Interview: The Prancing Pony Podcast – Visiting Tolkien Chapter By Chapter
The Prancing Pony Podcast is a weekly podcast about the Middle-earth legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, hosted by Alan Sisto and Shawn E. Marchese. They are passionate Tolkien enthusiasts inviting listeners to enjoy their detailed exploration of Tolkien’s work, with smart but straightforward discussion and a heavy dose of humor.
In each episode, Alan and Shawn cover a chapter of Tolkien’s works. They read out favorite passages, discuss recurring themes, and highlight connections to other Middle-earth tales, all to showcase the rich tapestry woven by this master storyteller.
They believe even Tolkien’s deepest works can be accessible to anyone. They wish to open the door to this beloved author for whoever wants to enter, and like the common-room of the Prancing Pony Inn in Bree, they welcome every traveler through Middle-earth – from hobbits setting out on their first adventures, to wizards well-versed in the ancient lore.
The podcast and its hosts are based in the US. However, due to the magic of internet, we were able to conduct an interview using the Palantíri of our email providers. Read on and get to know the hosts of a show which takes a deep dive into #allthingstolkien – with the bare minimum of digression.
Let’s start at the beginning, for it is a very good place to start!
Alan: It’s actually, “Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start.” It’s from Do-re-mi, a song from The Sound of Music. Anyway, on to your questions — and our answers!
Teilzeithelden: Hi Shawn, hi Alan! Thank you for sitting down with us (well, figuratively) and taking the time to share some insights on you and your own journey to Middle-earth. First of all, please let us know – who are Alan and Shawn?
Alan: I’m a husband, father, photographer, voice-over actor, and podcast host. I was born and raised in Southern California, and have become a ‘creative professional’ by happy accident. I absolutely love my ‘job’ as co-host of The Prancing Pony Podcast, and am as shocked as anyone that we’ve managed to create something people want to listen to.
Shawn: I guess you could say I’m a lifelong geek with a passion for languages and great stories. I was born in New Orleans, but for years I’ve lived in Texas with my wife and two children. My background is in literature and languages, and I spend a lot of time on those pursuits. By day I do white-collar office work for a big corporation, but I’ve always kept my creative side healthy: I’ve done a lot of writing, I’ve worked on independent films, and now I co-host a podcast!
Teilzeithelden: As a regular listener to your podcast, I imagine you got into the legendarium quite early in your lives. Can you shed some light on what brought you so close to Tolkien and his works? How did it all start?
Alan: Indeed, I was relatively young when I first encountered Tolkien’s works. I was 9 years old, perhaps 10, when I saw the Rankin & Bass animated version of The Hobbit, and later received my first copy of the book (illustrated with stills from that animated version). I vividly recall being unable to put the book down once Bilbo encountered Smaug, and reading furiously into the night. Unfortunately, my parents weren’t big fans and either didn’t know, or didn’t tell me, that there were other books! But a few years later — when I was 14, I believe — I found The Lord of the Rings and thus began my appreciation of all things Tolkien.
Shawn: I remember being a child in the 1980s and seeing commercials on TV for that Rankin & Bass cartoon of The Hobbit, but I never watched it at that age. As I got older, I got heavily into Dungeons & Dragons and fantasy novels, and so Tolkien was always on the edge of my awareness; but I didn’t actually decide to read his works until I was a teenager. I was fifteen when I first read the story of how Tolkien started writing The Hobbit by jotting “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” on an empty page of a student’s exam paper! I was so impressed that I went right out and bought a box set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I read those, and then went straight on into The Silmarillion… the rest is history.
Teilzeithelden: What is the one thing that fascinates you about Tolkien and his works?
Alan: Even as a young reader, the thing that fascinated me about Tolkien’s works was just how incredibly real they felt. These didn’t feel like fiction, they felt like history. As that young reader, I didn’t necessarily understand how that was done, or even why this “inner consistency of reality” was so potent. As I matured as a reader, I began to appreciate it even more and, after reading “On Fairy-Stories”, I finally began to grasp that this characteristic of the legendarium was precisely why I’d fallen in love with the works to begin with.
