They went ahead and recorded three episodes the next afternoon. In the first, Oberon disassembled a Chopin étude like a carburetor, discussed its constituent parts, and put it back together again. Occasionally he illustrated his point by singing the melody, clear and true. Ángel asked questions and made no effort to disguise that Oberon’s understanding and musicality took his breath away.

The second podcast they recorded that day centered around the Otherworld’s storytelling musical tradition, and they played and talked about “On My Own” from Les Misérables. Oberon said that he had never actually seen Les Mis live, and confessed that he would like to do that. Ángel admitted his resistance to show tunes, which he found melodramatic and emotionally manipulative. He could concede, when questioned by Oberon, that “On My Own” had good qualities, but he still found little pleasure in it.

The topic of the third podcast was “Magpie to the Morning,” which gave Ángel the opportunity to pull out his guitar and demonstrate Neko Case’s chord progression. They discussed the lyrics and Oberon’s difficulty understanding figurative language. This conversation led (naturally) to the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Darmok,” and to Ángel laughing breathlessly as he described the plot.

“See, the guy is from a culture that can only communicate in references to old stories, basically, so he keeps saying ‘Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.’ But because Picard has never heard that story, he has no idea what the guy is talking about.”

“That is exactly how I often feel,” said Oberon, his voice warm with amusement. “They call me the elf-lord, but they should call me Picard at Tanagra.”

The DOR put the podcast up every Tuesday, ending each one with Oberon’s song-name. By the end of October they had over seven million downloads per week. The DOR was barely able to cope with the floods of emails it was getting—everything from lavish praise, listener requests, artists’ campaigns to get their songs included in the Otherworld Project, and, of course, hate mail and death threats. It was difficult to tell if the podcast was having its intended effect of making Oberon more popular.

But the Oberon Podcast definitely did have one unintended effect: it made Ángel a star.

“Oh my God,” said Ángel, clutching his hair. Chandler Evanston had brought some laptops from the gatehouse, and, along with Lily and Oberon, they were clicking link after link on the internet. “Oh my fucking God.”

“Who is Ángel From the Oberon Podcast? We Found Out” screamed the headline at The AV Club. Their writer had done her homework, finding his full name and the professional website where he advertised his services as a session musician. Also featured was his long-inactive Facebook page, photos from high school and college, and the gull video.