Sherlock Holmes: The Man, The Myth

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Sherlock Holmes: The Man, The Myth"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Stuff You Should Know
• Hosts: Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
• Episode: Sherlock Holmes: The Man, The Myth
• Release Date: July 8, 2025
• Production: iHeartPodcasts
• Description: Josh and Chuck delve into the fascinating world of Sherlock Holmes, exploring his origins, character traits, cultural impact, and enduring legacy through literature and various adaptations.

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1. Introduction to Sherlock Holmes

[01:20] Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant open the episode by introducing their focus on Sherlock Holmes, the legendary fictional detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. They discuss their personal familiarity with Holmes, noting that while Josh has read several short stories, Chuck admits he hasn't delved into the original novels.

Notable Quote:

• Josh Clark: "I'm here to sniff you off the case with our brand new episode on Sherlock Holmes." [01:20]

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2. Understanding Sherlock Holmes’ Role

[03:35] - [04:20] The hosts clarify a common misconception—Sherlock Holmes is not an official detective of Scotland Yard but rather the world's first consulting detective. This distinction highlights Holmes' unique position as an "amateur sleuth" who often collaborates with Scotland Yard yet operates independently.

Notable Quote:

• Josh Clark: "He is the world's first consulting detective. That's what Arthur Conan Doyle, the author, called him." [04:11]

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3. Character Traits of Sherlock Holmes

[06:34] - [07:38] Josh and Chuck delve into Holmes' personality, describing him as a genius with exceptional deductive reasoning skills. They highlight his logical approach to solving mysteries, contrasting him with other fictional detectives who rely more on intuition or hidden clues.

Notable Quote:

• Josh Clark: "He's a deeply flawed person in a lot of ways too. I think that makes him really interesting." [06:34]

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4. Literary Contributions and Popularity

[11:28] - [12:26] The discussion moves to Sherlock Holmes' extensive presence in literature, comprising four novels and 56 short stories. Josh emphasizes the strategic timing of Holmes' publication in The Strand Magazine, which coincided with a surge in literacy and demand for new fiction in Britain.

Notable Quote:

• Chuck Bryant: "It was a time where... people are reading this thing like crazy." [11:28]

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5. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Influence and Personal Life

[26:45] - [29:02] Josh and Chuck explore Arthur Conan Doyle’s background as a trained doctor and how his medical knowledge infused realism into Holmes’ investigative methods. They discuss Doyle’s initial reluctance to embrace his creation wholeheartedly, mentioning his attempt to kill off Holmes and the subsequent fan backlash.

Notable Quote:

• Chuck Bryant: "I have had such an overdose of Holmes that I feel towards him as I do toward pate de foie gras." [29:02]

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6. Holmes in Popular Culture and Adaptations

[42:27] - [49:10] The hosts review various adaptations of Sherlock Holmes in film and television. They praise Jeremy Brett’s portrayal in the Granada series as one of the best, noting its fidelity to the canon. They also discuss modern interpretations like Guy Ritchie’s films, highlighting their unique takes on Holmes’ character.

Notable Quote:

• Josh Clark: "Jeremy Brett's portrayal [...] is generally regarded as like one of the best adaptations." [46:14]

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7. Fandom and Legacy

[43:33] - [45:45] Josh and Chuck examine the passionate Sherlock Holmes fandom, detailing groups like the Baker Street Irregulars and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. They describe how fans treat Holmes’ adventures as real historical accounts, engaging in the "Grand Game" of solving mysteries alongside the detective.

Notable Quote:

• Josh Clark: "It's all whimsical. But the way that they treat it is very serious." [43:33]

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8. Copyright and Intellectual Property

[51:17] - [54:04] The conversation shifts to the complex history of Sherlock Holmes' copyright. The duo explains how the Conan Doyle Estate managed Holmes’ intellectual property tightly for almost a century until recent legal changes in 2023 led to Holmes entering the public domain. This shift has opened doors for new interpretations and adaptations without stringent licensing restrictions.

Notable Quote:

• Josh Clark: "They ruled Sherlock Holmes intellectual property with an iron fist for almost a century." [53:05]

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9. Modern Interpretations and Future of Holmes

[54:04] - [56:39] Josh and Chuck discuss the future of Sherlock Holmes in media, pondering how new adaptations might evolve the character while staying true to his roots. They express excitement over the potential for innovative portrayals now that Holmes is in the public domain.

Notable Quote:

• Chuck Bryant: "It's a really bad idea because people would be pretty angry, I would imagine." [54:43] (Referring humorously to potential negative portrayals)

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10. Listener Engagement and Conclusion

[56:39] - [58:38] The episode wraps up with listener interactions, where Chuck shares an insightful email about the presence of anacondas in Trinidad, linking it to geographic and environmental factors. The hosts encourage listeners to engage and share their own insights and questions about Sherlock Holmes.

Notable Quote:

• Chuck Bryant: "Your hypothesis was spot on." [57:55]

---

Closing Thoughts

Josh and Chuck provide a comprehensive exploration of Sherlock Holmes, blending literary analysis with cultural critique. They underscore Holmes' lasting impact on both literature and popular culture, attributing his enduring popularity to his intricate character, innovative storytelling, and the passionate community of fans that continues to celebrate his legacy.

Final Note: For those looking to delve deeper into Sherlock Holmes, the hosts recommend exploring various adaptations and engaging with dedicated fan communities to fully appreciate the nuances of this iconic detective.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Ira Glass]

This is Ira Glass, the host of this American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office. It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what to try and do that. We've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling, and you get to see people everywhere adapting and making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in. If you haven't listened in a while, I honestly think these are some of the best stories we've ever done. This is American Life every week, wherever.

[Chuck Bryant]

You get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and D. Jerry's here, too. And we're here to sniff you off the case with our brand new episode on Sherlock Holmes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Have you ever read any Sherlock Holmes short stories? Or one of the four novels?

[Josh Clark]

You should have started that off with Josh.

[Chuck Bryant]

Josh.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I have. I've never read the novels, but I've read quite a bit of the short stories. Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay. I didn't know you were Sherlockian.

