From the heart of the Shire, through the depths of Moria, to the ends of Middle-Earth, it's The Babylon Bee Reads The Lord Of The Rings! In this episode of The Babylon Bee Reads, Kyle and Dan are joined by Jonathan Watson, creator alongside his two friends of TheOneRing.Com, which can also be followed on Facebook. Kyle, Dan, and Jon continue their fellowship in reading through The Fellowship of the Ring, this time in Chapter 3 Three's Company, where three hobbits encounter black riders and elves in their very own Shire. Be sure to check out The Babylon Bee YouTube Channel for more podcasts, podcast shorts, animation, and more. To watch or listen to the full podcast, become a subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans. The story so far: The Shadow of the past summary- Gandalf has told Frodo all about The Ring and that he is no longer safe in the Shire. Samwise is recruited to accompany Frodo. In this chapter: Frodo has to slip out of the Shire unnoticed so he hatches a plan of pretending to move to a new house in Crickhollow beyond/near Buckland where his Brandybuck side lives while the plan is really to make for Rivendell. Plans to leave on his 50th birthday Life lesson: "What is to be my quest? Bilbo went to find a treasure, there and back again; but I go to lose one, and not return, as far as I can see.' 'But you cannot see very far,' said Gandalf. Something spooks Gandalf who leaves suddenly to try to get news/ he tells Frodo to not use the ring! He promises to be back in time for the birthday party and to set off with Frodo (this does not happen- dang wizards). Frodo's wine is not included in the sale of Bag End to the dreaded S.-B.s. and does not offer her any tea when Lobelia comes with an inventory list. Frodo leaves for a leisurely night hike to set out with Sam and Pippin and hears unpleasant voice asking about him at the Gamgees. They get their packs and Sam says farewell to the beer barrel in the cellar. Sam's character: 'I am sure you have given me all the heaviest stuff,' said Frodo. 'I pity snails, and all that carry their homes on their backs.' 'I could take a lot more yet, sir. My packet is quite light,' said Sam stoutly and untruthfully. They walk, encamp, banter, eat, walk, eat, walk on a southern side road running through hill country eastward when they hear hooves coming up behind them. Frodo wants them to hide and "curiosity or some other feeling was struggling with his desire to hide." The rider seems to have an invisible nose and is using it to smell for someone. They begin traveling alongside the road a stone's throw to avoid detection. They encounter a rider again and then run into the elves who take them to a wood hall. Gildor! The Black riders are scared of the elves. The hobbits see the distinction between the Black Riders and the Elves. What is the significance of the songs they sing in this chapter? Gildor offers protection for the hobbits and is impressed with Frodo, naming him "Elf Friend." Gildor tells Frodo and the hobbits to carry on without Gandalf and to avoid the black riders. Gildor tells the hobbits that he'll send word to any other allies about his journey, although Frodo will discover that the elves are increasingly leaving Middle Earth. The Babylon Bee Reads LOTR Inn & Pub MAILBO BAGGINS We receive powerful testimony the brings up question about what money is used in the Shire On Fairy Stories and Eucatastrophe. The Will of the Ring.
From the heart of the Shire, through the depths of Moria, to the ends of Middle-earth.
It's the Babylon B Reads the Lord of the Rings with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Dan Coates.
Hello, everyone.
Welcome to the Lord of the Rings podcast.
What do we call it?
Babylon B reads the Lord of the Rings.
Babylon B Reads.
I'm Kyle Mann, your host, with my host, co-host, coast, host, guy.
Coast.
Coast.
Dan.
Dan Coates.
I'm Dan.
My host, Dan Colts.
And our special guest host who's been with us a couple episodes now, Jonathan Watson.
He's the grand poopah of the1ering.com.
That's right.
Not.net.
Not.net.
We're going to come out.
It's like, you know, it's like the Urukai versus the orcs.
It's their arrival.
It's a slight subset.
Right, right.
So today we're going through Three is Company, which is chapter three of Fellowship of the Ring.
So so far, if you've watched the movies, it's been fairly close.
And we were just talking about how this chapter is one of the early divergences between the book and the film.
A lot of it is time compression, and a lot of it is, you know, they just had to cut things out for time's sake or whatever.
But so when we left off at the end of Shadow of the Past, that was the big exposition dump where Gandalf tells us everything that's going on.
And Frodo and Sam are recruited to take the ring and get it somewhere.
So this is where we pick up here in 3 is Company.
