For this year's anniversary episode, Ruth Kinna comes on to talk about a couple of Hollywood Westerns: Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948) and Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952).

Hollywood Westerns are about law and order, violence and vigilantism, community and individualism, savagery and civilization, and imperialism and resistance. They're perfect for illustrating political ideals - and that's just what Ruth and I do!

Look forward to an episode all about the activism and idealism of Henry Fonda with the director of Henry Fonda for President at some future date.

Thanks again to Ruth, but above all thanks to everyone for listening for the past four years!

In normal cinema, the goal of the director is to control the audience, to direct their gaze, to dictate their emotions.

What does it mean when directors make movies where the audience is allowed to decide what the film means to them?

Legendary filmmaker Paul Schrader (screenwriter of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull; director of Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters and First Reformed) , joins me to discuss his book Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer and the democratic nature of slow cinema.

Alyssa Battistoni joins me to discuss her new book Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature. Capitalist theory generally describes nature as a "free gift." If gifts are already free, why does capitalism have to claim that nature is a "free gift"? And why does capitalism keep declaring that nature is "worth" some billions or trillions of dollars? Alyssa and I discuss the tragic, yet comic, misunderstanding of nature by capitalism, and other ways to think about nature besides the economic.