The Daily Zeitgeist - Icon #29 - Sherlock Holmes: ACAB Includes Sherlock (rebroadcast)

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

In this edition of the Iconograph, Jack and Miles are joined by writer/comedian Andrew Ti to discuss the 7% solution god: Sherlock Holmes! They'll explore his creation, his toxic fanbase, his less-than-great influence on modern policing and much more!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hello, the internet, and welcome to this spin-off episode of Dirtyly Zikeis, which we're called the iconograph. Instead of looking at the Zykeyes through current events on Monday mornings, we're looking at the Zykeyes through the powerful pop culture of horrocks that are our icons. We use these icons to create meaning, to build identity, to find the perfect way to end the phrase, no shit. to learn that sometimes the hat has the flap in the front, sometimes it has the flap in the back, but it takes a real genius to be like,

hey, porcée no los dos. Hey, baby. The flap in the front and the back. That's right. We're talking about Sherlock Holmes, with apologies to Captain America, the first superhero. And still to this day,

probably the most iconic. I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host, Mr. Miles Graham. Oh, boy. Sherlock Holmes. I love it. For whatever reason, my strongest depiction idea of Sherlock Holmes is a Basset Hound. He's got Basset Hound.

You know what I mean? Because I feel like there was a picture of a Basset Hound dressed as Sherlock Holmes that I've never shaken from my brain. This is like, feels like a poster I would have saw a doctor's office. It's McGruff, right? Isn't that McGruff? Oh, fuck. Oh, yeah. It wasn't a Mcruff rocking.

Wasn't there a McGruff with a Sherlock hat, though? A deer stalker, I think. Yeah, I think McGruff did wear a deer stalker. Yeah. which a bassetound can stalk some dears. Maybe not. It all works out. Maybe this is my bar and stain bears or something.

Is it worse to know deer stalker or know that a fedora is really a trill bee? It's the same energy. I understand it's the same energy, but what's worse? I think deer stalker, I think that's all right. I'm going to allow that one being like, it's not a fedora. It's a trill be. That sucks in a very special way. What it is is I'm not wearing a fedora.

Actually, what I'm wearing is a trillity. Thank you. There is a, there is a story, the hound of Baskervilles, as Brian the editor pointed out. In our third seat, one of our very favorite guests, a hilarious and brilliant producer and TV writer. You know him from the Yos This Races podcast, the new starter track podcast. It's Andrew. What's up? What's up, guys?

That's not it. That picture is not it. There are plenty of pictures of dogs. Sorry, Super Producer, Catherine, put a picture. Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah. No, a basset hound is Sherlock Holmes.

I think a basset hound somehow and also has become just Sherlock Holmes dog for some reason. I don't know why, but. Yeah. Because they're low to the ground and they keep it real. And he kind of has Bassett hound eyes, too. He kind of has those eyes. They love smoking cocaine. They do.

And that's the, that's why they call it a pea dog. He did it the sophisticated way. He did a 4% solution, I think it is, or 7% solution of cocaine that he injected into his arm and was just like, I find this very invigorating. The idea is just rush to my brain. Like a loving depiction of how to inject cocaine, right? If I recall kind of vaguely, it's like the pages of like and then. The books hit right as cocaine was becoming like this wonder drug.

So it wasn't illegal. Like you could just go to the pharmacy and be like, give me the solution. Apondon to carry another eight ball. Yeah. My good man. I should, just just a small note on your intro and this is a self-serving note. I do think you mean the first superhero in the West. In the West.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should definitely say that. West. I want to get right into it because there's a lot to cover. I think we generally know the same shit about Sherlock, Deerstalker, big old pipe, skinny jeans, slick back hair, deductive reasoning. But with the help of our researcher,

J.M. McNabb on the ones and twos on this one. I think we got some good shit. So this is going to be the fourth fictional icon we've covered in this series. Probably, I'd say the second most iconic behind Santa. a weird iconic hat can really do a lot for you, I will say. Santa got the hat, Sherlock got the hat. That is, but Santa took a very long, weird time landing on his current form and popularity.

I'd say the same is kind of true of Miss Piggy. I mean, she took years and was like sort of a background character for a number of years. Urkel probably holds our record for fictional or not fictional, the fastest overnight impact. Like he showed up as a background character in the next day, kids were like dressing as him in the mall. Sherlock first arrived in novels in 1887 and 1890 that were like called Penny Dreadfuls. They were, you know, dime store paperbacks. That's what that means? Yeah, that's what Penny Dreadfell's were.

They were well received. But when his short stories hit in 1891, it was like Bieber going on Ellen. It was just like fucking people went bonkers for this shit. Because like being part of a Penny Dreadful is like guesting on a track. You're like that's like one of it's like a short story collection or right? The fuck is a Penny Dreadful. A Penny Dreadful. I thought it was a roller derby person that I do.

I think it was just like a paperback knowledge. So the short stories appeared in the Strand, which was a magazine that had just a bunch of stories in it. And like when they came out, like when a new Sherlock would drop, they would have to change the library hours because people would just be fucking flooding them. Also like Harry Potter drop day kind of shit?

Yes, Harry Potter drop day. But like every time just a short story appeared in a magazine, the circulation for this magazine went crazy. The thing that is truly crazy, there's a bunch of stuff that's really weird about Sherlock's iconography. But one thing that is just like overall, he's not gone away.

Like this is our oldest icon besides Santa. But like if you're even just like looking at Santa in his current form, Sherlock in his current form actually goes back further than Santa. and he's been he is the most portrayed fictional human in film history he's been in 254 films he's neck and neck with Dracula

for the most depicted character of all time but Dracula's got him barely edges him out at 272 put in all kinds of shit that he doesn't belong in right you can just like John Ham in a comedy where you're like John Ham's in this comedy too

yeah I know we're at Robin Hood you would think. But no, Robin Hood. Sherlock has everybody except Drack. And we're going to talk about Sherlock and Dracula because they're linked in kind of a weird way. But right from the start, there's this weird form of fandom where it's almost like fandom mixed with like Talmudic scholarship on Sherlock, which if you've read the stories, it's kind of, like they're very just basic page turnery, you know,

like they're not these like deep texts. They're kind of fun, shallow page turners, but people start writing stories about Sherlock. People, like, publish interviews with Sherlock Holmes. People are publishing biographies of Sherlock Holmes. And it's like continued down to this day. Like a 2008 poll found that 58% of British people believe Sherlock Holmes was a real guy.

Like their Sherlock Troules. His motherfuckers took over the planet. Yeah. And they believed in Santa. Yeah. So there was like a mixture at the time of people who actually believed he existed. And then there were people who were like ironically believing that he existed. And he got some lucky breaks.

I'm talking about him like he's a real person for the purposes of this podcast because I am a Sherlock Truther. But like one of, so there was this 1891 story. in the journal, the speaker called the story. It was My Evening with Sherlock Holmes, and it was an interview with Holmes and Conan Doyle that was written by an anonymous writer, and the writer actually ended up being J.M. Barry, the guy who would go on to write Peter Pan.

So, like, there were good writers who were, like, there were really, like, eventually accomplished writers buying in hard and, like, sort of propelling. propelling his image and this character on in a way that, you know, probably benefited him quite a bit. Arthur Conan Doyle and his publishers received letters from people looking for him. Arthur Conan Doyle was like immediately like gift in the curse.

He was like, what the fuck? He had reportedly despaired that people thought his fictional character was real. People would ask, people would be like, hey, could you put me in touch with Sherlock? bro. I think my wife's cheating. I think my wife's cheating on me with Sherlock Holmes, dude.

