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

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning. So here we are. We are finally wrapping up chapter two, which has been a ton of references to other things, of foreshadowing of things to come, of setting the tone and setting up the rest of the story.

And it hits me, having just read through The Hobbit and then now through this, on a very, very close level,

how different the two stories are right from the beginning.

Yeah, they both start out in the Shire, and they're both very hobbity,

and we get a good sense of who the people of the Shire are and they're both very hobbity, and we get a good sense of who the people

of the Shire are, and what the actual dilemma is, the journey that we're about to go on. But the

dwarves hanging out in Bilbo's house, being dwarves, and the difference between that and Gandalf

coming to hang out with Frododo to reveal to him the dangers of

the ring and everything that is at stake here is a completely different scenario.

In the fellowship of the ring, the stakes are so much higher, but there's so much more intentional references to everything

else in the legendarium.

You can very clearly tell by this point in the writing of these stories that Tolkien had

100% incorporated this story into everything else that he had written. Whereas at this point in the

Hobbit, it's not that clear. I mean, clearly he went back and re-edited certain things,

but this is a very different kind of situation. And it's part of why this chapter takes so long

to get through is it is extremely dense, as we have

seen.

I have a feeling in future episodes we'll be moving at a bit of a faster pace through the

content.

For example, when this chapter ends, which we will talk about in just a moment, and we go from

all of the conversation between Gandalf and Frodo and laying out

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