"Sure, I'm just curious. There are-- a lot of things that people wouldn't necessarily think to say, because it's just a background fact about their lives, so you can't really ask about it. You just have to ask them to describe things about their lives in detail and then you'll stumble across it."

"The last one shown on the ship was an action movie about a ship's crew crashed on a planet with hostile wildlife. Another crew from another planet is also crashed there, I forget why there are so many crashes on this planet, and the Ibyabekan ship helps them and brings them back to Ibyabek when they defect from Xeren."

He is quiet for a minute and then says, "we have movies like that in Cascadia too."

"I was mostly watching children's television, for the language."

"Oh?" he says. "What did you think?"

"There were a lot of farm animals."

"Oh, yeah, that's a thing. We all have our own animals here."

"Why is that?"

"The Gileadites nuked us a few decades ago and we have a national trauma about it."

"I'm sorry to hear that - what does that have to do with farm animals -"

"When the nukes hit and the war started, it disrupted the supply lines and a lot of people went hungry. So a lot of people bought animals so that if it happens again they'll be able to rely on their own food. --And then once enough people started doing it it became normal to have your own pig. They are loving and intelligent animals who are also delicious to eat."

"Oh, that makes sense."

"I assume in the future you've figured out vat meat and you think this is all very barbaric."

"Our meat comes from animals. I believe some of them are genetically engineered to be able to eat Ibyabekan native plants."

"...That's odd. At least in Cascadia most people who think about it think that normal farms-- not like, a person and their pets whom they eat-- are really terrible for animals, and as soon as we can grow meat without animals we'd switch. Is it very hard, do you know--"

"I don't, I'm sorry."

"Huh. You seem... weirdly unadvanced for a society with spaceships."

"I don't know what to tell you about that."

"Maybe a better approach is to ask about what things people have invented recently."

"I don't particularly keep up with that sort of thing."

"Right, but you'd still-- notice some things? We recently invented virtual reality that lets you feel sensations, I have one in my house, and you'd at least know about that sort of thing even if you can't afford one." 

"It sounds somewhat frivolous."

"So are movies."

"Movies contribute to a cohesive culture."

"People here go to movies because they're fun."