Shawn: I’d have to agree with Alan. Tolkien really valued that “inner consistency of reality”, as he called it; and that’s what sets his work apart from that of any other writer that I know. The languages, the maps, the history; all of that makes Tolkien’s world feel more real than any other fantasy I’ve read. The most fascinating thing about all of it to me is that his world is as deep and rich as entire mythologies of real-world cultures — Greek, Norse, etc. — but whereas those developed over thousands of years by countless writers, this all came from the mind of one man.
Teilzeithelden: When you started the podcast back in early 2016, what was your motivation in creating such a show? Did you have any goals that you wanted to reach or was it more a “Let’s go and see where it takes us” kind of thing?
Alan: Interestingly, this began because of one of my day jobs. Several months before we began the podcast, I’d begun to work as a voice-over actor. It’s not an easy business: everyone thinks they can do it, so marketplaces are flooded with cheap ‘talent’, and one way to make sure you’re on the right track is to work with an experienced coach. Well, one of my coaches suggested that hosting a podcast would be one way to better develop my ‘conversational’ style. After thinking of a handful of possible topics, I landed on one I knew I’d stay passionate about: Tolkien. But I also knew I wanted a co-host, so I reached out to Shawn and the rest is history. As for early goals, there really weren’t any — it was, as you say, a “Let’s go and see where it takes us” sort of thing. Truthfully, I never thought we’d find the level of success that we’ve had.
Shawn: The only early goal I remember was just “Let’s see if we can get anyone to listen!” We thought it’d just be about a dozen people who already knew us. But we knew from the beginning that we wanted to create a resource for readers, to help them get as much out of reading Tolkien’s works as we did. But beyond that, like Alan says, we just jumped in and decided to let it take us where it would take us. We always knew we’d focus on linguistics, philosophy, theology and all that, because those are the things that interest us. But a lot of the elements that define the show today (like our pop-culture references and our digressions) happened organically. I don’t think either of us knew how much fun we could have just by riffing off each other, until about ten episodes in.
Teilzeithelden: You started with the Silmarillion, going through it chapter by chapter (which, according to The Tolkien Professor, was “a bit rushed”). After this, you changed from a bi-weekly schedule to a weekly schedule. Knowing that you both have day jobs and families blessed with children, what was the thought process behind it? Were you afraid to lose quality or get taken over by the work that comes with creating weekly episodes (and all the specials you do)?
Shawn: That’s right, we talked to Corey Olsen at the beginning of Season 2, right after we finished The Silmarillion, and he told us we rushed it! That was deeply amusing to both Alan and me, but also a wake-up call. We realized then that if we wanted to take our time to give the text the treatment it deserved, and we wanted to have a chance of someday getting through the end of The Lord of the Rings, we were going to have to pick up the pace to one episode a week.
Alan: There were a number of other factors behind that decision as well. Some of our Season 1 episodes had become absurdly long — nearly three hours on a few occasions — and we thought that, if we went weekly, we might be able to shorten them and focus a bit more closely. Second, we had just started a Patreon campaign, and we knew that people wanted weekly episodes more than just about anything else — so we set that as a goal in order to see if there really was the sort of demand we’d imagined. But also, by the end of that first season, we knew we’d be in this for the long haul — the show had seen a level of success that we’d never imagined, and Shawn and I were both excited to take it on for the next several years.
Shawn: And we had actually released a few specials that first season, so we had done weekly releases a few times anyway. We knew we could manage it, and we never seriously worried about sacrificing quality. We just knew that we had to start being a lot more disciplined and holding ourselves to less than two hours per episode. No more three-hour marathons! As for the workload, fortunately we both have very supportive families who are happy to see us doing something we love.
