A quick note before we get into it: I’m in Chicago today to give a keynote. I’m doing fewer of these on purpose this year—only four spots are still open for the rest of 2026. If you’d like me at one of your events, details here.
Now, on to the regularly scheduled programming.
Books
Strangers by Belle Burden. After twenty years of marriage and three kids, Burden’s husband walks out mid-pandemic with no real explanation. What follows is grief, reckoning, and the slow work of starting over. Burden is honest about the parts most memoirs sand down—the rage, the fantasies, the long stretches where nothing gets better. The book wanders into a few too many old-money-Manhattan and Vanderbilt-lineage tangents, but it’s still a great read.
Shows
Hacks Season 5 (HBO Max). Caught a preview of Episode 7, “Montecito,” in a theater with some of the cast sitting in the audience, and we were cracking up the whole way through. It might be the best half-hour the show has ever made—and one of the best episodes in TV comedy, full stop. The final season, and Hacks is going out at full strength.
Andor (Disney+). I’m not a Star Wars fan, and I almost skipped this for exactly that reason—big mistake. It’s a heist show, a war story, and a surprisingly sharp piece of political drama, all at once. No lightsabers, no chosen ones, just ordinary people making impossible choices under authoritarian rule. A slow burn, but a gorgeous one.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Apple TV+). Margo (Elle Fanning) gets pregnant by her married English professor, drops out of college, and starts an OnlyFans. The show treats this as exactly what it is: a smart, resourceful young woman making a living on her own terms. Michelle Pfeiffer as her ex-Hooters-waitress mom and Nick Offerman as her ex-pro-wrestler dad steal every scene they’re in.
Films
State of Grace (1990). Hadn’t heard of this mob movie until recently. It came out the same week as Goodfellas and got steamrolled into obscurity—rough, because the cast is Sean Penn, Robin Wright, Ed Harris, and a young Gary Oldman doing one of the greatest unhinged-younger-brother performances. Hell’s Kitchen, Irish mob, a friendship that can’t survive what both men have become.
Lurker (2025). A lonely clerk at an LA clothing boutique spots a rising pop star wandering through one afternoon, gets his foot in the door, and quietly refuses to leave the entourage. An honest, uncomfortable look at the cost of trying to fit in.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Rewatched this recently and forgot how good it is. Bradley Cooper, fresh out of a psychiatric stay, moves back in with his parents in Philly and crosses paths with Jennifer Lawrence, who has her own grief to work through. Both are at the top of their game, and Robert De Niro as the Eagles-obsessed, ritual-bound dad is the secret weapon. The final dance scene always gets me.
Related
Bold