You think he can't help me? Is it because? So I want to talk about this. Yeah. He gave him like a real ass address, right? He gave him a real address. That is one of the theories that he gave him a real address that actually didn't exist for like a decade or so.

It was like the numbers didn't go up that high, but eventually they got that high. And so, and when that became a real, like an actual real address, it was just like flooded with mail. I remember 867 5309 as your phone number. Randomly just the one of the few times I went to I've been to London like as a kid, I just walked by whatever 321 Baker Street or whatever the fuck it is. And I was like, oh yeah. Sherlock is.

Sherlock's house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is where I want to talk about the idea of Sherlock as superhero. and like he, I think he embodies this superpower that's maybe the most intriguing superpower because it seems like it could actually exist, which is the ability to use logic and reason to know a definitive truth about something or about everything in his case. And like, he can look at your coat sleeves and know what you do for a living. And then from that can solve the mystery of like, who stole your wallet.

And, you know, like a superhero who can fly is intriguing, but most sane people don't believe they can actually fly. But with Sherlockian deductive reasoning, which he doesn't actually deduce things. We'll talk more about that later. But it's almost like the saner you are, the more you want to believe that sane rationality can defeat the chaos of reality. Yeah. And then it's, I also think like that like appeals to everybody's, you know, idea of like, like, themselves and like, I could probably figure this shit out. But it also, I mean, it's kind of the entire promise of literature and writing, which was just kind of becoming democratically available at this

time, like to be able to use words and thinking to make sense of the world and like tell a singular truth. And so that then, like the J.M. Berry thing, uh, there's also like so many famous fans who, like T.S. Eliot, Isaac Asimov, Neil Gaiman, are all like part of this Sherlock Holmes Society, which was just like a group of weird little guys who would like hang out and study what they call. They called Sherlock Holmes' stories The Sacred Texts, which is what, again, if you read these things, it's wild.

Can I ask a question? I haven't probably read an actual Sherlock Holmes book for probably closer to decades now. Does he do the thing that the Benedict Comptus, batch one does, which is like walk through the deduction steps. Yes. He does. Yeah.

He does it. Yeah. So the structure is really ingenious where he first solves a little mystery, where like the person comes in and he's like, oh, I see you've lost your pocket watch and that you're, you know, I can tell that you're a typist and you're left-handed and near-sighted. And they're like, what the fuck? And he'll explain how he got there. quick. And that is actually based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor who studied under this guy

who could kind of, he like taught this class in medical school where he was just like, would kind of cold read people and be like, this is how I know this guy is an alcoholic. Like he came in, his nose is bright red. Gin Blossom's face. Yeah, Jim Blossom face. He's drinking now. literally one of the things and then I saw the bottle peeking out of his pocket like damn Sherlock

damn oh shit yeah but I think that's a little bit like you know the other way of looking at this is like you know your barry wises and Joe Rogens of today it's a thing that makes dumb people

think they're smart exactly like oh my god I could yeah I could fucking be psychic essentially so this is the big problem with Sherlock Holmes. Like that, so, uh,

just going back to like the superpower analogy, when Superman first came out, there was this rash of children jumping off their roofs, like for after like seeing Superman. Uh, and I think the same thing has happened on a massive scale with Sherlock Holmes, but the problem is that, uh,

the people who believed that they could do the superpower were cops. And like, yeah, just a whole century of cops who thought they could like use deducting. reasoning to solve crimes and could not. Yeah. So just back to the like kind of border between like this guy being a real person and not a real person. First of all, like, do we have an example of that anywhere else other than like, you know,

Santa where that's the whole game? But like, is there another fictional character where people, like, 60% of people in 2008, like years after, still like, I believe, man. I still, I believe in it. Is Jesus Christ?

Yeah. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean, not like, not religious. That guy's good numbers. Yeah, yeah. Brian,

the editor points to Bigfoot, which is another, like, but that one is explicitly, that's the point of that character is like that they're hiding him from you. Yeah. So,

I mean, so there's like the people who like, kind of, what's that? someone like someone from like one of those tall tales like Paul Munion yeah acose bill yeah it's kind of like that yeah but nothing like sherlock washington am i right i mean there probably is some version of like george washington cherry tree shit or like yeah right benjamin frank the sanitized versions the highly sanitized versions yeah um paul revere is a good one from brine the editor

so at the there's like at the street level like the people who are just like god damn i need to find find out where this watch went. Let me write to Sherlock Holmes. But then Sherlock Home, I kind of like that. And then there's more ironic believers, like the people, the, you know, T.S. Eliot and stuff, they would call it the game, which was they would like all get together and treat Holmes as a historical character whose exploits were chronicled by his trusty companion, Dr. John Watson.

and they would be like, this is, you know, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was actually Watson. And, you know, they came up with all these theories that they didn't actually believe in,

but they, like, had fun doing it. I read an account of, like, one of these meetings where, like, it was just an excuse for,

like, people to get drunk together and, like, weird creeps. Like, didn't have YouTube yet. They played a game called sardines,

which was just hide and seek. But when you find the person who's hiding, you have to hide with them. Right. And then, like, soon there's only one person seeking and there's like 30 people in one closet. And they were like, they seem to really enjoy it, especially when women were involved. Oh, Jesus Christ.

But so the whole treating him like a real person begins with this Oxford Divinity Professor, Ronald Knox, who analyzed and scrutinized the home stories as if they were real, which is interesting that it was a divinity professor. because, again, the way fans interact with this character has more in common with, like, the study of biblical literature up to that point than how people reacted with fiction. His satire was intended as a way to satirize the modern scrutiny of the Old Testament by German scholars like Albert Schweitzer, which, while that was the intent, it became a massive movement, not because people liked how hard it owned Albert Schweitzer, but because they, you know, they wanted to believe, like Molbert Schweitzer. but because they, you know, they wanted to believe like Mulder and Scully. I'm going to throw this out there. I don't think satire has ever worked even once. I just throw that out there. It was just like, damn, dog, that would be so tight.

Yeah. Oh, look at me being crazy. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, there's the Sherlock Holmes Society in England or America, and then the other version is the Baker Street of regulars. And again, like T.S. Elliot, the author of The Wasteland, I just want to stop down and read, right? Like, this is

somebody who's, like, writing famous epic poems. And he is devoted to, like, these books that are, like, bordering on, like, young adult fiction. He's, like, he's, like, the guy that, like, as soon as they allowed it in, I think it was in the UK, he, like, wrote down his actual religion was, like, the force or whatever the fuck. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's had. but yeah, I just, I went back and read through a couple of the most famous stories. And they're, they're just like very effective page turners, which again, like, I just, I do find that to be one of the most interesting contradictions. They're like fun, but what the fuck?

Like, what the fuck people? That's the mystery I kind of want to solve here. I mean, it's just because comparatively, like, the kinds of stories that were coming out at the time were just not doing anything like this. Yeah. I definitely think that that's what there's one that's called like the Society of Redhead Men or something like that. And it's this like very odd mystery where this guy like gets a job where they're just like you're redheaded. So you come to this room and you copy down the Encyclopedia Britannica and, you know, and then we pay you a really good wage. You just have to be there for four hours a day. And it's just like immediate, if you've like seen any mysteries or read any mysteries, you're immediately like, oh, well, they're doing that to get them out of the. the place where he is because they're like either robbing him or they have

something. I'm like that's that's exactly what it is. But it's just they invented it wasn't a new trick. What was the what was the? But it's like they were the best to add it and right right everything else has been like kind of built on top of that. So like the thing we talk about was the Flynn effect

where like culture gets built on top of culture. So like John Belushi is not that funny to me because I have I grew up on Farley which was like the metabolized version of that. Like, I feel like there's, there's some of that, but like, he's still so fucking famous.

