The second episode of our Middle-Earth Madness series compares chapters from Book 1 with chapters from the Hobbit. Which chapters did you have moving on? How does your bracket compare to ours so far? Are you still locked in or is your bracket thoroughly busted?

Our Middle-Earth Madness Tournament begins! We start out with the bottom left region of the bracket: Book 4 of the Lord of the Rings versus the Silmarillion. What do you think of our picks? Who did you have moving on?

We're continuing our look at what gets handed down in Middle-Earth, moving from the short-folk to the big-folk! What are some of the things that get handed down by Men? Join us as we discuss power, household heirlooms, and inherited friendship.

We're starting a new season and a new series, looking at all things "handed down." How do heirlooms, heritage, inheritance (and the like) play into Tolkien's world (and specifically into his stories)? We start out this week looking at the Hobbits and all of the things Bilbo hands down to Frodo (his home, his ring, his adventuring gear, and also his 'Tookish' adventuring spirit).

Because we can't leave well-enough alone, we dive a little deeper into the alleged connection between Sauron and Bombadil (suggested by their poetic style). We speculate together and offer explanations that range from plausible to ridiculous. How would you explain the similarities?

With all of our hosts back together, we take one (final?) swing at the collection of Tolkien's poetry. This time we look at their selections from the Lord of the Rings. Which were our favorites? Do we think they did a good job choosing a representative collection? Also...why do Sauron and Bombadil write poetry the same way!?

Since Jasmine was out of town for last week's episde, we return to Volume 3 of Tolkien's collected poetry and talk about a few more of our first favorites. Tragedy written in bouncy couplets. A slow and terrifying dragon. And a purposely unfinished work by...Arwen?

Jon and Ron dive in and share some of their "first favorites" from the third volume of Tolkien's Collected Poetry. We talk nostalgia, Germanic sagas, and limmericks. (Basically, we're all over the place when Jasmine isn't here!)