Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're here to sniff
Speaker 2: you up the case with our brand new episode on
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 1: Have you ever read any Sherlock Holmes short stories or
Speaker 1: one of the four novels?
Speaker 2: You should have started that off with, Josh, Josh, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have. I've never read the novels, but I've read
Speaker 2: quite a bit of the short stories.
Speaker 1: Yeh oh, okay, I didn't know you were Sherlockian.
Speaker 2: I'm not. I would not call myself that because if
Speaker 2: you are Sherlockian or in the UK Holmesian, you are
Speaker 2: like one of the original fans of fandom. And I
Speaker 2: mean I'm not there, Like I don't qualify. No, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: more than me. So have you read any not a one? Oh,
Speaker 2: you're missing out. They're really interesting and fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean not only that, I haven't really seen
Speaker 1: any of the stuff either.
Speaker 2: There's some really good movies out there. Last night, just
Speaker 2: to brush up, I watched The House of Fear. Okay,
Speaker 2: just based on the short story of the Five Orange
Speaker 2: Pips and it's really good. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Rogers
Speaker 2: and just the straight ahead, mid century black and white
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes mystery that you think of when you think
Speaker 2: of a Sherlock Holmes movie, or most people do. So
Speaker 2: they're good, They're really the movies are generally good. I've
Speaker 2: seen the worst version. People call the worst version Holmes
Speaker 2: and wattson you saw that, No, But I watched a
Speaker 2: clip and I was like, this is not that bad.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what you'd expect from Will Ferrell and
Speaker 2: John c Riley, Like, what were you thinking it's gonna
Speaker 2: be like high art or something like that.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I just heard it was zero five, not
Speaker 1: that they were expecting something, you know. Posh.
Speaker 2: Well the clip I saw was at least one and
Speaker 2: a half percent fun. Okay, it has a half of
Speaker 2: a star on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's get into it because this is a.
Speaker 2: Lot wait wait, wait, hold on, hunt, let me just
Speaker 2: wrap this up. Okay, yes, you should read some of
Speaker 2: the home stories. Okay, okay, yeah, let's get into it now.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we're talking about Sherlock Holmes, the infamous,
Speaker 1: the famous, fictional detective. I learned. I was about to
Speaker 1: say a lot, but basically everything about this was new
Speaker 1: to me. So I learned everything brand new. I was
Speaker 1: this day years old when I learned everything. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that I did I did not know
Speaker 1: for sure is that I always thought he was an
Speaker 1: official like Scottland Yard detective. I did not know that
Speaker 1: he was an amateur sleuth and that maybe he worked,
Speaker 1: you know, alongside Scottland Yard at times, but I just
Speaker 1: figure he was part of Scotland Yard.
Speaker 2: No, he is the world's first consulting detective. That's what
Speaker 2: Arthur Quinnan Doyle, the author called him. Another term for
Speaker 2: that as a private eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he would work with Scotland Yard sometimes, but most
Speaker 2: of the time he was several steps ahead of Scotland
Speaker 2: Yard whenever they did come in to arrest somebody.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like I mentioned, there were four novels, there
Speaker 1: were fifty six short stories over about a four decade
Speaker 1: plus period, which is a lot of writing. And apparently,
Speaker 1: and this is in twenty twelve, and he's been in
Speaker 1: quite a few more adaptations since then, but he's Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the most frequently portrayed human literary character ever in
Speaker 1: film and TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, two hundred and fifty four times.
Speaker 1: Well, no way more than that, now picked.
Speaker 2: It, yes, by seventy five actors.
Speaker 1: Yeah, more than that now.
Speaker 2: At the time in twenty twelve, the non human who'd
Speaker 2: been most adapted was Dracula, and he only had Sherlock
Speaker 2: Colmbs beat by like a handful. Oh okay, so there
Speaker 2: you go, Sherlock Colmbs. Everybody loves to portray him, and
Speaker 2: that's something we'll try to get to the bottom of here,
Speaker 2: because what we're talking about is one hundred and nearly
Speaker 2: fifty year old, like detective pulp fiction that has chapters
Speaker 2: of fans all over the world. Sherlock Colmbs is one
Speaker 2: of the most famous characters ever written in the history
Speaker 2: of literature, and people are nuts for him still today,
Speaker 2: and some people just like don't get it, and there's
Speaker 2: something to get, but not everybody can put their finger
Speaker 2: on it, and we probably won't either, but we'll try.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I think I never read it because
Speaker 1: I just don't read mysteries like that.
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that separates him from the
Speaker 2: mysteries is that he uses deductive reasoning like Agatha Christie.
Speaker 2: It's like can you guess who it is? Maybe there's
Speaker 2: a clue or something in there. More often than not,
Speaker 2: there's really nothing in there that can tell you who
Speaker 2: who did it? With Sherlock Holmes, it might not be
Speaker 2: in there either. But what he uses is deductive reasoning,
Speaker 2: where the kind of logic and reasoning he's using, like
Speaker 2: anybody has that potential at faculty, he's just particularly gifted
Speaker 2: with it. So he's I don't know, he's like a
Speaker 2: machine as far as logic goes. But he's also a
Speaker 2: deeply flawed person in a lot of ways too. I
Speaker 2: think that makes him really interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and actually I need to correct myself. I did
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Brown, as I've mentioned before, and that's where that
Speaker 1: train ended for me.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, it's an elementary school. Yeah, but I mean
Speaker 2: what a ride it was, right.
Speaker 1: That was pretty great. Watson, this is sidekick. We'll talk
Speaker 1: a lot about him as we go, And the first
Speaker 1: one was a study in Scarlet in eighteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: And I mean, let's go ahead, and I guess just
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how who Holmes is as
Speaker 1: a character. He's he's definitely like portrayed as like a genius.
Speaker 1: He sometimes can be very sort of flippant and arrogant.
Speaker 1: He's not very emotional. Watson says, you know that he
Speaker 1: has no interest in women, and that there's been speculation
Speaker 1: that Sherlock Holmes is a gay character. He's I believe.
Speaker 1: Watson described him in a Scandal in Bohemia from eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety one as the most perfect reasoning and observing machine
Speaker 1: that the world has seen. But as a lover, he
Speaker 1: would have placed himself in a false position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which you don't want to do, especially as a
Speaker 2: gentleman in Victoria in England, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a bit of enigma, right as far as
Speaker 1: just kind of personal life. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The reason why is because it was not a main
Speaker 2: driver of the series. Ye that Conandoah wrote like there
Speaker 2: were allusions to his life outside of his mysteries, Like
Speaker 2: he's well known to have a brother named Mike Croft.
Speaker 2: He was really passionate about boxing, and he played the violin.