Teilzeithelden: I remember a specific episode from your podcast where you talked about the fact that you had never met each other in person even after you started the podcast. It must’ve been as far as the end of the Silmarillion before you met. So – how did you meet each other in the first place, and how was it, finally getting to know the person you spent so much time with?
Alan: We originally ‘met’ via a Tolkien group on Facebook that we were both pretty involved with. This group used to have ‘book weeks’ (to balance all the memes and movie posts, I suppose!) where people were invited to share posts about the books. Shawn and I were two of the more active participants in these book weeks: his posts are why, once I’d decided to do a podcast on Tolkien, I reached out to him first. As for meeting face-to-face: indeed, that didn’t happen until Mythmoot V at the end of June 2018. That’s two-and-a-half years and 87 episodes after we’d started the show. So it was actually at the end of The Hobbit in Season 2 that we finally got to meet each other. Of course, by then, we’d spent so much time together in our recording sessions and so much time communicating outside of that as part of the production process, we felt entirely comfortable. It was really like seeing an old friend again after years apart.
Shawn: That’s true, but if I may rewind a bit further: even though we met in that Facebook group, we hadn’t spent more than about an hour actually talking on the phone to each other before stepping into our first recording. As a result, you can really hear us getting to know each other in the first dozen or so episodes of the podcast. We didn’t quite have the chemistry in those early episodes that we do now, or the comic timing, or the willingness to interrupt or talk over each other! It was… well, awkward at times. But every once in a while, in those early episodes, you can hear it click when we realize something we have in common, like Rush or Babylon 5. And that’s the kind of stuff that ended up becoming the identity of the show. Anyway, though, back to Mythmoot, I remember, that whole weekend people kept asking us “What was it like to finally meet in person?” and it really wasn’t even a big deal. We had spent a lot of time together already, and so it was more like a reunion than a first meeting.
What’s your Precious?
Teilzeithelden: The legendarium contains so many breathtaking moments. Some due to the sheer power of the story told, others to the way they are described, and even some that the casual reader will miss because of this one obscure reference to anglo-saxon culture that Tolkien weaved in. Knowing the level of insight that you provide on a weekly basis, which are your absolute favorite moments or scenes? You can choose from every work of Tolkien, but limit your choice to one – please.
Alan: Wow; limiting that to just one is hard. We ask some of our guests to do this exact same thing and now I know why they often pause for a while before answering. Still, I suppose I have to answer — so I’ll say that the arrival of the Rohirrim at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields is my favorite scene. It has everything: alliterative verse, textual ruins, powerful drama, intense visuals. Would it be cheating, though, if I said that Ainulindalë would be a close second?
Shawn: Don’t worry, I’m cheating too! As regular listeners will know, my favorite character is Eärendil, so there are some moments from that story I could pick. But my absolute favorite moment is in The Lord of the Rings, just a few pages after Alan’s. It’s when Éowyn faces off against the Witch-king along with Merry. That moment appeals to me for the same reason the Eärendil story does: it’s about hope triumphing over despair in the face of what appears to be certain defeat.
Teilzeithelden: I’ve heard rumors that there’s also life outside the show. Please share the best moment you had related to the podcast. What did the show bring to you that made you go like “Yes, this is why we do it”?
Alan: There have been quite a few of these: certainly far more than I’d ever have expected. Listeners who say that our show has helped them endure incredible personal hardships — I can’t share those details, of course, but those are incredibly powerful reminders of the impact that we can have on individual people. It’s a reminder that our audience isn’t a monolithic group, but that everyone has a story. The most enjoyable moments, though, have been meeting our listeners at Tolkien gatherings.
Shawn: Without a doubt. We’ve now done three conferences (or “moots” as Tolkien fans tend to call them) together: Mythmoot V in 2018, Texmoot in early 2019, and Tolkien 2019 just this past August. And then there was Oxonmoot in 2018, which Alan went to on his own. When people walk up to us and say things like, “I tried to read The Silmarillion four times, and I could never make it through until your podcast,” or when they say “Listening to you guys got me through a hard day at work,” that’s when I feel proud to do what we do. And when I see how other fans connect with each other because they both listen to our podcast, well, that’s just amazing.