What were the other Penny Dreadfuls? There were, like, Tarzan and, like, that kind of shit. Yeah, there's, I mean, yeah, and there were other mysteries, too. Like, and kind of ones from better writers. Like, Edgar Allan Poe wrote one before him with this guy, Dupin.

And, yeah. Just terrible. See August. dupin, which I think this is just the evidence that you got to, you got to inject cocaine because smoking lot of them. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right. Exactly.

I was doing opium or whatever. Come on. Yeah. Get on the upper at all times. I feel like was kind of this stuff. I'm nodding off reading your fucking shit, dude. I want to start farting when I'm reading a Sherlock Holmes penny dreadful. So Sherlock has one of the earlier, uh,

or maybe the earliest version of the toxic fandom that we, experienced today. So Arthur Conan Doyle secretly hated Holmes resented the fact that he was so popular because he considered himself a more serious-minded writer of historical fiction. And like that shit didn't sell as well. And like he was like, this is taking over my life. And so he decided to kill off

Holmes in 1893, like a few years after like this whole craze starts in the short story, the final problem. Because he felt that his literal reputation was at stake. London is said to have experienced its sunniest winter in 1892 thanks to the London fog

being temporarily blown away by the wind created by the sheer number of vigorous jack-off hand motions from people hearing Boyle worry about his literary reputation. But it is, it's also an interesting like story, his writing of it

in that like he could write this shit in his sleep. He would like write these stories in a day and then like, you know, spend the summer straining over this like historical fiction and I do think that's like an interesting kind of insight into the creative process that like

you know some things that just like come naturally to you and you're just like well that clearly sucks and it's like no that's like you hear there's a lot of music where people write their hits like as a joke you know they're like yeah this is

this is the dumbest version of what this record company's for from us and then it's like oh that that ended up being our number one hit right the tub thumping phenomenon yeah yeah yeah exactly weas are the nableness by the turtles uh stuck in the middle with you was those guys making fun of bob dillon i mean you kind of kind of have to imagine anyone who's ever written a law and order episode is a little like yeah yeah i don't know if this is my writing it with one hand while making the jack off ham motion with the other but It's also like people love fucking law and order.

It's great. Yeah, exactly. You know, copaganda side. Yeah. So at the end of this Sherlock Holmes story, the final problem, Sherlock Holmes falls to his death while battling Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach falls in Switzerland. Pretty definitive.

Like, it's like, oh, yeah, he's dead. He's dead big time. It did not go over well. There was a huge public back. Blacklash. 20,000 people canceled their subscription to the Strand magazine. People formed Let's Keep Homes Alive clubs when he was killed off in the story. Newspapers including the Boston Post published obituaries for him. Wow. According to Wikipedia, the strongly negative response from readers was unlike any previous public reaction to a fictional event. And it doesn't say citation needed next to that. Yeah. That's a fact.

The fact, brother. But people wore black arm bands to mourn him, allegedly. And, yeah, like previous to this, people just accepted what happened in books. But this time because there was this weird relationship with him where they wanted him to be real, everyone like fucking freaked out, demanded he come back, kind of anticipating the Snyder cut bros, kind of. anticipating the controversy around the first design of Sonic that looked like total shit. Change the T.

Yeah, but this was more of a sonic situation in that they were right and the creators caved and made the right decision. And after years of public pressure, he wrote another home-centric book, The Hounds of Baskervilles. Oh, that was the

I think that's the only one I've read. That's the comeback. Right. And it was, was he was still not willing to like bring him back from the dead so he just made it a prequel oh which he didn't just put a little trampoline at the bottom of the right of the fall yet um but he writes him back into this story he was like writing it as a non-home story and then needed a strong protagonist and was like what if i put sherlock jolk holmes in this

people are like, yeah, man. Fuck yeah. And then he was like, okay, you owe me twice as much money. They were like, sure. Great. Like, honestly, whatever you want. There's like so many instances of him writing these books where he's like, and I'm going to ask for this insane amount of money.

And like, obviously they're not going to give me that. And like by the time, like, he sits down from sending the letter off. They're like, here's the money. Just like, give us the fucking book. He's kind of getting hosed, like, in the early days because he doesn't realize, like, how fucking popular it is. Because he doesn't want to because he doesn't want it to be, like, as popular. Sounds like a man in need of an agent. See?

I know, right? We're going to get to a literary agent at this time in a second. But he is eventually convinced to bring Holmes back to life for a good by an American publisher who offered him $45,000 for a new batch of stories. and he was like, okay. All right. Yeah, great. I love that. Yeah.

In like the 1900, Jesus Christ. He, yeah, he survived the battle with Moriarty and pretended to be dead for like eight years for some reason. Do you? Is there any like theorizing or speculation on, I mean, because were there like arch nemesis in the same way? I feel like maybe that's, that feels like sort of modern in that. Yeah, the Moriarty thing. Yeah. Because like, who was Tarzan fighting?

There's a... Yeah, I don't know who Tarzan was fighting. But not like a guy. Seems like you want this episode to be about Tarzan, Andrew. I'm sorry. Or who the fuck was Conan? Conan the Barbarian was just generally, like, fighting. Yeah. I'm just saying, like...

Although, like, does Moriarty scan for you guys? Like, I knew him from the Benedict Cumberbatch one. Yeah. But I didn't really know him before that. It wasn't like a Lex Lerty. Luther the Joker thing where it's like the... I think it's supposed to be.

Yeah, I think it, and probably with a bunch of people who are more familiar with Sherlock Holmes it is. But for me, it's just like, it does feel like there's, you know, the books are written in a smart way where the stories are written in a smart way where it's like, and this is of

course the second most dangerous man in London and like it's, they're not like spending a lot of time on the lore, he's just telling you. This is something I've been pursuing. for decades. Incidentally, the plot for the story where he comes back from life was written by Gene Lecky, who was a young woman that Conan Doyle was having an affair with while his wife was dying

of tuberculosis. Oh, what a modern story. That's the most London shit I've ever heard. Yeah. And a wife's got a tuberculosis in it. So, right, right. Was she, was she like an aspiring writing novelist or something? This also sounds so Hollywood, too.

I know. It's like, yeah, my assistant, like, I was having this dude is having a affair with his assistant and actually gave her a spot in the writer's room. He's a showrunner. He eventually did the right thing and married her. So, you know, the right thing. And divorced his dying wife. Yeah. It does, it does feel like, like, I mean, right, that's, that's the, the way people have, um, dealt with this malaise in contemporary times is just hiring people to write the book you don't want to write and continue to collect the lion's share the money.

Right. Which is the move. Yeah. Yeah. For him, it was like, he just like wrote them fast and begrudgingly. And people were like, you're a king. You're the king, man.

You're the king, man. I'm up for the new season of Sherlock Penny Dreadfuls. Yeah. Exactly. Hey, guess what, Gene? You know something about me? I fucked the way I write fast and what was the way he said? Begrudgingly.

Yeah. And you're there for heart-wrenching knockouts. The world's biggest stage. And breathtaking triumph. 2026 FIFA World Cup. The knockout stage. Every match, every moment. Listen on TSN Radio.

Join the globe on the road to the July 19th final. 2026 FIFA World Cup. Stream it all live on TSN Radio. Available on IHeard Radio. We covered the Dupin thing. It is, Dupin was the Edgar Allan Poe character who smoked a pipe and was followed around by his roommate who also narrates the story. So there's kind of a lot of him in there.

