A Geek History of Time - Episode 138 - Sherlock Holmes and British Empire Part I

Episode Date: December 18, 2021

And we begin with good days, sir. Geeks come in all shapes and sizes, and that they come into all kinds of things that happen. I was thinking more about the satanic panic. By the scholar Gary Guy-Gak's. Well, wait, hold on. I said good days, sir. Not defending Roman slavery by any stretch.

No, but that's bad. Let him vote. Fuck off. When historians, and especially British historians, want to get cute, it's in there. OK. It is not worth the journey. No. MUSIC

This is a geek history of time. Where we connect an artery to the real world, my name is Ed Blalock. I am a world history and English teacher up here in northern California. And I am in the final stages. I think I feel comfortable enough now that things are rolling along smoothly. I can say it. We are in the final stages now of closing escrow on the house that I mentioned we were hunting for before.

So we're very, very excited about that. And we're trying to get our little boy to kind of understand what is gonna be happening because he's seen the new place and when we talk about it, where we don't think he's quite understanding the idea that that's gonna be home now in a few weeks. So we're kind of trying to explain that concept to him and sometimes he seems to kind of get it and sometimes he doesn't like this evening. He and my wife had to have a conversation about no, no, we're going to we're going to wait to pack your toys up because you want to play with them until we're going to wait until the end, but all of your toys are going to go with us.

So he kind of gets it enough to kind of get worried about that, but then he kind of doesn't. So but he's three. So you know, it's a big concept. How about you? Well, I'm Damien Harmony. I've been in the same place for a go-God coming up on 14 years now and yet I've had to refinance four times. So I'm financially basically in same boat as you guys. I do have a recommendation for you with him. Go somewhere, get, take him to Builder Bear or something like that and get him a new house, stuffy or lovy. And this is the thing that he needs to show to the new house. And he will then transfer some of that anxiety into the bear. And he has something to tend to and on and on and on. So, offload it onto that for him a bit. bit and also he gets this cool thing because yes we're going into a new place and he'll need it's his solemn duty to and you know obviously very the language is you need to you don't take everything so seriously.

or this new thing is not afraid of anything in the new house. So did you take it to each room? Did you make sure it knows where it's going to sleep tonight? And on and on and on. And let him bring it to the table for dinner for the next week. And then slowly fade that out as well. But strongly recommend, because it's essentially you're giving him a talisman, which has a lot of helpful aspects to it for you.

For a big transition like that, because he's literally only ever known your home. So that's a big deal. So, and that way he's got something to be in charge of, to hold on to, and to tend to, to keep him out of the damn way when the moving happens, when the people come in grabbing the boxes. Okay. So all the things, it gives them something to hold.

So. Yeah, that makes sense. Yep, and thank you for coming for to dad talk. That's a different podcast. Yeah, you know what our audience knows that. So, whatever. Yeah, so. So, what do you got going on?

Who the hell are you? Oh, I'm a teacher up here in northern California of drama and Latin and Yeah, I I really don't have much to say other than this I ended the multi-year long campaign with my kids Right, yeah, that ended the D&D session ended and it was an emotional roller coaster for the both of them. It was really neat. I mean, hell, they got to do what most adults playing D&D have never gotten to do, which is to finish a campaign. So it was pretty cool. And what they don't know is what I've lined up for them as far as a gift.

Hopefully, my Christmas, a friend of mine does art last year. He did the portraits of them because there weren't any school pictures. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So his name's Evan T. Lili, L-L-L-E-Y. He's a fantastic artist, free plug here, Evan. But he is, I've contracted him to draw their characters in retirement, sitting on a porch overlooking my daughter's character's monastery that she will have started.

Nice. So, yeah, so, you know. Very cool. Yeah, so by local, feel free to look up Evan T. Lillian, see what you can get. And he does, and he does fantastic work. So very cool. Yeah. So that's all, that's all the news that's fit to print.

We're at the five minute mark. I want to hear what you have to say today. Okay. Well, so I want to know, you tell me, who do you think is the most influential fictional literary character in the history of the popular media? Oh, let's see. Um, I would say Dr. Ellie from Jurassic Park, because her study of Paleobotany and paleoschatology that woman no shit Sherlock I mean she really does oh nice trick yeah nice trick no I would say probably Sherlock Holmes or Hamlet one of the two. Okay, so I want to ask, why Hamlet?

He's so tropeable and he's very much a cut out for, there's so many things that he goes through in those five acts, then you can pull that into any number of other things. Oh, he's going crazy, like Hamlet did. Oh, he's pretending to be crazy crazy like Hamlet did. Oh, he's pretending to be crazy like Hamlet did. Oh, he's ambitiously going after his revenge like Hamlet did. Oh, he's, and he's got enough virtue that you can, you can lie in IZM, whereas Macbeth, I would have said perhaps Macbeth, but he's just a right shit heel the whole time. So, no, no, no, you have to say definitely. He's a right shit. He'll hold time. Uh, I have a Scott friend.

I think he's just, uh, yeah, just a gobshite. Yeah. Just another gobshite. Yeah. So I would say hamlet more than more than Macbeth, but I would say probably given, given how close to the 20th century Sherlock Holmes is and how, how much of a Star Wars fanboy I am and therefore by extension, Thrawn fanboy I am. But also I had friends who watched House,

which I mean, House Holmes, I mean, it didn't take much. Yeah, yeah. You know, and so when you have it, So you lived at 221. Oh, he did. Oh, he's a dress, yeah. Yeah, so there's so many obvious parallels. Yeah, so when you have that many, like, what's the word I'm looking for?

Misynthropic geniuses. In the literature, I would look toward that character. He's still admirable, but he still hits all the quadrants in the same way that Hannibal, that... He loves it when a planet comes together. Yeah, him too. I was thinking, you know, the liver and fava beans. Um, but...

Oh, okay. See, my next one was gonna be Barca. Right, right. You know. Yeah. Um, but no, I think that those characters, and also detective stories were really big in the 1920s. Um, and really big now because both times were times where the world was being overtaken by fascism

And we stand to like those kinds of things at that time Okay, all right, I I appreciate all there's that you managed to compress so many layers of analysis into such a concise There's, you managed to compress so many layers of analysis into such a concise thing there. It's like a pearl onion. It's not full sized onion. It's a cocktail onion. I found it. Yeah. I have to make up for my nine episode zombie exploration.