Speaker 2: He was also very famous for intravenously injecting cocaine in
Speaker 2: a seven percent solution, and these things were just kind
Speaker 2: of referred to here or there early on. The cocaine
Speaker 2: was kind of a driver of his character. He was
Speaker 2: very self obsessed. He was very melancholy, like he would
Speaker 2: shoot cocaine to like basically get through the tedium of
Speaker 2: a day because he was so smart he couldn't possibly
Speaker 2: do so otherwise. But then as he developed, he became
Speaker 2: less of a well a cocaine addict and more of
Speaker 2: a fully fleshed out character who's the point and purpose
Speaker 2: was to figure out how to solve these mysteries using
Speaker 2: logic and deduction, and that's what he really became more
Speaker 2: than anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they've if you've seen, if you haven't read,
Speaker 1: and you've only seen like movie and TV versions, you've
Speaker 1: seen a lot more of a character called Irene Adler.
Speaker 1: Irene Adler exists far more in the TV and film side.
Speaker 1: I believe she was only in one story, so she's
Speaker 1: been much much more portrayed on screen as maybe a
Speaker 1: maybe a love interest, maybe a what's the word I'm
Speaker 1: looking for, sort of like a foil at times, not
Speaker 1: quite like a Moriarty level professor. Moriarty is often the
Speaker 1: main foil and sort of evil criminal mastermind. But Adler
Speaker 1: definitely exists a lot more in the film and television world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the world of Sherlock Holmes fans, they call
Speaker 2: her the woman. She's the woman who like.
Speaker 1: He called her that.
Speaker 2: Oh did he call her that? Okay? Yeah, So like
Speaker 2: she's the one who caught his attention by foiling his
Speaker 2: his investigation, Like he figured out what happened, but he
Speaker 2: didn't catch the criminal, and that really caught his attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he'd only been thwarted like four times, and
Speaker 2: she was one of them. Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He's also been like famously diagnosed retroactively with everything from
Speaker 2: bipolar two disorder, depression, Asperger's syndrome, and he's also commonly
Speaker 2: given an i NTJ personality hype from the Myers Briggs test,
Speaker 2: which is analytical, logical and with a strong intuition that
Speaker 2: seems to fit does so, going back out into the
Speaker 2: real world, if you're going to take the Doilian view
Speaker 2: of all this stuff that it's actually fiction written by
Speaker 2: Arthur Conan Doyle. The whole thing started in eighteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: I think when the first one that you just mentioned
Speaker 2: to study in Scarlet was published in Breton's Christmas Annual.
Speaker 1: I think it was eighty seven eighty seven, correct it.
Speaker 1: Because there are Sherlockeans and Homians Homesians.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, we should have totally given a CoA
Speaker 2: at the beginning of this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're going to be minor errors here and there.
Speaker 1: Everyone sure.
Speaker 2: So eighteen eighty seven, the first story comes out study
Speaker 2: in Scarlett. I think it's actually a novel, and it
Speaker 2: was published in this Christmas annual and it didn't take
Speaker 2: off like a rocket until he started publishing the shorter
Speaker 2: stories in a magazine called The Strand. And this is
Speaker 2: at the time that Strand mag Maine was the most
Speaker 2: widely circulated monthly magazine in all of Britain. And it
Speaker 2: just so happened that Conan Doyle was writing these stories
Speaker 2: at a time when Britain had suddenly become a lot
Speaker 2: more literate and they were hungry for new fiction. So
Speaker 2: he really kind of came in and brought Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 2: in it just the right time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so people are reading this thing like crazy. I
Speaker 1: think they ended up collecting those short stories in well,
Speaker 1: a collection called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and like
Speaker 1: you said, that was where I mean. I'm sure the
Speaker 1: novels are great, but he only did four of them,
Speaker 1: and it's really it seems like these short stories is
Speaker 1: where he found a place to sell a lot more stuff.
Speaker 1: But you know, I guess sell is one way to
Speaker 1: say it, or write a lot more stuff, because you know,
Speaker 1: there were less than ten thousand words. They were even
Speaker 1: short for detective short stories at the time, and I
Speaker 1: think they appealed to younger people quite a bit from
Speaker 1: what I've.
Speaker 2: Read, Yeah, because at the time, the younger generation, we're
Speaker 2: the ones who had just been educated through the public
Speaker 2: education system that had just been developed, so they were
Speaker 2: more likely to be able to read than their parents,
Speaker 2: just statistically speaking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they didn't want to read some long novel.
Speaker 1: They wanted to read a short story. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also one of the other things too that Conan
Speaker 2: Doyle figured out early on that I think people appreciate
Speaker 2: because it's so comfortable and familiar, is essentially the same
Speaker 2: formula for basically every single one of the stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which I mean it's like Encyclopedia Brown. In any
Speaker 1: kind of detective story, you're going to have a client
Speaker 1: come in or you know, it evokes fill Noir as well.
Speaker 1: A client comes in in this case to the very
Speaker 1: famous office to twenty one B Baker Street, and the
Speaker 1: client themselves are going to be sort of picked apart
Speaker 1: by Homes at the beginning, and he's going to make
Speaker 1: a lot of deductions about them and then evaluate the
Speaker 1: case and then you know, hit the streets, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: in disguise and start doing the investigating of course, solve
Speaker 1: the case, capture the bad guy, and then explain it
Speaker 1: all the Watson Scooby Doo style at the end. Which
Speaker 1: I mean, is this I know Holmes wasn't the first.
Speaker 1: Then we'll get into that fictional detective, but is this
Speaker 1: how that sort of trophy formula started?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So none of the first fictional detectives did things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: No, not in any kind of formula like that as
Speaker 2: far as I know. And there were only maybe a
Speaker 2: dozen that came before him, but they were all just
Speaker 2: kind of throwing stuff at the fridge to see what stuck.
Speaker 2: It was Arthur Conan Doyle who's the one who really
Speaker 2: figured it all out and just ran with it.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. They were illustrated by a guy named Sidney Paget,
Speaker 1: and as far as the look of Holmes, that was
Speaker 1: model on Paget's brother Walter, and you know, it would
Speaker 1: just interpret whatever Doyle was writing as far as what
Speaker 1: he would draw. So in the book, for instance, you know,
Speaker 1: there's two things, even if you don't know anything about
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes, and in fact, you probably call it the
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes hat and the Sherlock Holmes pipe. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: big curvy, huge bell pipe. And then that deer stalker cap.
Speaker 1: That's what it's, you know, it's what it technically is.
Speaker 1: But everyone else just calls it the Sherlock Holmes hat.