And you can tell that Arthur Conan Doyle knew it because this is a quote from the very first Sherlock Holmes novel. Watson says, It's simple enough as you explain it. I said, smiling. You remind me of Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin. I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories. Sherlock Holmes rose and lit his pipe. No doubt you think that you are complimenting me and comparing me to Dupin, he observed.

Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friend's thoughts with a propos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt, but he was by no means such a phenomenon as poet. appeared to imagine. Oh, break out the blunder bus. I know. Shot,

shot fire. Hold on. Yeah. Three minute reload time. He did later acknowledge that he owed Poe a debt and was like, yeah, I guess I'm really rich now, so I can admit that I ripped him off.

Bagelown Poe was a great writer in the master of all. The other inspiration was this medical professor, Dr. Joseph Bell, who Holmes's observational style, was pulled straight from him who trained himself to identify accents of patients and studied people's hands because calluses or other marks could help him determine their occupation. Other clues included suntans and whether or not a man removed his hat at the doctor's approach. He called this The Method.

And Doyle saw this while being like a mediocre medical student and his assistant. I mean, I guess. It's impressive, I guess, to them, right? But for us, I'm like, that's only because there was like 15 fucking jobs back. Right. Yeah, yeah. And you're like, are you a drunk? Are you a blacksmith? Do you, are you running from your dead? Are you a gambler? You know, are you a doctor? Like, cow drunk was a W-2 profession.

Yeah, yeah. I can tell that this guy's the town drunk because he's wearing a barrel, ringing a bell, and screaming incomprehensible nonsense. Yeah. So I will say that these are the, other than the, his cocaine, you know, my favorite parts of Sherlock Holmes stories are his cold reading of people because he's just like, you know, he's just like, I can tell you rode your bike here, by the way, the rubber is pushed forward on the soles of your shoes, which is like impossible, but like you get the immediate, you know, one of them that I remember is like you're a laborer. I can tell by the way your right hand is bigger than your left from like working the muscles in it, which I could propose another

explanation for that. But in the stories, I read, It actually, like, that part doesn't come... Gooners! I can tell you're a gooners, sir. A North London gooner. Hey, London is red. But, like, the cold reading doesn't often come that much in... Like, the cases are, like, plotted in a way that's, like, kind of...

I guess the plotting of the cases is the thing that, like, so much of the rest of mystery fiction has been built on top of, but... Right. It's like the procedural structure kind of nailed. It's like you go in, you're introduced to the case, you investigate, there's one red herring, there's a twist, and then you're off to the races to the end. And it's like, yeah, cool. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, the cold read is proven right immediately, so you don't really have time to, like, think that much about it.

The person's just like, by God, he's right. How did you know that? There's the barrel that you're wearing, sir. You're actively pissing the barrel that you're wearing. it's also it's hard not to mention that there's an unproven yet pervasive internet rumor that dr bell the original Sherlock Holmes or the doctor that Sherlock Holmes was based on uh there's a persistent rumor that he was related to Glenn Bell founder of Taco Bell yeah really no fucking way it's a it's a rumor that we weren't able to substantiate but I can't not bring it up so the conspiracy theorist what's

the tenuous connection that they even used to Same last name, Miles. Oh, it's purely just that. It's not even like that. Can't argue with that. Somebody went to America, maybe. Glenn William Bell was a direct descendant of Joseph Bell, a medical genius who lived in the early 1800s and is remembered as the inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famous character, Sherlock Holmes,

that came from, I remember the inland empire on Facebook. Yeah. Hell, yeah. You know, this has got to be the basis for like a TV show called like the Guacamole Mysteries. Right, right, right. It has to be in contemporary time, someone wakes up with the memories of both the founder of Taco Bell and Sherlock Holmes.

I mean, hey, you're the writer, man. Oh, yeah. We're all the writer today. Yeah. All right, let's get to his cocaine use. Oh, okay. Thank God. We don't want to spend 25 minutes on,

I remember they spent a lot of time talking about his violin strings now that we're talking about it, right? Yeah, he did play the violin. A lot of violent talk. I feel like if we're ranked. the most iconic parts of him. It is the deer stalker, the pipe, and then

magnifying glass, then violin. Violin only because they didn't want us, the versions that we were given, they really didn't want us to concentrate on the cocaine. But the cocaine, my page count, is awfully high.

Cocaine should be between hat and pipe. In my opinion, that should be there. That should be number one on the list. To Sherlock, it was probably cocaine number one. Yeah. And he's like, oh, shit, yeah, in my hat, let me give my other shit on that.

So, yeah, right first. It's in the second Holmes novel, the sign of four, the detective tells Watson that he enjoys a 7% solution because he finds it so transcendentally stimulating and clarifying to the mind. And he offers some cocaine to Watson. Oh, shit. He finds him with a needle in his arm. He's like, what? Fuck, bro. He's, uh, Watson's not into it.

Oh, it's just cocaine. Okay, that's fine. Oh. Exactly. Oh, seven. Oh, well, then shit. Let me tie off as well, Mr. Yeah, exactly.

It's like the equivalent of a Marlboro light. It's like merely a 7% solution of cocaine. But this was, so it started as like a miracle drug because they didn't have anesthetic that wouldn't put you to sleep in a way that you might not wake up from at the time. And so they're like, this one is good because the person stays awake. Holy shit, actually, they seem like wide awake. Whoa, easy, easy. And so at this time, they weren't just thrown in stories.

There's an 1896 recipe for homemade cold cure that consisted of ground coffee, menthol, powdered sugar, and cocaine. I can't have that much sugar, man. Come on. Yeah. That's easy. It's like when I do a bump, eat a powdered donut, have a coffee, smoke a fucking menthol. Yeah. same thing. Just never stop shitting, I guess.

He eventually kicks the cocaine habit. You don't see it in the original stories, but like... Is there an intervention? Episode? Well, like, Watson's kind of a fucking bummer, and he's like immediately like,

that stuff will kill you, man. Oh, fuck off, Watson. Get the fuck out of here. Yeah. So what you're, what I'm hearing is there's a gap in the canon for Sherlock is rehab, the most annoying person in rehab.

Actually, that's been written. Every, every possible part of his life has been fleshed out. There's a 1976 film The 7% Solution based on the novel of the same name. In It Holmes gets a little help from Sigmund Freud in getting off of cocaine. Can't stop. These motherfuckers cannot stop talking and thinking about Sherlock Holmes. It's so wild. Like they have a fucking little church that is just like putting pressure.

Like it's like the Scientology approach where they have like all these famous writers and thinkers who are just spending time thinking about Sherlock Holmes and like whether he was a real guy or not. The 7% solution sounds like some story about like Reinhardt Heidrick getting hooked on co. I know. What the fuck. But the other thing that I thought was notable from these stories. stories is like he's just, it is kind of law and orderish in that he's just like grabbing shit from the headlines, like from around the world. So like cocaine is one of those things because it's just like this thing that everybody's doing or trying or taking out. Um, there's a lot

of stories about like the wars, like the evils of empire coming home to ruse. Like people who are injured in foreign wars or like get like fucked up in foreign wars. Uh, the KKK makes an appearance in one. Um, which side? Yeah, I was going to say. They're the bad guys. So it's actually funny because... He's fiddling with them with a hoda. He treats them like Hydra. They have their own like super power essentially where like they keep killing people in the story.

The four orange pips. People keep like dying mysteriously. And the KKK is able to like always make it look like an accident. And then like at the end he's like chasing them trying to get them in London. And then like their boat is seen shipwrecked at sea. And it's like the KKK, they have an amazing superpower of, like, being able to make deaths look like accidents. All these people of color committed suicide. Yeah.

