Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast,

the show that explores the background of Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning. There's this weird thing that happens when you look at something close enough and actually focus in on it for once, and then you realize that things are different than you thought they were because you finally paid attention

to that thing? Or maybe things aren't different, but all of a sudden you have a question,

all of a sudden your attention is focused in on it. So your perception of that thing changes

because you actually noticed it. I mean, this can happen in our day-to-day life. I mean,

times have you opened a door before you realized, oh, wow, the wood around the doorknob

is kind of dirty because that's where everyone's hands touch, but it's been like that for

months because you just hadn't noticed.

Or when you look at a word, when you, this happens to me all the time, you're like,

wait, that's how that word is spelled, and then you look at it and you look at it and you look at it and eventually it just looks even more

strange because you've been looking at it. That happens. This is going somewhere, by the way. Another similar kind of thing that can happen is that you are introduced to a thing, a concept, an idea, whatever, at a young age.

And so you don't question it.

You just go, oh, well, that's just a thing, I guess, and then you accept it.

What am I talking about here?

I'm talking about the idea of sending barrels down a river, unescorted, just floating along by themselves, and those barrels contain goods

and expensive wine and things that you wouldn't want to get lost or busted open along the

journey, and yet they're just happy to let the barrels float down the river, at least for a significant portion of that journey.

Doesn't that sound odd?

Has everyone else realized that that seems like a kind of a silly idea?

And I get it.

I get the benefit of this is that you don't have to shepherd them along yourself.

The river will just bring them from one place to another, that you don't have to shepherd them along yourself, that the river

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