Speaker 1: But in the book Doyle just says it's a close
Speaker 1: fitting cloth cap. He doesn't say he wore his deer
Speaker 1: stalker cap that was an invention of Sidney Paget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that pipe is called a calibash pipe. And
Speaker 2: like you said, I mean like draw you right, you
Speaker 2: could draw like just a minimalist profile of just those
Speaker 2: two things, and around the world people would know exactly
Speaker 2: who that was.
Speaker 1: It's like the when Michael Jordan had the Hitler mustache
Speaker 1: in that TV commercial. I forgot them and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: why do you have a Hitler mustache? Right? I totally
Speaker 1: forgot Yeah, I mean that one's you can't have that
Speaker 1: mustache anymore and he's no, no, no, I feel like
Speaker 1: he should have known that.
Speaker 2: No, you really couldn't from basically the nineteen thirties on
Speaker 2: where it was off the table.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean not even It's not like he was
Speaker 1: doing it as an homage.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But it was definitely like what world is Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: living in Ray doesn't know that? Just nobody does that.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 2: So just one thing real quick for the Sherlockians and
Speaker 2: the Homesians. I saw that it is contested that Walter
Speaker 2: Sydney's brother was the model. Apparently Sidney claimed he wasn't
Speaker 2: everyone says that he was. So maybe Sidney Pagett was
Speaker 2: just a pathological liar.
Speaker 1: Maybe. I mean, I'd have to see a picture of
Speaker 1: Walter too, you know, to know for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's a really good way to put two
Speaker 2: and two together, I think, very homesy and in your
Speaker 2: approach elementary. You want to take a break and come back.
Speaker 1: Sure, Yeah, good timing. We'll be a background for this.
Speaker 1: By the way, we're back, And I said elementary. Apparently
Speaker 1: that wasn't something Doyle wrote that came from one of
Speaker 1: the movies, right.
Speaker 2: The movies are the first stage play one of the two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe stage play yeah.
Speaker 2: I think the closest he wrote was exactly my dear Watson.
Speaker 2: So close.
Speaker 1: I mean, not in Doyle, but elementary so much. That's
Speaker 1: way catch here for sure.
Speaker 2: So the the books themselves, or the stories themselves are
Speaker 2: meant to be accounts of the cases of Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 2: that were written by his sidekick, friend and roommate, John
Speaker 2: Hamish Watson. He's a doctor, doctor John. Yeah, that's that
Speaker 2: was his sidekick.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So was that the one who was about spending the
Speaker 2: night together there?
Speaker 1: Uh? Yeah, I don't know much about doctor John. I
Speaker 1: do know that he was the inspiration for the Muppet band, right.
Speaker 2: Oh no, okay, that's a different way. No, I think
Speaker 2: there's doctor Hooks in the Medicine show. I was just
Speaker 2: doing Doctor John is awesome. I saw him open for
Speaker 2: Cindy Lauper once. Oh wow, that was quite a combination,
Speaker 2: it really is. No, this is a different doctor John.
Speaker 2: This is doctor John Watson's sidekick to Sherlock Holmes, and
Speaker 2: he supposedly is the one who's narrating and recounting all
Speaker 2: of these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and right away, right off the bat, he is
Speaker 1: sort of picked apart and deduced by Holmes. When they
Speaker 1: first meet, Watson was an army medic that was wounded
Speaker 1: at the Battle of Maywand in Afghanistan, and Holmes picks
Speaker 1: this up and Watson is like, oh my god, who
Speaker 1: is this guy? Like, I can't believe this dude has
Speaker 1: nailed this facet of my life right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was the first of many, many, many times
Speaker 2: Watson would be astonished by Holmes's deductive reasoning skills.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he's kind of the heart, right, like a Parenturrently,
Speaker 1: Holmes isn't the most likable guy, but Watson really brings
Speaker 1: the sort of heart to it.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, he's warm, he's empathetic, he's just much It's
Speaker 2: basically like you and me, right, Like, you're the heart,
Speaker 2: You're the approachable guy, you're the folks he one. I'm
Speaker 2: the one that's got this general please don't touch me vibe.
Speaker 2: It's a bit like that. I'm not putting myself on
Speaker 2: the same level of Shirlock Holmes, but in that sense,
Speaker 2: I feel like we resemble it too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but that's just because you don't want people to
Speaker 1: touch you please. You know, you can buy it honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's not like a put
Speaker 2: on or anything. I really don't want to be touched.
Speaker 1: So we mentioned that there were fictional detectives before. We
Speaker 1: don't have to really go through, but there were like
Speaker 1: thirteen that preceded him. But Holmes is really the one
Speaker 1: that came along, like you said, and use this scientific
Speaker 1: reasoning and powers of deduction. And it wasn't just some dumb,
Speaker 1: blundering criminal, right that kind of gives himself away, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into, you know, sort of why, but it's
Speaker 1: because Doyle himself was medically trained and super on the
Speaker 1: just in the know about what was going on with
Speaker 1: modern policing and forensics and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so because of that he was able to
Speaker 2: like really razzle dazzle is audience, Like it's stuff that
Speaker 2: is just totally commonplace to us, was cutting edge of
Speaker 2: the time, like collecting blood samples, analyzing like dust and
Speaker 2: dirt and stuff like that to figure out where it
Speaker 2: came from, looking at handwriting, microscopes, finger printing. All these
Speaker 2: things were like brand spanking new in some cases where
Speaker 2: his audience wouldn't have even heard of or thought about
Speaker 2: this stuff. Sherlock Holmes is employing these techniques and in
Speaker 2: the one. On the one hand, it is very razzle
Speaker 2: dazzle like just as cutting edge as possible at the time.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand too, he's he's basically he's
Speaker 2: using science. He's using rational science and the scientific method
Speaker 2: in applying it to solve any problem. And that was
Speaker 2: very much like part of pop culture at the time.
Speaker 2: This was prior to World War One, where we showed
Speaker 2: like just how horrible science can go, where everybody was
Speaker 2: all about science. Science can solve any single problem, and
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes is the embodiment of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure we should tick through a few more
Speaker 1: of Holmes's sort of superpowers. As written by Doyle, this
Speaker 1: is a pretty fun one that he could. He could
Speaker 1: tell what a man did for a living by his fingernails,
Speaker 1: by his coat sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser knees,
Speaker 1: by the callusis of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression,
Speaker 1: by his shirtcuff. He was a safe cracker and a
Speaker 1: lock picker. Apparently, could tell the difference between one hundred
Speaker 1: and forty different types of tobacco ash and forty two
Speaker 1: different bike tire treads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like, this is Virginia Slim.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's pretty fun though, like a pretty fun thing
Speaker 1: to write, like a someone with almost superhuman. I mean,
Speaker 1: people have made the case that he's sort of the
Speaker 1: first superhero in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, And but he's again he's not. He's
Speaker 2: a human person, like you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 2: he is a genius he does have right, Yes, it
Speaker 2: is true, and I think that kind of makes Batman
Speaker 2: more accessible than say spider Man.
