We have a listener!

 One of the things about podcast life that I was well aware of going into it has been the "shouting into the void" aspect of it. Podcasters often talk about podcasting on their podcasts, and podcaster panels at 221B Con were very good at both encouraging and laying out some of the realities of the hobby, and one of those realities was the fact that you don't often get much feedback. Or any. People listen to podcasts as a part of their regular routines, and how often do you thank your mailman or the TV shows you watch every week?

Sure, one usually gets download counts and knows how many people are listening. And the numbers for The Watsonian Weekly and Sherlock Holmes is Real have listener counts in line with any Sherlockian activity I've ever done. The one with "Sherlock Holmes" in the title gets more listens than the one with "Watson" in the title, as one might expect. But what one rarely gets is reviews, which, early on, is a very good thing. If amateur podcasters (which everybody is when they start) got compared and critique at the level of Hollywood films, only the truly driven or narcissistic would probably endure.

So this week, The Watsonian Weekly got its best Christmas present ever -- a listener who went through all the episodes without trying to escape, and actually gave us a complimentary thread on Twitter. Even Rob Nunn, our drop-in book reviewer who read so many Sherlockian books this year he couldn't even attempt to review them all without impacting his reading goals.

So this week, Madeline Quiñones gets a shout-out in this blog, a special Christmas episode coming Christmas eve that will bring back "Slow Train to Little Purlington," a feature that's been missing lately, and my learning how to put a tilde over an "n" using a Mac keyboard.

We have a listener! As we start the third year of The Watsonian Weekly, that's a little boost of energy to keep us rolling on with our little podcast. Many thanks to Paul Thomas Miller, Margie Deck, Robert Perret, and even Rob Nunn, along with all those other voices we've dragged on to the show over the past year. Their week-in, week-out work has made the show possible, and the fact that they have supplied bits through some busy, challenging, pandemic-problem weeks of this particular year is especially worth noting. I really appreciate all of their efforts.

But our podcast cast and crew is not a closed-door  group. Have an iPhone or some other app that records voice memos? You, too, could actually be a podcast content creator for The Watsonian Weekly. Get in touch, even if you hate the sound of your own voice. (You know what the best way to get over hating the sound of your own voice is? Keep hearing it over and over again! You get numb to it, and just trust that anyone who keeps listening must not find it too offensive.)

So many thanks to Madeline this week for being one of those rare folk who pulled up our little podcast out of the great sea of podcasts out there. It's great to have a listener!