Because the desert island question is too easy.

If you asked most people to name their top 5 albums, they probably have a rough list in their head ready to go. But why? My theory is that the albums you will love the most for your whole life only come at important times in your life that allow you to 1) relate to them deeply, as well as 2) spend a lot of time listening and re-listening to them.

But what about your top 5 bands? If you settle on a few of those after a lifetime of listening to music, how do you choose which album by those bands is your favorite? Again, a theory: it is very, very hard for any album, even by your favorite band, to surpass the connection you have with the one specific album that cemented them as one of your favorites.

This means that rarely is it the first album you hear (though sometimes it is, if that one speaks most to you and is a fully realized version of that artist). More often, you will be introduced to a band with an album and start to love them. But a later album will be the one that seals the deal. And once that happens, no other album will ever quite live up to that mark.

However, that is more a function of your relationship to the band than the actual album’s quality. The album you love the most is not necessarily their best work, objectively.

For example, I am a huge fan of The Mountain Goats, a band with a huge catalog and literally dozens of albums. I discovered them in college, well into their career, and heard enough of their early tracks to grow interested. But with the release of Tallahassee, the first full album I owned, I had a musical step forward from a band I already liked, a tight thematic package about a crumbling relationship, that I could play over and over as I read, wrote, or studied — as well as sulked, as I went through various relationship troubles of my own.

If you polled all Mountain Goats fans, the majority opinion might be that an earlier album like All Hail West Texas may have some of the most poignant and memorable songs in their whole catalog, and capture them at the peak of their lo-fi period. Or they might say that The Sunset Tree was the most personal, intimate, and moving while capturing both a totally coherent sound and emotional narrative. It may be their real masterpiece. But for me, it will always be Tallahassee. It’s the work that cemented their place in my heart, and so my relationship with that album supersedes any discussion of objective merit.

So instead of just sharing favorite albums — which doesn’t lead to a very long or interesting conversation, really — ask yourself:

What is your favorite band’s best album? Why do you think so?

What personal connection do you have to that album that might make it your favorite and not the consensus pick? What’s the story behind your choice?

When we reward law-breakers with more puppy access, we’ve definitely screwed up.

This topic is a hot one. I am not even going to attempt to address it personally, other than to voice that as I personally see more and more of these stories, particularly in campus environments, it’s hard for me not to question if something has gone haywire in what we label as unacceptable behavior worthy of regulating.

Luckily this Atlantic article, “How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm”, does a much better (and much longer) job, not only addressing how it came to be, but both the benefits and potential dangers of a heightened sense of what’s allowable and what’s over the line. One researcher quoted in the article puts it simply:

A university that tries to protect students from words, ideas, and graffiti that they find unpleasant or even disgusting is doing them no favors. It is setting them up for greater suffering and failure when they leave the university and enter the workplace. Tragically, the very students who most need the strength to face later discrimination are the ones rendered weakest by victimhood culture on campus.

You really ought to read this one. By framing it around the term “concept creep” and addressing it academically, we’re given a much more rational way to digest and discuss a strange symptom of today’s evolving discourse. Which is just what people love to discuss over beers, right? So.

How does this trend make you feel? Has it affected you personally?

Are you happy to put up with the negative effects for the positive gains? Or vice versa?

Have we reached a tipping point, or will this go even farther? How far can it go?

A good warm-up question: who in your life do you lie to the most?

As mobile computing, big data, location services and voice recognition converge, new possibilities emerge we probably never even thought about. The Atlantic had a smart piece on one possibility: the future of fraud-busting.

They cover several potential avenues that technology could protect us, but one in particular seems like it could change a lot more than how often we have to change our credit card numbers.

Picture yourself walking down the street when a man approaches and asks for bus fare; he says he lost his wallet and needs to get home. Right away, your phone buzzes with a notification: Stay away. He’s a fraud. The same voice has been asking for money in different locations all week. Such a possibility sounds far-fetched, but your phone company already gathers information from all the phones in its network, and several tech firms are developing voice-biometrics software that can identify individuals and even catch emotional patterns that may indicate deceit. [emphasis added]

The idea of catching on to repeat offenders with data is one thing. But what if someone unlocks that next level of real-time analysis, decoding an individual’s voice patterns and emotional cues, to foil lying? Imagine a world where an effective lie-detecting machine is in everyone’s pocket. Conversation would never be the same again.

Would you want this technology to exist, understanding that you’d know when people were lying to you, and they’d know when you lied to them?

Even if that meant the polite deceptions we use to smooth things over with friends or in relationships are no longer possible?

How else would this change our lives — at work, in commerce, in dating, even in public life like politics or dealing with the law?

For your sake, let’s not imagine the biological implications too vividly here.

Once women — and by extension, their partners — reach a certain age, the procreation question becomes inevitable. Should we? Can we? When? How many? How will this affect our careers, our finances, our lifestyle, our happiness? (And this obviously doesn’t even have to be a “we” and “our” conversation; it can just as easily be a “me” and “my” one instead.)

But what if, in the name of equality, this was a less one-sided conversation? What if through some breakthrough, the burdens and privileges of childbirth could be shared equally by both genders, and it was up to each parent to choose who carries each child?

If male, would you want to have this experience?
If female, would you be willing to give it up?

What would the societal side-effects be?
Would there be a weird “favorite child” effect?
Would people fight or even litigate over who gets to, or has to, carry a child?
How else would families work differently?

Annie Johnson, the first African-American ever (and first woman since 1983) to win Homebrewer of the Year.

This article, from Thrillist of all places, does most of the work for us in asking the interesting question here:

So, in the absence of statistics, I set out to answer a simple question: where the hell are all the black craft brewers, bar owners, bloggers, aficionados, and nerds? Why is craft beer — the consumer side, and especially the business side — so white?

The article goes on to explore this idea in greater depth, touching on several possible explanations/causes, and asking the big questions:

1. Black people don’t drink much craft beer

2. There is an ugly history of racism in beer

3. Craft brewing requires money and time

4. Does it even matter?

And however sticky it may be, this last point offers the most interesting debate. The article makes a strong case that the lack of diversity in participants also leads to both a lack of diversity in creativity, and a lack of sharing in the associated economic opportunity. These are basically irrefutable arguments.

What may be tougher to tackle are how these play out on an individual level:

Do enough people care enough to push change, from either side?

For those in the craft beer scene, how do they feel about the current makeup of the crowd? What could they do on a personal level to change it? How would they personally benefit?

For those outside of it, do they even want to be brought in? Why or why not? Are they missing out, or just sitting out?