This is true. This is true. So here's the thing. You're, you're on the money with where I was going with this. Sherlock Holmes is probably at least for the modern popular media. He is likely the most influential literary fictional character that there is. And I apologize for the noise in the background. Folks, if you haven't, if you haven't queued on it yet, we are recording remotely this evening.

And so that's the sound of my wife telling my son that he needs to stop babbling and go to bed. And him, so. Objecting for cipherously. Well, protesting his innocence. Ah, I wasn't babbling. Trying to, yeah, basically. So, but yeah, the, the apparel's recording from home.

There you go. So in any event, Sherlock Holmes, it could be argued that Holmes is just on a media level. Holmes was the first franchise character. Oh, yeah, you got multiple stories about the same guy. Yeah, you can go through. OK, yeah. Four novels and 56 short stories.

Good Lord. Yeah, that's a lot of a period of time. Yeah, over a period of time spanning from 80. Hold on. I have it in front of me here. From 1886 until the 1920s. So is that before or after Jack the River? I've been in the process for 40 years. Did is that before or after Jack the River? Did that start before or after Jack the River?

You know what? I didn't look up. Okay, I'll tend to that. But yeah. Okay, so it's 1886 you said. Yeah, it was a sudden scarlet. Okay. Because when it was written, it was published in November of 1887. Okay.

And so right out the gate, he was the first commercial franchise character in that kind of way, in that he, you know, this long series of short stories about the same character, all of them being wildly popular. Previously, in the generation prior to that, you had had writers like Dickens, who had been, I mean, Dickens was hugely productive in the work that you put out. Right. He would have won very, very long novel, published in serial and then moved on to another set of characters,

then have another long novel, the cipherous, wordy novel, because it was paid by the word. Oh, did not realize that. Yeah, Dickens was paid by the literal of the paid by the word. And so, so if you go back and now knowing this, if you go back and reread anything, he wrote, you can tell he never settled for

one adjective when he could use three. But he was, so he was the celebrity. Okay. Dickens the author was the celebrity and Also, he was one of the first celebrities to branch out into making his own brand of alcohol Yeah, I know where you're going with this. Yeah, no, he comes from you literally every Christmas every Christmas Yeah, no, he competed with another man down the street named Cummins To both see who can make the best cider. So see, that's a new variation. I know, all you know, it's a new year. So, so, but, but Charles Dickens was the, the celebrity. He was the one who had the following. He was the one who had the fans, and they loved his writing. They loved his characters, but he was the focus. Conan Doyle was famous

and was well known and popular and everything, but everybody loved the character of Holmes. Of Holmes? Okay. Okay. If that makes sense, the celebrity was less Conan Doyle. Celebrity was more of the character. Right. In the way that everybody knows who Captain America is sadly not everybody in mainstream culture knows who Jack Kirby was. Right. Okay. That makes sense to make to make a comparison. Yeah. No, I'm very much that kind of person I mean with the exception of like you know Jack Kirby Stanley and Bill fingered all those guys

but I Thank you for mentioning you're welcome. Absolutely makes me happy Well, you know, he also made alcohol anyway He was partnering with deepens, but anyway, but I with the exception of very few creators, I actually am much more partial to characters as well. So I completely understand people's fixation on a character more so than the creator. That makes sense to me. Yeah, and so now the other thing is As far as homes is important Without homes we don't get Batman

I could see that yeah, okay, we don't we don't get Batman. We don't get hercule poireau. We don't get Like name a detective hero. Oh that one guy anywhere in pop of our culture One guy that we saw on like masterpiece theater who New judo, but he wrestled with a guy by the waterfalls And then he had a friend that was a doctor. I forget his name. Anyway that guy when I was growing up I barely watched when my parents watched I'm sure Fuckin hate you. Well, what about that other guy with the mustache, Poirot? I forget. Who put the goal of course you must pronounce his name. You're a latinist. So,

you know, French's, French's wasted on you. Yeah. In your defense, of course, the French don't know how to spell like anything. But yes, Poirot, the Belgian. Oh, the author of that, Porenz, he also was competing alcohol. God almighty. There's also the Netherlands guy, five guides in. I feel dirty for laughing at that. So we don't get any any detective hero. We don't get Batman. And we don't get because of the nature of who Holmes was as a hero. He was this genius polymath, new and awful lot about literally everything. And on top of that, he was, as you've already mentioned, an expert at Jiu Jitsu was a champion

stick fighter in a crack shot with a pistol. He was all of these things. We don't get the pulp heroes. We don't get Doc Savage. We don't get the other, the other kind of proto superheroes. So it could be argued that Sherlock Holmes was the proto-proto-superhero in some ways. And so there are multiple genres of popular fiction, popular entertainment that he's got his fingerprints all over. Ironically enough. And until you dust for them, it can be hard to spot them.

Ooh, I like. So I want to talk a little bit about the genesis of the character and about Arthur Conan Doyle, his creator. Ooh, this I know some about, so you might hear interruptions for me. Okay, yeah, that's awesome. Cause I love, I'm a big Houdini fan. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

So Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 in Edinburgh. Okay. Scotland. Now his parents were Irish and very Catholic. He had a Jesuit education, which, par for the course, turned him into an agnostic before he eventually described to you spiritualism, came a mystic and a spiritualist. Now he again had a very high-end education, and while he was studying for a medical degree,

he served as a ship's doctor aboard a whaler in 1880. After completing his studies in 1881, he again signed on as a ship's doctor for a vessel headed to West Africa. Then after he got those adventures out of his system, he tried to settle down and run a medical practice, but unfortunately working as a doctor on land didn't work out for him. I don't know whether his bedside manner was bad or just his business sense, but several attempts at running his own practice failed.

He wound up going sort of back in the way that it worked in Victorian England. He got certified as an ophthalmologist, eventually tried to start a practice as an eye doctor, but that failed as well. But fortunately for him, he had fiction to fall back on to pay the bills. He had his very first work published in 1879 in a magazine called Chambers Edinburgh Journal. The story was the mystery of Cisassa Valley, which was very much a Victorian adventure edge of the earth, you know, white man going off into the jungle kind of story. edge of the earth, you know, white man going off into the jungle kind of story. He continued to write short stories and essays throughout his medical schooling and his time failing at running a medical practice. And in 1886, he wrote a study in Scarlett, the first home story, and made the equivalent, the modern day equivalent of 2,900 pounds for its sale to ward and lock publishers,

who put it out the following year in an annual publication called Beaton's Christmas Annual. Okay. And it sold very, very well. The sign of four was the next home's novel published in 1890. And then the Strand magazine published 12 homes short stories between July of 1891 and June of 1892, which were collected in the adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1892. Now, I have several historical background questions. Do you want me to hold them for now?