[Josh Clark]

I'm not. I would not call myself that, because if you're a Sherlockian or in the uk, Holmesian, you are like one of the original fans of fandom. And I mean, I'm not there. Like, I don't qualify.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, more than me.

[Josh Clark]

So have you read any?

[Chuck Bryant]

Not a one.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, you're missing out. They're really interesting and fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, not only that, I haven't really seen any of the stuff either.

[Josh Clark]

There's some really good movies out there. Last night, just to brush up, I watched House of Fear, which Is based on the short story the Five Orange Pips. And it's really good. Basil Rathbone and Nigel Rogers and just the straight ahead mid century black and white Sherlock Holmes mystery that you think of when you think of a Sherlock Holmes movie, or most people do. So they're good. They're really. The movies are generally good. I've seen the worst version. People call the worst version Holmes and Watson.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, God.

[Josh Clark]

You saw that? No, but I watched the clip and I was like, this is not that bad. This is exactly what you'd expect from Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. Like, what were you thinking? It's going to be like high art or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no, I just heard it was zero funny. Not that they were expecting something, you know, posh.

[Josh Clark]

Well, the clip I saw was at least one and a half percent funny. Okay. It has a half of a star on Rotten Tomatoes.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, well, let's get into it because this is a lot.

[Josh Clark]

Wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on. Let me just wrap this up. Okay. Yes, you should read some of the Holmes stories.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Yeah, let's get into it now.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. Well, we're talking about Sherlock Holmes, the infamous. The famous fictional detective. I learned, I was about to say a lot, but basically everything about this was new to me. So I learned everything. Brand new. I was this day years old when I learned everything. But one of the things that I did not know for sure is that I always thought he was an official, like Scotland Yard detective. I did not know that he was an amateur sleuth and that maybe he worked alongside Scotland Yard at times, but I just figured he was part of Scotland Yard.

[Josh Clark]

No, he is the world's first consulting detective. That's what Arthur Conan Doyle, the author, called him. Another term for that is a private eye.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So he would work with Scotland Yard sometimes, but most of the time he was several steps ahead of Scotland Yard whenever they did come in to arrest somebody.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so like I mentioned, there were four novels, there were 56 short stories over about a four decade plus period, which is a lot of writing and apparently. And this was in 2012 and he's been in quite a few more adaptations since then, but he's the most frequently portrayed human literary character ever in film and TV.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, 254 times.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, no way.

[Josh Clark]

More than that. Now depicted. Yes. By 75 actors.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, more than that.

[Josh Clark]

Now at the. Yeah. At the time in 2012, the non human who'd been most adapted was Dracula and he only had Sherlock Holmes beat by Like a handful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

So there you go. Sherlock Holmes. Everybody loves to portray him. And that's something we'll try to get to the bottom of here because what we're talking about is 100 nearly 50 year old, like detective pulp fiction that has chapters of fans all over the world. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous characters ever written in the history of literature. And people are nuts for him still today. And some people just like don't get it. And there's, there's something to get, but not everybody can put their finger on it and we probably won't either, but we'll try.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I think I never read it because I just don't read mysteries like that.

[Josh Clark]

Well, one of the things that separates him from the mysteries is that he uses deductive reasoning, like Agatha Christie. It's like, can you guess who it is? Maybe there's a clue or something in there. More often than not, there's really nothing in there that can tell you who did it. With Sherlock Holmes, it might not be in there either. But what he uses is deductive reasoning where the kind of logic and reasoning he's using, the, like anybody has that, that potential, that faculty. He's just particularly gifted with it. So he's, I don't know, he's like a machine as far as logic goes. But he's also a deeply flawed person in a lot of ways too. I think that makes him really interesting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And actually I need to correct myself. I did Encyclopedia Brown, as I've mentioned before, and that's where that, that train ended for me was in elementary school.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But I mean, what a ride it was, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

It was pretty great. Watson is his sidekick. We'll talk a lot about him as we go. And the first one was A Study in Scarlet in 1887. And I mean, let's go ahead and I guess just talk a little bit about who Holmes is as a character. He's definitely portrayed as like a genius. He sometimes can be very sort of flippant and arrogant. He's not very emotional. Watson says that he has no interest in women and that there's been speculation that Sherlock Holmes is a gay character. I believe Watson described him in A Scandal in Bohemia from 1891 as the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen. But as a lover, he would have placed himself in a false position.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which you don't want to do. Especially as a gentleman in Victorian England. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And a bit of an enigma. Right. As far as just kind of personal Life.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The reason why is because it was not a main driver of the series that Conan Doyle wrote. Like there were illusions to his life outside of his mysteries. Like he was well known to have a brother named Mycroft. He was really passionate about boxing and he played the violin. He was also very famous for intravenously injecting cocaine in a 7% solution. And these things were just kind of referred to here or there early on. The cocaine was kind of a driver of his character. He was very self obsessed. He was very melancholy. Like he would shoot cocaine to like basically get through the tedium of a day because he was so smart and he couldn't possibly do so otherwise. But then as he developed, he became less of a, well, a cocaine addict and more of a fully fleshed out character whose the point and purpose was to figure out how to solve these mysteries using logic and deduction. And that's what he really became more than anything else.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean they've. If you've seen, if you haven't read and you've only seen like movie and TV versions, you've seen a lot more of a character called Irene Adler. Irene Adler exists far more in the TV and film side, I believe. She was only in one story, so she's been much, much more portrayed on screen as maybe a love interest, maybe a. What's the word I'm looking for? Sort of like a foil at times. Not quite like a Moriarty level Professor. Moriarty is often the, the main foil and sort of evil criminal mastermind. But Adler definitely exists a lot more in the film and television world.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. In the world of Sherlock Holmes fans, they call her the woman. She's the woman who, like he called her that. Oh, did he call her that? Okay, yeah. So like she's the one who caught his attention by foiling his, his investigation. Like he figured out what happened but he didn't catch the criminal. And that really caught his attention.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Think he'd only been thwarted like four times and she was one of them, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

He's also been like famously diagnosed retroactively with everything from bipolar 2 disorder, depression, Asperger's syndrome. And he's also commonly given an INTJ personality type from the Myers Briggs test, which is analytical, logical and with a strong intuition that seems to fit. It does. So going back out into the real world, if you're going to take the Doylean view of all this stuff, that it's actually fiction written by Arthur Conan Doyle, the whole thing started in 1886, I think, when the first one that you just mentioned, A Study in Scarlet, was published in Breton's Christmas Annual.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think it was 87.

