Hello, everyone. Welcome to the October 2025 Ask Me Anything Edition of the Mindscape podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. Usually, one of the things that slows me down when I'm doing the AMAs, the Ask Me Anything episodes, is I got to think of something to say here in the intro. I suspect nobody cares about the intro. I suspect many of you skip it, but I want to start with something interesting. I'll be honest, right now, this semester, there's been enough going on. I have nothing interesting to say right now. Here's the most interesting thing I have to say. The Philadelphia sports scene has been a disaster. You know, I live in Baltimore, but we're next to Philadelphia, and I grew up in Philadelphia, so all of my teams are still Philadelphia teams. Both the Eagles and the Phillies

had very, very high hopes, and also the Penn State football team, which is not Philadelphia,

but Pennsylvania, really high hopes, completely dashed in different ways. The Eagles won the

Super Bowl last year, so they can't really complain.

But this year, they're not nearly doing as well.

The Phillies zoomed into the playoffs and then completely crashed and burned.

It's gotten so bad that my beloved Philadelphia 76ers are like the hope for Philadelphia

sports fandom.

That's not a good position to begin because the

six years have not been making people happy when the chips are down for the last many years

in a row. Let's put it that way. Anyway, maybe think of like why we put so much of our, why I do

anyway, why sports fans do put so much of our emotional energies into these things

that are absolutely beyond our control, in part because it's a distraction from the

terribleness of the world around us, but I would like my distraction to be a little bit more

rewarding. I really, really need the Philadelphia 76ers to be successful in the NBA this

year to preserve my sanity as the world collapses around us.

That's it. That's the best thing I have thought of to say to begin the podcast for what it's worth.

The other thing is various scheduling issues have come up. Usually I try to put the Ask Me Anythings at the first Monday of every month.

For various reasons, that's not happening, but there will be one AMA in October, in November,

in December, as usual.

So don't worry about that.

It might not be the first Monday, but they're going to happen.

...