Or would you like me to ask? No, no, bring them up, bring them up. Okay, you said his first publication was 1879, and it was the journey at the end of blah, blah, blah. Yeah, the Sassam Alley. Okay, this is a Sassam Alley. The mystery of, I was absolutely combining it with like Marvel comics, obviously.

But okay, so that's 1879. Isn't that right around the same time as the battle? No, Omdermon was 1896. I'm just thinking the Berlin conference was like 1885. So you've got a whole bunch of discovering the Niles source. Oh yeah. Like all the, you know. Yeah, this is a period, this is the period during which Cecil Rhodes, and I'm going to get into this in just a minute. Oh okay okay. But this is this is this is a time period during which Cecil Rhodes was busy trying to build a railroad from the Cape to Cairo. Right. Was the was the, you know, slogan. Right. Right. Right. And, and, you know, utilizing the British East India Company to privately purchase up territory, basically across the length of Africa,

in central and eastern Africa, in order to try to accomplish that goal. Okay, so yeah, you've got huge... So yeah. I mean, this is the time where the English are hyper proud and treated as exploration type stuff. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so, and then you said he gets going on Sherlock Holmes in 85 is the first time we see Holmes hit the page? 86. 86, okay. And actually we see, so he wrote the story in 86. It was published at the end of 87. At the end of 87, oh see, I think that's really interesting because like at the end of 87, and the end of 87. Oh, see, I think that's really interesting because like at the end of 87,

and I'm sorry if this is like way too granular, when in 87. November. No shit. Yeah. Is there an actual date on that? Because you're getting real close to Bloody Sunday. Like right up on the pitch.

No, no, no, I don't have a specific week or anything. Wow. Okay. I'm just wondering if there's some sort of reaction to that because, I mean, there had been a whole bunch of political unrest and demonstrations, etc., etc. From 86 on up, because you had, you remember, there were pogroms in Russia and you had an influx of Jewish immigrants Yeah, into what's it called white hall? No, not white hall white White chapel white chapel. Yeah white chapel and you have this huge like growth of white chapel and it's like wildly overcrowded to the point where you have like I think like half the kids don't make it to age five there. It's really, really bad.

And like 86 is when the demonstrations start and the police go, we should on the Irish in 87. And there's just, and there's because you've got all that influx of immigration, you've also gotten influx of vice, not because immigrants bring it, but because overcrowding leads to you. Yeah.

Okay, and because you mentioned White Chapel. Yeah, I bet you that's why I was thinking Jack the Ripper. I, yes. Yeah. I mentioned White Chapel. I had because earlier you had asked about Jack the Ripper and the murders took place in 1888. So it's not a reaction to the murders, but I wonder if his

popularity is going up due to the public imagination being grabbed by these murders. Well, okay, so he was the character was really popular right out the gate. Okay, okay, right out the gate. He sold really well right out the gate. And now, let's see. Now is the, is this a point at which I can, I can point out why people seem to love true crime. And, and I know it's not true crime,

but why people seem to love these kinds of stories. Or, okay. So in the, I know this from the thirties, from the history of the thirties., from the history of the 30s, and from the history of these last 10 years, quite honestly. And this is what pinged it for me. So feel free to sit down and take a sip of your common cider. But sorry, you're a Dickens man.

I apologize. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, you're a Dickens man. I apologize. Yeah, yeah, yeah, heat it up get a get a nice warm Dickens citer and sit back but The look that I'm getting from you so Anyway, so um, okay in in the 2000 later half of the 2010s a huge upsurge in true crime podcasts came about.

Yeah. Statsurgy don't get murdered. Yeah, like to the point where you're like every other podcast is a true crime podcast. I started looking into why this was. And I found that this was not the first time people got super interested in true crime who done it mystery type stuff. And it turns out in the 1920s and the 1930s specifically, in Germany, it was the first or second most popular genre of like dime novels essentially, of reading.

Now to keep in mind, they didn't have podcasts back then. They only had Photoshop. So, but the fact that you had this very, very staunch interest in that same genre, and then we're backing it up another 50 years. So, you know, we're doing a bit of the math, but you're backing it up another 50 years. And I'm seeing a huge crackdown in England on political unrest.

And there, I mean, shit, you had a czar get murdered assassinated by anarchists. You had, you know, you've got, we're 40 years past the age of revolutions, but you're getting bloodier and bloodier attacks on heads of state. Oh, yeah. In America, you had Charles Gato in 1881.

I mean, you've got multiple attempts on the heads of the lives of the heads of state, and you have this huge clamping down in multiple countries, Western European and Eastern European countries, huge clamping down on the public in many ways. So law and order being established with a firm and iron hand. And now you've got this interest in, now this is true in the 1930s and 20s, this interest in true crime slash who done it novels. And the same thing can be said in the mid 2010s,

you have these enormous riots and uprisings of people and you have the same thing in the 30s, uprisings of people. And they just get smacked down by the police state over and over again in multiple locations throughout America and you have this interest in these podcasts. And then you have the same thing in the 1880s.

You have the uprisings from 86 to 88. You have everything that all the influx that was happening in White Chapel and you had Bloody Sunday. And so I think this is a really interesting, many years apart thing, but it keeps happening in interest in who done it because it creates this idea of there is somebody out there smarter than me. I can offload intellectually what's going on with the disorder that I'm seeing in the

hopes that they bring about order. Yeah, well, there's something very appealing. I'm trying to remember where it was that I read this, but the idea stands here. There's something very appealing about the idea of somewhere there being a dog-ed detective. Yes. Dog-ed, dogged, seeker, seeker for truth and justice, who, if anything, if something happens to somebody, they're going to be There will be a record the right word. There will be a reckoning. Okay, and he will help to state to do it

He will help the police to do it on some level. I think I think my own interpretation of it. Mm-hmm is less status Well, you're less a leftist. Sure. You're right. True. My historical, I have gradually come to the understanding that, okay, there are some areas where Marx did have a point as historical analysis.