[Josh Clark]

87.

[Chuck Bryant]

Correct it, because there are Sherlockians and Holmians, Holmesians.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, yeah. We should have totally given a coa at the beginning of this, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. There are going to be minor errors here and there, everyone.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. So 1887, the first story comes out, Study in Scarlet. I think it's actually a novel, and it was published in this Christmas annual. And it didn't take off like a rocket until he started publishing the shorter stories in a magazine called the Strand. And this is at the time that Strand magazine was the most widely circulated monthly magazine in all of Britain. And it just so happened that Conan Doyle was writing these stories at a time when Britain had suddenly become a lot more literate and they were hungry for new fiction. So he really kind of came in and brought Sherlock Holmes in at just the right time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So people are reading this thing like crazy. I think they ended up collecting those short stories in, well, a collection called the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. And like you said, that was where. I mean, I'm sure the novels are great, but he only did four of them. And it's really. It seems like these short stor is where he found a place to sell a lot more stuff. Or, you know, I guess sell is one way to say it, or write a lot more stuff, because, you know, there were less than 10,000 words. They were even short for detective short stories at the time. And I think they appealed to younger people quite a bit, from what I have read.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because at the time, the younger generation were the ones who had just been educated through the public education system that had just been developed. So they were more likely to be able to read than their parents, just statistically speaking.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But they didn't want to read some long novel, they wanted to read a short story.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And also, one of the other things, too, that Conan Doyle figured out early on that I think people appreciate because it's so comfortable and familiar, is essentially the same formula for basically every single one of the stories.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which, I mean, it's like Encyclopedia Brown. In any kind of detective story, you're going to have a client come in, or, you know, it evokes film noir as well. A client comes in, in this case, to the very famous office, 221B Baker street, and the client themselves are gonna be sort of picked apart by Holmes at the beginning, and he's gonna make a lot of deductions about them. And Then evaluate the case and then, you know, hit the streets maybe, maybe in disguise and start doing the investigating. Of course. Solve the, the case.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Capture the bad guy and then explain it all to Watson, Scooby Doo style at the end, which, I mean, is this. I know Holmes wasn't the first and we'll get into that fictional detective, but is this how that sort of trophy formula started?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Yeah, 100%.

[Chuck Bryant]

So none of the first fictional detectives did things like that?

[Josh Clark]

No, not in any kind of formula like that, as far as I know. And there were only maybe a dozen that came before him, but they were all just kind of throwing stuff at the fridge to see what stuck. It was Arthur Conan Doyle, who's the one who really figured it all out and just ran with it.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's awesome. They were illustrated by a guy named Sidney Padgett. And as far as the look of Holmes, that was modeled on Padgett's brother Walter, and would just interpret whatever Doyle was writing as far as what he would draw. So in the book, for instance, you know, there's. There's two things even if you don't know anything about Sherlock Holmes. And in fact, you probably call it the Sherlock Holmes hat and the Sherlock Holmes pipe.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That big, curvy, huge bell pipe and then that deerstalker cap. That's what it's. You know, it's what it technically is, but everyone else just calls it the Sherlock Holmes hat. But in the book, Doyle just says it's a close fitting cloth cap. He doesn't say he wore his deer stalker cap. That was an invention of Sidney Padgett.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that pipe is called a calabash pipe. And like you said, I mean, like. Right. You could draw like just a minimalist profile of just those two things and around the world people would know exactly who that was.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like the. When Michael Jordan had the Hitler mustache.

[Josh Clark]

In that TV commercial I forgot about.

[Chuck Bryant]

And everyone's like, why do you have a Hitler mustache?

[Josh Clark]

Right, I totally forgot about that. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, that one's. You can't have that mustache anymore. And he's. I don't know know. I feel like he should have known that.

[Josh Clark]

No, you really couldn't. From basically the 1930s onward, it was off the table.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, not even. It's not like he was doing it as an homage.

[Josh Clark]

I don't think so.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it was definitely like, what world is Michael Jordan living in where he doesn't know that? Just nobody does that. It's funny.

[Josh Clark]

So just one thing real quick for the Sherlockians and the Holmesians. I saw that it is contested that Walter, Sidney's brother, was the model. Apparently Sidney claimed he wasn't. Everyone says that he was. So maybe Sidney Padgett was just a pathological liar.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe. I mean, I'd have to see a picture of Walter to, you know, to know for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. That's a really good way to put two and two together, I think. Very homesy and in your approach.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, elementary.

[Josh Clark]

You want to take a break and come back?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. Yeah. Good timing. We'll be back right after this.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

By the way, we're back. And I said elementary. Apparently, that wasn't something Doyle wrote. That came from one of the movies, right?

[Josh Clark]

The movies are the first stage play. One of the two.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, maybe. Stage play. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I think the closest he wrote was exactly my dear Watson. So close.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, I'm not knocking Doyle, but Elementary is so much. That's way catchier, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

So the books themselves or the stories themselves are meant to be accounts of the cases of Sherlock Holmes that were written by his sidekick, friend and roommate, John Hamish Watson. He's a doctor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dr. John.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's. That was his side gig.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So was that the one who was about spending the night together? Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know much of Dr. John. I do know that he was the inspiration for the Muppet Band, right?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, no. Okay. That's a different one. I think that was Dr. Hook in the medicine show I was just doing. Dr. John is awesome. I saw him open for Cyndi Lauper once.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

That was quite a combination.

[Chuck Bryant]

It really is.

