All right, what's up? We're on the road. And not Cormac McCarthy is the road. We will not be chomping on anybody's thighs or butts. We are on the road. And I thought it's perfect timing to return to the Lord of the Rings. I've not read The Hobbit of the Lord of the Rings in many, many years. Of course,

I read it, I think a couple times when I was in junior high and high school. And now is the

perfect time to return to it just because. And I also realized that a lot of the analyses that

are out there, they're really good. There are plenty that focus on this or that element, this or that, you know, layer or level of analysis, but not many people have done a significant deep dive covering all of the influences, the layers, the levels, and even the intelligence domain that i think is clearly there

to influence Tolkien we're going to talk about all that this is probably going to be a several

part series it won't be just one it's going to be multiple parts so we're going to start with

the first half of the hobbits today so we've gotten through

actually more than the first half but this will be a part one and a part two so if you want to

get access to the full video here you'll want to subscribe to jays analysis and head on over

to the website or here for members on youtube and choose the495 option or the $60 a year option to get

access to the full talks. Of course, I am still going to do the old boys part two very soon.

That will be in the midst of this ongoing series. But we have a long journey ahead of us.

We have our own little journey to Mordor as we go to Vegas and L.A. for

a host of podcast. And so what better ascetic struggle than the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit.

Now, a lot of people don't know, as we said, that the Hobbit is kind of a little mini Lord of the Rings.

I've noticed that it's basically the same patterns, the same structure.

And, of course, it was written for his children.

So Tolkien wrote that for his kids.

And then as they got older, they would be a little more able to digest the intense complexities of the Lord of the Rings.

But the Hobbit was a precursor to that, kind of a prolog, you could say.

But it has not just a lot of the same themes kind of in a shorter mini version.

It also has a lot of different layers and symbolic structures that, again, I think most people are not aware of.

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