History, languages, travel, people, wine, tequila, eating out, reading, music, archeology, esp. Egyptology, anthropology, rounding up the usual suspects
Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal for drinks.
Organized Time, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, BRMC, 22-20s, The Hives, The Cult, The Clash, Led Zeppelin, The Ramones, The Replacements, Beatles and Stones, CCR, The Undertones, The Who, The Doors, Sex Pistols, XTC, The Jam, U2, Dead Can Dance, Nick Cave, Edith Piaf, Amalia Rodrigues, Cesaria Evora, Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Theolonius Monk, Anita O'Day, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Hartman, Billy Eckstine, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown, Dexter Gordon, Lester Young, Django Reinhardt, John McLaughlin, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, George Jones, Bob Wills, classical music, incl. opera (Dmitri Hvorostovsky & Ewa Podles, I'm talking to you!) and so very much more.
Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Maltese Falcon (anything with Bogart), All About Eve, all film noir (esp. Out of the Past and Murder, My Sweet), anything Japanese (live action, not so much the anime), silent film, Mulholland Drive, Amadeus, Camille, The Lion in Winter, Monty Python's Holy Grail, Dangerous Liaisons, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Al Dentro del Mar, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands, anything by Stanley Kubrick, anything by Luis Bunuel, Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, Lady from Shanghai, LA Confidential, Chinatown, In a Lonely Place, Rebel Without a Cause, King Creole, Hong Kong stuff, Zhang Zimou's films, anything with Gong Li, Night of the Hunter, The Killers, anything with Johnny Depp, Repulsion, Knife in the Water, The Tenant, Badlands, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, so many more that I can't think of right now
HBO stuff: Deadwood, Sopranos, Rome, etc. Also, CSI and L&O, Discovery, History, The Shield, Battlestar Galactica (seriously, this is one of the best things on TV right now), documentaries, music...
Mostly nonfiction: history, biography, anthropology, archaeology, science (esp. quantum physics, for general readers, of course), religion. As for fiction, the Russian novelists, James Ellroy, Raymond Chandler, Hawthorne, Poe, Fitzgerald, Dante, Shakespeare, Villon, Rabelais, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Valery, Flaubert, Camus
Aung San Su Kyi, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama. Also, anyone with character and integrity who respects themselves and others.