Author: Ryan Weber

Writers know how to create great tension with on-again, off-again couplings: Sam and Diane. Mulder and Scully. That one actress and whatever the name of Nathan Fillion’s character is on Castle. But look out, shippers, because the next great will they/won’t they love story has hit our screens! It’s America and the Paris Climate Agreement! I can’t get enough of watching these two waffle on their commitment to keep the planet habitable! These are classic rom-com characters. We’ve got a central protagonist, America. Optimistic but brash, good-looking but a bit self-centered, naïve but world-weary, with the overinflated sense of self that…

I love hypothetical moral dilemmas, like “Is it right to redirect a trolley to run over five people?” or “If I strangle a cat, can I seal it in a box so I don’t know whether it’s dead or alive?” But the greatest moral dilemma of all time is explored in Les Misérables, which Bezos and I caught in London. We ducked out early for a secret Flosstradmous show, but I got the gist of Les Mis. It tells the story of a poor man, Jean Valjean, who gets arrested for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s starving kids. Some…