Teilzeithelden: We’ve talked about the good moments, however, I’m sure that there must be some points where you felt like Gollum having to eat boiled, mashed taters. Would you like to share such a moment, too?
Shawn: It’s hard work, and there’s a lot of it. When you factor in reading, research, answering listener questions, and everything else, we spend around 10 hours each on preparatory work for each episode before we even sit down for a recording session. It is a lot of fun, and I probably would be spending that time flipping through pages of Tolkien’s books anyway, but it’s very time-consuming. Fortunately, my family are (as I’ve said) very supportive. And if the response from our listeners is any indicator, all the hard work shows.
Alan: I’d also add to that the general challenge of our late-night recording sessions. There have been times when we’re up until after midnight my time (which is 2:00 am for Shawn) on a weeknight, only to have to get up and do regular work the next day. It’s fun to do — and some of our silliest outtakes come when we’re completely exhausted! — but there’s a price to pay the next day for sure.
Teilzeithelden: During the podcast, you discussed the movie adaptations of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Now, a new Tolkien biopic has been released. Would you share your thoughts on this movie – and maybe give some advice to viewers what to look out for?
Alan: We touched on the Tolkien biopic in episode 125 — what was going to be a 15-minute chat turned into nearly an hour’s conversation. Our expectation was that it would take artistic liberties — and it did. But setting those aside, the film can still be enjoyed — there are enough bits of ‘fan service’ for the knowledgeable Tolkien fans. I think I ended up giving it 3 out of 5 stars, while Shawn was a bit more charitable.
Shawn: A bit. I think I landed on 3.5 out of 5 stars. The most important thing to keep in mind is that it is not a documentary, and it is not completely historically accurate. It is a fictionalized portrayal based on key events in the early life of the historical J.R.R. Tolkien. That’s not entirely a bad thing, and as Alan says, it didn’t come as a surprise to either of us. I always like to remind people that human lives do not follow three-act story structure, so all biopics take liberties! So watch it, and enjoy it for what it is… and once you’ve watched it, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War, or Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, and that’ll give you the real story.
Teilzeithelden: What are your hopes and expectations towards the upcoming Amazon series which is rumored to be set in Númenor? Do you like the idea of having more interpretations of Tolkien’s works or do you fear it’s going to turn out like The Hobbit movies did?
Shawn: I don’t mind having more adaptations, because they do tend to help new readers discover the books, which is ultimately what I really want. And I’m optimistic about the Amazon series. My hope is that the mistakes made by Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies will serve as a cautionary tale for the Amazon team, not to mention anyone else who follows them. I know they’re looking to fill in some gaps in the story, and I think that’s why they’re setting it in the Second Age; but I hope they’ve learned from Jackson’s example that they need to be very careful which gaps they fill in, and how.
Alan: I’m an optimist at heart, but I concede that Jackson’s Hobbit films have made me a rather cautious optimist when it comes to this Amazon adaptation. I am looking forward to its release and to watching it — but I’m simultaneously a bit anxious. My hope has recently been buoyed upon learning that Tom Shippey will be involved as a consultant and that John Howe is onboard as well, working on the visual design. At the end of the day, given the amount of money that Amazon is investing, it has the potential to be an epic, breathtaking television adaptation — but it also has the potential to be quite the opposite. I suppose ‘cautiously hopeful’ describes my position.
The road goes ever on and on
Teilzeithelden: Sometimes it feels like years and years of studying are necessary to even get a glimpse of the depth of Tolkien’s works. What is a good place for interested readers to start their own journey into this world?
Shawn: If you’ve never read Tolkien before, start with The Hobbit, then The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. After those, read the standalone editions of what Tolkien called his three “Great Tales”: The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, and The Fall of Gondolin. Those weren’t available to me when I first read Tolkien, but they’re essential reading now. After reading those, tackle Unfinished Tales. That will give you the overall picture of the story. But then when you’re ready to start studying, well, that’s another story.
