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There are people who have no idea what they would do with themselves if they had a little under two weeks with no commitments, a car, a duffel bag, and a series of motel reservations making a loop around New England with a spur up into Maine.

I am not one of those people.

A cove ... somewhere. Near Camden? Probably near Camden. Linda Holmes/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Linda Holmes/NPR

On my Late Fall Foliage Solo Tour, of all the anxieties that occasionally gripped me, not knowing what to do with myself — by myself — was not among them. I examined racks of jewelry and adjusted room thermostats and had chocolate chip ice cream at a place my family used to go when I was a young teenager. (It's the same, except that now it's next to an enormous Walmart.) I read books. I had clam chowder four times and had breakfast at a little place right by Amherst populated by students, and I eavesdropped on a Rocklandite in a laundromat explaining that he'd gone mudding that weekend and needed a story to give his girlfriend about why the truck was all scuffed up. I walked a trail at Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park near Freeport and heard total, hum-less, fan-less silence, which I rarely do. I visited a cemetery where some of my relatives are buried. I dropped the valve cap into the wheel of my car while putting air in my tires, got distracted enough battling the air hose that I forgot to dig it back out, and happily found it peacefully hanging out inside the wheel cover many, many miles later when I remembered.

I spent Halloween on Cape Cod, where behind me, the door to wandering tourists was swinging shut for the season. I spent an evening in a Ramada with the power out, and I chatted with the Banana Man at the Kennebunk service plaza, and I managed to keep my composure and not crack up when I overheard a discussion at a Rockport Denny's in which a woman said, with a certain guilty, gossipy glee, "She worries so much about havin' lines on her face, but what about that mouth full of choppers? That's all I could see." ("Choppers," of course, was "chaw-pahs.") I walked down a steep trail at a botanical garden where, at the bottom, a nice lady comes and picks you up in a golf cart to haul you back up the hill. I tipped 50 percent to servers to whom I said "Just me!" when I asked for a table, who filled my coffee over and over because they had plenty of tables and it was foggy and gray outside. I took a picture of a butterfly I suspect has been photographed by thousands of tourists before me.

A butterfly takes it easy on some daisies at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. Linda Holmes/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Linda Holmes/NPR

We have a certain cultural mistrust of solitude, I think. It is for weirdos and lost souls, spinsters and misfits. But in truth, I can't tell you what a luxury I think it is to be entitled to it. Most of the time, I want good company, like most people do. But the experience of earned, voluntary aloneness is, among other things, instructive. I don't think you can really understand how accustomed you are to being scheduled and operating off an internal to-do list at almost all times until you think to yourself, "My goal will be to get to Providence by 4," and then you think, "Why is there a goal?"

And then it begins to make you internally rebellious: What if I drove with no goal? What if I had nowhere to be all day until it was time to sleep and I discussed with no one where to stop and take a picture, where to have lunch, what shop to go in, or which way to turn on the trail? What would I do if I could do anything — in this micro-environment, in this moment, at the point of this particular pause, what is my wish?

Wolfe's Neck Woods State Park. Linda Holmes/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Linda Holmes/NPR

Because the experience of good company is in part the experience of matching your wishes to someone else's; that's part of what makes it great. You build a common wish with another person: to go somewhere, to meet, to have sushi instead of steak. And those shared wishes are profound.

But if you collaborate constantly, both professionally and personally, it's easy to forget what undiluted self-determination feels like, and there's something to be said for remembering.

While I was staying in Freeport, I realized that the clouds and rain that had accompanied the first few days on the road had broken, and I started to wonder if I could see stars. I don't see a lot of stars in my day-to-day; there's an awful lot of light pollution in my section of the East Coast, and if I'm being honest, I doubt I'd take the time to stare at them anyway. But on this particular night, I went out and waited for my eyes to adjust, and when they did, there were many, many, many stars. I decided to try to take a picture.

I am a casual hobbyist at best when it comes to complicated pictures of any kind. I play around — enough that I had a tripod and a remote shutter release in the car — but I didn't really have the right lens for this, and I wasn't really in the best place (hunkered down between two big evergreens in the darkest corner of the motel parking lot). I just wanted to see if I could do it. Had I had to explain it to someone else how long I was out there fiddling and turning dials and pushing buttons and counting seconds in my head, I would have felt silly. There is a diabolical internal voice that feels external and belongs to no one that says, in moments like this, "What are you doing? You are bent over a camera on a tripod in the dark, and you're all in black, meaning you really, really do appear to be skulking around like a crazy person, and this picture is going to have power lines in it anyway, and it won't be in focus because that's the part you haven't figured out, so it's not going to be a good picture anyway, so what are you doing?"

The luxury of solitude lies in hearing that, and training it to settle down. "I am taking a picture of these stars, and it's going to take me a bunch of tries, but eventually, I'm going to make it work because I have absolutely no responsibilities on this particular evening and I can stay out here until 3 in the morning if I feel like it."

It did not take until 3 in the morning. And it's not a good picture, but when I look at it, I remember in my fingers the precise temperature of the air, dropping the lens cap in the grass and feeling around for it, and wondering whether people in passing cars thought I was crazy. "Just me," I would have said with a wave.