I like that Tolkien's like, okay, chapter 3.
I got to put 3 in the title.
That was definitely intentional.
Yeah.
Literary humor.
Yeah.
Right.
So what happens in this chapter is that Frodo has to get out of the Shire after what Gandalf told him in chapter 2.
But he's got to get away in a way where he can slip out unnoticed.
He doesn't want to make it obvious that he's leaving.
Yeah.
And so this is one of the big things I spend a lot of time on is how are we going to make it look like Frodo is not, you know, grabbing the super weapon and charging out because that would be strange if this Hobbit all of a sudden just left for no reason.
So he moves, the whole thing is he like plans this move to another part of the Shire.
Right.
Right.
And sells bag end.
Oh, Bakrick Hollow by Brandy.
Brandy Book?
The Brandy Book.
So he sells his house and moves out.
And the whole thing is, oh, I'm going to stay there for like six months and then we'll quietly leave.
But in the meantime, I mean, he's kind of hanging around the Shire.
They're not really leaving.
Gandalf is even there for over two months at the time.
So the departure is really sort of, it feels slow.
Even, I mean, it kind of feels like, get out, don't stick around anymore.
But even Frodo, I think, has a hard time leaving, even though he's ready to go and Gandalf is telling him he should go.
Neither of them seem completely like the urgency that you feel in the movies isn't really here in the books as much.
But it builds rather than is like an instant firecracker of a get out right now type of moment.
Yeah, and I think it was always unclear to me.
And I don't know if this was a fault of the movies or the book or what, but where it was always unclear to me how much Sauron knew and like, you know, what he was looking for because he's obviously inquiring and we meet the ring wraiths for real here where they start asking around the shire.
But it's not like he's just like, I'm going to go crush the shire and invade it.
I know they have the ring.
It's like he's asking around.
So it's not really clear to me.
That may be the difference in the urgency between the book and the film.
Is in the film, it makes it look like he's figured it out.
I'm coming here.
And this, it may be more like he's got a suspicion, similar to how Gandalf has a suspicion, but he's not like 100% sure until he gives that whole exposition dump to Frodo in the previous chapter.
So, Gandalf gets spooked by something he hears and just suddenly takes off and tells Frodo.
I love how Gandalf is always popping in, popping out, like always when you need him, like, oh, now he's gone again.
Right.
So, he takes off and tells Frodo, hey, I'll be back in time for your birthday, and then we'll leave the shire together.
And I think as it becomes clear in this chapter, that doesn't end up happening.
So, in a lot of ways, this chapter really is the beginning of the quest.
And early on in the chapter, Frodo says, I have been so taken up with the thoughts of leaving Bag End and of saying farewell that I have never even considered the direction for where am I to go and by what shall I steer?
What is to be my quest?
Bilbo went to find a treasure there and back again.
But I go to lose one and not return as far as I can see.
And then Gandalf says, Well, the ultimate quest, we have to find the cracks of doom.
He goes, But that may not be for you.
And then he recommends that he goes to Rivendale.
So now we kind of have the setup.
Now we know we have a little direction.
We know where the stories are going.
He's got to get to Rivendale.
And again, if you've read The Hobbit, you've got a little bit, there's a little echo there.
You know, we talked about how he writes kind of in these cycles of there was this hero 50 years ago who did this, you know, with Bilbo.
And he's echoing that now with his quest where he's departing on his 50th birthday to go to Rivendale, just like Bilbo did.
And then that cool twist of like, he went to go find treasure.
I'm going to lose treasure.
So we have a really interesting, unique subversion of the hero's quest here.
I like the life lesson in that little passage that you read where he says, you know, I go to lose one and not return as far as I can see.
Gandalf goes, well, you can't see very far.
So if you don't know, just take one step at a time.
Yeah.
I love that little insight that Gandalf gives him.
Yeah.
And again, we see just the stout-heartedness of the Hobbits.
He's like, I might not come back.
And here we go.
It's almost like Gandalf wants to trust Frodo more than he feels like he should right now.
He said, because he says, you know, at any rate, you're not ready yet for that long road.
And so it's telling us right away that Frodo is going to go on a mission, but man, we don't know if he can do it.
And so Gandalf is still like the trust between Gandalf and Frodo isn't as complete in the books as it is in the movies right off the bat.
And so you kind of see a little bit of tension between them still hanging out.
