What I found most amusing, though, was that it gradually emerged that Damian and the women were approaching their paranoias from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. For instance, Mia and Leslie both loathed Trump, whereas Damian refused to outright dismiss the QAnon conspiracy. I had heard about this QAnon stuff in the news but had only the vaguest understanding of what it was all about. As Damian explained it, the conspiracy (not that he called it that) alleged that numerous liberal Hollywood actors and high-ranking Democrats had been running an international child sex trafficking ring, and that Trump feigned collusion with the Russians in order to enlist special counsel Robert Mueller in an effort to expose the ring and thus prevent a coup led by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and liberal philanthropist George Soros. That’s the essence of it at least, as far as I understood it. I could barely keep a straight face as Damian explained all of the shadowy saga’s numerous subplots, twists, and pseudonymous online players. He suggested that parts of it had ‘maybe been blown out of proportion’ but seemed to otherwise believe it was true.

There were a few other points of conspiratorial divergence amongst the three of them. Leslie, for instance, believed the measles vaccine led to autism, whereas Mia said the anti-vaxxer movement ‘melted her face off,’ especially given her line of work. All three of them, however, agreed that September 11 was an inside job, as did Nora. Damian arrived at this belief only after his two tours in Iraq. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given their backgrounds in science, Howard and Jo both seemed wholly unconvinced by these alt-narratives. Shawn, being Jewish, also had no time for conspiracy theories, as he found most of them anti-Semitic at their root, in some form or another. He had a gorgeous way of sort of staccato hissing with laughter to himself, not quite loud enough to interrupt, but just enough to register his complete disdain for what was being theorized. Emily, meanwhile, remained mostly silent; though I couldn’t tell whether out of polite opposition, because she was being gradually persuaded, or because, frankly, she just couldn’t follow the conversation.