A friend of my wife's is coming over for dinner tonight and he is a lot smarter than me.

What do we have in common, well... A Bachelor's in Computer Science, and that should be enough of a conversation starter. But he's nearly completed his doctoral studies and is light years ahead of me in his particular area, which I find fascinating but don't have any legit reason to care about (except for maybe a better way through heavy traffic - he's a combinatorics guy specializing in that I think) and I got married and had some kids and am a professional programmer for medical records software.

We've got a lot in common, but there's a point where neither of us care or understand each other - although I really want to learn from him and I'm not certain he'd even want to talk about his work.

So for all you doctors or code monkeys, what's a good conversation starter!