The Four Dead People You Would Want To Have Dinner With

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This is a discussion inspired by the writing or small-talk prompt "which dead people/historical figures would you want to invite to a dinner party?"

Limit this thread to dead people who are famous enough to have a wikipedia page, not people you personally knew.

State who your four dinner guests will be and why, what you want to talk about, and for extra fun, imagine how they will interact with each other.

My four:

1) George Carlin. Not only a contender for G.O.A.T. comedian but also an anti-authoritarian icon of pop culture. I want to hear all of his contemptuous opinions of the 2020's and the absolute neurosis of our culture post-covid.

2) Emma Goldman. The quintessential American anarchist who said she didn't want any part of a revolution that didn't involve dancing. She seems like someone who would do some drugs with me and then talk shit about tankies and liberals with me.

3) Cesare Borgia. Just because The Borgias was one of my favorite shows of all time so I really want to meet the real deal, though based on his historical portrait, he won't be nearly as sexy as Francois Arnaud portraying him. Did he really do it with Lucrezia? What happened at the banquet of chestnuts? The bastard son of a Pope who tried to make his own kingdom, like Carlin and Goldman, he was an outlaw in his own way in his own time.

4) Epicurus. The only dude I'm sure won't want to get high with me, but I'll invite him anyway because his philosophy is solid and had epicureanism prevailed over stoicism, the world would have been a much better place to live. He's no party animal, but being an atheist or an apatheist during a time of extreme superstition and god-fearing, he too is a rebel.

[Ethel mermania]

Mom, dad, and my mothers parents

[Thepeopl]

My biological brother, sister and parents.
I've only met my biological father. My mother died shortly after giving birth to me. My brother and sister died before I could visit my birth land.

So, yeah very selfish. No historical ppl.

[San Lumen]

Theodore Roosvelt, Bob Ross, Rene Descartes, Isaac Asimov

[Hispida]

going to take this as four separate dinners:

dinner 1. bob ross
dinner 2. vladimir lenin
dinner 3. my uncle
dinner 4. my great-grandmother

if it's one united dinner, then i'm just going to choose people from my family; my uncle, my great-grandmother, my great-grandfather, and my great-aunt.

[Ethel mermania]

My biological brother, sister and parents.
I've only met my biological father. My mother died shortly after giving birth to me. My brother and sister died before I could visit my birth land.

So, yeah very selfish. No historical ppl.

I don't think it is selfish, it is just setting a different priority.

I certainly can understand the OP's choices, they would be enlightening dinner companions.

But I want to tell mom about my kids.

[The Blaatschapen]

Grandpa, grandma, dyakovo, Ethels's mom.

[Big Bad Blue]

Four French people:

Donatien Alfonse Francois, Compte de Sade
Cyrano de Bergerac
Jean-Marie Arouet, better known to the world as Voltaire
Josephine de Beauharnais

Four US Republican politicians:

Thaddeus Stevens
Charles Sumner
Thomas Brackett Reed
Jeannette Rankin

Four authors:

Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Henry Miller
Edith Wharton
W.E.B. Du Bois

[Risottia]

Oooh.

I'd like to have again a chat with prof.Hack (the astrophysicist) and prof.Levi-Montalcini (the Nobel laurate for Medicine). And poor prof.Regge (the theoretical physicist), especially before he was a hit a bit by dementia. And, well, you won't find him on the Wikiez so it shouldn't really count, but I was fond of poor prof.Casagrande, who taught me the courses of Optics and Quantum Optics. Same for prof.Bassetti, who taught Statistical Mechanics.

[Space Squid]

One expert linguist.
One person from the Indus Valley Civilization
One Minoan person who can write Linear A
And one spot I reserve for whoever Arch tells me would be most useful to anthropologists (maybe someone who speaks PIE?)

[Czardas]

Excluding family and friends for the sake of the question I can think of a lot of people I'd love to be present to hear a conversation among. For example, among leftist political thinkers, Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin and Gramsci. Or classical musicians: Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, and Cage. This is mostly for the pure enjoyment of seeing how people would react to one another.

Individual dinners? The problem with that would be I'm the common denominator in all of those, and I'm not that interesting as a person. That's also the problem with inviting four different people with not much in common. (I guess I also have no idea how public figures really acted in private.)

[Mtwara]

I'm not a good conversationalist so chances are any dinner would be a little disappointing.

The people I would chose are probably:

Ernest Hemingway
Alfred Wainwright
Patrick Moore
Theodore Roosevelt

I have no idea how they would all get along with each other.

