Do you often have such odd conversations?

As often as possible, yes! Odd conversations are one of the finer things in life. I was inspired once reading of the extensive correspondences Charles Darwin kept with many of the key figures of his day to start my own discussions by writing 25 letters to 25 of the most revolutionary people that I could think of on my 25th year of life, one every two weeks. Tentatively that is likely going to include:

Shia Agassi
Stewart Brand (On his fatalistic coal retraction)
James Watson (No, I don't agree with him about Africa)
Paul Ehrlich
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Shinji Nishimoto
Mario Capecchi
Michael Eric Dyson (On his BookTV appearance)
Muhammad Yunus
Abbas Raza
Cosmides and Tooby
Aubrey de Grey
Eviatar Zerubavel
Stephen Chu
Stephen Fry
David Tow
Lawrence Lessig
Peter Salovey
Sergei Brin
E. O. Wilson
Alison Gopnik
Henry Markram
Juan Carlos I of Spain (On Basque separatism)
Dean Kamen
and Nadine Strossen