Hello, everyone. Welcome to the July 2025. Ask Me Anything Edition of the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. As you know, if you listen to last week's solo episode, I'm actually back now from traveling. Maybe you didn't know that. You knew I was traveling. Now I am back. I was visiting Santa Fe, the Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Institute, among other places. And now I'm back in the good old studio.

So the audio quality should be back to where it normally is. And I thought I would start off

the AMA with two anecdotes that I came back with from Santa Fe. They're only vaguely Santa Fe related.

They're of broader interest, I think. One is when I was driving back to Albuquerque to catch the

flight home to Baltimore, killing time, I was looking for a podcast to listen to. In the car is the only

time I really have to listen to podcasts. And the algorithm served me up an episode of Amy Poller's

podcast called Good Hang. Not a sponsor of the Mindscape podcast, but that's okay. I'm happy to recommend Amy Poller's podcast if you like that kind of thing. It is not generally my kind of thing, but Amy Poehler had Idris Elba as her guest on the show, and I figured, you know, I'm just driving back to the airport. I'm not in the mood. It's very early in the morning to think about anything very deep. Let's listen to some celebrity chit-chat. And that would be fine. These are two actors, Idris Elba and Amy Poehler, who I enjoy immensely watching on TV and movies. so why not listen to them casually gab?

But actually, even though I wasn't expecting any deep sociological or scientific insights,

I kind of got one, which was interesting.

I mean, maybe it's something I should have thought of myself before.

They were talking about the wire.

Those of you have not seen The Wire.

I'm going to try very hard not to spoil it, but you should see The Wire. It's the best TV show ever made. And I say that not just because it is set in Baltimore. Idris Elba was one of the

stars of the Wire. And in fact, it was basically his breakout role as far as Americans are

concerned.

And he played a character called Stringer Bell.

And Stringer Bell is interesting because he was one of the leaders of a drug gang.

But he aspired to be something more than that.

He wanted to go legit and be a businessman.

He took classes at a local community college on finance

and economics and things like that. And he tried his best. And again, no spoilers, but

it's difficult to change your role in the system in this kind of circumstance. That's one of

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