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Stars in Freeport. Linda Holmes/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Linda Holmes/NPR

Stars in Freeport.

Linda Holmes/NPR

When I sat down with Benedict Cumberbatch to talk about Sherlock, the first thing on his mind wasn't exactly the show.

"I'm really worried about those Sherlock fans, because they have been here, probably, for a while," Cumberbatch says to his assistants, asking them to tell a small clutch of fans waiting outside the hotel where we were meeting that he would stop by to see them soon.

This attention to fans seems a natural reflex for Cumberbatch, but it's also a key to the show's success. Producers have earned a massive audience by shaping Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes into a compelling character for modern viewers.

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Benedict Cumberbatch, right, and Martin Freeman star as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson on the BBC's crime drama Sherlock. Robert Viglasky/© Hartswood Films hide caption

itoggle caption Robert Viglasky/© Hartswood Films

Benedict Cumberbatch, right, and Martin Freeman star as Sherlock Holmes and John Watson on the BBC's crime drama Sherlock.

Robert Viglasky/© Hartswood Films

That's why, even as fans resign themselves to waiting more than a year for a new episode of the show, it makes sense that the BBC would release a new box set to tide them over until then.

On Tuesday, fans get first crack at a DVD and Blu-ray set containing all three seasons of Sherlock, with outtakes, interviews, new commentaries and even collectible resin mini-busts, depicting the show's two leading men.

Once fans devour this material, they'll discover Sherlock's last season gave more information than ever about the mysterious detective's history — details Cumberbatch recites in our interview with the rapid-fire cadence from one of Sherlock's famous speeches filled with deductions.

"You find out about Sherlock's background," the actor says. "You find out that he comes from a truly stable home. It was a gesture in the first episode, but you see that in practice in the third. You see that, as a boy he was deeply insecure — it begins as a taunt [from his older brother, Mycroft] ... and that comes back to haunt him and he feels like a child. He's reduced to feeling like a child."

Cumberbatch suspected those storylines came from conversations early in the first season's production with one of the show's producers, Steven Moffat.

"Immediately as an actor I wanted to understand who [Sherlock] was, what his parents were," he adds. "These were questions I asked ... I wanted to understand. [Moffat] was just talking about, 'Can't this guy just be good at what he does and he's your age and he looks like you and he's doing his thing?' And I went, 'No, no Steven, there's a process I've got to go through. I've got to understand how I became this person.' "

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He didn't necessarily expect those answers to be revealed to viewers, Cumberbatch points out now. "I can't just sort of float onto set with a whole bunch of mannerisms and hope it sort of comes off," he says. "You have to ground it in some sort of reality, otherwise you get found out as things sort of evolve."

One other thing Cumberbatch insisted on was creating a weakness for Sherlock — his inability to connect with people — another idea Moffatt resisted.

"And [Moffat] said, 'But can't he just be really good? Can't he just be good at it? Why does he have to have flaw or an Achilles heel?'" the actor says. "Because I said, you know, 'Where's his weakness?' Because no human being doesn't [have one]. And however much [Sherlock] tries to convince himself he's not human, he is."

Cumberbatch says those early conversations seemed to spark ideas that fully developed in the show's third season, featuring a look at Sherlock's parents — played by the star's real mother and father — and his unique personality, revealed in a climactic scene with the episode's villain that ends with a the detective declaring himself "a high functioning sociopath" before letting off a gunshot

(For the sake of those who may not yet have seen the show, I won't say what Sherlock shoots or why.)

"What he's resorting to at the end is violence," Cumberbatch says "It's the weakest, weakest thing to do. So, to me, I think that exposes more about Sherlock ... I think you get under the skin of every character with this last season ... This is a really Freudian drama."

The new box set offers even more goodies for fans, including an interview where Moffat explains Sherlock Holmes' endless appeal.

"He's got the one explainable superpower that's out there; he deduces things," Moffatt says at one point. "He actually goes to the trouble to explain it. Superman never tells you how he flies. But Sherlock Holmes tells you how the trick is done."

The trick for producers of Sherlock will be using events like this new box set to keep fans excited until a new episode appears — more than a year from now.

Income inequality has been on the rise in the U.S. for decades. The top 1 percent of earners in the U.S. now holds a much greater share of national income than three decades ago. At the same time, incomes for the bottom half of American households have remained virtually flat.

Some economists and social scientists argue that income inequality leads to unequal access to opportunity and resources like nutrition and education. That's left children born to poor families with little hope of escaping poverty themselves, they argue, and has made upward mobility unattainable for many in the middle class, as well.

But others say that income inequality is not inherently a bad thing. They point to research that finds that countries with greater inequality also experience more economic growth. That means that people at all income levels will benefit, they argue, even if their individual slice of the economic pie becomes smaller.

At the latest Intelligence Squared U.S. event, two teams addressed these questions to debate the motion, "Income Inequality Impairs The American Dream of Upward Mobility."