We also get the mention of Frodo's friends that come to stay at Help him with the packing, Fredegar Bulger and Folko Boffin, the fatty, good old fatty.
And Pippin Took and Mary Brandybook, of course, become important characters.
I had one of the Lord of the Rings board games, and there was a, it had four characters, you know, Sam, Frodo, Mary Pippen, and the fifth one was Fatty.
And I was like, Didn't they just make this guy up?
They ran out of him.
And Bob down in the mail room decided to call him Fatty.
Real character, yeah.
I do enjoy all the humor here in this chapter with Labelia, Sackville Baggins.
Yeah, that's just always hilarious.
She comes in and she starts doing an inventory.
She's got the list.
She got the list.
And says Frodo did not offer her any tea.
And before that, they're going through everything, and the dining room was bare except for the tables and chairs.
But the food was good, and there was good wine.
Frodo's wine had not been included in the sale to the Sack of the Baggins, even though he's not going to be able to take it with him.
He's like, she's not getting it.
He's like, I got a good home for this.
They have their last.
Maybe that's why it took them so long to leave the Shire.
There was a drink of food and wine to go through.
It would be very Hobbit-like, for sure.
And they say they have their last meal at Bag End and they leave the washing up for Label.
It's just fantastic.
These dirty plates just completely stacked up in the sink.
And then when they finally do end up taking off, they find Sam in the beer cellar.
He's saying goodbye to the beer barrel or whatever.
That's fantastic.
You know, we had a commenter who said, who's actually reading Lord of the Rings for the first time, and I'm not sure that'll come up in the mailbag section, but he said something to the effect of, I actually don't like the hobbits because they're so petty.
And I think that there's actually, I think they're actually quite insightful and intentional on Tolkien's part that the Sackville Baggins and the Baggins are and the Bagginses are squabbling over spoons and the little things.
And the little things.
And I think to Tolkien, that was a good thing.
And that was a human thing to just, you know, have these little local concerns.
And they're not trying to conquer the world.
They're not fighting over territories.
They're fighting over spoons.
And I think there's something human in there.
Right.
And in the end, they still have a relationship.
Yeah.
They may hate each other, but they have to live together, right?
And they figure it out.
Maybe that's a life lesson for us, too.
But yeah.
Okay, so we get introduced to the ring wraiths.
As they're leaving, they hear voice.
It's when Frodo steps out.
Frodo wandered around.
He's wandering around because the house has been sold.
It's like his last moments in Bag End, and he hears down the road the old gaffer talking to someone.
It says the other voice was strange and somehow unpleasant.
And the gaffer tells him the baggins has gone away.
He's not here.
So this is a little different from the films where we have the ring wraiths just like storming through and like, oh, I'm going to chop your head off.
Where at least, at least in terms of the time scale, where that doesn't happen right away.
They're just kind of like walking around.
They're trying to conceal that they're evil.
They're just like a guy in a dark cloak that just says, hey, do you know where the baggage?
I don't know what they talk.
Like, hey, you know where the baggins are, you know?
Yeah, and I feel like you get the sense that this, you know, there's one ring wraith here, and it feels like someone has put his fingers out into Middle Earth to try and find out where it was.
You know, everyone has an idea of where to go, but it's not like they know right away where to go in the same way that Gandalf doesn't know right away that they have to leave instantly because they're in imminent danger.
They're still trying to make their way through it all.
And so the ringwraith is putting his feelers out and trying to see where the ring might be.
Yeah, and I like how super creepy it is that he's just down the road and you can hear him.
He's just having a conversation.
And I realize, you know, Tolkien never, like, the whole conversation between the gaffer and the ring wraith is only the gaffer.
It's the gaffer responding and you never hear anything.
There's no conversation with Ringwraith, which makes it even weirder that he's having a conversation that he only hears through the gaffer's responses because he can't actually hear the ring wraith.
Yeah, he just hears like a strange voice, but it doesn't say he can make out what it's saying.
So they actually take off on the journey here.
We have this bit with Sam in the backpack and talking about how he can carry more.
Yeah, he's lying, saying, oh, I could carry a bit more.
And I love that quote from Frodo where he's like, he's got everything on his back.
And he's like, I pity snails and all who carry homes on their back.
But I can, just they have all this wit and banter between them all.
And it's just so good.
So, such good.
It's so good to read stuff like that.
We have great foreshadowing and just narrative moment here where he says, I wonder if I shall ever look down into that valley again as they crest the hill and head out.