Okay, fine. Yeah. But I think my own take on it is, and I will say, there is a certain level of class analysis involved in my own interpretation. Because the biggest audience for true crime stuff are middle class, it's a bourgeois audience. The people who had the money,

yeah, the people who had the money. Yeah. The people who had the money to buy the dime novels were either upper lower class or solidly bourgeois middle class readers. And there is nothing so concerned for the maintenance of order as any social class stuck in the middle. That's true because they know who's above them that they could reach to, but they're scared to death of who's below them that could grab them and pull them down. Yeah, and and their very existence as a or their very position within the hierarchy depends on society remaining stable. Yeah. Because the very first thing that happens is anytime an empire falls apart,

the middle class disappears. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and I would say it's the way around. We can argue. Well, yeah, we can argue about cause and effect. Yeah. You know, and I would say it's the other way around. We can argue. Well, yeah, we can argue about cause and effect. Yeah, you know, on a subconscious level, anybody in the middle class understands that. Yeah, yeah. When you hear dogs barking, you have certain kind of, yeah, yeah. It's interesting that you bring up your Marxist leanings because. I have one.

I get a toaster now, right? Now, I, but it's interesting. I'm a leftist or you? I'm a fucking toaster. No. Well, it's a toaster so we can make an entire loaf for everyone. Okay. But no, but marks came out with the second volume of DOS Copy-Tal in 1885.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I just, that's the thing. And Angles and Angles published another volume of the condition of the English working class in 1892. Yes. Yes. So which... Which... Big changes. I'm which I'm going to get into. Okay, cool. So Holmes is this incredibly popular character. So Holmes is this incredibly popular character. And he made Doyle an incredibly wealthy man. Doyle became one of the best paid writers of his era. But Doyle was really deeply ambivalent about Holmes.

Oh wow. Like part of the reason Doyle became so well paid was you know magazines and publishers would come to and go, He was part of the reason that I became so well paid was, magazines and publishers would come to him and go, hey, we want you to write a home story. And he'd say, okay, and in his head, he'd say, okay, reasonable price would be a hundred pounds. Mm-hmm. And I'm pulling numbers completely out of my butt.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, but, you know, we did not have a number. If a reasonable price was a hundred pounds, he'd charge him 250. And they'd say, okay, wow. Because they knew, because they knew the moment they were able to say we have a new home story, whatever publication it was, whether it was a magazine or it was a new novel or whatever it was, they knew they were gonna make huge

about some money on it because the character was just so beloved. So it was a worthwhile investment for them to pay him whatever he had. To pay him literally whatever he had. And he's like trying to, wow, I saw the opposite thing happen in professional wrestling ones, where it was, I don't want this guy coming to our group.

I'm gonna offer him an insultingly low rate and the guy took it without blinking. He's like, shit. Yep. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great kind of mirror image there. So the strand, so okay, I'm getting ahead of myself in 1893. So remember, Sinophore was in 1890. Okay. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was in 1893. So remember, Sinophore was in 1890. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was in 1891. And sorry, between July of 1891, a June of 1892, and that's the first collection of Holmes short stories.

short stories. So in 1893, he got so tired of writing the character that he wrote the story, the final problem, which famously ends with him wrestling with Moriarty and falling down the Rackenbach Falls, presumably to his death. And he was like, no, I'm done. Killed him off. killed him off. And the thing was, he had so many, Doyle had this as this contentious relationship with Holmes, I think partly because there there was such a large amount of himself in the character. Because Doyle was a very much larger than life kind of character. He was this avid sportsman athlete, mountain climber. I mean, he did all this crazy shit. Like, he was this gentleman adventurer, kind of guy. And Holmes, you know, embodied a certain amount of that. And it was like he just got sick of writing about that character, you know, in that way, like, you know, when somebody reflects perhaps parts of

your own personalities that you don't like. Sure, or that you're tired of talking about. Yeah. And so anyway, but he had this terribly ambivalent relationship with a character at one point in correspondence with his mother He mentioned that he was thinking about killing the character off and this is in 92 Okay, and his mother and his mother wrote back to him going no you can't you mustn't You know partly because of course, you know everybody loves the character So his mother probably liked the character too, but there's also the fact that, you know, you're, you're going to kill gravy train. Yeah, no kidding. You know, don't do it.

You're printing money. Yeah. You know, um, so real quick, real quick, um, his career followed that of Watson's. But his personal, but it, but, but he's in Watson was much more successful as a doctor. Well, yeah, but like Everything that you were saying in the beginning about his career. I was like, oh, that's Dr. Watson Yeah, and then and then like hard right turn to to homes and you're like, yeah, he embodied all those things and it seems to me like I don't know he he inserted himself in the story twice. He's looking at, you know, inside

of you, there are two wolves. Kind of a little bit. I think there might be something on there. I think the function of Watson is one where, you know, the whole role of Watson plays in all the stories is that we have to have a normal human being there to act as an interlobe Q-Tor. Okay. For this crazy genius that we're following. Yeah, I mean, you've set up Robin and Batman there. Kind of, yeah.

And so... He's the Winston Z. Moore of the pair. Yeah. Like, yeah. There you go. And the thing is, for the readers of the Holmes novels, because again, we're talking about the Victorian era, a man of Watson's station. Uh-huh. He's a professional, you know, he's a lower ranked gentleman,

a lower ranked gentleman, basically, is of solidly middle class profession, you know, respectable, all of these kinds of things. And so that that was, you know, number one, kind of the way for for homes to have the audience better, identify with what was going on in the story. And number two, they'll always talk about, you know, right about what you know. Right. So, you know, having his narrator be like him, a medical doctor, and, you know, kind of, you know, something of a man of action, you know, makes sense in that way. But I think, yeah, so basically, Doyle got got bored with Holmes. Yeah, I can see why. This is what it comes down to. Partly because everything he was putting out or half of everything

or three quarters of everything he was putting out during that time period was home stuff. And he had this this fantastically huge vast imagination. And he had all these other ideas for stuff he wanted to write. He really wanted to write historical fiction. And he has a two two other series that are the best known that he did. There are the Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, which are first-person short stories in novellas, written as the reminiscences of a Napoleon French cavalryman. Oh, you, you stated him out. The English version. Oh, yeah, Sharp. Yeah. Yeah, so, version. Oh, yeah, sharp.