It looks like by hanging. Like, what the fuck are they even trying to say? You just need a hook, I guess, but yeah, yeah, yeah, that's sort of, that's sort of the opposite of the KKK thing. Yeah, he's just pulling shit from the headlines and just putting them into these, like, very broad, like, good versus evil. So he's like, KKK. is this evil organization and not... Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And get back to the cocaine jokes, man. I think the KKK for a long time benefited from people just being like, well, fuck, man. They are like so evil and like scary looking. And that they, like, when you look at the actual documents of the time, they're just like the biggest group

of like bumbling, dip shit, like tripping over their own dicks out of a sense of inferior. priority. That's every fascist of all time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The fact that we keep getting conquered by them is sort of on us. It is pretty frustrating. His first novel was about Mormonism, like the Mormon, like that he didn't really know what he was doing it in the first novel. It's called a study in Scarlet, which is a great title, but the book is just like one half Sherlock Holmes mystery. And then the second half, he just like flashes back to the crime happening in Utah. And like Brigham Young just like is a

character like comes in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is fanfix straight up. This is just like, okay, okay, who do we got? Who's in the news? Yeah, yeah. It's like kind of news fan fix. So, I mean, maybe that's also what contributed to people thinking he was real as though,

like, he was throwing in details of reality in a way that might have. But it's also, it's just law and order too. Just ripped from the headlines. Well, it's law and order free like people suing you. Yeah, yeah, but more in the sense of like, that's, the thing where people are like, I, I kind of, this, this is happening sort of ambiently in the culture right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, all the law and order cast, probably enough people believe they're real people. That's true. Yeah, right. Be like, I want him.

Yeah. I want him as a lawyer. I'm like, who the fuck is Marischka Hargette? What the fuck? Did you just say to me? But speaking of ambiently in the culture, just a couple of details of like what was going on in the literary world of this time. So after this first book, which kind of sucks, is like half a flashback to Utah, a place he's never been clearly, like, just written about this church that he, like, doesn't understand at all. Um, he's invited to this dinner with a publisher and it's him and Oscar Wild and like a couple other writers. And they're like, hey, we, we found this loophole where due to like publishing rights, like, we want to start publishing novels as like magazines as basically the penny dreadful thing.

And so they both get assigned a novel, and Doyle turns around the second Sherlock Holmes book, the first good one, the one where it's introduced that he does cocaine. And Oscar Wilde turns around the picture of Dorian Gray. Wow. Yeah. From the same dinner. Damn. It feels like there's just something in the water at this time, and it was cholera.

It's cocaine. Yeah, it was like cocaine. It's cholera and cocaine. but I want to circle back to the Dracula thing because again these are the two fictional characters that have been portrayed the most in the history of like film

like what you know American film but like these characters that are as far as I'm concerned old they're old as far so there's this book Holmes to Sherlock terrible name but it's a good book where it's just tells the story about the creation of Sherlock Holmes like by all the different people involved

like publishers, illustrators, Conan Doyle, there's like an illustrator who gives us the cap, there's an actor who gives us the pipe, a play years later

gives us elementary, my dear Watson, but there's this moment around the time that Doyle is like trying to keep Sherlock dead where he is writing to this other author's manager

and they like mentioned that this manager is also like trying to get his own literary career off the ground and had just published a book, and that manager's name is fucking Bram Stoker. The book he had just written was Dracula.

So, like, they, and Conan Doyle's like, oh, by the way, I read your book, fucking Rips, good job. Pretty good. But, like, that made me, like, realize how weird it is that, like, these two characters who go on to be the most popular

and successful fictional characters of the 20th century are invented at the same time, like in the same place, basically like coming out of the same same scene, which wouldn't be that weird if they were like similar, but like they couldn't be more different from each other. Like one creates like horror and like is like just their whole existence.

There's both a bunch of honkies I don't care about. Thank you. I didn't even know Bram Stoker was Irish. I was like, Bram Stoker. Yeah. I guess a fucking name. Abraham Stoker was his name.

Yeah. I guess I guess it's probably. not a coincidence that cocaine was legal these days. Yeah, cocaine was just made legal and all of a sudden they were like, holy shit. I'm loving these fucking stories, dude. The one guy where the party never ends, Dracula?

Yeah. I mean, the idea that he wrote a novel in however quick amount of time is like, okay. Yeah, Coke was legal. Editor didn't have a lot of power. But there's this theory of history called, like, the axial age that points out that basically

like Confucius and China the Buddha in India all the famous philosopher like Plato and Homer and like all these people and then like a bunch of the prophets in the Old Testament all existed in the same century like they just in different parts of the world

but it was basically like all these people who like created these forms of thinking like were all operating at the same time essentially in like different places. And it's just like, I don't know. I think because of the way we understand history, we like think of it as like individual characters operating, you know, because we like understand things through story.

And so we view it as like interweaving stories. But like I feel like there's also, it's like harder to research and even like speculate about because of the shape of like our brains and how we like, understand things through stories, but like there's something to an understanding of things as like that that was just like the firmament of the time. Yeah, yeah. You know?

Or it could just be like, you know, presumably the ratio of good brains doesn't change that much. Yeah. On earth. But I mean, it could just be like they were, they preceded like an era of stability and prosperity within which, within which time their stories were lionized and perpetuated. whereas, you know, Buddha 0.0 just died in a ditch. Yeah, exactly. That's like it's, we, we tend to, like, prefer the great man theory of history,

but it's like a lot of times it's just like a certain confluence of like time and history and like culture dreaming up these things because the moment is right. Like human culture has been baked to the point where this is a thing that they're ready to happen. Like iconic characters come out of the oven. And we also need that because the alternative is thinking that the universe is random and that's too scary. So you need it to be, these men were great because their actions made a difference in their fate. Yeah.

So we believe that Edison, we believe Edison invented the light bulb because even and like ignore the fact that like three people invented the light bulb at the same time in different places around the world. And, you know, because we just want it to be. a thing that we have control over. Elon Musk is the most Le Epic Bacon person who's ever existed. And we just need to believe that. Yeah. That's true.

All right. I want to get to Sherlock Holmes' influence on criminology and how we understand crime because it's not so good. His greatest contribution. Is this maybe his most potent contribution in a way? Could be.

So first of all, like they advertised his first novel as something detectives should all read. Right. And people also, like, when they tell the story of this, a lot of the times, they'll overstate, like, how much, like, I think English crime fighting was very much in the dark ages. And, like, again, he's jumping on things that are, like, new in that world, like fingerprints and stuff like that.

But just to be clear, the first forensic manual titled The Washing Away of Wrongs was published in China in 1247. And in Germany in 1507, there was a requirement to present and preserve medical evidence in murder cases. It was just like they were just kind of getting around to it in England. Five decades before Holmes debuted, the first English guideline, the King's College Manual Principles of Forensic Medicine were published in 1844. But he, like, it wasn't widely known or popular. So he was just, again, good at seeing what was happening in the world and weaving it into a compelling

story where it was like very basic good versus evil, truth versus chaos. Well, it's also, I mean, like the same reason a lot of copaganda is, and medical dramas are popular, is that it's very comforting to people to think that these people are both smart and good

and right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, injustice prevails on some level. Yeah, and otherwise, you couldn't deal with society if you didn't think that. Yeah. J.M. pointed out that, like, like a lot of the things that we think

of as evidence have like been already disproven. There's this criminology journal in the 80s that wrote an article called Sherlock Holmes started it all about like the like celebrating forensics and then goes on to describe how a suspect's tooth marks were as valid as a fingerprint. And in 2010's Sherlock Centric Elementary episode, he's testing. for bite marks and implying that they're as good as DNA evidence. Bite marks are wholly, wholly subjective. Well, Sherlock did start it all in that modern policing is entirely based off of

pseudoscience that's post hoc reasoning for whatever they want to decide. So they did this test where they discovered that bites produced 23 entirely different marks, each one bearing little resemblance to the rest when they did like tried, used 23, they did 23 bites with the same mouth. And then they also asked somebody to identify bite marks from the same thing. And of the 100 cases, they examined, the analysis reached unanimous agreement on four. Four of a hundred. Great hit rate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four percent accuracy. People should lose their freedom over that. Yes. By mark is still being used today. And so it's like we talk about the CSI. bias where like shows are like well you know it bleeds into like how juries think about things they're like well there should be this sort of evidence and like that sort of evidence is exactly right and i feel like

that whole idea of we can definitively prove things with these tactics kind of starts with Sherlock Holmes uh i will just just a couple of the methods that he uses in his stories uh he was a believer in physiognomy, which used facial structure to assess character and mental capacity. Hell yeah. Phrenology. Yeah. The discredited racist pseudoscience involving cranial measurements that was used as a justification for slavery.

