The Library of Lazy Thinking Podcast
Episodes
Richard Phoenix on Island
12 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What would your utopia look like?A socialist state where everyone shares the same communal underwear, and you stay in the education system until retir...
Sam Reid on Never Let Me Go
27 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
I once saw Carey Mulligan in the bar at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square.In my memory, it was just the two of us. Or at least, it was quiet. I...
Adelle Stripe on A Childhood: The Biography of a Place
07 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You could spend an entire podcast unpicking the bizarre circumstances that found a working-class kid from Grimsby on a business class flight to Las Ve...
Toby Litt on Shōbōgenzō, or The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
31 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Shōbōgenzō, he said.Bless you, I replied, and passed him a tissue.No, you idiot. That’s the book. I want to talk about Shōbōgenzō, The Treasur...
Hannah Patterson on On the Calculation of Volume
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What if, instead of trying to date Andie MacDowell, Bill Murray had spent Groundhog Day questioning existence in Danish?Granted, it’s not a what-if ...
Gurnaik Johal on The Topeka School
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Ah, Ben Lerner.Who doesn’t love Ben Lerner?Seriously. Get in touch.That said, despite being a big fan of his work, I also find him maddening at time...
Jenn Ashworth on Of Walking in Ice
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
You’ve got to love Werner Herzog.Confronted with the news that his friend was dying, his reaction was to walk 500-plus miles across Europe (during W...
Anna Whitwham on The Waterbearers
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Toni Morrison wrote that you can’t understand the history of America unless you understand the history of African American women.Reading The Waterbe...
Glen James Brown on Smallcreep's Day
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After he’d written Smallcreep’s Day, Peter Currell Brown never wrote another book.He disappeared from the world of literature completely and start...
Meg Remy/U.S. Girls on Sandfuture
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Do you know who designed the Twin Towers?Probably not.Chances are, you don’t know who designed most of the buildings you instantly recognize.Why is ...
Helen Mort on Rain
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Elusive poemNeed help to figure you outSpend time with HelenThough technically daring each other to write a Japanese Death Haiku during our chat, I’...
Joe Dunthorne on When We Cease to Understand the World
17 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Are you ready to get stupidly excited about maths?No?Granted—it’s not a state most of us ever find ourselves in. But trust me, it’s time to get ...
Megan Nolan on The Loves of My Life
10 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“A sex memoir.”“The gayest book ever written.”“Filthy.”Reading the blurbs about Edmund White’s most recent memoir, The Loves of My Life,...
Claire Carroll on The Doll's Alphabet
27 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Strange. Surreal. Smart.The uncanny world Camilla Grudova imagines across the various stories that make up The Doll’s Alphabet is one in which you’...
Richard Foster on Ending Up
11 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Find a quiet pub that hasn’t been renovated for at least twenty years, preferably longer.Order a preposterous drink, one that involves Cinzano, and ...
Sophie Mackintosh on What Happens at Night
26 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Weird.A bit creepy.Not quite sure what’s going on.…but enough about me.Let’s talk about What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, which is weird, ...
Keiran Goddard on Change
06 Feb 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Just who do you think you are?Stop actin' like some kind of starJust who do you think you are?Take it like a man, baby, if that's what you are'Cause I...
Hattie Crisell on American Wife
23 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Give over, Gatsby.Zip it, Zuckerman.Away with you, Angstrom.There’s a new hero in the Great American Novel…And she goes by the name Alice Blackwel...
David Keenan on Visions of Cody
16 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Get ready to feel a new passion for life.Get ready to notice things you’ve never noticed before…Speak to people you’d usually pass in the street...
Catherine Taylor on The Quest for Christa T.
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can you ever paint a complete picture of a person on the page?The often-overlooked German writer Christa Wolf figured she’d give it a damn good go.T...
Luke Turner on The Slaves of Solitude
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Write drunk, edit sober.That was Hemingway’s formulation.But given Patrick Hamilton is said to have been on three bottles of whisky a day by the tim...
Susanna Crossman on About A Mountain
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
I love this book.I love Susanna Crossman for recommending it.And I love you, my bookish friend. Because why not?Indeed, I’m filled with book love to...
Jen Calleja on Bear
13 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At just 176 loosely-fonted pages and ostensibly about a woman who has a holiday romance with a grizzly, you might think the appropriately titled Bear ...
Rob Doyle on Aurélia
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Strap in.We’re leaving the known world behind to explore the strange ecstatic visions of a little-known but hugely influential French writer, a fasc...
Olivia Sudjic on The End of the Story
31 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes the best place to begin a story is at the end.Sometimes, a whole story is about an end.(That certainly seems to be the case with Lydia Davis...
Rebecca Watson on The Lesser Bohemians
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Getting into someone’s mind is a dangerous business.Consider poor Kylie Minogue who, as far as I know, has never managed to get an unnamed “Boy”...
Sam Mills on The Complete Cosmicomics
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Do we all go through a Will Self phase?Maybe.But only one writer I know turned their enjoyment of Will Self into a brilliant, mildly mind-bending, and...
Lias Saoudi on White Sands
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As the frontman of the band Fat White Family, you might know Lias Saoudi as an exciting, confrontational, and spanx-wearing rock phenomenon.You might ...
Wendy Erskine on Mrs Caliban
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sexy frogmen are sneaking around and clowns are being run over in Belfast.What’s going on?Well, you’re about to find out.Welcome to Episode Two of...
Aidan Cottrell-Boyce on My Phantoms
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It’s here.And you came.Hurrah!Imagine me, standing at an elaborate entrance to a grand hall, wearing a tuxedo, bowing deeply, and welcoming you to T...