Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.

As the world becomes darker, and this is something that is hit on time and time again in this part of the Fellowship of the Ring, this idea that the world outside the shire is becoming dangerous.

Things are getting worse.

And even the hobbits, even the most reclusive hobbits, are hearing rumors of things.

The world is changing.

And they can feel it in this little pocket of the world where it seems like they never are really in any real

danger. And yet, for the hobbits that are paying attention, they're starting to notice that

things are changing. And I'm not going to go into too much of a real world corollary here,

but I have a feeling that many of us have felt this before. This conversation that we're

about to see between Sam and one of his peers feels very real. And by that, I mean, I have a

feeling many of you will have had conversations like this in recent years, whether it was about,

I don't know, the pandemic or politics or anything like

that. It really doesn't matter the specific example. What is important here is that the conversations

are around an individual revealing information and knowledge that other people don't want to

believe is true. And we're about to see this play out twice, between Sam and Ted Sandeman, and then also between

Frodo and Gandalf.

And in the first conversation, Sam is trying to tell Ted that there are things going on out

there and there are dark tidings of bad things that could affect the shire, and yet Ted doesn't

want to admit that this is true at all.

And the other conversation is between Gandalf returning to Frodo after being gone for

a significant period of time and revealing to him that the ring that was given to him by

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