A curated mix of what's on my nightstand, in my ears, and stuck in my head. The common thread: these are things I keep coming back to, and they seem to have more to say each time.
Book
The Passenger & Stella Maris
Cormac McCarthy
Two companion novels, one shattering meditation on grief, mathematics, and what it means to be haunted. McCarthy's final works, and possibly his most personal.
fiction
Book
Hyperion Cantos
Dan Simmons
Four books. One of the most ambitious science fiction undertakings ever written. The first novel alone, structured as Canterbury Tales in space, is worth the price of admission.
sci-fi
Book
Selected Poems
Rainer Maria Rilke
Nobody writes about solitude, longing, and the inner life quite like Rilke. I return to him when I need to slow down.
poetry
Book
The Electric State
Simon Stålenhag
A graphic novel that feels like a fever dream of late-capitalism and drone warfare, told through haunting painted landscapes. Fewer words than most books; stays with you longer.
graphic novelsci-fi
Book
A Perfect Spy
John le Carré
Le Carré considered it his best. A portrait of a consummate liar and a devastating examination of how the people who love us most shape us into who we become.
fictionespionage
Book
How Children Fail
John Holt
Written in the 1960s and still uncomfortably accurate. Holt watched children in classrooms and asked a simple question: what if school is the problem?
education
Book
Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time
James Suzman
From hunter-gatherers to knowledge workers, a sweeping anthropological account of how humanity decided that busyness was a virtue.
anthropologynon-fiction
Book
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar & Bill Carr
The internal playbook of Amazon, written by two insiders. Less hagiography than most business books; more genuinely useful.
businessstrategy
Book
Hamlet & Macbeth
William Shakespeare
Two plays about men undone by the gap between who they are and what the world demands of them. Still unmatched after 400 years.
dramaclassic
Book
Empire of AI
Karen Hao
A reported account of OpenAI's rise and the human cost of building transformative technology at speed. Hao had unprecedented access, and she uses it carefully.
AInon-fiction
Podcast
Acquired
Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal
Long-form business history at its best. Each episode is a full autopsy of a single company, how it was built, the decisions that mattered, the moments it nearly didn't survive. Episodes run four-plus hours and earn every minute.
business
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Podcast
This American Life
Ira Glass
The gold standard of narrative audio journalism. Decades in and it still finds stories that make you see ordinary American life as something stranger and more moving than you expected.
journalismstorytelling
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Podcast
Freakonomics Radio
Stephen Dubner
Applies economic thinking to questions nobody thought to ask. At its best when it punctures conventional wisdom with a single well-chosen dataset.
economicsideas
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Podcast
In the Dark
APM Reports
The most rigorous investigative journalism podcast I've encountered. Each season takes one case and follows it until something breaks. Patient, methodical, and genuinely consequential.
investigativejournalism
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Podcast
Odd Lots
Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway
The best podcast for understanding how the global economy actually works, told through the people closest to the machinery. Surprisingly entertaining for something so technical.
economicsfinance
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Podcast
Fresh Air
Terry Gross
Terry Gross has been doing this for decades and still asks better questions than almost anyone. The archive alone is a cultural education.
interviewsculture
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Podcast
The Moth
Various
True personal stories, told live, without notes. A reminder that everybody is carrying something extraordinary around with them.
storytelling
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Podcast
Throughline
NPR
Takes today's headlines and traces them back to their roots. Consistently reframes things you thought you understood.
historyjournalism
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Movie
Heat
Michael Mann, 1995
The definitive crime film. Two men defined entirely by their work, on opposite sides of the same obsession. The diner scene between Pacino and De Niro is the best five minutes in American cinema.
crimedrama
Movie
Contact
Robert Zemeckis, 1997
A film about science, faith, and what we do when the universe finally answers back.
sci-fidrama
Movie
The Man From Earth
Richard Schenkman, 2007
A professor tells his colleagues he has been alive for 14,000 years. Shot entirely in one room, zero budget, and more philosophically interesting than most films ten times its cost.
sci-fiphilosophy
Movie
Arrival
Denis Villeneuve, 2016
Officially a film about alien contact. Actually a film about grief, time, and whether knowing the future changes your willingness to live it.
sci-fidrama
Movie
Blade Runner 2049
Denis Villeneuve, 2017
Asks what it means to have a life that matters when nobody is watching. Visually stunning, but the images serve the loneliness rather than replacing it.
sci-fi
Movie
Michael Clayton
Tony Gilroy, 2007
A film about institutional complicity and one man slowly running out of reasons to keep looking away. A quiet reminder that the most important battles in corporate life are fought over whether to remain human.
dramathriller
Movie
Spartan
David Mamet, 2004
Mamet writing at full speed. Nobody else writes dialogue like this. The film understands something most thrillers miss: the real action is never in the room, it's in the mind.
thriller
Movie
The Lives of Others
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006
A Stasi officer surveilling a playwright slowly becomes implicated in the humanity he is supposed to be monitoring.
dramahistory
Movie
In Bruges
Martin McDonagh, 2008
Two hitmen waiting in Bruges. Funnier than it has any right to be, and then suddenly devastating.
dark comedydrama
Movie
Her
Spike Jonze, 2013
Released in 2013, it now feels less like science fiction and more like early documentation. The way Theodore learns to talk to an AI, what he projects onto it, what it reflects back - it maps uncomfortably well onto how millions of people are quietly relating to language models today.
sci-fiAI
Movie
Locke
Steven Knight, 2013
Tom Hardy, one car, one drive, one decision already made. A masterclass in what cinema can do with almost nothing.
drama
Movie
Captain Fantastic
Matt Ross, 2016
A father raising his children entirely outside of society, and the question of whether love and conviction are enough to justify the cost.
dramafamily
YouTube
3Blue1Brown
Grant Sanderson
Makes mathematics feel like something you experience rather than follow.
mathematics
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YouTube
Kurzgesagt
In a Nutshell
Takes the biggest questions seriously and makes them accessible without dumbing them down.
scienceideas
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YouTube
Veritasium
Derek Muller
Consistently finds the counterintuitive angle on things I thought I understood.
science
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YouTube
Nerdwriter1
Evan Puschak
Helped me articulate why certain films and ideas work the way they do.
filmideas
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YouTube
Every Frame a Painting
Tony Zhou & Taylor Ramos
Archived now, but changed how I watch films.
filmcraft
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