Have you ever known someone who only communicates in pop culture references? Maybe someone for whom internet memes are all that matter? You know that friend who only ever talks about sports or politics or quotes from the movie Anchorman? Sure, that friend may be fun at a party, but what if you need to have a conversation on a deeper level?

I once worked with a student who only talked about the Star Wars character Boba Fett (the mysterious, masked bounty hunter who pursues Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back). No matter how I tried to steer our conversations, this student always brought them back to Boba Fett:

Hey, have you seen the new Boba Fett comic book? It really fills in some of the gaps between the movies.

Do you think Boba Fett is ever going to get his own spinoff movie? Who should play him? I mean, Temuera Morrison is getting a little old, but he’s still doing the voice in the video games.

Check out the Boba Fett tattoo I want to get. I want it on my back— like my ENTIRE back.

Everything was Boba Fett. Now, as a lifelong Star Wars fan, I had no problem talking about Boba Fett, but I really wanted to get to know this student and establish a supportive rapport with him, and all of this Star Wars talk was very surface level (perhaps even masking some deeper issues he wasn’t ready to discuss). Finally, after a month of unsuccessfully asking about his family and friends and school only to have him pivot back to Boba Fett, I thought of a different approach:

“What is it you like so much about Boba Fett?”
Of course, this was met with the predictable “He’s cool,” so I took things a step further: “What makes Boba Fett cool to you?” My student had to pause for a minute before explaining, “He’s methodical and cunning, but he’s mysterious too.” Suddenly, I had a little more to go on. Plenty of people like Boba Fett, but this student prized a few specific characteristics: cunning and mystery. As we talked more about what made Boba Fett cool, this student spoke of the character’s roguishness and disregard for authority, which in turn told me about this student’s own attitude toward authority and the sort of person he aspired to be. While I’m sure my continued attempts at conversation had already given this student a sense of support, talking this way about Boba Fett helped us reach a new level of understanding.

To take a conversation to a deeper place and help people reflect, see if you can get to the emotions and ideals behind what people say. When I was growing up, this was often presented to me with the somewhat condescending maxim:

Great minds discuss ideas.
Good minds discuss events.
Lesser minds discuss people.

[sigh] Yes and no.
While this expression has some value to it, perhaps we should modify it: Great conversation unearths the ideas behind events and people. When we start to question the significance of a place or an experience or a masked bounty hunter from a galaxy far far away, we can help people explore their worldviews on a deeper level. These things —be they pop culture icons or personal experiences— resonate with us for good reasons, so always probe deeper; there may be some big ideas just under the surface.

For more on this concept, check out David Dark’s “Life’s Too Short to Pretend You’re Not Religious.” Dark refers to these personally-significant pop culture artifacts as an “attention collection,” and all of us have them. While discussions of these attention collections may seem shallow at first, they can go really deep if we’re willing to ask the right questions.