"Help me out here! Can I give you an all-time favorite animated film? An all-time animated favorite is Ratatouille. I do not know why, but that film about that rat really got me. I loved Lion King as a kid, but as a thinking animated film [Ratatouille] really has something that I like about it. I thought it was amazing. And Peter O’Toole’s voiceover as Anton Ego is just brilliant."

"Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, and Nicholas Ray: the film-noir hat trick. Based on Dorothy B. Hughes’s very different but equally brilliant novel, it’s doomy, romantic, pitch-black, and unforgettable. The Criterion extras here are particularly superb, with special attention to the movie’s turbulent backstory (Ray and Grahame were divorcing during production). This is the movie for which I’m most intensely evangelical. It feels as vital now as it did a half century ago."

"For me it is one of the most brilliant Mafia movies. Moreover it's the incarnation of the mythical erotic-romantic-tragic relationship between men and women. Beginning with love and ending with death. Isn't it the best description of this endless men-and-women love-hate system? And it's one of the best films about family as well. The protecting nest as miserable, dark shelter from an even darker existence of solitude."

This books lays out a simple, brilliant and practical way of eliminating the current and painful polarization of wealth and poverty. It proves with practical examples that low-income families will save money for higher education and home-ownership if they have the opportunity. All it takes is the investment of a few thousand dollars in each low-income family. This is far more practical and less condescending than any guaranteed annual income scheme.

"One of my favorites is called Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. It's crazy good! It's quite a long book, but the author captures this passage of time over hundreds of years, different sides of the world, and the stories of different families and how they intertwine and interlace. It's unbelievable - it goes so fast and it's so much to capture, but she did a brilliant job. So if you haven't read that one, definitely read it."