[Josh Clark]

No, this is a different Dr. John. This is Dr. John Watson, sidekick to Sherlock Holmes, and he supposedly is the one who's narrating and recounting all of these things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And right away, right off the bat, he is sort of picked apart and deduced by Holmes. When they first meet, Watson was an army medic that was wounded at the battle of Mawand in Afghanistan. And Holmes picks this up, and Watson is like, oh, my God, who is this guy? Like, I can't believe this dude has nailed this facet of my life right away.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was the first of many, many, many times. Watson would be astonished by Holmes deductive reasoning skills.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but he's kind of the heart, right? Like apparently Holmes isn't the most likable guy, but Watson really brings this sort of heart to it.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, absolutely. He's warm, he's empathetic, he's just much. It's basically like you and me, right? Like you're the heart, you're the approachable guy, you're the folksy one. I'm the one that's got this general please don't touch me vibe. It's a bit like that. I'm not putting myself on the same level as Sherlock Holmes, but in that sense I feel like we resemble the two.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but that's just because you don't want people to touch you. Please, you know, you can buy it, honestly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's not like a put on or anything. I really don't want to be touched.

[Chuck Bryant]

So we mentioned that there were fictional detectives before. We don't have to really go through, but there were like 13 that preceded him. But Holmes is really the one that came along, like you said, and used this scientific reasoning and powers of deduction. And it wasn't just some dumb blundering criminal.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That kind of gives themselves away. And we'll, we'll get into, you know, sort of why, but it's because Doyle himself was medically trained and super on the, just in the know about what was going on with modern policing and forensics and stuff like that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so because of that he was able to like really razzle dazzle his audience. Like it's stuff that is just totally commonplace to us, was cutting edge at the time, like collecting blood samples, analyzing like dust and dirt and stuff like that to figure out where it came from. Looking at handwriting, using microscopes, fingerprinting, all these things were like brand spanking new. In some cases where his audience wouldn't have even heard of or thought about this stuff. Sherlock Holmes is employing these techniques and on the one hand it is very razzle dazzle, like just as cutting edge as possible at the time. But on the other hand too, he's, he's basically, he's using science, he's using rational science and the scientific method and applying it to solve any problem. And that was very much like part of pop culture at the time. This is prior to World War I, where we showed like just how horrible science can go, where everybody was all about science. Science can solve any single problem. And Sherlock Holmes is the embodiment of that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. We should tick through a few more of Holmes sort of superpowers as written by Doyle. This is a pretty fun one that he could tell what a man did for a living by his fingernails, by his coat sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser knees, by the calluses of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt cuff. He was a safecracker and a lock picker, apparently. Could tell the difference between 140 different types of tobacco ash and 42 different bike tire treads.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he's like, this is Virginia Slim.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's pretty fun, though. Like a pretty fun thing to write. Like someone with almost superhuman. I mean, people have made the case that he's sort of the first superhero in a way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. And. But he's. Again, he's not. He's a human person, like, you know what I mean? Like, he is a genius. He does have. Right. Yes, it is true. And I think that kind of makes Batman more accessible than say, Spider Man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, Spider man was real too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But he was bitten by a radioactive spider.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I see what you mean. Sure.

[Josh Clark]

Batman came across his powers through vastness, generally. Yeah. And enormous wealth, for sure. But one of the things that Holmes was famous for too, Chuck, is he was able to hone in so fully on catching somebody because he was very selective about the knowledge he took on. In some cases, he was just ignorant about stuff that anybody walking around would know about. I think there was a time where in one of the stories where Dr. Watson is explaining to him that the earth travels around the sun and Sherlock Holmes is like, not only do I not know that I'm going to forget it now because I'm very carefully curate the information that goes into my mind because I only want the stuff in there that's going to help me solve cases. I would suggest that that actually could maybe come in handy with shadows and time changes and stuff like that. But maybe not. Maybe you didn't need that.

[Chuck Bryant]

You would have been a good Watson, actually. Sherlock.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

If you think about it. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no.

[Josh Clark]

I feel like I really would have annoyed Sherlock Holmes if I had been his sidekick.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, we both would have. So he's. He's generally trying to do the right thing. He's trying to catch the bad guy. He's trying to. To aid the desperate for the most part. He protects England from corruption. He's. There was. It was a time where. And Doyle wrote this into the stories where there were some just sort of notorious failures of the police, not catching Jack the Ripper being one of them. Yeah, that was a big one. And so he would compensate for those failures. And, you know, even though he didn't have, like, maybe the best personality, he was all about business and all about getting it done.

[Josh Clark]

And he was a Victorian gentleman, so he was an upholder of the social order and social hierarchies. He knew how to navigate that stuff. But at the same time, he was also a critic of them. Like, he saw very clearly just how arbitrary and capricious the social hierarchies in Great Britain were and are, and he criticized them personally, to himself. He made no effort or action to make any changes to them. He just saw them for what they were, which is fraudulent and harmful, typically.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. We should probably talk a little bit more about Doyle. He was from Edinburgh, a town that we have performed live in. One of the great towns in Scotland.

[Josh Clark]

One of the great towns in the world.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, absolutely. I should have broadened that out. It was amazing. I had.

[Josh Clark]