Speaker 1: Well, spider Man was real too, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But he was bitten by a radio active spider.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see what you mean.
Speaker 2: Sure, Batman came again, came across his powers through vas Yeah,
Speaker 2: and enormous as well, for sure. But one of the
Speaker 2: things that that Holmes was famous for, too, Chuck, is
Speaker 2: he was able to hone in so fully on catching
Speaker 2: somebody because he was very selective about the knowledge he
Speaker 2: took on. In some cases, he was just ignorant about
Speaker 2: stuff that anybody walking around would know about it. I
Speaker 2: think there was a time where in one of the
Speaker 2: stories where doctor Watson is explaining to him that the
Speaker 2: Earth travels around the Sun, and Sherlock Holmes is like,
Speaker 2: not only do I not know that, I'm going to
Speaker 2: forget it now because I very carefully curate the information
Speaker 2: that goes into my mind, because I only want the
Speaker 2: stuff in there that's going to help me solve cases.
Speaker 2: I would suggest that that actually could maybe come in
Speaker 2: handy with shadows and time changes and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: but maybe not. Maybe he didn't need that.
Speaker 1: You would have been a good Watson, actually, Sherlock, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, and he's like, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 2: I feel like I really would have annoyed Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 2: if I had been a sidekick.
Speaker 1: We both would have. So he's generally trying to do
Speaker 1: the right thing. He's trying to catch the bad guy,
Speaker 1: he's trying to aid the desperate. For the most part,
Speaker 1: he protects England from Corruption's there was a time where,
Speaker 1: and Doyle wrote this into the stories where there were
Speaker 1: some just sort of notorious failures of the police not
Speaker 1: catching Jack the Ripper being one of them, and so
Speaker 1: he would like he would compensate for those failures. And
Speaker 1: you know, even though he didn't have like maybe the
Speaker 1: best personality, he was all about business and all about
Speaker 1: getting it done.
Speaker 2: And he was a Victorian gentleman, so he was an
Speaker 2: upholder of the social order and social hierarchies. He knew
Speaker 2: how to navigate that stuff. But at the same time
Speaker 2: he was also a critic of them. Like he saw
Speaker 2: very clearly just how arbitrary and capricious the social hierarchies
Speaker 2: in Great Britain were and are, and he criticized them
Speaker 2: personally to himself. He made no effort or action to
Speaker 2: make any changes to them. He just saw them for
Speaker 2: what they were, which was fraudulent and harmful.
Speaker 1: Typically, Yeah, for sure, we should probably talk a little
Speaker 1: bit more about Doyle. He was from Edinburgh, a town
Speaker 1: that we have performed live in, one of the great
Speaker 1: towns in Scotland.
Speaker 2: One of the great towns in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I should have broadened that out. It was amazing.
Speaker 2: There's only like two pounds in Scotland.
Speaker 1: Oh, come on, we were got such a good fath there.
Speaker 1: He trained to become a doctor, so we had medical training.
Speaker 1: And it looks like he worked as a sort of
Speaker 1: ship doctor on some like a whaling vessel and a
Speaker 1: cargo steamer in West Africa. And he was always a
Speaker 1: you know, a good and talented writer. And apparently while
Speaker 1: he was you know, not getting his medical practice going
Speaker 1: to the degree where he could sustain himself financially. He
Speaker 1: wrote this very first story. He still looked for three
Speaker 1: pounds to a periodical and the only, well seemingly the
Speaker 1: only reason he got his first novel, A Study in
Speaker 1: Scarlett published, was because the wife of a publisher at
Speaker 1: Wardlocking Company was like, you got to publish this guy's novel.
Speaker 1: It's like it's really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're like, we'll give you twenty five pounds
Speaker 2: for it was about think two hundred pounds today. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm not sure I did the conversion, but I can't
Speaker 2: read my own handwriting. And they were the ones who
Speaker 2: published that Breton's Miss Annuel, so that's where it first
Speaker 2: popped up. But after it started to get more and
Speaker 2: more popular when they appeared in Strand Magazine, he started
Speaker 2: to be able to command a little more money. So
Speaker 2: he sold a dozen to Strand Magazine for one thousand pounds,
Speaker 2: which today would be about one hundred and ten thousand
Speaker 2: pounds or one hundred and fifty thousand US dollars. And
Speaker 2: there's a thing that he's fairly well known for. He
Speaker 2: wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, eventually almost against his will,
Speaker 2: for money he considered himself a much better writer than
Speaker 2: a writer of pulp crime fiction. Yeah, and he wrote
Speaker 2: the Sherlock Holmes stories because he essentially needed money all
Speaker 2: the time, even though he was making gobs of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it seemed like It's not I don't
Speaker 1: think he like hated his legacy, but it definitely seemed
Speaker 1: like everything I read he was like, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: writing these other books too, and all everyone cares about
Speaker 1: are these Sherlock Holmes books, right, I mean this little
Speaker 1: In fact, he wrote the original book The Lost World,
Speaker 1: which is also a film in nineteen twenty five, and
Speaker 1: Michael Crichton directly paid homage with his own novel The
Speaker 1: Lost World. Yeah, and it's basically I mean, it's not
Speaker 1: the same plot, but it deals with people going to
Speaker 1: a place in South America where there are prehistoric you know,
Speaker 1: animals living.
Speaker 2: Yes, and Arthur Conan Doyle was the first person who
Speaker 2: wrote hang On to Your Butts.
Speaker 1: Well, apparently Crichton was inspired to bring back Malcolm. I
Speaker 1: think he killed off Malcolm and brought him back to life.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and that was also and I don't know
Speaker 1: if it was an homage, but more of like, well, Hey,
Speaker 1: Doyle did it with Home, so I can do it
Speaker 1: with Malcolm right exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes at one point, unsuccessfully,
Speaker 2: it turned out, and the reason why he had a
Speaker 2: quote he said that I've had such an overdose of
Speaker 2: homes that I feel towards him as I do toward
Speaker 2: Petit de foi gras, of which I once ate too
Speaker 2: much so that the name of it gives me a
Speaker 2: sickly feeling to this day. That's how I was just
Speaker 2: sick of Sherlock Holmes. He was that it was like
Speaker 2: eating too much fois grass, which I can imagine is
Speaker 2: not a very comfortable sensation.