Yeah. Yeah, so Richard Sharp is the, yeah, is the English answer to Pre-Advicious Brick Adirgerard, written with much less sense of humor. The adventures of Pre-Advicious Brick Adirgerard are very, I don't want to say comedic, but they're light and they're kind of fluffy. The sharp novels are much more post-Vietnam, gritty or sucks kind of stories. But yes, and then Doyle's other sort of series, he wrote basically two novels. We're the novels of the white company, which were a medieval 15th century, 1400s, you know, adventures during the Hundred Years War.

Right, right. And so that was what he really wanted to write. And bringing to your Gerard became a very popular character, but never got anywhere near the level of popular love that Holmes had. And when he killed Holmes off in order to write these other characters, he got hate mail. And in a very Victorian note, it should be noted that at least one letter from a middle-class lady called him directly a brute for killing off homes, which for the time was quite the strong language for her respectable lady to be using. Yes. You know, to us of course living in the,

you know, 2020s, it's so quaint. Yeah. You know, so innocent. Like did anybody actually threaten to kill him? Like how did they, how did they threaten to kill him? Did they threaten to cut us out off and fuck us throughout? Like, no, then like, no, he doesn't have anything

to complain about. Like, no, you're starting to know. You know, then like no, he doesn't have anything complaint about like no, you start, you know, the internet has taken hate mail to a whole other kind of level. You know, for ill, not done if you could say for good or ill, no, for ill. But anyway, but he actually so so this, this is also a precedent setter in that he did something the fandom didn't like and you know, he got hate mail. The Strand magazine, which had been one of the big publishers of home stories, and had

been the magazine that published the final problem, they lost 20,000 subscriptions in protest. Wow. Wow. Like to the extent that they suffered very serious financial hardship. Yeah. Yeah. And so, now the funny thing is, I had not realized it took this long, but in 1903, he brought Holmes back for the adventure

of the empty house. And that was when, okay, he never really died. He's been in hiding to try to find all of Moriarty's followers and whatever. Okay. But in 1901, so eight years after he killed him off, he broke down and wrote the hound of the Baskervilles, which was set before, like it was consciously stated in the story, that this is before his encounter with Moriarty at the record box falls.

Right. So, Kayle, give you another story, but I'm not bringing it back to life. Then two years later, it was like, yeah, all right, finding it never really died. So is this the first prequel? Is this the first prequel? Well, it's not really a prequel, because it happens in the midst of the continuity of the other stories that were already ex-cat. But it could be, well, the empty house is certainly the first example of a retcon.

Right. He's not really dead. I would say the New Testament might be, but I get where you go. Not cool. Not cool. Dr. Nellie, that's just completely wrong, but anyway. So, to get back to talking about Holmes' genesis as a character, he was based in large part on two specific figures. One of them, well both of them were mentors of Doyle's while he was in medical school. Joseph Bell was a surgeon at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. And he was on the cutting edge at the time of the use of science

introduction. And I'm sorry, I'm I'm misreading my own notes. So some of his characteristics and his tricks of looking somebody up and down, noticing details and then popping off with, oh, well, how is your trip to fill in the blank? Like, how did you know that? Well, I can see that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that,

that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that was one of them. He had this professor who used deduction in that way. And then he also had, as a kind of instructor, mentor figure, was the chair of medical jurisprudence at the medical school of the University of Edinburgh, where he went went was Sir Henry Little John. All of these guys are scots by the way. I'm just going to throw it out there. Hey, you know, and Little John was the one who was on the cutting edge of using science, scientific methods for deduction, because he served as police surgeon and medical officer of health in the city of Edinburgh.

So those are two, so those are the two folks that are often pointed to as the real life inspirations for the character. Conan Doyle himself pointed to August Dupan, who had no no no bells. No nothing yet. Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe is actually the inventor of the modern detective story. And his and his detective character was a Frenchman named August DuPan, who utilized deduction in a way similar to Holmes, he's kind of the Erscherlock Holmes. And there was another literary figure, a COQ, who was another detective character in popular

fiction at the time. But neither one of these guys ever became nearly as popular as Holmes. Who wrote the LeCoc character? I got to look that up. Okay. But do you know if it was an American or not? No, it was a Frenchman. Okay, because I know that American depiction of French people in the 1800s tended to be

that they're more erudite and, frankly, some sort of lconic savior of the, of the, of the story because of the institutional memory of the American Revolution. Yeah, that makes sense. So, yeah. So, so now, before I get any further into my thesis about Holmes, we got to talk about the British Empire. We got to talk about the British Empire. We got to talk about the British

Empire, we got to talk about the Industrial Revolution. All right. So next week, we're going to get to your thesis then because I know you and I have both done a lot of study on these two things. Yeah. All right. So to talk about the British Empire, I got I got to break it kind of down into kind of phases because the thing is at the time of Holmes's creation, the British Empire was in a very specific position in the empire had a very specific view of themselves and of their imperial status. And to kind of get to how that came to be, we've got to talk about how the empire came into being. So first of all, the very, very like earliest beginnings of imperial aspirations for England started in 1584. Elizabeth I of course was constantly in this, sometimes it was a shooting war, sometimes it wasn't competition with Spain. Right. And in the 1500s, Spain and Portugal, between the two of them were the major powers of the world. Yes. And so Elizabeth sent out expeditions to kind of claim territory in the Americas. John Cabot went north to try to find a route the northern, northern passage. And Walter Rale found the Rowan out colony in 1584, which famously failed.

Right. James Town got founded in 1607 by the Virginia company, which named for the Virgin Queen. Virgin Queen. Yes. And then in 1624, 1627, 1628, Caribbean colonies were founded in St. Kits, Barbados, and Nevis. And those were the first British colonies to become truly commercially successful. Right. Because they figured out about sugarcane plantations. And Sugar was a way to print money during this period. Because sugar leads to molasses, which leads to rum. You've got a lot going on there and I've never mind just the deliciousness of sugar. But rum is easily transportable. It's objectively weighed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's as easy to transport and easily converted into. Yeah. Sure. From there. So yeah.

And then over the course of the 1600s, the colonies that gradually got founded up and down, what we refer to as the eastern seaboard, they wound up attracting lots of settlers because there was lots of farmland. And so their populations grew very rapidly, but the Caribbean colonies stayed more lucrative and financially important. The Royal African Company was founded in 1672 to facilitate slash monopolize the African slave trade that provided labor for the Caribbean colonies and the plantation colonies in the southern colonies of North America. Now is this before or after the British East Indies company?

