure to learn more about Jansson herself!
Oriana’s Finnish travels! Start
here and just keep hitting
the ‘next’...
2019-04-291h 11
Heat RocksEgyptian Lover on Cameo's "Cameosis"Guests: Egyptian Lover The album: Cameo: Cameosis (1980) Egyptian Lover is one of the pivotal figures in shaping the sound of Los Angeles funk and hip-hop beginning in the 1980s. As a teen, he became a core member of the all-powerful Uncle Jamm's Army party crew and by the mid-80s, he was an artist in his own right, releasing a series of key electro albums that would help pave the way for the emergence of other L.A. groups like the Dream Team and N.W.A. For our episode, Egyptian Lover wanted to take...
2018-04-2038 min
This Is Your MixtapeNot Like Me. [Ned Raggett.]Ned Raggett writes about music for a
variety of locations around the world and on the web. He's been doing it for
25 years now and he doesn’t want to stop—or perhaps, he tells me, he’s lazy
and used to routine. He lives and works as a library assistant for the
University of California in San Francisco.
We discuss the Muppets, exile in Siberia, the necessary lie of genre,
listening to music from various perspectives, and not “fitting in” like people
expect you to.
Ned’s Five Songs.
Rainbow Connection from
The Muppet Movie...
2018-02-161h 11
joseph aleo's WEEKLY MIXWEEKLY MIX 16: April 23, 2017
On today’s show we’ll chat with Ned Raggett about the art of writing album reviews. Ned has been published in AllMusic, The Quietus, Pitchfork and many other fine publications. While I’ve been a deejay and a podcaster for several decades, I’ve only done the odd album review. If I’m going to do The Weekly Mix properly, I need to hone my skills at album reviews and who better to learn from than a master like Ned Raggett?
I’ve known Ned online for quiet a while and discovered him through my friend Steve Ho...
2017-04-2300 minjoseph aleo's WEEKLY MIXFriends Mix
Welcome to 2017 and welcome to my podcast!
On today's show we're going to listen to a mix I put together with my friends two years ago. That's a long time, I know, but there's a reason for that and to explain myself I have to tell you a little bit about myself.
First off, I've been deejaying and producing shows for more than half my life. I've been on the air for hundreds of hours and I've spent hundreds of more hours producing shows. People often ask me where I find the time...
2017-01-0100 min
Sup Doc: A Documentary PodcastDEEP WATER w Ned RaggettToday's whale of a tale concerns the ill-fated voyage of Donald Crowhurst, as seen through the lens of Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell's 2006 documentary, Deep Water. Music journalist and nautical enthusiast Ned Raggett joined Paco and George to discuss his attachment to this story from the 1968 race to circumnavigate the globe. This doc defies logic and will have you saying "...What the..." more times than The Imposter. Befuddling and tragic as it is, we wring some fun out of it. You can catch this doc on Netflix. Sunday Times Golden Globe Race inspired Robin Knox-Johnston, Bernard Moitessier...
2016-06-1352 min
BiographicalEp 32 DEEP WATER with music writer Ned RaggettSup Doc: A Documentary Film Podcast
Ep 32 DEEP WATER with music writer Ned Raggett
Today's whale of a tale concerns the ill-fated voyage of Donald Crowhurst, as seen through the lens of Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell's 2006 documentary, Deep Water. Music journalist and nautical enthusiast Ned Raggett joined Paco and George to discuss his attachment to this story from the 1968 race to circumnavigate the globe. This doc defies logic and will have you saying "...What the..." more times than The Imposter. Befuddling and tragic as it is, we wring some fun out of it.
Sunday Times Golden Globe Ra...
2016-06-1200 min
KUCI: Our Digital FutureNed Raggett on Our Digital Future
Ned_Raggett
on live on KUCI 88.9 FM on Our Digital Future w/Ziba Z
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Raggett
5:00pm-6:00pm Our Digital Future Librarians Around the World Discuss the Digital Future of Our Information Spaces w/ Ziba Z
http://www.kuci.org/128mp3stream.m3u
2010-08-1900 min
Todd RundgrenFOREVER NOWThe Psychedelic Furs
'Forever Now'
About this CD
Likely exercising the same controlling approach that he was notorious for, from his work with every act from the New York Dolls to XTC, Todd Rundgren brought in legendary backup vocal duo Flo and Eddie as well as a cellist, two horn players (including NRBQ member Donn Adams), and himself on keyboards. The end result is simply fantastic, fusing the post-punk charge of the first two albums (Ely still sounds great as always, from the first song on, while Tim Butler acquits himself well on bass) with a new synth-based approach...
2006-10-2405 min