In the adventure of the blue carbuncle, this is, again, this is the guy that fucking T.S. Eliot was like, let us go study the sacred text. Holmes observes that a man must be highly intellectual because he wears a big hat. I have no doubt that I'm very. stupid, but I must confess that I am unable to follow you. For example, how did you deduce that this man was an intellectual? For answer, Holmes clapped

the hat upon his head. It came right over the forehead and settled upon the bridge of his nose. It is a question of cubic capacity. A man with so large a brain must have something in it. Swish. Swish. Can't argue without logic. Barry Bonds was a genius. I mean,

he literally sounds like a cop today. Yeah, exactly. Yes. Like, Just so smug and so certain but using pseudoscience. I want to get to my favorite example in a second here, but just other methods he used. He solved cases using graphology, which is the debunked belief that handwriting can determine age, gender, health, and even nationality. Well, I might, I'm not, I feel like a lot of Japanese boomers have the same way they write English. I've got to say.

Yeah, I will say my mom and her sisters all write exactly the same. an education system. Yeah. That's a product of an education system. Yeah, you can kind of tell. Because I'm like, man, every, it's funny, man, of, there's Japanese people of a certain age, they have the exact same handwriting.

But again, that's- And my dad's handwriting is so different because, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Not to say that they'd be like, or they'd be like, this guy's from Michigan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's that old Michigan chicken scratch he's got. At one point, he's able to solve the case after concluding

that two sets of handwriting were, made by blood relative. He's like, these people are related. Hell yeah. That's so funny because I remember in junior high copying the way my friend wrote because I thought it looked cooler too. It's so funny how those things like when I used to do

rather than dot my eyes, you draw circles. I mean, it has like a the grain of truth is you are taught to write. And so if you have similar writing as someone, there's something was in common at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to be like, this is a 41 year old Blackenese man.

It's, yeah. Nearly a quarter of the 2,601 people who have been exonerated since 1989 were wrongfully convicted based on false or misleading forensic evidence like bite marks. He also, just another kind of example of his

deductive reasoning, is that he explores the theory that the moods of dogs could be passed down by the moods of owners. So that's, again. So I do just want to stop here and talk about the detective Giuliano Milini from the Amanda Knox

documentary. Have you guys seen the Amanda Knox documentary? No. His existence makes me very suspicious that the history of crime and punishment is just littered with complete idiots ruining the lives of innocent people because they read Sherlock Holmes and believed it a little too hard. So

he's the main guy who's like driving the prosecution of Amanda Knox. At one point he deduces that the killer must have been a woman because the body is covered by a blanket and only a woman would have covered the body because I guess her delicate nature

would prevent her from wanting to look at what she just done. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I remember at the time being like, that sort of bullshit sounds familiar. And then later in the documentary, they show this like B-roll of him and he's like wearing a hunting jacket smoking this big Sherlock Holmes pipe.

And I was like, ah, yes, yes, of course. But I just feel like the past... 150 years. And it's not like just Sherlock Holmes, obviously. Like, he gave rise to a lot of detective fiction. And even the story structure where it's like he discovered a incredible, like a thing that would be impossible for him to know. And then he explains exactly how he did it. Right. Like, I think the thing that's seductive about Sherlock Holmes is the thing that is seducing these dipshits. Yeah. Well, it's also like it's dipshits who gravitate towards law enforcement who are extra tip shitty.

Yes. And like this makes them feel like they can do a thing. Which is, you know, the whole thesis, I guess, of what we've been talking about. But it's just like, yeah. Like a real, an actual smart person, if, if Sherlock Holmes were actually smart, you know, you pepper this with, well, I suspect this. I don't know for sure. But like, like, it's the true wisdom.

That's like. Yeah. Right. And then he passed out. He just ends up becoming like a pickup artist for cops. Yeah, dude, that's so sick. The way he can just A to B to C, crime solved, dude.

Oh, and he's on a pipe. Fuck you in the hat. He's a fucking pickup artist. And people would consult People would consult Arthur Conan Doyle on real crimes. Like the police would occasionally be like, well, sir, you are obviously our greatest mind.

It should be noted that he later became a major proponent of spiritualism. And he was famously taken in by the Cottonglee Fairies hoax. Oh, yeah. Where it was like somebody just did. It's like a double exposure. Yeah, yeah. Double exposure.

He made the place. So he went to the Strand, the place that published the Sherlock Holmes things, and was like, I demand that you publish these photos. He's like, the recognition of their existence will jolt the material 20, 20th century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud and will make it admit that there is a glamour and a mystery to life. See, this is the building on culture thing because at least he knew to keep his mouth shut about trans people more than the pervasive culture, I suppose.

Right. Yeah, yeah. At least this was the hill that he died on that he was wrong about. Yeah. Berries are fucking real, man. There's a real man. Ghosts are real, man. They're out here. He, like, spiritualism is the thing Thank you. Super producer, Catherine. Just put the photograph in the chat. Yeah. It's pretty pretty convincing to. I'm shocked.

You'd put your parent in a home if they fucking sent you this picture earnestly. No, he'd be like, oh, come on. Well, it is like such a cute little art project, but it is crazy to be like, this is real on, I guess, Victorian Facebook. his family like went on to really dive into the spiritualism like that that was the main legacy like his kids lived their lives like taking orders from his ghost via medium so like they would like all go to a medium and be like father what should we do like he'd tell them like whether they should have surgery or not like when to get married and then like one of them was like marrying like a Kardashian of the time

and she was like it was crazy like his wife just was obviously just telling them whatever she wanted she was like your father said via the medium that you actually can't have that money to buy a race dog yeah yeah but his sons were just like rich fuck boys

hell yeah good stupid asses all of them I mean I think obviously the pervasive lesson in all of this is money poisons your brain so quickly yeah right like generational wealth is bad. Gassed up on your own shit like that.

Yeah. Yes. Oh. But yeah. So just the idea that they all wanted to believe in is deduction, right? Right. Yeah. Which is a deductively valid argument is one in which it can't be the case that the

premises are true and the conclusion false. And Sherlock would use a combination of induction and abduction and then infer truths and make logical guesses. but this has subsequently been dubbed the Holmesian fallacy, which is a logical error of basing a conclusion on the belief that you have eliminated all other possibilities, but everybody is said. Hey,

this goes back to one of my first times on, but this is just a variant of the Gish Gallup. Gish Gallup. Say enough bullshit that people can't really follow or it takes too long to debunk and then you're not. He is G galloping his way into literary history in every one of these stories. He's just like as well he's in, of course. Sherlock, this was a hate crime.