Okay, so the East Indie company was actually founded in 1600. Okay, yeah, that India Company was actually founded in 1600. Okay, yeah, that's what I thought. The East India Company was long time before that. Yeah. And that was focused on trade literally in the East Indies or in and around, you know, what is today, Southeast Asia. But it was also the, or the prototypical

limited liability corporation stock market. I think it's the liability. Yeah, but also are you asking what that is or? No, no. Oh, okay. Yeah, it started the stock market, if I recall correctly, in England. So people literally bought stock in the company.

And so when the dividends would go up. You had to be painting with a broad brush. Yes. Pending with a broad brush. Yes. But it was the first one that was publicly traded, maybe it might be the right way to put it, because it was opened up to people

and then they were able to raise capital. And so that became the model for all the ones that came later. So it would make sense that after the British East Indies company, they figured out to make a way to make it profitable in the West Indies, essentially. Oh, yeah. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And that, yeah.

So, yeah, there had been partnerships and, you know, hey, I know a guy who's putting together an expedition, you can buy shares and there had been, but yeah, you are correct that the East India Company was what, I don't wanna say popularized, but in the technical sense of popularized, like made available to a population. Yes. That's, yeah, that makes sense.

population. Yes. That's yeah, that makes sense. So British slavers transported a third, a third of slaves sold across the Atlantic between to an 1807, which was when Britain had lots of slavery in 1807. Wait, what was the first date? 1672. Wow. Okay. To 1807. Got it. Yeah. All right. And that's three and a half million people. Yeah. And that's just the people that were stolen and then put into bondage. Never mind the ones who were then born. Born. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and basically as soon as they found the company in 1672, the British built forts at strategic points in West Africa at James Island, Acra, and Bunt's Island, which today

are located in Gambia and other West African countries. Senegal. Yeah, to protect and facilitate the trade. So we have British troops, garrisoning forts, English actually. I need to clarify. Yeah. We have English troops, garrisoning forts, therefore the English slave trade. Now, that tagline about English troops

changes very rapidly in 1706 and 1707, when the acts of union were passed by first the English parliament and then the Scottish parliament. Britain, not Britain, sorry, England and Scotland had been two separate kingdoms united under one monarch since 1603, so for over a century. King James I. Yeah, or if you're Scott James the sixth But they had had separate they had separate parliaments

the acts of union basically dissolve the Scottish parliament and and Sent everything unified everything in in parliament in London right and Turned England and Scotland into the United Kingdom, which is the nucleus of Great Britain, which included Ireland as a possession of the British crowd. Right. Also Wales, which had its own identity, sort of, but had been part of England for a couple hundred years, several hundred years by that time, by the English since the Edward Kings. So in 1714, Britain was on the winning side of the War of the Spanish Succession,

which was ended with the Treaty of Utrecht, and that handed over territory in modern-day Canada gave Britain control of Gibraltar, which gave them control of who got to go in and out of literature and into the Atlantic. And from the Spanish, they gained a concession of being allowed to sell slaves in Spanish America. So Florida, Mexico, Colombia, Mexico went way higher before. So yeah, well, way further north. Yeah, way further north. Yeah. And so India is its own pot of curry. It's a whole separate is its own pot of curry. It's a whole separate sphere of expansion. Right. For a couple of hundred years, Britain and France both claimed different spheres of control.

And then, and this is all because the Mughal Empire in India was in a state of decline. Because of Orangeseb and yeah. Yes, yeah. And so the British and the French were essentially taking chunks of spheres of influence. And the same way that they were taken over spheres of influence. And the French bet on the wrong horse in the 1750s and in 1757 Britain defeated the Nauwab of Bengal at the Battle of Plessy. And the French had been backing him after that that basically broke French power in India.

Right. And that made the British East India company the Hezumon. Yeah, and I'd like to point out that it was very much largely the corporation and its private army that did a lot of the beginning fighting that then pulled the British army into having to do the fighting. So it was, I mean, thank goodness we've all grown so that it's not these really large corporations pulling entire governments into war and sending young men off to die and killing countless people in their native lands and starting 30 year famines, which they did. They actually, I don't know if you're aware of that. Yeah,

in the 17 mid 1700s, there was the family that killed 30 million people that the British East Indie Company basically caused. Yes. Yeah. So good times, good times. Yeah. So the British East India Company defeated France with the help and support of the British government. Yes.

Yeah. help and support of the British government. Yes. And with a very large C-poi army commanded by English officers. Yes. And so at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, which we in the United States get taught as the French and Indian War. But it was actually a global conflict, boys and girls. It could be considered almost the first world war. So in 1763, France was basically crippled. Yes. And they just, they couldn't compete any further in India. And the East India Company armies made up largely of sepoise commanded by British officers, like I mentioned. And now at this point, we start seeing Scott's Irishman and Welsh taking on those roles for the East India Company as part of the Empire. And so they now dominate the subcontinent. And in some cases, they control it outright, and they have a local director

or local governor, technically answers to some non-corporate British authority, but basically they run things. And then in other places, they rule through client princes who they controlled partly through money and grants and whatever, partly through keeping them armed. And then also through the threat of you are going to do what we tell you to do, or we're going to send our army and you know, kill you. Exactly. Because we can, we've done it before. And so the Napoleonic Wars, at the very beginning of the 19th century now, cemented Britain's

position as the world's greatest imperial power at the time. Spain and Portugal, who had been, you know, the big guys on the block previously, had relied on Britain for their own defense and independence of their own monarchies from Napoleon. And of course by this time Spain had suffered more than one financial collapse and the war of the Spanish succession had been a thing and the Habsburgs were a wreck and like yet so so Spain was already out of the running but this just cemented it. Yeah. And and invented it. Yeah. And, and the, the Napoleonic Wars essentially proved, I'm not going to say that they established it because it was already established, but they proved Britain's maritime dominance of basically the entire planet.

The British Navy beat the brakes off of basically everybody who tried to come at them during the Napoleonic era. And they were what kept Britain from being invaded by Napoleon's armies. Yes. Well that, and there was also, I mean, you can't under argue the influence of British commercialism in their victories, either. The Napoleonic armies were all wearing coats made from British produced wool. Yeah. And cotton that they'd gotten from India. made from British produced wool.

Yeah, and cotton that they've gotten from India. Which we're going to get into in a second. Now we're going to talk about industrialization, but yes. Yeah, I mean, so they're trying to invade England wearing English-made stuff. I don't think you're going to win against people when that happens. It's exceedingly rare when you... Well, Napoleon tried to introduce the continental system to try to cut Britain off from trade.