Speaker 1: I'll have none of it, thank you. One thing we
Speaker 1: talked about Doyle before another podcast, I think when we
Speaker 1: did episodes on like spiritualism and seances and things. That
Speaker 1: was kind of one of his Aside from writing these books,
Speaker 1: he was very well known for being into spiritualism. After
Speaker 1: his son died in nineteen eighteen, he would go to
Speaker 1: up seances and try to, you know, make contact with
Speaker 1: his son, which is super sad to think about. I
Speaker 1: know that we definitely talked about him when we mentioned
Speaker 1: the photograph that supposedly showed real fairies from Elsie Wright girls,
Speaker 1: Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths, and Doyle famously was like, no,
Speaker 1: this is totally real, everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Cottingham Fairies. Remember we build a whole episode
Speaker 2: around the one thing that should have just been a
Speaker 2: short stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've done that before.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it was really surprising and shocking to Doyle's
Speaker 2: friends his fans, like this is the opposite of what
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes would do, you know, getting spiritualism. But he
Speaker 2: was tenacious, like he was a true believer. And he
Speaker 2: was friends with Harry Houdini, and they were an odd
Speaker 2: pair because Houdini was a voracious skeptic. He couldn't stand mediums.
Speaker 2: He liked to unmask mediums, and Conan Doyle would support
Speaker 2: them by going to them, and he Conan Doyle thought
Speaker 2: Houdini had supernatural powers, despite Hoodini saying like, no, these
Speaker 2: are all tricks. Yeah, like I'm just doing these I'm
Speaker 2: not going to tell you how I did it, but
Speaker 2: these are tricks. Please believe me. And I would be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I read between the lies or did you just supernatural?
Speaker 1: Did you just wink at me?
Speaker 2: Right? Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's like Constanzo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he was just he was just do Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a great one. But he was just it was
Speaker 2: just his thing. He could not be persuaded out of
Speaker 2: believing in spiritualism.
Speaker 1: There's also been a lot of you know, ideas over
Speaker 1: his history about who, like who he was based on.
Speaker 1: Was there a real Sherlock Holmes. The name itself comes
Speaker 1: from American doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, because again Doyle was
Speaker 1: trained as a doctor, so I guess that was just
Speaker 1: a homage on his part. There's a historian named Angela
Speaker 1: Buckley that claims there was a Victorian police officer named
Speaker 1: Jerome Caminada that inspired him. But Doyle himself says, now,
Speaker 1: the inspiration was a guy that taught me in medical school.
Speaker 1: He was my third year instructor of clinical surgery. His
Speaker 1: name was doctor Joseph Bell, and he had this sort
Speaker 1: of party trick that he would do in lectures and
Speaker 1: stuff where he would sort of demonstrate, I almost said,
Speaker 1: Doyle Holmes like qualities of deducing things from little mundane
Speaker 1: details about somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like where someone had been, whether they were a sailor,
Speaker 2: if they smoked. Apparently very famously. He once said, madam,
Speaker 2: I would ask you to reveal your pipe, and everyone
Speaker 2: gasped us this old lady who showed her pipe, and
Speaker 2: that was clearly the root of her problem, and he
Speaker 2: just deduced it from a lower lip ulcer and a
Speaker 2: little bit a little scar on her cheek. He could
Speaker 2: do that with everybody. So that part of Holmes is
Speaker 2: definitely from Joseph Bell. I mean, like you said, he
Speaker 2: said as much. But Angela Buckley has a pretty good
Speaker 2: claim that Jerome Kaminada inspired him too. If you look
Speaker 2: into Kamanada, he would use disguises. He was doing police
Speaker 2: work that now today is just part of police worker.
Speaker 2: At the time, he was the only one on the
Speaker 2: Manchester Force who was doing this stuff, so it was
Speaker 2: probably an amalgamation of a bunch of different people all
Speaker 2: combined with Doyle's command of science, cutting edge science at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, on that note, we've talked about
Speaker 1: how he was using all of these sort of modern
Speaker 1: things to inspire the stories. It actually happened the other
Speaker 1: way as well, which is super cool, Like there were
Speaker 1: real investigators that were doing things that they found that
Speaker 1: Holmes did in the novels and I mean, that's super cool.
Speaker 1: It wasn't they knew that there was sound science behind it,
Speaker 1: so there was I think there was a French criminologist
Speaker 1: named Edmund Locard who basically was like, yeah, I do
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff that Sherlock Holmes does in
Speaker 1: his books because it's super smart and a good way
Speaker 1: to catch somebody.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's also this instance of life imitating art
Speaker 2: that showed up in the story The Problem of thor Bridge.
Speaker 2: And in the story, I guess, the victim takes their
Speaker 2: own life by shooting themselves with a gun that's tied
Speaker 2: to a rock with a short rope, and they shoot
Speaker 2: themselves on a bridge over a waterway, so that as
Speaker 2: they fall to the ground, the gun is pulled down
Speaker 2: into the water and it looks like it was a
Speaker 2: homicide so the family can collect insurance. Well, there's no
Speaker 2: less than two people out there who seem to have
Speaker 2: been directly inspired by the story in real life did
Speaker 2: the same thing. And it turns out that it gets
Speaker 2: even more twisted because Arthur Conan Doyle probably got his
Speaker 2: idea for the Problem with thor Bridge from a case
Speaker 2: that was written about by Austrian criminologist Hans Gross in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety three where this this thing actually happened. So
Speaker 2: you have a case of life imitating art imitating life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well. Engross is another one of those who was
Speaker 1: like picking up stuff from the novels to use in
Speaker 1: everyday work. Like you mentioned dust, like gathering dust and packets,
Speaker 1: and Locard was telling like the police, the policeman on
Speaker 1: his staff like, hey, you should read these you guys
Speaker 1: should read these books.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like Arthur conan Doyle's character Sherlotte Colmes was the
Speaker 2: first to basically say, we need to not contaminate crime scenes.
Speaker 2: They need to be preserved as they are when we
Speaker 2: come upon them. This is before cops were even doing that,
Speaker 2: like cutting in cops were even doing it, Like he
Speaker 2: was just laying down some amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: Should we take another break?
Speaker 2: After me saying something like he was laying down some
Speaker 2: amazing stuff, I feel like it's yeah, we need to.
Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So we're back, Chuck. And even Conan Doyle was surprised
Speaker 2: by how popular his character was and he couldn't quite
Speaker 2: figure out why. He just assumed it was a distraction
Speaker 2: from everyday life. Other people have said It probably also
Speaker 2: has a lot to do with the short story form,
Speaker 2: the fact that they pretty like action starts taking place
Speaker 2: pretty quickly. But at the same time, a lot of
Speaker 2: the stories start out with Watson and Sherlock Holmes hanging
Speaker 2: out in their sitting room and there's like a fire
Speaker 2: burning or it's just like like Conan Doyle adds just
Speaker 2: enough detail here there to really kind of make it engrossing.