This person was lynched. No, it was a suicide. This person was very mad at Christianity as they burnt this cross on their own lawn. Unbelievable, unbelievable, the things that you see, Watson. But, yeah, the explanation, the human being doesn't exist who could eliminate all possible alternatives. I'd say this is especially true of Holmes, who was weirdly specific. in his knowledge. I think scientists would call him

spectrumy today, but for... I think a scientific term. But there's a part of one of the stories where Watson is like, well, of course, the earth revolves around the sun. And he's like, not only did I not know that, I'm also going to immediately forget it

because that information doesn't help me solve my crimes. Oh, yes. He was just like, oh, I only care about the things that help this plot specifically for the next 200 pages. Yeah, I kind of remember that vibe. They did that briefly in the Cumberbatch one. There's like something he doesn't know and the whole thing is, it is very like phrenology-esque.

It's like there's just limited capacity of this dome, you know. I can't, I have to delete some megabytes. Big hat, big thinking. Big thinking. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, there's this one example in one of the, like I only read, reread three, but like they're just full of so much bullshit.

There's one part where he's like, well, it's as obvious to me is the fact that your window is on the right side of your room, Watson. And Watson's like, what, what? And he's like, well, of course, I knew like basically because you're, the direction that you face when you

shave must be this way and because of the direction of the sun at this time of year. And Watson's like, God damn, man, you're so smart. but that would like it doesn't even make if you think about it for a second like you also have to know what direction his sink is facing like what what direction he's facing like no no you don't no I don't see it's just smart sounding bullshit it's fucking crazy um but like I feel like in the same way we always talk about how like easy it was to lie in the pre-internet age like you go back

even fucking a century from there and you're out here and be like, oh yeah, dude, I can tell your fucking bathrooms, cut the thing over here. They're like, oh my God, this guy's so confidently saying this bullshit. Yet we don't collectively have the savvy to immediately identify it. He's just like a very impressive con man. Yeah. Well, or I mean, it's just like these books happen to capture the times he was right.

Sure. Exactly. Okay. That's the Sherlock we don't have. Is the 99, like, thousand times when he does this and people are like, nah. Uh-uh. No, I just don't think so, man. Yeah, that actually sounds like bullshit to me.

Are you okay, man? You have like track marks all on your arm. It's everything all right. Yeah, I do. Sorry. I'm only, I'm down to 7% now. Yeah.

So, yeah, I'm weaning myself out of it. I think that's the highest amount you're allowed to have. Yeah, I'm down to it. Well, all right. I'm going to do six point eight later.

So I'll be right. I'll be right. If you boil it a little bit before you do. Yeah, it's a little bit. One thing that I do think, you know, if we think of like an,

icons kind of reputation being a thing that kind of comes down through like sort of a cultural natural selection one thing that I think was probably beneficial is that right as he's being published the Jack the Ripper crimes

are happening and so people are yeah they want a superhero yeah they want a superhero it's one of the most famous unsolved crimes is happening so it's like creating the need for Sherlock homes in in reality right so like you know just all all the things that you know he gets designed and

then redesigned and made like more and more iconic he has the most famous unsolved crime of maybe the century happen as he's becoming popular and so he has like and then he has like whatever weird ingredients were in the firmament of like making culture ready for timeless icons yeah people just want to, I was actually thinking about, because I think my, probably not my, I don't know if he's my favorite, but my most watched Sherlock Holmes variant is House.

Yes. And if you think about House, really the fiction there is imagine your insurance of proving four doctors working on your face for the time. Just fucking imagine that. Four doctors all the time. Right. Yeah. That's all they're

thinking about. And rather than cocaine, it was opioids, right? For Dr. House. Yeah. that's right. He did have a, he did have a pill problem, which was appropriate to his time, you know. But doctor, like, the pitch for her house was like, but what if Sherlock Holmes was a doctor? Which it's like, well, the original Sherlock Holmes was a doctor. That's actually where the idea came from. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're just talking about medical diagnoses right now. Yeah.

Whoa, dude. What if he was like a doctor and detective? Yeah, that's kind of the gig, man. He's figuring out what's wrong with people. Pretty good. There have been a bunch of crossovers with like weird Sherlock Holmes in Dallas where somebody wrote a book in which Sherlock Holmes was there to solve the JFK assassination. It was JFK assassination. A great example of the false notion that like, you know, you look at a thing and you can figure out. It's like actually so many people, everyone has looked at this thing and has gotten worse at understanding what has happened. I feel like the umbrella man would have really thrown Sherlock for a loop.

The guy opened an umbrella on a sunny day in Dallas right before he got his head blown off. And I knew he must have been from an upper latitude, perhaps Russian in nature due to his need for shade from the intense sun. It's fucking Dracula, dog. He would have died. He would have died. Dracula. And then he's also crossed over with Batman, which. I will say Batman is the other side of the coin,

like proving how hard it is to write this sort of shit. Because Batman, like, is always like the world's greatest detective. And I've never once seen in a movie or like in a comic book or anything. Yeah. Do a good job. Like, yeah. It really feels like a self-ascribed nickname. The world's great.

Detective. Like, bro, you got your, self-proclaimed. You got your girl killed, bro. Ah. Fuck. Shit. God damn it. Not again.

He also mostly is like, well, I'm a billionaire and I built this thing that just tells me the answer. Right, right, right. Yeah. You know, most of the time. That's right. And then we, of course, come to sexuality and erotica, which people have launched. So he is kind of asexual throughout the stories and in most of the iterations. But some people were detecting some sexual chemistry between him and Watson.

So there was a 1971 paperback. So J.M. McNabb went to, our writer researcher, went to this room at the Toronto Public Library that is like the Sherlock Holmes room. And it has, it's like set up to look like Sherlock's study. And it just has like all like just a room full of the sort of like literature that we're talking about, not just Sherlock Holmes stories, but like stories about Sherlock Holmes. And he found this one, the sexual adventures of Sherlock Holmes,

where else are you going to find sentences like, my own erection was threatening to rend the rugged tweed of my breaches. Yeah. Rended the rugged tweet of my breeches. It was actually credited to Jay Watson, but it was actually written by prolific erotic novelist

Larry Townsend. but queer Holmes Watson fanfic took off with the Benedict Cumberbatch BBC Sherlock show Oh sure oh after that okay yeah yeah Benedict Cumberbatch said it's always like one of them is tired One comes back from work the other's horny a lump appears in his trousers and then they're at it It's usually me getting it I'm biting Watson's dog tags He felt like he was like trying to make it sound dismissive and then kind of got carried away. Yeah, he's whispering my ear.

I'm whining that he's always leaving dishes in the sink that he's not washing. I forgot that better to come back. That's one really leans into Watson's war stuff. Well, so the original Watson was like a war injured like former soldier who had just returned from Afghanistan to show how much things had changed. Yeah.

Right, because that's what they do in the show is he still gets injured in Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah. But I think that's a good place to leave it, guys. Sherlock Holmes. Dude, I want to party with this guy. Seems like a good time. I can't.

I will say. No. It's like that Fiona Apple story about like this is why you realize that you're talking about Clinton Tarantino. Yeah, this is why you need to stop doing cocaine. This is what you sound like. Yeah. I just want to see the guy shoot up cocaine and be like, let's go fucking solve a crime.

Like, what the fuck? I can tell from the way you're standing. I'm like this guy's these guys fucking nuts dude let me video this shit yeah he's like taking apart and putting back together these yards

half the time he's jacking off in that study I don't know what the fuck he's doing in there I will say I do think a part of the appeal is like how fucking cozy that study looks though like it looks so nice in there with that fire and like it just

it has a nice little look about And the cocaine. Cocaine feels warm. Marvelling at the superpowers of the KKK. Yes, exactly. How do they do it? Watson. Damn, they're good.