There's only, like, two towns in Scotland.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, come on. We were on such a good path there. He trained to become a doctor, so he had medical training. And it looks like he worked as a sort of ship doctor on some, like, a whaling vessel and a cargo steamer in West Africa. And he was always a, you know, a good and talented writer. And apparently, while he was not getting his medical practice going to the degree where he could sustain himself financially, he wrote this very first story. He sold it for £3 to a periodical. And seemingly the only reason he got his first novel, A Study in Scarlet, published was because the wife of a publisher at Wardlock and Company was like, you gotta publish this guy's novel. It's like, it's really good.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they're like, we'll give you £25 for it. It was about, I think, £200 today, maybe. I'm not sure I did the conversion, but I can't read my own handwriting. And they were the ones who published that Breton's Christmas Annual. So that's where it first popped up. But after it started to get more and more popular when they appeared in Strand Magazine, he started to be able to command a little more money. So he sold a dozen to Strand magazine for a thousand pounds, which today would be about 110,000 pounds or 150,000 US dollars. And there's a thing that he's fairly well known for. He wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories. Eventually, almost against his will for money. He considered himself a much better writer than a writer of pulp crime fiction. And he wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories because he essentially needed money all the time, even though he was making gobs of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, it seemed like. I don't think he, like, hated his legacy, but it definitely seemed like everything I read, he was like, you know, I'm writing these other books too, and all everyone cares about are these Sherlock Holmes books.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, this is a little fun fact. He wrote the original book the Lost World, which is also a film, in 1925, and Michael Crichton directly paid homage to with his own novel, the Lost World. And it's basically. I mean, it's not the same plot, but it deals with people going to a place in South America where there are prehistoric animals living.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And Arthur Conan Doyle was the first person who wrote Hang on to your butts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, apparently Crichton was inspired to bring back Malcolm. I think he killed off Malcolm and brought him back to life.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that was also an. I don't know if it was an homage, but more of like, well, hey, Doyle did it with Holmes, so I can do it with Malcolm.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Exactly. Yeah. Doyle tried to kill off Sherlock Holmes at one point. Unsuccessfully, it turned out. And the reason why, he had a quote. He said that I have had such an overdose of Holmes that I feel towards him as I do toward pate de foie gras, of which I once ate too much. So that the name of it gives me a sickly feeling to this day. That's how just sick of Sherlock Holmes he was, that it was like eating too much foie gras, which I can imagine is not a very comfortable sensation.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'll have none of it, thank you. One thing, we talked about Doyle before in other podcasts. I think when we did episodes on spiritualism and seances and things, that was kind of one of his. Aside from writing these books, he was very well known for being into spiritualism. After his son died in 1918, he would go to seances and try to, you know, make contact with his son, which is super sad to think about. I know that we definitely talked about him when we mentioned the. The photograph that supposedly showed real fairies from Elsie Wright Girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths. And Doyle famously was like, no, this is totally real, everybody.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the Cottingham fairies. Remember, we build a whole episode around the one thing that should have just been a short stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we've done that before.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So it was really surprising. And Shocking to Doyle's friends, his fans. Like, this is the opposite of what Sherlock Holmes would do, you know, get into spiritualism. But he was tenacious. Like, he was a true believer and he was friends with Harry Houdini. And they were an odd pair because Houdini was a voracious skeptic. He couldn't stand mediums. He liked to unmask mediums. And Conan Doyle would support them by going to them. And he. Conan Doyle thought Houdini had supernatural powers, despite Houdini saying, like, no, these are all tricks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, I'm just doing these. I'm not going to tell you how I did it, but these are tricks. Please believe me. And Doyle would be like, yeah, I can read between the lines. You're a supernatural power. Did you just wink at me? Right, Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like Costanza.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, but he was just. He was just. Yeah, that was a great one. But he was just. It was just his thing. And he could not be persuaded out of believing in spiritualism.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's also been a lot of, you know, ideas over his history about who, like, who he was based on. Was there a real Sherlock Holmes? The name itself comes from American doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes, because, again, Doyle was a. Trained as a doctor. So I guess that was just an homage on his part. There's a historian named Angela Buckley that claims there was a Victorian police officer named Jerome Caminata that inspired him. But Doyle himself says no. The inspiration was a guy that taught me in medical school. He was my third year instructor of clinical surgery. His name was Dr. Joseph Bell. And he had this sort of party trick that he would do in lectures and stuff where he would sort of demonstrate. I almost said Doyle, Holmes, like, qualities of deducing things from little mundane details about somebody.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like where someone had been, whether they were a sailor, if they smoked. Apparently very famously, he once said, madam, I would ask you to reveal your pipe. And everyone gasped as this old lady showed her pipe. And that was clearly the root of her problem. And he just deduced it from a lower lip ulcer and a little bit. A little scar on her cheek. He could do that with everybody. So that part of Holmes is definitely from Joseph Bell. I mean, like you said, he said as much. But Angela Buckley has a pretty good claim that Jerome Caminata inspired him, too. If you look into Caminata, he would use disguises. He was doing police work that now today is just part of police worker. At the time, he was the only one on the Manchester force who was doing this Stuff. So it was probably an amalgamation of a bunch of different people, all combined with Doyle's command of science, cutting edge science at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So, I mean, on that note, we've talked about how he was using all of these sort of modern things to inspire the stories. It actually happened the other way as well, which is super cool. Like, there were real investigators that were doing things that they found that Holmes did in the novels. And I mean, that's super cool. It wasn't. They. They knew that there was sound science behind it. So there was. I think there was a French criminologist named Edmond Locar who. Who basically was like, yeah, I like, do a lot of the stuff that Sherlock Holmes does in his books because it's super smart and a good way to catch somebody.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And there's also this instance of life imitating art that showed up in the story the Problem of Thor Bridge. And in the story, the. I guess the victim takes their own life by shooting themselves with a gun that's tied to a rock with a short rope, and they shoot themselves over on a bridge over a waterway so that as they fall to the ground, the gun is pulled down into the water and it looks like it was a homicide so their family can collect insurance. Well, there's no less than two people out there who seem to have been directly inspired by the story in real life, did the same thing. And it turns out that it gets even more twisted because Arthur Conan Doyle probably got his idea for the Problem of Thor Bridge from a case that was written about by Austrian criminologist HANS GROSS In 1893, where this thing actually happened. So you have a case of life imitating art imitating life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, and Gross is another one of those who was, like, picking up stuff from the novels to use in everyday work. Like you mentioned dust, like, gathering dust in packets. And Locard was telling, like, the policemen on his staff, like, hey, you should read these. You guys should read these books.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like, Arthur Conan Doyle's character, Sherlock Holmes, was the first to basically say, we need to not contaminate crime scenes. They need to be preserved as they are when we come upon them. This is before cops were even doing that. Like, cutting edge cops were even doing it. Like, he was just laying down some amazing stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we take another break after me.

[Josh Clark]

Saying something like he was laying down some amazing stuff? I feel like it's. Yeah, we need to.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we'll be right back.

[D]

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[Ira Glass]

This is Ira Glass, the host of this American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office. It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what to try and do that. We've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling and you get to see people everywhere adapting and making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in. If you haven't listened in a while, I honestly think these are some of the best stories we've ever done. This American Life Every week, wherever you.