Speaker 2: But then it takes off, and like we said, it
Speaker 2: follows that formula. So there's a comforting familiarity to the
Speaker 2: whole thing that a lot of people make point to
Speaker 2: is like this is why it's endured for so long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a cozy quality, yes.
Speaker 2: Cozy mystery kind of thing, but then it branches out
Speaker 2: into the world of Victorian London.
Speaker 1: So, like you said, he was surprised because I'm not
Speaker 1: only surprised at like, hey, people are really liking this,
Speaker 1: but that just wasn't a thing there. That kind of
Speaker 1: fandom wasn't a thing. It was probably the first time
Speaker 1: that there were groups of people getting together and like
Speaker 1: talking about this stuff and forming like fan groups. Maybe
Speaker 1: the first fan fiction. As it turns out, Jay and Barry,
Speaker 1: who was a contemporary obviously, the creator of Peter Pan
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety one anonymously wrote My Evening with Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the first fanfic perhaps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was kind of a good example of
Speaker 2: how he changed fandom or created fandom where readers stopped
Speaker 2: just kind of passively consuming stuff and started being like,
Speaker 2: there's a there's a parasocial exchange going on here, like
Speaker 2: we own you, you belong to us, Give us more.
Speaker 2: You know what George R. Or Martin went through when
Speaker 2: he hadn't finished that.
Speaker 1: Last Yeah, yeah, that last book.
Speaker 2: Like that was essentially Arthur Conan Doyle's fault.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And like you said earlier, when he tried to
Speaker 1: kill well, not tried, when he killed them off, there
Speaker 1: was a revolt. There were twenty thousand Strand subscribers who
Speaker 1: canceled their subscriptions. They would write these, you know, hateful
Speaker 1: angry letters of the time. It wouldn't be like the
Speaker 1: hateful angry letter you would get today. I think one
Speaker 1: of them started with you brute, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: that's pretty tough language for back then for sure. And
Speaker 1: then so he needed money and so he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I guess I need to write another one
Speaker 1: of these things. So he published The Hound of the Baskervilles,
Speaker 1: which was sort of a prequel. It wasn't bringing him
Speaker 1: back from the dead just yet. It was Holmes before
Speaker 1: he died. He finally resurrected him in the Adventure of
Speaker 1: the Empty House in nineteen oh three and just said
Speaker 1: he faked his death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And everybody was like, fine, we don't care. I'm
Speaker 2: glad you brought him back.
Speaker 1: He could just said it was magic and they would
Speaker 1: have been like, okay, fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he came back with it just a classic
Speaker 2: right off the cup. The Hound of the Baskervilles is
Speaker 2: probably the most well known Sherlock Holmes case, and it's
Speaker 2: just a really well written book, and it's been adapted
Speaker 2: into movie after movie after movie, apparently.
Speaker 1: More than twenty of them.
Speaker 2: I think, oh, really, I'm surprised it's actually not more.
Speaker 2: There was one called Derhound von Baskerville, and that was
Speaker 2: a favorite of Hitler's, who's now made two appearances in
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes episode. Did not expect that. No, But part
Speaker 2: of this whole thing that we kind of I mentioned
Speaker 2: Douleian interpretation earlier. There's this thing that's a part of
Speaker 2: being a Sherlock Holmes fan. Again, in North America they're
Speaker 2: called Sherlockians. In the UK they're called Holmesians. And if
Speaker 2: you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, there's a really good chance
Speaker 2: that you treat this whole thing as if these are
Speaker 2: real accounts of real life, historical happenings, that are the
Speaker 2: cases of a real life detective named Sherlock Holmes, and
Speaker 2: that these were written by real life doctor and friend
Speaker 2: to Holmes, John Watson, and that Arthur Conan Doyle was
Speaker 2: Watson's literary agent, and that they it just goes from there,
Speaker 2: And it's really important to remember you don't just completely
Speaker 2: take leave of your senses when you become a Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes fan. This is all tongue in cheek, it's all whimsical,
Speaker 2: but the way that they treat it is very serious.
Speaker 2: And they use like actual like literary analysis in genealogy
Speaker 2: and all this stuff to basically tease out as much
Speaker 2: information as they can about the real life homes and
Speaker 2: real life Watson. And they call the whole thing the
Speaker 2: Grand Game. And it's definitely a cornerstone of being a
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes fan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super cool. And I think the sort of
Speaker 1: origins of that were in nineteen eleven when a guy
Speaker 1: named Ronald Knox wrote a spoof textual analysis and he
Speaker 1: would you know, that's where it became. He would say
Speaker 1: things like sacred writings, and that's when the official canon
Speaker 1: was born. And like you said, that lives on today
Speaker 1: with the Grand Game and specifically the biggest group. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's plenty of groups, there's no shortage. I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: one in your town, unless you know you live in
Speaker 1: like the tiniest town imaginable, there's probably a Shirlock Holmes
Speaker 1: group there you get together with. But the most famous
Speaker 1: one is called the Baker Street Irregulars out of New York.
Speaker 1: It is an invitation only group. It was founded in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, and it seems like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to get in. Isaac Asimov was in FDR,
Speaker 1: was in there. I believe. The one in England is
Speaker 1: called the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: just they get together, they dress up, they have some
Speaker 1: dinner and they play the Grand Game, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of fun quite honestly, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I read in an article I could not find it
Speaker 2: for life of me where the author the journalist was
Speaker 2: invited to one of these meetings, and it just sounded
Speaker 2: so fun and so cool. But yeah, that's I think
Speaker 2: it's interesting that the American chapter is like the founding
Speaker 2: fan chapter Fan Club of Sherlock Holmes, not the British one.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And they actually are so essentially powerful that they actually
Speaker 2: grant like official status to other chapters Elsewhere. I found
Speaker 2: one called the Shaka Sherlockians of Hawaii. They were basically
Speaker 2: given official status by the Baker Street Irregulars. It's a
Speaker 2: great website. If you want to know more in a
Speaker 2: lot of detail about Sherlock Holmes, go check out Shaka Sherlockians.
Speaker 2: It's pretty fun.
Speaker 1: Well, we mentioned adaptations. There have been tons of them.
Speaker 1: I said, there have been over twenty film or TV
Speaker 1: versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Specifically the first one,
Speaker 1: and yes, you are correct, that was a stage version
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety nine from William Gillette where the line
Speaker 1: elementary my dear fellow first came along. And I mean,
Speaker 1: you name it. How many movies have there been? Total?
Speaker 1: Do we even know I'm sure seventy.