[The Blaatschapen]

Fine, for famous people, let's go with Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Cobain and David Bowie.

[Hispida]

Fine, for famous people, let's go with Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Cobain and David Bowie.

courtney love seeing kurt cobain walk outside of the grass restaurant like

[The Blaatschapen]

Fine, for famous people, let's go with Marilyn Monroe, Anna Nicole Smith, Kurt Cobain and David Bowie.

courtney love seeing kurt cobain walk outside of the grass restaurant like

Courtney is not invited.

[Elejamie]

Whether it be four separate dinners or just one big get-together, here's my list.

1. Bill Hicks. Being a fan of his work, not just his more angry stuff (I was quite fond of using his "Play From Your Heart" bit to sum up the UK at Eurovision because we decided to send something that people would actually like this year) but also when he went all introspective, he would definitely provide some entertaining commentary and would probably be fun to talk to.
2. Stu Ungar. A bit obscure but, as someone who used to play Texas hold 'em quite a bit (not for any real money, though) and as someone who is getting into gin rummy, it'd be interesting to play against one of the best as some post-dinner entertainment. Given that I'm not really a professional in either, I'd probably have to remind him that it's just a bit of fun, he doesn't need to be all big about it because he's whooping me.
3. Alan Rickman. He was one of my favourite actors, even though I'm not really a massive film buff. His death really hit me hard and I still can't believe he's gone. Plus, you know, it's Hans Gruber, Severus Snape, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the Sherrif of Nottingham and Metatron.
4. Richard H. Kirk. Also obscure (but not as obscure as Stu above) despite also being the most recent death on this list, he was pretty much one of the main men behind one of my favourite bands in Cabaret Voltaire. So it'd be fun to have him play something before, during or after the meal.

And, as an honourable mention because she was my pet and because I think she'd be absent for a fair amount of it, I'd like to mention my cat Emilie who sadly crossed the rainbow bridge nearly two years ago. Simply because she was my adorable princess and her hooman misses her very much. I'd probably just leave her a bowl of wet food (or maybe some biccies with a little bit of tuna on top) and some water, then give her a fuss after the party. That is if she doesn't come in and ask to be the centre of attention.

[Farnhamia]

Only four? Well ...

- my dear René Descartes (I will have to slap him at least once for not listening to me when I said, "Do not go to Sweden! It's cold up there! That little bitch Christina is not worth it!")
- Doctor Franklin, of course (we'll talk about North Korea)
- Hatshepsut (I do miss that girl)
- Karl Marx (but he has to bring dessert)

[Informed Consent]

1. Jesus Christ
2. Frederick Douglas
3. Reverend Joseph Jackson
4. Rush Limbaugh

[Hamidiye]

Hitler, Suleyman the Great, Nestor Makhno and Atatürk.

[Hukhalia]

mao (asking about theories regarding the cultural revolution and how 2 apply it 2 a modern setting)

hunter thompson (a brother in substance abuse, respect, that'd be a night to remember)

khrushchev (so i could hound him about his revisionism)

jesus (bro i want to have dinner with fucking jesus of course i do it's JESUS)

[Hispida]

holy shit i forgot about having dinner with jesus

[Free Algerstonia]

i am picking allah, emperor norton, emperor bokassa, and q

[Risottia]

[*]Alan Rickman. He was one of my favourite actors, even though I'm not really a massive film buff. His death really hit me hard and I still can't believe he's gone. Plus, you know, it's Hans Gruber, Severus Snape, Marvin the Paranoid Android, the Sherrif of Nottingham and Metatron..

What, no mention for Sir Alexander Dane (aka Dr. Lazarus) and Colonel Brandon?

[The Archregimancy]

One expert linguist.
One person from the Indus Valley Civilization
One Minoan person who can write Linear A
And one spot I reserve for whoever Arch tells me would be most useful to anthropologists (maybe someone who speaks PIE?)

Archaeology is only really classified as a subdiscipline of anthropology in North America; it's conceptualised as an entirely separate discipline in much of the rest of the world.

Given, however, that you're focused on linguistics, early civilisations, and writing, I'd go with whomever wrote the Kish Tablet.

Perhaps they can give you some insight into just who came up with this wacky 'writing' idea.

[Senkaku]

I will go with... Ashurbanipal, Edward Bernays, Wassily Kandinsky, and David Graeber, but I feel like there's a bunch of combinations other people have suggested that I'd also be happy with. Just 4 is a really hard pick, I feel like it's easier to do groups of 4 for different themed dinners (one dinner with 4 political leaders, one with 4 ancestors, etc.).