And that's, yeah, at least that's something for us to find out here.
And that's so they kind of take like a side road, it seems like they don't go down the main road and through the valley.
They kind of go up and around.
And now they're, they're like on a side road.
Maybe we can put that map up.
Yeah, we'll get that map.
Yeah, we see where they actually walked.
I found it interesting that Tolkien always makes the point that the hobbits are completely silent and yet they sing along the road.
Yeah, it even says something to the effect like even the animals didn't notice them.
And then the animal notices action, notices him actually later, which is interesting.
But, you know, hobbits are supposed to be a fork of humanity, right?
They're not like a separate being.
They're supposed to be human.
But they clearly have some sort of, I don't know, connection with the environment that lets them become part of it.
And so when they pass, right, they can pass completely silently.
And so even the elves really didn't notice them, as we'll see down the road.
Yeah.
So there, and I do like we see this, how these hobbits oscillate between being like these rave adventurers and just being like, I just want to go home.
You know, it's a very normal human thing.
It says, the morning came and Frodo found that there was a tree root that had made a hole in his back.
And he says, walking for pleasure, why didn't I drive?
And all my beautiful feathered beds are sold to the Sackville Baggins's.
These tree roots would do them good.
So this is the first chapter that kind of sets up the same pattern throughout the rest of the book.
It's kind of like that march, rest, eat, march, fight.
So you start getting a sense of it.
We're starting to get that cycle in here for sure.
The beautiful, insightful passage where they sing or they speak.
Frodo says the road goes ever on and on down from the door where it began.
That we song that we already know.
And then he talks about what Bilbo used to say.
He used to often say there was only one road and it was like a great river.
Its springs were at every doorstep and every path was its tributary.
It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.
You step into the road and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing what you might be swept off to.
And I just love this because he gives this, you know, obviously Tolkien is kind of using Frodo as his mouthpiece to give us this theme of this book, you know, these journeys and these adventures.
And then Pippin goes, well, the road won't sweep me anywhere for an hour at least, unslinging his back.
And I love that he just has this, they're constantly swinging between like being adventurers and like, eh, I'm tired.
You know, we can all relate to the hobbits with that.
Yeah.
So this is where the rider kind of catches up with them.
Yeah.
And then so they get off the road because they don't want to be seen.
Yeah, so they see this, a black horse coming along.
On it sitting a large man.
They can't see his face.
So these ringwraiths have no, they have no physical form, no corporal form, right?
But they kind of take on this like presence when they like, they can like throw a cloak around themselves and kind of appear as a man.
You still don't see anything, which is really interesting.
Yeah, very creepy.
And then like there's the, there's the detail in there where it's smelling.
It's smelling for something.
Snuffling.
And then there's something in Frodo that he wants to hide, but there's something inside that doesn't want to hide.
And you kind of start seeing it.
I think the movie does portray that pretty well.
There's that struggle of like wanting the ring wanting to go back, it seems like.
Yeah, and then Sam goes, oh, yeah, I remember that guy.
He was back in the Shire.
He just forgot to mention it.
And then Frodo's like, why didn't you say something?
So they keep walking, not along the road.
And we get to this beautiful song.
I think they did end up adapting it in the movies.
My favorite line, home is behind the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread through shadows to the edge of night until the stars are all light.
And I also liked that line earlier.
It says, we'll take the hidden paths that run towards the moon or to the sun.
Just fantastic.
Yeah.
Music is such an integral part.
Lyricism, music, poetry is such an integral part of Lord of the Rings and the entire cosmology of Middle Earth, of art of AI.
And I think you guys mentioned this before in a previous podcast where the entire world was created by song.
And so song is like interwoven into the very fabric of the earth.
And so when in other parts of the Silmarillion, when the light is gone out, not just the light, but song has gone out of the world.
And so that's where I think when there is singing, there is a connection to the earth.
There's a connection to your maker.
There's a connection to everything else around you.
And so it might just be that's a little more subtle, maybe, but I think that's one of the reasons why Tolkien likes songs so much because he realized the creativity of that.
There's a creation aspect to it.
And we can go into like his essay on fairy stories where he talks about sub-creation and all this other sort of stuff.
But creating a song is like being coming, touching a little bit part of the importance of the earth in a way, an importance of being a creator yourself.
And so you see so much music in here.
And sometimes you wonder, and you're like, God, would you just get on with the story for once?