Speaker 2: Million, I think a lot. Yeah, I'm not. Yes, you
Speaker 2: bet your sweet Pippy that there's a Sherlockean out there
Speaker 2: who knows exactly how many movies there are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think depending on who asked, taste
Speaker 1: differs obviously, but the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes from
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy from Billy Wilder is generally regarded as like
Speaker 1: one of the best adaptations, even though it was a
Speaker 1: box office failure and it had a pretty troubled production
Speaker 1: m it just brought a little a wit to it
Speaker 1: thanks to Billy Wilder obviously that hadn't been there before,
Speaker 1: and I think Wilder definitely hammered home. The subtext at
Speaker 1: Holmes perhaps is gay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he later said that he regretted not coming out
Speaker 2: and actually saying it. That was definitely his intent, but
Speaker 2: it's not ambiguous in the movie, And just reading about
Speaker 2: the movie in and of itself is pretty interesting. But
Speaker 2: it's one of the reasons why it's so beloved by
Speaker 2: Sherlock fans is the attention to detail, and that's like
Speaker 2: true to the cannon is unparalleled, Like no one I
Speaker 2: don't think has ever really done it. That well, even
Speaker 2: though the actual like plot and everything that's going on
Speaker 2: the point is just so wildly outside of the canon.
Speaker 2: It's a weird amalgam of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was Robert Stevens played Homes in that film.
Speaker 1: One of the more beloved performances was Jeremy Brett in
Speaker 1: the eighty four through ninety four A Granada television series.
Speaker 1: I don't really know how people feel about the Guy
Speaker 1: Richie stuff. I haven't seen those movies or read much criticism.
Speaker 1: You haven't seen the movies, no, I've literally never seen
Speaker 1: any Sherlock Holmes sing or read any Sherlock holmsing.
Speaker 2: Wow. I don't know if the first one you should
Speaker 2: see is the Guy Ritchie versions. But they're really interesting
Speaker 2: interpretations of it. Like they get in fights, like they throw,
Speaker 2: they throw fists and stuff, like Sherlock Holmes beats people up.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. But it also is very true to
Speaker 2: the canon too, so I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: actually like it, like even Sherlockians.
Speaker 1: Right, maybe you know what I have seen something because
Speaker 1: I forgot. I have seen both of the Anola Holmes films.
Speaker 2: Okay, there you go.
Speaker 1: In which Anola Holmes is the twenty year younger sister
Speaker 1: of Sherlock. I believe she's like fourteenish in the movies
Speaker 1: and played by uh, what's your name? Millie Bobby Brown
Speaker 1: eleven hit from Stranger Things, and we watch those with
Speaker 1: the family and Ruby and Emily and I all quite
Speaker 1: enjoyed those movies.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you like those.
Speaker 1: I did like those. But Sherlock is very adjacent in
Speaker 1: those films.
Speaker 2: No, for sure. I'm just trying to think of what
Speaker 2: the first thing you should see is. I really don't
Speaker 2: think it should be the guy RITI once, Maybe Watson,
Speaker 2: I don't know, probably not that despite the clip that
Speaker 2: I saw, it does seem to not be very well loved.
Speaker 1: Well Cumberbatch. I'll like Cumberbatch. He did a modern one, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and actually you mentioned that Billy Wilder kind of
Speaker 2: brought like a little bit of humor comedy to it.
Speaker 2: That guy carried on by Sherlock on BBC. That was
Speaker 2: Benedict Cumberbatch. I don't know. I can't really recommend what
Speaker 2: to go into. Hopefully some of our bigger Sherlocky and
Speaker 2: fans can recommend where to start to you, because you
Speaker 2: really should. You should at least see one thing, if
Speaker 2: not read one thing and just see what you think.
Speaker 1: I like Johnny Lee Miller in that Elementary sounds interesting.
Speaker 2: Okay. Do you like Lucy Lou two?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure she And there you go, my friend, You're gonna
Speaker 2: love Elementary.
Speaker 1: I think maybe I'll check out one of those. But
Speaker 1: I mean, there's somebody in my head that I picture
Speaker 1: from a kid. Would that have been the TV show?
Speaker 1: The one I mentioned is the most like beloved portrayal?
Speaker 2: Maybe Jeremy Brett. You weren't a kid in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a kid in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: No, you were nearly a grown man at age fourteen.
Speaker 1: It was thirteen. Thank you. That may be the one
Speaker 1: I'm thinking in my head, because I just when I
Speaker 1: think in my mind of Sherlock Holmes as a TV
Speaker 1: portrayal or whatever, this one dude pops into my head,
Speaker 1: and I bet you that's who that is.
Speaker 2: Did you watch a lot of Masterpiece Theater as a
Speaker 2: thirteen year old?
Speaker 1: A little bit here and there?
Speaker 2: Oh, and maybe that is.
Speaker 1: What it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, supposedly he is the one who did the best
Speaker 2: out of all.
Speaker 1: Of them all right.
Speaker 2: Interestingly, though, Johnny Lee Miller was the one who's portrayed
Speaker 2: him the most, with one hundred and four one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty four episodes on that show Elementary. That was
Speaker 2: a little trivia for you.
Speaker 1: That's modern times set right, Yes, that.
Speaker 2: And Sherlock are both set in modern times. And if
Speaker 2: you go back to the actual stories, they're all set
Speaker 2: in Victorian England, even though he was writing them well
Speaker 2: outside of Victorian England by the time he wrapped them up.
Speaker 1: Well, this all brings up the sort of ending here
Speaker 1: is that can anyone just make this or do they
Speaker 1: have to pay for the rights or is it still
Speaker 1: in is it in the public domain? And the answer
Speaker 1: is it's been fairly complicated for a while now, I
Speaker 1: mean up until recently that is.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So his son's one of their widow's producer and
Speaker 2: someone else basically got together when Conan Doyle died in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty and they were like, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine,
Speaker 2: and they managed to gather up all the rights to
Speaker 2: all of the Sherlock Holmes writing the character every and
Speaker 2: consolidated it into Conan Doyle Estate Limited. And if you
Speaker 2: had anything that you wanted to do with Sherlock Holmbs,
Speaker 2: you had to go through them, and you had to
Speaker 2: pay them whatever they wanted, essentially, and they ruled Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes's intellectual property with an iron fist for almost a century,
Speaker 2: and they really got a bad reputation for it. But
Speaker 2: despite that, that just goes to show how popular Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes is. People kept dealing with them to make Sherlock
Speaker 2: Holmes movies, books, fan fiction analysis, basically everything amazing.
Speaker 1: There was one pretty famous case where the movie seven
Speaker 1: Percent Solution from the seventies from nineteen seventy four from
Speaker 1: director Herbert Ross. Apparently they thought it was in the
Speaker 1: public domain and it wasn't.
