Good evening, little masters, and welcome to episode 4.

And welcome to episode 302 of the Prancing Pony podcast where if we take one more step it'll be the farthest away from home we've ever been.

Maybe the farthest away from home you've ever been, I don't know.

Actually, no, not even that. I'm sure. What, Birmingham's farther?

I think, for you anyway. But folks, both of you mentioned the common room and join us. I am the Lord of the Mark, Sean Marquesi, and I'm here with the Man of the West who's geography skills obviously need a little polishing.

Alan Sisto, folks, join us as we celebrate the Tolkien Society's 50th Oxamute with a live episode recording from Oxford.

I can't believe it's taken 50 of these things for me to get here in person, but Alan has been to all 50 of them.

But no matter how you got here, you're all welcome in our common room here at the Prancing Pony podcast where we are reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation and a whole lot of bad jokes along the way.

We love deep dives into the Lord discussing our favorite themes and a whole lot more.

But we try to keep it light and fun, like a couple of friends chatting at a pub or a couple of friends chatting at a pub with a live audience today.

And we will almost certainly actually be chatting at a pub, hopefully with a live audience later tonight. But we're glad you've joined us.

We are indeed. But tonight is something special. Before we dive into book six of the Lord of the Rings this season, also known as the second half of the Return of the King to some of you, I wanted to start this season off right by joining my old Fred and co-author, Sean Marquesi.

Here are one of my favorite places on Earth, Oxford. And I'm really happy to be here. I mean, this is, as I said, this is my first Oxamute that I've actually been to in person.

Only my second time in Oxford. And I really love it here. It's a great town.

It's a very cool town. And it's just really exciting to be able to kind of walk. We're talking and walked, right?

You know, just being able to walk by, oh, oh, there's the Martyrs Memorial. Like I've heard of that thing from the biography or you know, just like walk.

Oh, there's the Carfax. We're talking drove the stolen race.

Yeah, common deer. Common deer, please. Common deer.

But no, it's been super cool and really exciting to be here. And especially exciting to be here to talk about our book.

Yes, did you bring a copy of it by any chance? Do we have to just like pretend we're holding it in our hands?

We're just going to pretend we're holding our hands because I don't think I think I gave away the copy that I was carrying around today.

So why we love Middle Earth? Of course, you've all heard of it by now. It's releasing in the US September 12th that releases in the UK. We understand October 12th.

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