But I think Tolkien took a lot of pleasure in writing that, even though he may not have been the best poet, right?
He took a lot of pleasure in writing the songs and writing the entire stories of like Baron and Luthian in meter.
Yeah, and I think when I read this originally, or when I tried to read it as a kid, I think I'd always get to those parts where it's like, what?
Two pages of a song?
Yeah, skip that.
And now, as I go back, can't we just go back to One Ring to find out?
Yeah, it's only like three lines.
Now that I'm a little bit older, and I really appreciate what you're saying, how it's kind of like that connection back to creation.
Yeah.
Connection back to their creator.
And as a kid, you're just like, oh, where's the battle scene?
Where's the swords?
So we're kind of coming to the last big event of this chapter, which is the elves.
We meet Gildor.
And there's a kind of lengthy section at the end where they talk about how they're talking to the elves, Frodo's getting information from the elves.
But first, what happens is we'd see another black rider.
And it says, it looked like the black shade of a horse led by a smaller black shadow.
The black shadow stood close to the point where they had left the path and it swayed from side to side.
Frodo thought he heard the sound of snuffling.
The shadow bent to the ground and then began to crawl towards him.
And so we have this very creepy, like cloaked guy just like off along the ground towards you, like pterodactyl.
You know, that is so creepy.
And all of a sudden it stops and retreats.
And the elves have shown up.
So we have elves kind of rescuing them by chance, I think, right?
Or fate.
Or fate, fate.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
And of course, Sam is now having his wishes, all his wildest dreams.
Yeah.
Meeting the elves.
And it makes that point where he said it's a little bit further in, where that's the chief event of his life, right?
Sam can describe the words in fiction or clearly to himself what he felt that night, but it remained in his memory, one of the chief events of his life.
And I mean, think of what else he went through.
The chief event was having dinner with some elves, essentially.
But he was there when the ring was destroyed and they were saved by the eagles on Mount Doom.
But this is the event that he remembers: some shiny elves.
So they're singing a song, Snow White, Snow Edo, Lady Claro, Queen Beyond the Western Seas, or light to us that wander here amid the world of woven trees, and talk about Gilfoniel and Elvarith.
How'd I do there?
That's good.
Also known as Varda, she's the sort of the spouse of Manway, who's the lead, the lead angel, I guess you'd say, archangel of Middle-earth.
And she's sort of her, I mean, maybe the closest you could say is their patron saint.
And so the light of Elbreth and Gufonian, like those are the different words they give her in the different Elvish languages.
And so they always refer to her because the bringer of light and the creator of light and essentially Middle-earth.
And so that's why they do it.
And so the same reason, you know, when Frodo has the vial of Gladriel, that's what he yells out because of she is their Patron saint, I'm trying to think of a better word.
I don't know something, but yeah, guardian aims always kind of connected to starlight, right?
Like there's a certain star in the sky that they associate with that's right, yeah, the stars put in the sky.
And then also, I mean, it's the light of the trees of Valinor, too, that they assess with that.
I don't know how far deep we want to go into that, but there were these two trees that were essentially the daylight and the nighttime.
They were eventually killed by Morgoth, who and the progenitor of Shelob.
And so when they hearken back to the light of Elbreth Gilfoniel, it harkens back to a better time, right?
A time when there was light in the world, real light, not this fake light of the sun and the moon, but the light of the trees of Valinor.
And so their music is always kind of heading back towards that light.
And so the Bible Gladiol is the smallest, you know, the smallest little part of that that's left on the earth.
That's all that Old Testament stuff that I didn't read.
So the elves walk along with our hobbit heroes for a while, and they're like getting tired.
Pippin keeps falling over, and the elves are like ninja, reaching their hands over and like picking him back up as he's walking.
And then finally they say, come, come, now is the time for speech and merriment.
And so they get to hang out and sing and eat.
The elves, you know, every time I read this, they say the elves are a little cruel to the hobbits.
They're not nice people to them when they say, but we have no need of other company and hobbits are so dull.
They laughed.
Oh, man.
Who wants to spend time with them?
But, you know, they're just so on a different level.
Like, they're like important.
Right.
But I mean, that's what we're going to find out: is that the unimportant ones are the ones who are going to save the world.
Yeah, they're the important ones.
I mean, these are the guys who are essentially leaving Middle Earth.
They're like, yeah, Bob, you can take the ring.
It's okay.
We're heading out this way.
We're not going to give you any help.