It was like everybody went, but they have all the best shit. Yeah, and that pissed him off because... And that's where we get the term incontinental now because of how pissed he was. Nice. Thanks. I'm not even mad about that one. That's where we get the term incontinence now, because of how pissed he was. Nice. Thanks. Nice. I'm not even mad about that one. That's good. So with on that note, thank you for that handy sec way.

Now we're going to talk about industrialization. Yes. So in 1776, James Watt, a Scotsman, sold, he had invented it and paid it at earlier, but he sold the first reciprocating steam engine to a client for industrial use. And there had been earlier models of steam engine, but they had not had enough efficiency to really be used to large scale. Right. To again, pay with a very broad brush.

Very. With the introduction of mechanical factory machinery, manufacturing on a large scale became far easier and more profitable. Mm-hmm. Britain came to dominate the textile trade because of steam powered factory mills, which suspect you're a point about uniforms in the Napoleonic War. And so then Watts engine got applied to rail locomotion in 1789. So now we have steam powered factories, which are driving this incredible

growth of capital and this economic, I don't want to say renaissance, but revolution. This fundamental change in the way that manufacturing worked and a paradigm shift in the scale on which manufacturing worked. Nowadays we call that an industry disruption, but I would say that this is an industry eruption because here before it had not existed. Yes. I like that. You know, and the thing was, and when I have the opportunity to teach the Industrial Revolution to students, part of what we take for granted and don't really understand,

I think it's really, really hard, especially for teenagers, but for anybody really, to think about the level on which our lives today are fundamentally different, from the lives of folks living in the early 1700s and before, simply because of the scale on which we consume everything. Oh yeah. You know, everything, every article of clothing that you and I are wearing, unless you're sweater, I can see you wearing a sweater, unless that was hand knitted by somebody. I'm gonna look. Okay. But I doubt it. Yeah, but the t-shirts we both have on, my jeans, you know,

I'm wearing sweatshirts. Okay. Whole all of our clothing was manufactured, the manufacturer. Oh yeah. This says made in Ireland, but it does not say anything about whether it was hand-knitted or not. Okay, let's apply a sweater. It is. I freaking fell in love with this last year. Yeah. But you know, I've been I've been playing with this little wire. It's a

twisty tie. Yeah. And I just kind of keep my hands busy. Mm-hmm. This was made somewhere. Like this was not handcrafted. Yeah, you know, like, I mean, even the trash that I'm like, you know, just fiddling with. Oh, yeah, we're surrounded by stuff that was made in factories. You know, it would. And if it's not, it's made with components that were. Yeah, like that's, that's the kicker is, you know, even the handmade shit is handmade from components that you, you did not fashion those ball bearings yourself, sir. You know, that kind of thing. And off the top of my head, I'm having a hard time remembering what the date of Adam Smith is, but I'm pretty sure he predates the industrial revolution, but he kind of pre-saged it, kind

of protected it in a way. In that, you know, and the thing is, we, you probably have more than a dozen shirts in your closet right now that are like the one you're wearing. I have, I don't even know how many. Oh yeah. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, you and I, if we roughly extrapolate our station and society, we would have been relatively wealthy owning three

suits of clothes. Yes. And we would have done laundry once a week, and we would have showered maybe once or twice a week at the most. And by shower, I mean bathed because of basin is much easier to set up for holding water than it is to run pipes so that you have water falling on you from above. Adam Smith wrote the wealth of nations in 1776. The same year's rate. So he was right there. Yeah, the same year that David Hume died, by the way. Okay, there you go. So, you know, and so this was a paradigmatic change

in the nature of manufacturing and in the nature of consumption. And for a certain class of people, it was a huge sudden a wave of opportunity. Because now there were literally whole industries born practically overnight. And with all of those industries were now born. An entire class of workers, first off, there were the folks who left the farm to go into town to work in a factory. But then above them in hierarchy were the middle class, you know, low-end gentleman in society who took the first positions as factory managers and middle management and all of the clerks and accounts and bankers and everybody that had to keep track of the money that was moving around and had to be involved in planning the

construction of a mill had to be involved in the engineering for that. I mean, all of this stuff, you know, as railroads grew, they needed clerks to keep track of what was going where. So, so there's this massive opportunity created for a middle class, which in England was already notably large compared to many other parts of Europe. Right. To now expand very, very rapidly. Right to now expand very very rapidly and so Where was I so so Britain urbanized so rapidly over the course of the 19th century

The percentage of Britons living in cities went from 17% to 72. Yeah, as I recall, 1800 was the first year that London had a million people plus in it. Yeah. That sounds about right. And it's 50 years later that they figure out how to use a sewer, which is always going to kick out of. Yeah. Normally, you're only one generation behind on stuff like that. But yeah.

Yeah. And so there's this massive economic expansion, huge economic growth, and the scale of consumption of materials explodes. And so we have the empire growing up into the beginning of the 18th century. And then at the same time, we see the sudden demand for we need more coal, we need more cotton, we need more raw materials, we need tin, we need iron, we need all this stuff. Yes. And so now we're going to get to what the British Empire looked like in the 1880s. So by this time now. You also, so you have that, but you also commensurate with the Empire growing, you have urbanization. Yes.

And like you said, you have the industrialization, but you also have necessarily urbanization, which I do think that though that deserves a special mention simply because if you look at homes you look at his stories They're usually murder mysteries of some sort. Yep, right? And you mostly yeah with with urbanization you see increases of murders you see increases of people getting away with shit um And it's not and which is, because as you often speak, the threshold of violence is on the decline.

But when you have increased crowding urbanization, such that even the middle class can feel it. Well, it was common. It was common for middle class gentlemen in London in the 1860s, 1870s at least, and into the day of Holmes to carry a sword cane. Yes. To keep off pickpockets or muggers. Yeah.

You know, and by the way, and by the way, in the stories, when Watson is running around with a revolver literally in his coat pocket. Right. Nobody bats an eye. Right. Now, I would say though that robbers and muggers is different than murderers.

