Featuring the cool, clear light of science brought to bear on situations of life-and-death significance in the middle of an otherwise mindless carnival of the id (originally Las Vegas, but then expanded to include other vacation destinations), CSI tapped people’s yearning to be more than spectator-consumers, to transcend the prevailing idfulness, and to overcome the allure of always being told what they want to hear, in order to truly and objectively know something.