Alan: Then I’d say to start where we started — with “On Fairy-Stories” and “Mythopoeia.” The former is an incredibly in-depth essay that sheds a great deal of light on how and why Tolkien wrote as he did. The latter is poetry, so a little less precise, but a wonderfully vivid piece that describes (among other things) the need that Man has to sub-create: “We make still by the law in which we’re made.” And, after our conversation with Dr. Verlyn Flieger, I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest that those who really wish to make a study of Tolkien read his essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” I didn’t say it would be easy.
Shawn: That is going to require some familiarity with the poem Beowulf itself, but there’s good news there — you can pick up Tolkien’s own translation of that, which is not as hard to get through as you might think.
Teilzeithelden: You invite Tolkien scholars and other authorities to the PPP on a regular basis. You conducted interviews with John Garth (author of Tolkien and the Great War), Tom Shippey and Corey Olsen (and many others). What is the main goal behind those interviews?
Alan: If I can be incredibly honest here, one of the goals was for us to get to visit with these amazing people! But it’s not just for our own personal enjoyment, of course — our goal with each of these interviews has been to expose our listeners to really knowledgeable people. Granted, we know our Tolkien relatively well — but we are, at best, well-informed laypersons. Bringing actual scholars on the show gives our listeners a chance to really dive deep into a particular area of Tolkien’s life or work, and to get a different viewpoint than they get from us each week.
Shawn: The truth is that a lot of scholarship and analysis have been written on Tolkien’s works. But because he’s a popular author of fantasy, and not “literary fiction”, the scholarship tends to be very accessible; you don’t have to be an academic to understand it. We want our listeners to learn about this material, and help them understand what these true authorities have contributed to the discussion. And we’ve gotten great response on our interview episodes from our listeners, many of whom have told us they weren’t familiar with a particular scholar’s work until we interviewed them.
Teilzeithelden: You already finished up discussing The Silmarillion and The Hobbit, and you’re working your way through The Lord of the Rings now. However, Tolkien’s works go beyond what the majority of the audience knows and enjoys. So where does the road lead you to?
Alan: Honestly, we’re not entirely certain. We know that we’ll go through Season 8 at a minimum — that would cover the last half of The Return of the King. We’ve not officially planned out time after that, but we are hoping to take a season to cover other legendarium material: Unfinished Tales, as well as some portions of The History of Middle-earth. I know we also want to spend a season covering non-legendarium works: Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham, Leaf by Niggle, and so on.
Shawn: I suspect by the time we get through The Lord of the Rings we’ll have covered most of what we want to get out of Unfinished Tales and The History of Middle-earth, so it’ll be a matter of picking up whatever bits and pieces we haven’t touched on yet. But we’ve talked about coming full circle and ending the podcast with a second run through The Silmarillion, going through it more slowly and with the experience and context we’ve picked up since our first season. That’s going to be fun.
Alan: Finally, and we’re not promising anything here, we’ve talked about maybe co-writing a book when we’re done with the show.
The Fellowship of the Podcast
Teilzeithelden: Over the years, you’ve grown quite an audience. You’re not just explaining your opinions and findings, instead you’re actively engaging with the community of your followers. What do you do to get people involved and why are you doing it?
Shawn: We started as friends in a Facebook group, and to a certain extent the podcast was a natural outgrowth of discussions we had in that group, with other people reading and commenting along the way. So we always wanted to make sure we had our listeners involved in a dialogue with us: commenting, sharing, sending questions, and generally being a part of the Prancing Pony Podcast. We’ve had a listener mailbag since the very beginning, and we answer questions from it in every regular episode.
Alan: One thing we quickly discovered is that people want to be involved. Even when we only had a few dozen listeners, we’d get questions for Barliman’s Bag, comments on social media, etc. People everywhere have a desire for community — like-minded people gathering together, even if it’s only virtual. All we did was provide a place for them to gather, really — and the show itself acts as a touchstone of sorts, with everyone able to participate in discussion at any time, as they go through the show at their own pace.
