The Prydainger Zone Ep 00 - Lloyd Alexander and his Chronicles, an introduction

**Andrew Cunningham** (0:02)
This is a HeadGum Podcast.

**Craig Getting** (0:05)
Andrew, this episode is brought to you in part by Mint Mobile. When we were kids, summer meant freedom. No more homework, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks. But as adults, summer still means freedom, thanks to Mint Mobile's summer sale. Right now, all of Mint Mobile's plans are $15 per month, even unlimited, so free yourself from big wireless and their gimmicks and their gotchas and their dirty looks, and switch to Mint for high-speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network. Andrew, you use Mint Mobile.

**Andrew Cunningham** (0:37)
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**Craig Getting** (0:50)
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**SPEAKER_3** (1:39)
While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary. Plus these are books you should have read by now.

**Craig Getting** (2:16)
Welcome to Prydain-ger Zone. Gonna take you right in to Prydain-ger Zone, a podcast brought to you by The Boys That Overdue, a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

**Andrew Cunningham** (2:32)
My name is Andrew. Of course, in Prydain, Kenny Loggins spells his name K-Y-N-N-Y-L-Y-G-G-Y-N-S.

**Craig Getting** (2:41)
Yeah, the Welsh Kenny Loggins.

**Andrew Cunningham** (2:46)
Welcome to Prydain, where it's not that all the vowels are Y's, but if they had Wheel of Fortune, you would play R-S-T-L-N-N-Y instead of E, I think.

**Craig Getting** (2:57)
That is oh my goodness. I should have looked up like the Scrabble and Wheel of Fortune rules for the Welsh language, because I'm sure they have them.

**Andrew Cunningham** (3:07)
Yeah.

**Craig Getting** (3:08)
You know, when I was watching a lot of Wheel of Fortune, we'll talk about our newest long reproject in a second, when I was watching a lot of Wheel of Fortune back in the day.

**Andrew Cunningham** (3:16)
Back in the day? I was going to say, do you mean your whole, your entire life?

**Craig Getting** (3:20)
My entire life up until I had a son, basically. I.

**Andrew Cunningham** (3:25)
Can you imagine Simon would go nuts on that wheel, though? He would love to spin that wheel.

**Craig Getting** (3:30)
I know. I just need him to be a little older so I can scooch his bedtime back a little bit and then we'll embrace the Jeopardy Wheel of Fortune.

**Andrew Cunningham** (3:37)
Then he would get lose a turn and he would be so sad and they would have to stop the show for him to be upset.

**Craig Getting** (3:45)
He might break the wheel when he spins it. He's so strong. My little bam bam boy.
But no, they would occasionally show like clips from wheel around the world and you'd get to watch like 30 seconds of wheel in Albania or whatever. They never showed whales, but I have to imagine.

**Andrew Cunningham** (4:08)
Yeah, it's got to be fun. It's got to exist. It's got to exist. Just like Prydain.

**Craig Getting** (4:14)
Welcome to our newest long read project, Andrew. You've been agitating for the series. You've been advocating for this series. Tell us about it.

**Andrew Cunningham** (4:23)
Yeah, The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander. It's a 60s fantasy series, I think aimed at a younger age than Lore of the Rings. I think not too far off from where The Hobbit is in.

**Craig Getting** (4:37)
Yes, sure.

**Andrew Cunningham** (4:40)
It's a book series that I discovered them because my parents, I think probably my mom specifically, gave them to me as a kid. And I think it was, I'm not sure where she got them from, but I read her Chronicles of Narnia. I read their Lord of the Rings, and they got to a certain Christmas, like a Christmas or two Christmases where I got like this, Redwall, and Harry Potter, like all in a row. Yeah, sure, sure. All in a row. At the time, the third Harry Potter book was the newest one. Okay. And the author of those books had not yet established herself as the world's preeminent transphobe. So, like, you know, it was different, but yeah, I'm getting into this at the same time as I'm getting into a lot of other, like YA fantasy, like the Wheel of Time comes for me a few years after this.