This three-way discuss took place over Christmas vacation in their Grove Street home front room. Unfortunately, the conversation went in way too many directions to take accurate notes. This is a simple paraphrase and only scratches the surface. To bring you up to speed, the following may help:
John: 2004 BHS grad; 2008 University of Chicago, BA linguistics, minor in Slavic languages and literatures; May 2010 MA, Berkeley, linguistics; in Ph.D. program in linguistics, expects to be completed in May 2013.