[Dexter Thomas]

Get your podcasts, are there any pictures of you online? I'm not just talking about Google, I'm talking anywhere.

[F]

Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts.

[Dexter Thomas]

That database is now being used by police departments all across the country to match criminal suspect photos. And sometimes it makes mistakes.

[F]

So in this one case, two of their search results that I think were in the top 10 of the search results were Michael Jordan, a picture of Michael Jordan.

[Dexter Thomas]

But cops are still using it to make arrests.

[F]

Police, they are trusting this software to lead them to the right suspect, but you're not even being told that it was used, let alone given any of the details about how it works.

[Dexter Thomas]

This is not minority rules report. This is happening right now. People are getting arrested and doing actual time in jail after being picked out by a computer. I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, where every Wednesday we explain the right now of living in the future. You can turn off the computer, but do not let the computer turn you off. Listen to Kill switch in the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Josh Clark]

Foreign. So we're back, Chuck. And even Conan Doyle was surprised by how popular his character was, and he couldn't quite figure out why he. He just assumed it was a distraction from everyday life. Other people have said it probably also has a lot to do with the short story form. The fact that they pretty. Like, action starts taking place pretty quickly. But at the same time, a lot of the stories start out with Watson and Sherlock Holmes hanging out in their sitting room and there's like a fire burning, or it's just like Conan Doyle adds just enough detail here or there to really kind of make it engrossing. But then it takes off, and like we said, it follows that formula. So there's a comforting familiarity to the whole thing that a lot of people make point to is like, this is why it's endured for so long. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like a cozy quality.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Cozy mystery kind of thing. But then it branches out into the world of Victorian London.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, like you said, he was surprised, because I'm not only surprised that, like, hey, people are really liking this, but that just wasn't a thing there. That kind of fandom wasn't a thing. It was probably the first time that there were groups of people getting together and talking about this stuff and forming fan groups. Maybe the first fan fiction, as it turns out. JM Barrie, who was a contemporary, obviously the creator of Peter Pan in 1891, anonymously wrote my Evening with Sherlock Holmes, which is sort of the first fanfic, perhaps.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And that was kind of a good example of how he changed fandom or created fandom, where readers stopped just kind of passively consuming stuff and started being like, there's a parasocial exchange going on here. Like, we own you. You belong to us. Give us more. You know what George R.R. martin went through when he hadn't finished that last.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That last book, like, that was essentially Arthur Conan Doyle's fault.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And like you said earlier, when he tried to kill. Well, not tried. When he killed him off, there was a Revolt. There were 20,000 Strand subscribers who canceled their subscriptions. They would write these hateful, angry letters of the time. It wouldn't be like the hateful, angry letter you would get today. I think one of them started with, you brute. Which is. That's pretty tough language for back then, for sure. And then. So he needed money, and so he was like, all right, I guess I need to write another one of these things. So he published the Hound of the Baskervilles, which was sort of a prequel. It wasn't bringing him back from the dead just yet. It was Holmes before he died. He finally resurrected him in the Adventure of the empty house in 1903. And just said he faked his death.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And everybody was like, fine, we don't care. I'm glad you brought him back.

[Chuck Bryant]

They said it was magic and they would have been like, okay, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And he. But he came back with just a classic right off the cuff. The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably the most well known Sherlock Holmes case. And it's just a really well written book. And it's been adapted into movie after movie after movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Apparently more than 20 of them, I think.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really? I'm surprised it's actually not more. There was one called Derhund von Baskerville, and that was a favorite of Hitler's, who's now made two appearances in the Sherlock Holmes episode. Did not expect that.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

But part of this whole thing that we kind of. I mentioned Doyle in interpretation earlier. There's this thing that's a part of being a Sherlock Holmes fan again. In North America, they're called Sherlockians. In the uk they're called Holmesians. And if you're a Sherlock Holmes fan, there's a really good chance that you treat this whole thing as if these are real accounts of real life historical happenings that are the cases of a real life detective named Sherlock Holmes. And that these were written by real life doctor and friend to Holmes, John Watson, and that Arthur Conan Doyle was Watson's literary agent, and that it just goes from there. And it's really important to remember you don't just completely take leave of your senses when you become a Sherlock Holmes fan. This is all tongue in cheek.

[Chuck Bryant]

Mm.

[Josh Clark]

It's all whimsical. But the way that they treat it is very serious. And they use, like, actual, like, literary analysis and genealogy and all this stuff to basically tease out as much information as they can about the real life Holmes and real life Watson. And they call the whole thing the Grand Game. And it's definitely a cornerstone of being a Sherlock Holmes fan.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's super cool. And I think the sort of origins of that were in 1911, when a guy named Ronald Knox wrote a spoof, Textual Analysis. And he would, you know, that's where it became. He would say things like sacred writings. And that's when the official canon was born. And like you said, that lives on today with the grand game and specifically the biggest group. I mean, there's plenty of groups. There's no shortage. I'm sure, there's one in your town. Unless you know you live in like the tiniest town imaginable. There's probably a Sherlock Holmes group there you get together with. But the most famous one is called the Baker Street Irregulars out of New York. It is an invitation only group. It was founded in 1934 and it seems like it's pretty hard to get in. Isaac Asimov was in, FDR was in there. I believe the one in England is called the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. And they get together, they dress up, they have some dinner and they play the grand game. Which sounds like a lot of fun, quite honestly.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I read an article, I could not find it for the life of me where the author, the journalist was invited to one of these meetings and it just sounded so fun and so cool. But yeah, I think it's interesting that the American chapter is like the founding fan chapter, fan club of Sherlock Holmes, not the British one. And they actually are so essentially powerful that they. They actually grant like official status to other chapters. Elsewhere I found one called the Shaka Sherlockians of Hawaii. They were basically given official status by the Baker Street Irregulars. It's a great website. If you want to know more in a lot of detail about Sherlock Holmes, go check out Shaka Sherlockians. It's pretty fun.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, we mentioned adaptations. There have been tons of them. I said there have been over 20 film or TV versions of the Hound of the Baskervilles, specifically the first one. And yes, you are correct, that was a stage version in 1899 from William Gillette where the line elementary, my dear fellow first came along. And I mean, you name it. How many movies have there been total? Do we even know? I'm sure somebody knows.

