Well, good evening, little masters, and welcome to episode 280 of the PrancingPony podcast

where, well, Faramir sets at the metaphorical kids table in Denethore's words.

Go not to the steward for fatherly love, for his answer will be both no and heck no.

Folks, pull up a bench in the common room and join us, I'm Matt, the Nerd of the Rings,

and I'm here with the Man of the West, who has not been touched with the wisdom or sadness of

the elder race, Alan Sisto. You know, frankly, I just settle for a little of their legendary height,

but all right. Folks, join us tonight as Faramir manages to disappoint his father once more in the

second of five episodes on the Siege of Gondor, the fourth chapter in the Return of the King.

Folks, some of you are hearing this show for the very first time. To you, we bid a warm welcome.

Here at the PrancingPony podcast, we are reading, talking, and often joking our way through

middle-earth a few pages at a time. We take a deep dive into the lore, we explore how the story

came to be, we talk about our favorite themes, and a lot more. But in a lighthearted and fun way,

like friends chatting at the pub, and we're glad you've joined us. And I'm sure you'll be glad you

joined as well. But before we get into even our introduction, let alone our discussion, I wanted

to celebrate a little. Now, this episode releases on February 19, 2023. Well, the very first episode

of the PrancingPony podcast dropped on February 21, 2016. We are celebrating the seventh anniversary

of the PrancingPony podcast this week. Wow. I know. Believe it, when I started this thing,

the idea is still being around seven years later, mind-blowing. Not a chance. That's awesome.

It really is cool. In that time, we have released 280 full episodes, along with over 200 episode

postscripts and 15 quarterly specials for our patrons. Somewhere around 550, maybe even pushing

600 hours of content. We've had more than 6 million downloads during that time, and the community

around the show continues to grow so much that we actually held our own moots in 2021 and 2022.

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