Shawn: And that community has been great for us. The feedback, questions, corrections and engagement make the show better. And frankly, having a group of friends build up around the show makes it much more fun.
Teilzeithelden: Before we wrap up, it’s time for a lightning round! Limit your answers to one sentence (if possible).
Teilzeithelden: Favorite author that is not Tolkien?
Alan: Isaac Asimov
Shawn: Frank Herbert
Teilzeithelden: Favorite character in the legendarium?
Alan: Favorite elf: Finrod. Favorite man: Faramir.
Shawn: Eärendil, but Éowyn comes close.
Teilzeithelden: Dogs or cats?
Alan: Huan or Tevildo? Huan, of course!
Shawn: Cats. Tevildo forever, Huan never!
Teilzeithelden: Do Balrogs have wings, and if so, actual or metaphorical?
Alan: Metaphorical wings only.
Shawn: Uh, have you listened to the show!? No. No, no, no.
Teilzeithelden: What’s the worst name that Tolkien used in first drafts instead of the published versions (e.g. Tevildo for Sauro or Bingo for Frodo)?
Alan: Oh, the most unfortunately-named character has to be Teleporno (or Celeborn, as he would be known).
Shawn: By the way, do not Google “Teleporno” under any circumstances. Since Alan took the obvious one, I’ll answer with Nienna’s early name of “Fui”. If I may digress, though, the best name Tolkien used in an early draft would have to be one of Ungoliant’s early names: “Ungwë Lianti”, which sounds like an Italian sports car.
Teilzeithelden: Which book to read in 2019?
Alan: Well, we’ll be spending pretty much the whole year in Book Two of The Lord of the Rings, but other than that, Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth.
Shawn: Hard to argue with those two, but if you want to dig deeper into the scholarship, there’s also a fantastic collection of essays recently out, called Sub-creating Arda, that features contributions from some very big names in Tolkien studies.
Teilzeithelden: Favorite moment in your own show?
Alan: Oh, goodness — we spent an entire episode on our fan-selected highlights (our eleventy-first episode, of course). I’d have to say the Gollum-GPS bit… genuinely hilarious, all spontaneous.
Shawn: When we interviewed Verlyn Flieger, not only did she give me props for an observation I made about Túrin Turambar (which made me feel wonderful), but at one point she even ended up interviewing us for a few minutes. We kept it all in the show, because it was great.
Teilzeithelden: You can visit one place in Tolkien’s world. Which one?
Alan: The Shire, without a doubt. Like Tolkien, I’m a hobbit in all but size.
Shawn: Rivendell. I’d love to sing a a few rounds of “Tra-la-la-lally” and then get lost in that library.
Teilzeithelden: Which one question would you ask Tolkien if you could?
Shawn: Would you please appear on my podcast?
Alan: How can I possibly thank you for creating this amazing world of Middle-earth? Is there anything I could possibly do to help further your efforts?
Teilzeithelden: Who’s older – Tom Bombadil or Treebeard?
Alan: I think we landed on Tom being the oldest; Treebeard is the oldest ‘living thing’, but Tom is something else…
Shawn: Yes. Tom Bombadil, without a doubt.
Teilzeithelden: Last, but certainly not least, you’re running this podcast in your free time. Would you like to tell our readers where they can find the show and how they can support it?
Alan: You can find us on our website, theprancingponypodcast.com, and on social media: Facebook (The Prancing Pony Podcast), Twitter (@prancingponypod), Instagram (prancingponypod). You can listen or subscribe anywhere you find podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more.
Shawn: If you’d like to support the show, please consider joining The Fellowship of the Podcast at patreon.com/prancingponypod. But there are other ways to support us, too. You can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, tell your friends, share us on social media, Reddit, or anywhere else you find Tolkien fans online. And thank you!
Teilzeithelden: Once more, thank you for spending your time on this interview!