[Josh Clark]

A million. I think a lot. Yeah. I'm not. Yes. Do you bet your sweet bippy that there's a Sherlockian out there who knows exactly how many movies there are?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I think depending on who you ask. Taste differs, obviously, but the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes from 1970 from Billy Wilder is generally regarded as like one of the best adaptations. Even though it was a box office failure and it had a pretty troubled production. It just brought a little a wit to it, thanks to Billy Wilder. Obviously that hadn't been there before. And I think Wilder definitely hammered home the subtext that Holmes perhaps is gay.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He later said that he regretted not coming out and actually saying it. That was definitely his intent. But it's left ambiguous in the movie and just reading about the movie in and of itself is Pretty interesting. But it's one of the reasons why it's so beloved by Sherlock fans is the attention to detail that's, like, true to the canon is unparalleled. Like, no one, I don't think has ever really done it that well. Even though the actual plot and everything that's going on the point is just so wildly outside of the canon. It's a weird amalgam of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and that was. Robert Stevens played Holmes in that film. One of the more beloved performances was Jeremy Brett in the 84 through 94 Granada television series. I don't really know how people feel about the Guy Ritchie stuff. I haven't seen those movies or read much criticism.

[Josh Clark]

You haven't seen the movies?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I've literally never seen any Sherlock Holmesing or read any Sherlock Holmes sing.

[Josh Clark]

Wow. I don't know if the first one you should see is the Guy Ritchie versions, but they're really interesting interpretations of it. Like they get in fights, like they throw fists and stuff. Like Sherlock Holmes beats people up. It's really interesting. But it also is very true to the canon too. So I think a lot of people actually like it. Like, even Sherlockians.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, maybe. You know what? I have seen something because I forgot. I have seen both of the Enola Holmes films.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, there you go.

[Chuck Bryant]

In which Enola holmes is the 20 year younger sister of Sherlock. I believe she's like 14ish in the movies and played by what's her name, Millie. Bobby Brown, 11 from Stranger Things. And we watched those with the family and Ruby and Emily and I all quite enjoyed those movies.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so you liked those.

[Chuck Bryant]

I did like those. But Sherlock is very adjacent in those films.

[Josh Clark]

No, for sure. I'm just trying to think of what the first thing you should see is. I really don't think it should be the Guy Ritchie ones.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe Hobies and Watson.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. Probably not that one. Despite the clip that I saw, it does seem to not be very well loved.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, Cumberbatch. I like Cumberbatch. He did a modern one, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And actually you mentioned that Billy Wilder kind of brought like a little bit of humor comedy to it that got carried on by Sherlock on BBC. That was Benedict Cumberbatch. I don't know. I can't really recommend what to go into. Hopefully some of our bigger Sherlockian fans can recommend where to start to you, because you really should. You should at least see one thing, if not read one thing and just see what you think.

[Chuck Bryant]

I like Johnny Lee Miller in that elementary sounds interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Do you like Lucy Liu too?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure. She in there?

[Josh Clark]

Well, there you go, my friend. You're going to love Elementary.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think maybe I'll check out one of those. But I mean, there's somebody in my head that I picture from a kid. Would that have been the. The TV show, the one I mentioned is the most beloved portrayal. Maybe.

[Josh Clark]

Jeremy Brett, you weren't a kid in 1984.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wasn't a kid in 1984, no.

[Josh Clark]

You were nearly a grown man at age 14.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was 13. Thank you. That may be the one I'm thinking in my head. Cause I just. When I think in my mind of Sherlock Holmes as a TV portrayal or whatever, this one dude pops into my head and I bet you that's who that is.

[Josh Clark]

Did you watch a lot of Masterpiece theater as a 13 year old?

[Chuck Bryant]

A little bit here and there.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, maybe that is what it was. Yeah. Supposedly he is the one who did the best out of all of them. Interestingly though, Johnny Lee Miller was the one who's portrayed him the most with 154 episodes on that show elementary. That was a little trivia for you.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's Modern Times set, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, that and Sherlock are both set in modern times. And if you go back to the actual stories, they're all set in Victorian England. Even though he was writing them well outside of Victorian England by the time he wrapped them up.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, this all brings up the sort of ending here, is that can anyone just make this? Or do they have to pay for the rights? Or is it still in. Is it in the public domain? And the answer is it's been fairly complicated for a while now. Up until recently, that is.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So his sons, one of their widows, producer and someone else basically got together when Conan Doyle died in 1930 and they were like, mine, mine, mine, mine, mine. And they managed to gather up all the rights to all of the Sherlock Holmes writing, the character, everything, and consolidated it into Conan Doyle Estate limited. And if you had anything that you wanted to do with Sherlock Holmes, you had to go through them and you had to pay them whatever they wanted, essentially. And they ruled Sherlock Holmes intellectual property with an iron fist for almost a century. And they really got a bad reputation for it. But despite that, that just goes to show how popular Sherlock Holmes is. People kept dealing with them to make Sherlock Holmes movies, books, fan fiction, analysis, basically everything.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing. There was one pretty famous case where the movie 7% solution from the 70s from 1974, from director Herbert Ross. Apparently they thought it was in the public domain. And it wasn't.

[Josh Clark]

Man, what a surprise that would have been.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. How do you. I don't know, maybe. I guess things were different back then in 74. But how does this studio not know that when they greenlight it?

