Sunday morning with the podcasts.

The post-Sherlock's-birthday-weekend time is a good time for listening to Sherlockian podcasts. People have connected in New York in January and there are good interviews to be heard. And as I've found I enjoy listening to the major Sherlockian podcasts on the computer more than my phone, given the ease of sliding past the commercials for the same-old, same-old advertisers and the more meandering parts, Sunday mornings can be a good time to sit down and give them a listen.

The first advice I would give to anyone who has never listened to podcasts before is to start out by listening to as many different ones as you can. Podcasts are like the little conversational groups that pop up at a party. The best are like those people who are unbelievably cool and interesting, but somehow find you charming enough to welcome to their chat-circle. The worst are those droning bores that don't really care who's listening, as long as they have a target to speak at. And like the conversations at a party, you never know which ones will suit your particular tastes and which won't.

Sherlockian podcasts are few, compared to full population of the larger sea of audio they swim in, so it's pretty easy to touch base with the major ones now and then . . . like on an easy Sunday morning.

As Evelyn Herzog and Susan Rice were appearing on I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, that was my first destination this Sunday. Two Sherlockians for whom I've had great admiration and respect about as long as I have known their names, Evelyn and Susan were being interviewed on the Adventuresses of Sherlock Holmes was a must-listen. I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere is always a good place to get a little Sherlockian history from those who participated in it, and no part of our fandoms's history still in living memory is as important as the journey of the Adventuresses. (Though I suspect the journey we're all going on right now will one day be a milestone in its own right -- we're just not into the "history" part yet.)

Some of their stories I had heard before, some parts were brand new, but good stuff and a solid reminder of how different things were fifty(? Really? Fifty?) years ago.

Zipping back to the present for a second podcast, the Baker Street Babes were talking to Bert Coules. In this case, I was coming in more for the Babes than the guest, as I am, sadly, not as Bert-Coules-aware as many of my fellow Sherlockians. That quickly changed as the podcast rolled along, as the Babes in full bloom can bring out the best in a guest. It was especially delightful to hear Kristina back on the podcast (she tends to wander off to Mongolia or some other remote destination), as her spark always takes a Babes podcast from good to great. Bert's observations about the Sherlockian Canon from an dramatiser's point of view bring points one would never get from one's own readings.

Bert's point that "the friendship is what the stories are about -- the cases are incidental" actually makes a real point about modern fanfic without directly addressing it. A lot of us old school Sherlockians are a bit taken aback by the romantic/sexual relationships between Sherlock and John that newer fans love to dive into, but if you consider Holmes and Watson's relationship to be the most important part of the stories, taking them down those more involved relationship roads seems quite natural, now that society is becoming more accepting of male/male romance.

Which brings me to the third major Sherlockian podcast I like to listen to these days, the Three Patch Podcast. If you want to go into relationships between Sherlock-related characters, Three Patch is definitely the place to go. It's a HUGE podcast and dives deep into BBC Sherlock fandom, so one has to be prepared for all of that. In their latest episode, they even discuss how they've drawn out an awfully lot of content for a series that only produced about ninety minutes of new content in the last year. I didn't start really listening to this podcast until I'd seen everything Sherlock fandom was bringing to the table at 221B Con, so I wouldn't recommend this one to a classic Sherlockian without some transitional airlocks to deal with the change in atmosphere.

To this day, Sherlock fandom feels more to me like we discovered a whole new planet of Sherlock Holmes fans, rather than just fans more focussed on a particular show like the Jeremy Brett days. They have a culture and customs much unlike the planet some of us came from, yet are definitely intelligent life forms and seem to be wielding more advanced technologies. I've heard the opinion expressed that, like the previous Brett wave, this new culture will lose its energy and wander elsewhere, with its few remaining members being absorbed by the old Sherlockian world, but as I said . . . a whole new planet. Something on that scale changes life as we know it, no matter what happens to that planet's own culture as time goes on. And I definitely don't see it going away.

I didn't get too far into Three Patch this morning, as like I said, it's HUGE. But will whittle away at it over time. There are a couple of newer podcasts I wanted to get to today, but only so much morning to go around, and I'll have to get there later. It is Sunday morning after all, and a time for a relaxing listen with no pressure.

Which is a nice way to start the last day of the weekend.