We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, which is another way of saying we wandered bravely from topic to topic with the confidence of people who believe curiosity is a form of planning. It started with musical dreams, which immediately ran into taxes, because nothing crushes artistic ambition faster than discovering the government would also like a solo. From there we examined the mysterious phenomenon of celebrity wealth, which turns out to be mostly an illusion created by sunglasses, confidence, and someone else paying for lunch.

Naturally this led us to government conspiracies, because once you realize famous people don’t have as much money as you think, it’s only a short hop to assuming someone is hiding something. We discussed survival skills for the collapse of society, a scenario everyone is very confident about despite having trouble assembling IKEA furniture. The Doomsday Clock came up, which is reassuring because it’s good to know the end of the world is being managed by people who own a clock.

We also talked about zombies, because every serious discussion eventually circles back to zombies, the one apocalypse we’ve fully rehearsed thanks to television. Along the way we touched on personal health journeys, which mostly involve learning what foods now hate us, and food preferences, which are deeply emotional and should never be questioned. Black pepper emerged as a cultural force, gold mining as an economic mystery, and hibernation as an underutilized lifestyle choice for anyone tired of the news.

In the end, the conversation proved that modern life is complicated, confusing, and possibly ending soon, but at least we can laugh about it while seasoning our food aggressively and considering a long nap.