Speaker 2: Man, what a surprise that would have been.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how do you I don't know. Maybe I guess
Speaker 1: things were different back then in seventy four, but how
Speaker 1: does this studio not know that when they greenlight it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. That one was interesting though I looked
Speaker 2: it up. I was about to ask if you'd seen it,
Speaker 2: but I know the answer that apparently Sherlock Combs is cocaine.
Speaker 2: You spirals out of control and Watson sends him to
Speaker 2: Vienna to be cured by Sigmund Freud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's to be pretty weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty interesting sounding though too. But they ended
Speaker 2: up making it. I think they just had to pay
Speaker 2: retroactively for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's when they've really got you over a barrel.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 2: Copyright ran out finally unambiguously to all Sherlock Combs stuff,
Speaker 2: just this past twenty twenty three, I guess, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think initially it ran out in the UK in
Speaker 1: two thousand and then it was ninety eight in the US.
Speaker 1: But there was a family argument that like, no, he
Speaker 1: wrote these over a long period of time, over decades,
Speaker 1: so like the whole thing needs to go expire by
Speaker 1: the last story he wrote, was their argument.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he was so developed that like he was
Speaker 2: a flat character, and really the character of Sherlock Comes
Speaker 2: that everybody portrays is the final ones that we own
Speaker 2: the copyright too. And I think a judge finally told
Speaker 2: them to go soak their heads, essentially said that what
Speaker 2: they their strategy was a form of extortion. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: they finally lost it. I don't know what they're doing nowadays. Oh,
Speaker 2: I know what they're doing. They're essentially authenticating new stuff
Speaker 2: so you can get their blessing and make it like
Speaker 2: an official Sherlock Holmes mystery that you wrote.
Speaker 1: But that's why something like Will Ferrell and John c
Speaker 1: Riley's Holmes and Watson could come along, right, they could
Speaker 1: just do it all of a sudden.
Speaker 2: I think that was I think they would have had
Speaker 2: to have paid for it because I think it was
Speaker 2: from like twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, so even though yeah, I guess the family won
Speaker 1: that argument then huh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think they lost too many cases. I
Speaker 2: think it was quite near the end of the copyright,
Speaker 2: I gotcha. Yeah, so I'm sure that they had to
Speaker 2: pay for the use of that, and I'm sure they
Speaker 2: lost money on it.
Speaker 1: Well, I wonder now, I mean, I don't think so
Speaker 1: far we've seen any like abomination where they've you know,
Speaker 1: like they make Mickey Mouse a serial killer and stuff now,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm curious to see if someone's going to
Speaker 1: do like a Sherlock Holmes thing where he's the batty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure some stuff you should know. Listeners went, Wow,
Speaker 2: that's a good idea, Chuck, It's.
Speaker 1: A really bad idea because people would be pretty angry.
Speaker 1: I would imagine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't want to mess with something like that
Speaker 2: he's good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean Will Ferrell's just now recovering.
Speaker 2: I want to give a couple of shouts out. First
Speaker 2: of all, Kyle, our writer, Kyle helped us out with
Speaker 2: this one, so if we got anything wrong, blame Kyle.
Speaker 2: And then also we heard from friend of the show,
Speaker 2: Richard Fallwall, who wrote in when we first talked about
Speaker 2: doing a Sherlock Holmes episode on some other episode, and
Speaker 2: he's like, yes, do and listen to Stephen Fry's Audible
Speaker 2: collection of all of the Sherlock Holmes cannon works.
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Even if you don't do that, listen to Stephen Fry's
Speaker 2: like introductions to each of the collections. And I listened
Speaker 2: to one of them, and he's right there, amazing, just
Speaker 2: charming interpretations of what's going on in these and the
Speaker 2: way the effect that they had in real life. So
Speaker 2: you can go out and listen to that on audible.
Speaker 2: Apparently it's seventy two hours long.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Well can you imagine We can vouch and
Speaker 1: say that due to our selects episodes on Saturday. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it intro is the best part for sure.
Speaker 2: Oh and one more thing I want to shout out.
Speaker 2: I guess you haven't seen this either. You have to
Speaker 2: see this, no matter what you think of whatever people
Speaker 2: tell you to watch or read. See mister Holmes eventually
Speaker 2: with Ian McKellen, just the most art house of the
Speaker 2: Sherlock Holmes movies.
Speaker 1: It's so good.
Speaker 2: But it's about him retired as a beekeeper, which is
Speaker 2: part of the canon too.
Speaker 1: I love Ian McKellen, so I'll check that.
Speaker 2: Out, Okay, but just put it off to the side.
Speaker 2: Don't make that the first one you see.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think that's it. Chuck Great, Sherlock Holmes. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna watch something. I promise everybody. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: watch something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right in and Chuck know what he should.
Speaker 1: Watch or read something even better?
Speaker 2: Yeah, same thing?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, since Chuck said right, that means it's time
Speaker 2: for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, on the Anaconda episode, you tried to work
Speaker 1: out how and the heck green Anacon has made it
Speaker 1: to Trinidad when the Caribbean island is separated from Venezuela
Speaker 1: by mere seven miles of ocean water. Well, guys, I'm
Speaker 1: from Trinidad, so maybe I can help. We can easily
Speaker 1: see Venezuela from certain parts of our country. And that's
Speaker 1: because Trinidad, unlike the other islands of the Caribbean, is
Speaker 1: not connected to the ocean floor. It actually rests on
Speaker 1: the submerged continental shelf that extends from the coastline of
Speaker 1: Venezuela into the Atlantic Ocean. All the other islands in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean Archipelago are volcanic, reaching up from the seafloor,
Speaker 1: but not us. Ours is a continental island that was
Speaker 1: once part of the South American mainland. Essentially, there was
Speaker 1: a land bridge between Trinidad and Venezuela as recently as
Speaker 1: the Last Ice Age. As such, our flora and fauna
Speaker 1: are pretty much identical to those found in Venezuela and
Speaker 1: even deeper into South America and hint Anaconda's baby. They
Speaker 1: terrified my childhood because they are in our rainforest and
Speaker 1: big ones that come into town bordering the forest like
Speaker 1: where I lived. Anyway, I stopped the podcast midst stream
Speaker 1: to quickly tell Josh in real time your hypothesis was
Speaker 1: spot on.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I love emails like that.
Speaker 1: Warmest regards, and that is from Revel.
Speaker 2: Thanks Revel. That was a great, great email and we
Speaker 2: appreciate it. Thanks for clearing that up for us. If
Speaker 2: you want to be like Revel, you can send us
Speaker 2: an email too. It's stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.