I read Tolkien’s The Silmarillion when it first came out in the late 1970s. Besides watching the Peter Jackson films, I haven’t been exposed to the deep and impressive minutiae of the Tolkien universe since then. But, seeing as I’m now watching The Rings of Power, I thought I should bone up on the Second Age.

I was so tickled watching these Wired “Tech Support” videos with Tolkien professor, Cory Olsen, answering Twitter questions about Middle-earth. I was tickled for two reasons: One, I was shocked at how much I still actually remembered, and two, the aha moments I had learning things I didn’t know (like the fact that the name Théoden and the other kings of Rohan’s names are all Old English words for “king,” and that even Tolkien himself had no idea what happened to the Entwives).