I am Interviewed for a Podcast (Geek Nation)

So, Thursday I had the interesting experience of visiting a radio station for the first time in years,* thanks to the good folks at KOBOLD setting up an interview w. me to discuss my contribution to the KOBOLD GUIDE TO MAGIC (out next month). So if you'd like to listen to ten minutes of me very much outside my normal environs (e.g., among talk radio DJs). My segment starts about two minutes in and runs for about eleven minutes; we talk about my essay ("Tolkien and Magic") and its theory about the Three Magics (Learned, Channelled, and Innate), about the new HOBBIT movies, and about magic in a roleplaying game setting. Here's the link:

http://media.kisw.com/a/87634817/bjgn-02-18-14-magic-star-wars.htm

In the meantime, here's a sneak preview of my piece posted on the KOBOLD website a few weeks ago:

http://www.koboldpress.com/k/front-page17424.php#.UwFJm-By_zI

Enjoy!

--John R.

*aside from an interview for the local Wheaton College radio station a few years back, in connection with MR. BAGGINS, it called up childhood memories of the time, back before I was in first grade, when my father did some moonlighting from his college teaching at Monticello and for a while was a disk jockey at a radio station in another not too-distant town (Warren, I think, though it's been a long time ago and I can't be sure). I remember being much taken with the ticker-tape machine, the only time I think I've seen one, which delivered news bulletins. I don't remember what music my father played, but if he got to choose it then it would have been his two idols, Hank Williams and Roger Miller (both of whom were big influences on his own songwriting).