But, you know, there's Riddell Elrond.
We'll go over that direction and see what you can do, but we're heading out.
You know, the elves are all apathetic.
They're just like, eh.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
Sam says it was the singing.
It was the singing that went to my heart.
So there's another reflection of what you were talking about: the importance of song.
Frodo stays up talking to Gildor, and he's asking him questions about Bilbo, asking him about the enemy.
And you can see Gildor, like, he understands that if Gandalf hasn't told him something, he probably shouldn't tell him either at this point.
So he just kind of, the conversation, or that one question is halted at that point where he pleads didn't say anything.
Yeah.
So then we have the really important line.
He's talking about, can't we walk through our own shire in peace?
And Gildor says it is not your own shire.
Others dwelt here before hobbits were, and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more.
The wide world is all about you.
You can fence yourselves in, but you cannot forever fence it out.
Which I think is actually like thinking back to Tolkien's biography and some of his letters, that's as he got older, that's what he felt like was happening to the world.
Like it was closing in on him and he couldn't fence it out anymore in his life.
And so it goes again to the little things in life, like the little pleasures of the world around him.
Smaller and smaller and smaller as he got older.
And for the hobbits, it's a realization here, too.
I think he was seeing that in them.
The world is bigger, but it's closing in on you as it gets bigger.
Yeah.
Yeah, they must have felt a lot like that with the two World Wars, you know, in England.
Like you can't just live your little life on your farm anymore.
That's right.
The world is encroaching.
It's kind of like that part where they're starting to leave the valley and they're looking over the horizon and Sam is seeing something he's never seen before.
Like all he knows is like the 20 miles around his little town.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that was normal.
I mean, you know, for a lot of human history, you didn't leave, you know, you didn't go 10 miles outside your little area.
Gilder says in this meeting, there may be more than chance, but the purpose is not clear to me and I fear to say too much.
And then kind of concludes, where shall I find courage? asked Frodo.
That is what I chiefly need.
Courage is found in unlikely places, said Gildor.
Be of good hope.
They fall asleep, and that is the end of the chapter.
So they're falling asleep in the woods with peace and happiness and hope because they're here with the elves.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And this is really, I think it was mentioned earlier where the movies diverge a lot from the books.
That the plot line is far more deliberate in the books than it is in the movies where we move really quickly.
But now we're still, we've still got a lot to go to until we hit a certain point in the movies where you feel like things are starting to move again.
Yeah.
So next week we are going to do a shortcut to mushrooms, which again is very different from the movie and I love it.
I actually love what they did with the farmer and it's way different than we see in the films.
And it's a similar thing where we have this the hobbits that are wanting to eat and hang out and take their time, but they're really kind of being rushed along.
So that'll be next week, please.
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The tavern, something like that?
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I was trying to remember the script at Austin, right?
Okay.
Okay.
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We've been getting a lot of good feedback.
If you want to email us, podcast2babylonbee.com, or you want us, if you subscribe to the Babylon Bee, you can comment on the article that's on the site and we will, when this video goes up, we will talk about your questions in the next subscriber portion.
So enjoy the book.
Chapter four, read it.
All right, guys.
See you next time.
Coming up next for Babylon Bee subscribers.
We didn't know how this was going to go because we were like, let's do a Lord of the Rings podcast because we love Lord of the Rings.
My email inbox is like, boom, boom, boom, Lord of the Rings.
I really appreciate it.
The whole thing is Lord of the Rings now.
I think people need to read Tolkien.
Oh, absolutely.
The world is just absolutely the best time.
It's the best time.
So you need something where it's just like, hey, here's where the normalcy of life can be found.
This is reminding the little things in life.
Yeah, I absolutely totally agree.
What is the currency in Lord of the Rings?
Is it Shire coin?
It's probably not fiat.
It's probably not fiat.
It's probably some hard gold and silver.
It's definitely that gold and silver coin.
Kyle and Dan would like to thank Seth and Dan Dylan for buying us cool swords and paying the bills.
Adam Ford for creating our jobs.
Ethan Nicole for creative direction.
And all the writers at the Babylon Bee.
Matthew McDavid for guiding studio operations.
Patrick Green for show production.
Catlin Patty for Laugh Tracks.
The Babylon Bee subscribers who make what we do possible.
And you, the listener.
Until next time, this is Austin Robertson.
The voice of the Babylon Bee reads The Lord of the Rings.
Reminding you that there is some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.