67. An Interview with Ian McKellen : He Read Tolkien EVERY NIGHT Before Filming
Here’s another recording from the December 2, 2003 roundtable interviews I was invited to join with a few other journalists to speak to the actors and crew of The Lord of the Rings (our Peter Jackson ...
5 Sep 202328min
66. Happily Ever After isn’t Enough – On Fairy Stories, Part 6
We’re wrapping up Tolkien’s seminal essay this week looking at Consolation–and with that–Tolkien’s well-known term, Eucatastrophe. With so much depth, this essay isn’t easy to consume, and we really h...
29 Aug 202355min
65. Escape Isn’t Possible with “Modern” Storytelling – On Fairy Stories, Part 5
What are we supposed to recover from? And why do fairy stories provide it? And why do we need to escape? And how do fairy stories break us out? As we get closer to finishing out “On Fairy Stories,” ...
22 Aug 202359min
64. Movies are NOT Sub-Creation – On Fairy Stories, Part 4
When Tolkien talks about Fantasy, he doesn’t simply mean fiction stories set in sword-and-sorcery worlds. Fantasy is the highest form of sub-creation, the “most nearly pure form”–and the most potent....
15 Aug 20231h 8min
63. Kids Ruin Everything – On Fairy Stories, Part 3
This week we discussed “Children” from the “On Fairy Stories” by Tolkien. He pushes back against the coupling of fairy-stories and children, making the point that, “If fairy-story as a kind is worth ...
8 Aug 202352min
62. Tolkien Still Matters : with Nick Groom, author of Tolkien in the 21st Century
This week Michael and I talked with Professor Nick Groom, author of Tolkien in the 21st Century: The Meaning of Middle-earth Today, releasing Sept. 5, 2023 (apologies for some some of the echo in the ...
1 Aug 20230s
61. An Interview with Peter Jackson : It’s for the fans!
On December 2, 2003, I was invited to join a few other journalists to interview the actors and crew of The Lord of the Rings. For me (Jonathan), for a “kid” in his mid-20s who turned a website into on...
25 Jul 202328min
60. The Origins of Fantasy – A Soup with Distance and Time: On Fairy Stories, Part 2
Diving into what the origin of fairy stories is, we realize–once again–that Tolkien doesn’t give us an encyclopedic answer, but instead lays out some boundaries that help us better understand where fa...
18 Jul 202346min
