50 People or Groups, Living or Not, Real or Maybe Not…

… I’d like to meet and spend maybe a half hour talking to. In no special order, and totally topical – the list would most likely be different next year or last year. Let’s assume we’d be able to converse regardless of the respective languages, and that they’d have to answer my questions honestly, even if such answers deflate the myths.

1. Stephen Hawking
2. Albert Einstein
3. Charles Darwin
4. Thomas Jefferson
5. J.R.R.Tolkien
6. Isaac Asimov
7. William Shatner
8. The cast of Star Trek (the original)
9. The cast of Firefly
10. Abigail Adams – because she fascinates me
11. The person who first figured out how to make chocolate
12. Rush – the Canadian band, not the Limbaugh
13. Rosa Parks
14. Bill Gates
15. Grace Hooper – for her contributions to COBOL, a language I never learned
16. Jesus, to see if he really existed, said all the things attributed to him, and ask what he thinks about the current state of his religion
17. William Shakespeare, to see if he really existed and wrote all the things attributed to him
18. Siddhārtha Gautama, to see if he really existed, said all the things attributed to him, and ask what he thinks about the current state of his religion
19. Mohammed, to see if he really existed, …you get the drift
20. Abraham Lincoln
21. Josephine Smith, my grandmother, to tell her the Red Sox finally won another World Series
22. Joseph Smith, to have a look at those tablets
23. Dian Fossey
24. Bob Hope
25. Gary Larsen
26. Benjamin Franklin
27. Marie Antoinette
28. Reiff Lafleur, because I’m curious how his life has been
29. Aretha Franklin, to give her some r-e-s-p-e-c-t
30. The native Americans – to warn them
31. Gustav Holst, because I really like his suite, The Planets
32. Jules Verne
33. James Clerk Maxwell
34. The Beatles, particularly John Lennon
35. Mary Shelley
36. Winston Churchill
37. Marilyn Monroe (who wouldn’t?)
38. Marie Curie
39. Amelia Earhart, to find out what happened
40. Werner von Heisenberg
41. Galileo Galilei
42. The designer of the Great Pyramid of Giza
43. Leonardo da Vinci
44. Nikola Tesla
45. Martin Gardner
46. Alan Turing
47. M.C. Escher
48. Captain Lipfert, to thank him for advising me that a degree in physics post-Navy might not be as valuable as one in engineering
49. Clause Shannon
50. Orville and Wilbur Wright

As I said at top, I’m sure this list would be different tomorrow.