The son of Yale President and literature professor A. Bartlett Giamatti, so his good and wide-ranging taste is not a surprise. See also his geekfest discussions of literary science fiction with Stephen Colbert.

Paul was nine years after me at Yale; I knew his dad, watched a Yale baseball game with him once. Paul was undergrad pals with Edward Norton and Ron Livingston. Like my classmate Angela Bassett, he has degrees from both Yale University and Yale Drama School.