Before the debate, the audience at the Kaufman Music Center in New York was 60 percent in favor of the motion and 14 percent against, with 26 percent undecided. After the debate, 53 percent favored the motion and 37 percent voted against it, making the team arguing against the motion the winner of this particular debate.

Those debating:

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FOR THE MOTION

Elise Gould is the senior economist and director of health policy research at the Economic Policy Institute, where she researches wages, poverty, inequality, economic mobility and health care. She is a co-author of The State of Working America, 12th Edition. Gould also co-authored a book on health insurance coverage in retirement; published in venues such as The Chronicle of Higher Education, Challenge Magazine and Tax Notes; and has written for academic journals including Health Economics, Health Affairs and Journal of Aging and Social Policy. She has testified before the U.S. House Committee on Ways and Means, Maryland Senate Finance and House Economic Matters committees, the New York City Council and the District of Columbia Council.

Nick Hanauer is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist with more than 30 years of experience across a broad range of industries. He has managed, founded or financed more than 30 companies, creating aggregate market value of tens of billions of dollars, including Amazon.com, Aquantive Inc., Insitu group, Market Leader and, most recently, the venture capital firm Second Avenue Partners. He is actively involved in a variety of civic and philanthropic activities and has served a broad range of civic organizations, including the University of Washington Foundation and the Seattle Alliance for Education. He currently serves as a director for the Democracy Alliance and as a board advisor to the policy journal Democracy. Hanauer has published two national bestsellers, The True Patriot and The Gardens of Democracy, with co-author Eric Liu. In 2012, his TED talk on income inequality went viral after TED, citing it as overtly partisan, declined to publish it on their website.

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Edward Conard, a former partner at Bain Capital, argues that the success of America's top earners actually spurs economic growth — growth that, in turn, has increased incomes at all levels of the economic spectrum. Samuel LaHoz hide caption

itoggle caption Samuel LaHoz

Edward Conard, a former partner at Bain Capital, argues that the success of America's top earners actually spurs economic growth — growth that, in turn, has increased incomes at all levels of the economic spectrum.

Samuel LaHoz

AGAINST THE MOTION

Edward Conard is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You've Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong. Prior to writing his book, Conard was a senior managing director at Bain Capital, where he headed the New York office and was responsible for the acquisitions of large industrial companies. He previously worked for Wasserstein Perella, an investment bank that specialized in mergers and acquisitions, and Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, where he headed the firm's industrial practice. Conard recently joined the Intelligence Squared U.S. board of trustees. His views in this debate are his own.

Scott Winship is the Walter B. Wriston Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Previously a fellow at the Brookings Institution, his areas of expertise include living standards and economic mobility, inequality and insecurity. Earlier in his career, Winship was research manager of the Economic Mobility Project of The Pew Charitable Trusts and a senior policy advisor at Third Way. His research has been published in National Affairs, National Review, The Wilson Quarterly, Breakthrough Journal and Real Clear Markets, among other outlets.

Every election suggests change, so given all the scandals involving football, now's an appropriate time to envision what reforms might be forced upon the sport. Well, I'll tell you: It's tough to mess with football.

Now, to begin with, from hindsight, it was probably misleading to call baseball "the national pastime." The claim was, essentially, based almost entirely on the fact that baseball was the only team sport that boasted a professional presence. The World Series was our World Cup and the Olympics rolled into one.

But really, below that top level, football always ruled our hearts. Unlike elsewhere, sport in America grew up as an adjunct to the classroom. Yes, there were the famous three R's –– 'readin, 'riting and 'rithmetic –– but the fourth R was rivalry. Beating the other school, the other college. In a few areas, most famously Indiana, basketball became the identifying school sport, but most everywhere it was football –– shown most vividly in Buzz Bissinger's Americana classic, Friday Night Lights. Even now, when schools in parts of rural America are forced to consolidate, what the little towns seem to miss most is not their school itself, but their school team.

Forget football's ugly violence. In contrast, it was primarily for sweet reasons that the sport ascended to cultural prominence. Baseball makes a great deal of its association with spring, with the beginning of nature's year, but, much more important, football begins in concert with back-to-school. That's always mattered. Baseball is every day, but football was always on the weekend; an event, parties, dances. Eventually, football even became the centerpiece of homecomings, a touchstone of the fond memory of our youth.

So much is made, and correctly, of baseball's attraction for fathers and sons. But football has an even stronger connection to boys and girls to, well ... to sex. Baseball has the seventh-inning stretch; football has halftime –– strike up the band and pretty cheerleaders to go with the macho players.

For a burgeoning United States that was flexing its muscles to the world, our manly football was the perfect sport to display the nation's youthful power. Baseball and basketball are about hand-eye coordination, primarily about skill; football –– coaches tell boys –– is about being a man. Maybe a lot of us need that even more now when as a nation we are frustrated. When fathers can't make the living their fathers once did and when men see women in the ascendancy.

That is surely why, for all the evidence now of how football batters male brains, it seems practically invulnerable to change. Football is simply too embedded in our American calendar, in our American culture, and in our American blood — and guts.

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