The Common Reader
Episodes
Laura Thompson on Agatha Christie: Shakespeare, Murder, and the Art of Simplicity
01 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What a delight to talk to laura thompson about Agatha Christie. Above all, this episode was fun. Laura really does know more than anyone about Agatha ...
Ruth Scurr: The Life and Work of John Aubrey
18 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What a pleasure it was to talk to Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life, about the great man himself, who was born four hundred years ago thi...
Naomi Kanakia: How Great Are the Great Books?
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ahead of her new book What’s So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony...
Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard. “It’s Wanting to Know That Makes Us Matter”
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Hermione Lee is the renowned biographer of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, Penelope Fitzgerald, and, most recently, Tom Stoppard. Stoppard died at the ...
Literature, politics, and the future of the humanities
07 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode of The Common Reader podcast is a little different. I spoke to both Jeffrey Lawrence and Julianne Werlin about literature, politics, and ...
John Mullan. What makes Jane Austen great?
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tuesday is the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, so today I spoke to John Mullan, professor of English Literature at UCL, author of What Mat...
Rebecca Lowe: the container theory of time in On the Calculation of Volume
25 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I was delighted to talk to Rebecca Lowe, who is, like me, a great admirer of Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume series. We discussed Calcul...
Peter Pan video
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I made a video of my recent essay ‘What I Learned Reading Peter Pan to my Children’. I made this video because it is one of the things I am most p...
Shanon Chamberlain: what is a novel?
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shannon Chamberlain is a former tutor at St. Johns College, an expert in the influence of fiction upon Adam Smith, a mystery writer, Substacker, and a...
Rhodri Lewis: Shakespearean Tragedy
25 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I was delighted to talk to Rhodri Lewis, author of Shakespeare’s Tragic Art. We discussed Shakespeare’s most under appreciated plays, the best fil...
Video of my discussion with Catherine Lacey about Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea
11 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
My thanks to Catherine Lacey for a great discussion! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to ...
Frances Wilson: T.S. Eliot is stealing my baked beans.
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frances Wilson has written biographies of Dorothy Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, D.H. Lawrence, and, most recently, Muriel Spark. I thought Electric S...
Victoria Moul. Poetry for life.
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Victoria Moul has been reading and memorising poetry since she was nine. She recites it at the dentist (‘Aubade’, rather alarmingly) and she recit...
Lamorna Ash. Don't Forget We're Here Forever
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview, Lamorna Ash, author of Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, and one of my favourite modern ...
Helen Castor: imagining life in the fourteenth century.
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I was delighted to talk to the historian Helen Castor (who writes The H Files by Helen Castor) about her new book The Eagle and the Hart. I found that...
Clare Carlisle: George Eliot's Double Life.
27 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Clare Carlisle’s biography of George Eliot, The Marriage Question, is one of my favourite modern biographies, so I was really pleased to interview C...
Matt Yglesias: reading books makes me feel calmer.
13 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Interview with Matt Yglesias about reading classic novels, like Middlemarch, and some discussion of his favourite movies. This is a public episode. I...
Katherine Dee. Finding life where others don't.
23 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Shakespeare Book Club meets tonight to talk about A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Zoom link here for paid subscribers. Paid subscribers can also join...
Agnes Callard: what is the value of fiction?
09 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After enjoying her new book Open Socrates so much (and having written about her previous book Aspiration in Second Act), I was delighted to talk to Ag...
The twenty best English poets
23 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, James Marriott and I discuss who we think are the best twenty English poets. This is not the best poets who wrote in English, but the...
Natasha Joukovsky: literature, capitalism, and Jane Austen.
02 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Paid subscribers can join this chat thread about Pride and Prejudice. The book club meets on 16th February.I was gripped by a. natasha joukovsky’s n...
Is Atlas Shrugged the new vibe?
18 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Atlas Shrugged seems to be everywhere today. Randian villains are in the news. Rand remains influential on the right, from the Reagan era to the moder...
Tyler Cowen: Trump's DOGE team should read Shakespeare.
01 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tyler and I spoke about view quakes from fiction, Proust, Bleak House, the uses of fiction for economists, the problems with historical fiction, about...
Brandon Taylor: I want to bring back all of what a novel can do.
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who else in literature today could be more interesting to interview than Brandon Taylor, the author of Real Life, Filthy Animals, and The Late America...
Zena Hitz: reading the Great Books
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I’ve been a big Zena Hitz fan since I read Lost in Thought in 2020, a book I am still recommending to people nearly five years later. We talked abou...
Marion Turner: Chaucer's world
17 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I spoke to Samuel Arbesman about late bloomers. He asked many splendid questions no-one has asked before. With Mark Crowley I discussed some practical...
Naomi Kanakia: How Great are the Great Books?
27 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It was a delight to talk to Naomi Kanakia who writes the Woman of Letters Substack. We talked about the homogeneity of modern fiction, whether the Gre...
Catherine Lacey: internet geography
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I was delighted to talk to the novelist Catherine Lacey, whose book Biography of X I admired very much indeed. We talked about personal websites, how ...
Nabeel Qureshi: literature requires the fuller engagement of your soul.
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There’s a profile about me and Second Act in the New Zealand Listener. It’s very good so if you’re in NZ and have a subscription (it’s paywall...
Hollis Robbins: literature makes you a mind reader
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I always enjoy corresponding with Hollis Robbins (@Anecdotal) and was therefore delighted to talk to her about poetry and literature. It’s a wonderf...
James Marriott. The value of being pretentious and the importance of the emotions to the intellect.
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What a delight to talk to James Marriott, the Times columnist who writes about literature, culture, and being a millennial. James is very well-read an...
A.N. Wilson. Walking in mysteries.
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
NB The first two or three minutes have some audio glitches but the rest of the recording is much better quality.I was delighted to talk to A.N. Wilson...
Tyler Cowen: reading John Stuart Mill
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In Tyler Cowen’s new book there is a whole chapter about John Stuart Mill, and I think Tyler really gets Mill, and draws on many of the key sources,...
Zadie Smith and the revenge of beauty
08 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
This is the second part of an essay about Zadie Smith. You can read the first part here. As an experiment, I have recorded this essay so you can liste...
Noah Smith interview
05 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Writing ElsewhereRecently I have written for The Critic about how to find somewhere to live in London, solving the problem of modern architecture, and...
Anna Gát, startup founder and late bloomer
08 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
NEWS* Podcasts are now available in places like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. If you listen to them there, please rate or like the episodes as this help...
Robin Hanson, interview
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This conversation with economist and late bloomer Robin Hanson probably peaks towards the end, when we were bouncing ideas around, but the whole thing...
Sarah Harkness, late bloomer
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
It was such a pleasure to talk to Sarah Harkness. Sarah is a former partner at Arthur Andersen who had a career in corporate finance and then as a non...
Helen Lewis interview
18 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Before we get started… Writing elsewhereI have recently written about modern Russian literature for CapX, as well Victorian YIMBYs and Katherine Ma...
Charles Moore interview
01 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
I was very pleased to talk to Charles Moore, who I have read admiringly for many years. His three volume biography of Margaret Thatcher is one of the ...