Yes. So, yes, the threshold of violence. Violence is a everyday threat, but murderous violence is a different thing, and that comes with the increased urbanization with people stacking on top of each other. And with the advent of, like you said, the Industrial Revolution, a greater capability of people to flee from whence they came into larger urban centers as well. So I think all of these things are, and as you said in the beginning, the middle class is very much dependent upon and wary of stability. And all of these things absolutely threaten with their chaos,

that stability. And so we have all of these circumstances that are ripe for a character like Holmes to be popular. Like we were talking about before. And to have him be popular as a middle class, specifically a middle class his hero. Maybe he's not middle class, but a middle class's hero. I would argue he's very, very bougie. Like very much, like upper middle class. Yeah, gives everybody something to aspire to and envy

You probably have that rich friend, but more importantly, he will solve the thing about which you are afraid from your professors Yes, yeah, and and I think before I get into Very much more. I think we've come to a good place to kind of pause it and pick up. Okay. Because the next part of what I'm talking about might drag on and I don't want to wind up carrying this over too far, but you've got something to say. Well, I was going to say, is this next part going to deal with the introduction of other ethnicities into the daily life of the middle class? It is definitely something we can talk about.

Okay, cool. Then, yeah, I very much can discuss. Because I think embedded in that middle class, I really do think this comes back to a middle class fear of chaos. Because again, I'm looking at it from 1930s and 2010s perspective as well. Oh yeah. No, I think that's a fair analysis. And if I recall correctly, and I realized that I'm branching out here and I'll try to rain it in, but there was a huge economic depression in the 1870s, and I don't know where it hit in England, because I know it hit in America, the depression of the 1873, specifically.

But if I'm thinking in terms of like you have economic uncertainty and chaos, middle class gets scared, authoritarian's come in, and now you get these literary heroes, or these literary folk eye at the very least. Yeah, I think Britain suffered a whole bunch of, you know, kind of boom and busts. The American economy did during the same time period. The Industrial Revolution created this very high stakes game of Russian roulette for investment and crash and investment and crash. It took a lot of trial and error and, you know, guys flinging themselves

from fourth story windows. For regulation to wind up getting created to rain that in. Yeah. So I think that could be a factor, but I think there's bigger, larger scope kind of issues behind it. So at this point,

putting a pin in this until our next episode, what do you have as a takeaway right now? Well, I think that I'm still waiting for it to bear out, whether or not this is true, and I'm trying to keep an open mind instead of like coming at it with my conclusion in mind already. But so far, what I'm seeing is that Holmes very much represents the middle class's avatar of who they wish would save them from the poor's and from the browns. That's what I will say is we're on a similar tack but as usual your interpretation is much more marks

than angles than mine. Yeah, wrong. You know, but yeah, no, I think there's room for that as a shading within the thesis I'm gonna put forth next. Okay, cool. I was gonna ask, because I don't have anything to recommend reading, I was gonna ask what Holmes story, if someone was gonna get started, what Holmes story, would you recommend? And before you answer that, let me tell you that. Before you answer that, though, in my sophomore year of high school, I had a teacher

who she would require us to read a thousand pages beyond our normal reading for the semester. And so I picked Holmes. And she always said, you know, if you pick a book, you got to finish it. And so I found an anthology and she said, okay Well, you have to finish one of the books within that anthology Soft more me not mature enough to understand or appreciate homes, but the scenes stuck in my head about Somebody came to him and it might have been the first home story. I don't know. Hopefully you can tell me He they said okay, well do you know that the world is flat? And he says or that do you know the world is round? He's like no, but I shall forget it very soon

What are you talking about? Well, it's a file cabinet in your head and and I don't need you know information that I don't need So I'll forget that quickly and then they ask him some questions and then they ask him okay We'll tell us about that man down there in the street and he says, oh, you mean the sergeant? And then how do you know that? And then boom, did a boom, did a boom, did a boom, the his mustache, his this, his that, his this. Oh yeah. Any impressive, I don't know what story that was from.

Do you? I'm going to say, I think that was the sign of four. Okay, so now that I've pressed on your brain for that, what story would you recommend to our audience if they wanted to get started on reading homes? I would personally recommend Scandalin Bohemia. Okay.

Because it actually turns out not to be a murder mystery. So it kind of breaks the mold a little bit. Number one, and number two, it's the introduction of one of the most popular supporting characters in the Holmes canon, Irene Adler, who is something of an antagonist for homes and is the one woman homes respect. Okay. So yeah, I would argue that's one of my favorites out of the canon. Yeah, so I'd probably go with that one. And what I would otherwise recommend for reading for anybody interested in any of this is I would strongly suggest that you pick up the adventures of Sherlock Holmes with

the first collection of the short stories because they are a lot of fun to read. And they are a really remarkable time capsule for the period in which they were written, especially if you're at all interested in steampunk anything. Read those stories because they are not steampunk, but you can't go very far wrong with your understanding of the aesthetic or your understanding of the mindset of the era by reading them. Okay. So that would be my recommendation. Cool. Alright.

Well, excellent. Well, then social media wise, where can people find you? I can be found on Twitter at EH Blaluck. I can be found at the same address on Instagram. And on TikTok, I'm Mr. Blaluck. Where can you be found, sir? You find me on the Twinsda at Da Harmony. It's two Hs in the middle. And you'll find me making fun remarks about my own sense of, I had one tweet that I really enjoyed,

like tickled myself with it the other day. And it was, I've always questioned my own judgment. And I think it's largely because I thought Marty Genetti was the more the better performer of the two rockers, which wrestling fans will find that hilarious because the other member of the rockers was Sean Michaels. All right. There you go.

Cool. And where can they find us collectively? Collectively, we can be found at geekhistorytime.com on the interwebs and Geek History of Time on just totally blank on Twitter. Yes, Geek History Time. Yes, and also you can find us, oh, real quick. I'm back to doing live shows. So, yes, January 7th, if I recall correctly, I very quite not. So this one, this particular episode,

will release in time for that. But it will be January 7th. No, I'm sorry, January 14th will be the first time we do a live show. So look up capital punishment, capital with an O, get it. Capital punishment. Look us up on the Facebooks. That's the easiest way to find us.

And also check in with us every Tuesday at 8.30 pm on twitch.tv for slash capital puns. But yes, look up capital punishment to see if we're coming to a town near you. And if you're in Northern California, we will be. So come check that out. It'll be an awesome show. Lots of fun. You got to be vaccinated.

So anyway, now you can find this podcast on Stitcher Spotify and the Apple iTunes Store. Please subscribe, click that button. It doesn't hurt. And of course, give us a review and give us the five stars that you know that we deserve. There we go. Cool. Alright, well for a geek history of time, I'm Damien Harmony. And I'm Ed Blalock, and remember, the game is a foot.

you