Andrew T. Thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you, follow you? I don't know, man. Don't follow me. To doce how to find me. Yes. Yeah.

Give them your name. The Andrew T. on social media, but we've been enjoying this show, starter track on suboptimalpods. dot com. Yeah, it's really fun. We've been watching Star Trek episodes. My co-s, Tony Newsom, there's a writer on Starfleet Academy, so, and actor, and she was in lower-dex. You get it. Yeah. The funniest. I thought it was a bad way of explaining who she is. Anyway, she-

never brought up the fact that you're related to Sherlock Holmes. Well, I'm related to the Chinese Sherlock Holmes. Yeah. That's the only, the only T-slash-D in Chinese literary history is basically Chinese Sherlock Holmes, Judge D and he is very similar methods. Tong Dynasty, well, yeah, his whole thing is he does all the deduction shit but because he is like an imperial magistrate

most of the plots end with and then I had the suspect tortured and he confessed. So more of a modern American Yeah, more accurate to real policing. Yeah, yeah. So NYPD D. Yes, that's right. There it is. Okay.

Miles, where can people find you? At Miles of Gray. You know, do you know the other shows? But check out in Footy, and I talk about soccer there, which is also English. Oh, like Sherlock Holmes. There you go. And like Michael Carrick. Yeah.

Michael Carrick, yeah, right. He took the free points on us, yeah, bro. I'm going to be right back to tell you the stuff that I forgot to mention in this conversation. The Notebook Dump. I'll be back in a minute. Listen. And you're there. For heart-wrenching knockouts.

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Stream it all live on TSN Radio. Available on IHeart Radio. All right. That was our conversation with Andrew T about Sherlock Holmes on the spectrum, off his ass on cocaine. Thanks to Miles and Andrew and to our researcher, J.M. McNabb. This is the No, no, no, no, no book, don't. Where I talk about the things that I forgot to mention or wished I had more time to talk about. One thing that I wished I had more time to talk about is the Axial Age.

that idea that I mentioned that is implied by the Axial Age, I guess, that big developments in history are driven not by individual men, but by these large movements that happen because the time has just come, you know? Zykeist is ready for that invention

or artistic movement or philosophical idea. The book where Carl Jaspers introduces this idea is called the origin and goal of history. Like world history is just this one movement working toward a singular goal, even though it feels completely disconnected. That's at least the thesis or a helpful way, he thinks, for looking at history, the world history.

We're all working towards one goal in various places without realizing it. There's a similar idea in Vonnegut's the Sire, of Titan. But in that case, the goal is like being beamed into our head or some shit. I forget exactly. But anyways, the other place that that idea had occurred to me, and when I first started reading about the Axial Age again, was doing the research for the Maryland Mom Row episode. And I was like thinking about the fact that all these mysterious deaths happened in the U.S. in the 1960s while doing the Maryland Mom Row episode, like she has this mysterious death.

then the Kennedys, then Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X. I think I'm getting these out of order. Elvis, John Lennon, it's just this rash of young, beautiful, important people dying violently or mysteriously. That, I don't know, in that case, it could just be the CIA killing a bunch of people that they were scared of. But, yeah, I don't know. In this case, I do think it was interesting because I was researching already and kept seeing this idea that like Sherlock Holmes and Dracula are neck and neck and way out in front as the

two fictional characters that have been depicted the most in the history of film and they were invented by two guys in the same year in the same area, the same town and invented before film has even been invented and then they go on to dominate 20th century cinema. Just weird, interesting. one more historical anecdote for the notebook dump that I wanted to hit. So I wanted to make sure I wasn't being unfair to the legacy of Sherlock. I had some anecdotal stuff about cops thinking they could Sherlock their way into solving crimes, which is always dangerous because cops are often the most confident about the stuff they're wrong about.

They're strong and wrong, and you generally can't tell them shit. But I didn't have like a direct link between Sherlock and modern cop. So I asked J.M. McNabb, a researcher, to see what he could find. First of all, he did great work on this doc. And second of all, he did come back with first that article on forensics that I think I mentioned in the conversation that starts like, I think the article starts, Sherlock started at all. And then goes into like how bite analysis and stuff like that is infallible. turns out very fallible, highly subjective, terrible form of evidence.

And then he came back with this story that I'm about to tell you about Sherlock and Conan Doyle being sort of spiritual ancestors to what is essentially the main bad guy in our iconograph series so far, the FBI. I feel like across all the different stories, the FBI keeps coming up. They hated and fucked with everyone from Einstein to Maryland Mumro as soon as those people

had a progressive idea, essentially. So anyways, here's the story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when he wasn't begrudgingly writing absolute classics of the mystery genre, was out in the world, hanging out with other famous people and chasing ghosts and fairies, but hanging out with other famous people. At some point he meets this famous self-promoting private detective William J. Burns. And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle falls for Burns' bullshit hook line and sinker. So Burns is a former member of the Secret Service who left the Secret Service to start his own detective agency, made a name for himself after being hired to solve the 1910 Los Angeles Times bombing,

which was bombed due to the editor's anti-union agenda. Burns solved that case via blatantly illegal means, kidnapping one conspirator and keeping him in a Chicago house for a week in order to extract a confession without having to, quote, waste time in fighting habeas corpus proceedings. And then he tracks down the other suspects to Indiana and brings them to California without any legal authority. and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, presumably buying into whatever smart police work, he's retconned onto that story,

instead of just being like, yeah, so I kidnapped them and, like, scared them until they told me what I wanted to hear. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is like, wow, this is America's Sherlock Holmes. Burns is also brought in to work on the Wall Street bombing of 1920. doesn't solve that, but what he does is aggressively hype the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle called him the American Sherlock Holmes, just aggressively self-mythologizing his own abilities, writing true crime stories based on his cases for detective magazines, starring in a silent movie about one case called the $5 million counterfeiting plot, which included a cameo from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. He eventually becomes the head of the Bureau of Investigation in 1921, which is soon to be the FBI.

So he is like the proto J. Edgar Hoover. Unfortunately for him, he is forced to resign in disgrace in 1924 due to his role in the Teapot Dome scandal, which was just basically the Harding administration selling naval reserves to private oil companies. but Burns literally had his agents following Democrats who tried to stop them reading their mail, listening to their phone calls in order to try and dig up potential ammunition for smear campaign. So, yeah, basically Sir Arthur Conan Doyle co-signed a guy who was essentially the proto, Jay Edgar Hoover, who went on to be the main antagonist of many of the lives that we've been covering in our iconogram. series. By the way, speaking of Conan Doyle

befriending problematic American detectives, he also met William Pinkerton and was so impressed with him that he turned to the final Holmes novel, The Valley of Fear, into a pro-Pinkerton anti-union story inspired by their infiltration

of the Molly Maguars. So, not on the best side of history, but very entertaining. That's going to be it for Sherlock, cool character, indirectly responsible for a lot of bad shit. If I missed anything on this or any other icons that you think is interesting, by all means,

let me know in the Discord or on Twitter. And I'll mention it in these notebook dumps in the future. Up next, we have an icon who is no friend to the police. Hell, he once pulled up from the logo and shot two of them for harassing a black man. Next week, Miles, Molly Lambert and I take a look at Tupac Shakur. It's a very long one, a lot of great shit in there. So hopefully you tune back in for that one. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I enjoyed researching it.

And I'll talk you all next week. Bye, bye. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.