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. That one was interesting, though. I looked it up. I was about to ask if you'd seen it, but I know the answer to that. Apparently Sherlock Holmes cocaine use spirals out of control and Watson sends him to Vienna to be cured by Sigmund Freud.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty weird.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's pretty interesting sounding though too. But they ended up making it. I think they just had to pay retroactively for it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's when they really got you over a barrel, but.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I know. But the copyright ran out finally, unambiguously to all Sherlock Holmes stuff. Just this past 2023, I guess, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think initially it ran out in the UK in 2000, and then it was 98 in the US. But there was a family argument that, like. No, he wrote these over a long period of time, over decades. So like the whole thing needs to go expire by the last story he wrote was their argument.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because he was so developed that like, he was a flat character. And really the character of Sherlock Holmes that everybody portrays is the final ones that we copyright too. And I think a judge finally told them to go soak their heads, essentially. He said that what they. Their strategy was a form of extortion.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So they finally lost it. I don't know what they're doing nowadays. Oh, I know what they're doing. They're essentially authenticating new stuff so you can get their blessing and make it like an official Sherlock Holmes mystery that you wrote.

[Chuck Bryant]

But that's why something like Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly's Holmes and Watson could come along. Right. They could just do it all of a sudden.

[Josh Clark]

I think that was. I think they would have had to have paid for it. Cause I think it was from like 2018.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. So even though. Yeah, I guess the family won that argument then, huh?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I don't think they lost too many cases. I think it was quite near the end of the copyright.

[Chuck Bryant]

I gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So I'm sure that they had to pay for the use of that. And I'm sure they lost money on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, I wonder now. I mean, I don't think so far we've seen any, like, abomination where they've, you know, like, they make Mickey Mouse a serial killer. And stuff now. And I'm curious to see if someone's gonna do like, a Sherlock Holmes thing where he's the baddie.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm sure. Some stuff you should know. Listeners went, wow, that's a good idea, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a really bad idea because people would be pretty angry, I would imagine.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you don't want to mess with something like that. He's good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, Will Ferrell's just now recovering.

[Josh Clark]

I want to give a couple of shouts out. First of all, Kyle, our writer Kyle helped us out with this one. So if we got anything wrong, blame Kyle. And then also we heard from friend of the show, Richard Falwell, who wrote in when we first talked about doing a Sherlock Holmes episode on some other episode. And he's like, yes, do and listen to Stephen Fry's audible collection of all of the Sherlock Holmes canon works. He said, even if you don't do that, listen to Stephen Fry's, like, introductions to each of the collections. And I listened to one of them, and he's right. They're amazing. Just charming interpretations of what's going on in these and the way the effect that they had in real life. So you can go out and listen to that on audible. Apparently it's 72 hours long.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow. Well, can you imagine? We can vouch and say that due to our selects episodes on Saturday, sometimes the intro is the best part for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, and one more thing I want to shout out. I guess you haven't seen this either. You have to see this no matter what you think of whatever people tell you to watch or read. See Mr. Holmes eventually with Ian McKellen. Just the most art house of the Sherlock Holmes movies. It's so good. But it's about him retired as a beekeeper, which is part of the canon too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Mm. I love Ian McKellen. So I'll check that out.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, but just put it off to the side. Don't make that the first one you see. Okay, I think that's it, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Great. Sherlock Holmes. I'm going to watch something. I promise everybody. I'm going to watch something.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, write in and let Chuck know what he should watch first.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or read something even better.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, same thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, well, since Chuck said right, that means it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, guys, on the Anaconda episode, you tried to work out how in the heck Green Anaconda has made it to Trinidad when the Caribbean island is separated from Venezuela by mere 7 miles of ocean water. Well, guys, I'm from Trinidad. So maybe I can help. We can easily see Venezuela from certain parts of our country, and that's because Trinidad, unlike the other islands of the Caribbean, is not connected to the ocean floor. It actually rests on the submerged continental shelf that extends from the coastline of Venezuela into the Atlantic Ocean. All the other islands in the Caribbean archipelago are volcanic, reaching up from the sea floor, but not us. Ours is a continental island that was once part of the South American mainland. Essentially, there was a land bridge between Trinidad and Venezuela as recently as the last ice age. As such, our flora and fauna are pretty much identical to those found in Venezuela and even deeper into South America, and hence anacondas, baby. They terrified my childhood because they are in a rainforest and big ones would come into town bordering the forest like where I lived. Anyway, I stopped the podcast mid stream to quickly tell Josh in real time. Your hypothesis was spot on.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. I love emails like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Warmest regards and that is from Ravel.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks Ravel. That was a great, great email and we appreciate it. Thanks for clearing that up for us. If you want to be like Ravel, you can send us an email [e-mail].

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[D]

You listen to your favorite show.

[Robert Lamb]

This episode is brought to you by Hendrix Ginn. Hey, this is Robert Lamb from Stuff to Blow youw Mind. Here at Stuff to Blow youw Mind, we celebrate curiosity. And that's why I want to take a minute to talk about Hendrix Gin, the refreshingly curious choice for marvelous summer cocktails. Hendrix is crafted with care in Scotland by master distiller Ms. Leslie Gracie, and is uniquely infused with rose and cucumber. To learn more about Hendrix and to find more cocktail recipes, visit hendrixgen.com US Drink Responsibly Hendrix Gin, 44% alcohol by volume 2025, imported by William Grant & Sons Incorporated, New York, NY.

[Dexter Thomas]

Are there any pictures of you online? Then you could already be in a massive police database without even knowing it.

[F]

Clearview scrapes together images from Facebook, from LinkedIn, from Venmo accounts.

[Dexter Thomas]

I'm Dexter Thomas, host of Kill Switch, a podcast about how living in the future is affecting us right now.

[F]

Police. They are trusting the software with this magical ability to lead them to the right suspect.

[Dexter Thomas]

In this episode, we dive into how cops are using AI and facial recognition and sometimes getting it wrong and putting innocent people behind bars.

[F]

So if your accuser is this algorithm, but you're not even being told that it was used, let alone alone given any of the details about how it works.

[Dexter Thomas]

Listen to Kill Switch on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[H]

OpenAI is a financial abomination, a thing that should not be an aberration, a symbol of rot at the heart of Silicon Valley. And I'm gonna tell you why on my show, Better Offline, the rudest show in the tech industry where we're breaking down why OpenAI, along with other AI companies, are dead set on lying to your boss that they they can take your job. I'm also going to be talking with the greatest minds in the industry about all the other ways the rich and powerful are ruining the computer. Listen to Better offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast.