Book · recommended on 3 episodes
A Hunger Artist
Franz Kafka ISBN 9788090217119
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Franz Kafka ISBN 9788090217119
Find it on AmazonAffiliate link — we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
This book by Franz Kafka has come up 3 times on Lex Fridman. 3 of those mentions were genuine on-air recommendations, not just passing references. The people who brought it up: Lex Fridman, Rob Reid. The earliest mention we indexed is from 2021-06-21 and the most recent from 2025-09-30. Every occurrence below links to the episode page and to the exact second it was said on YouTube.
“I can also highly recommend Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" and "Hunger Artist." Both are too interesting and weird to explain”— Lex Fridman
The guest here is Pavel Durov: Founder and CEO of Telegram, the messaging platform used by over a billion people, and earlier the founder of Russian social network VK. He owns 100% of Telegram and is known as a fearless advocate for free speech and user privacy. Telegram founder Pavel Durov on freedom, censorship, his French arrest, lean engineering, crypto, an assassination attempt, and human nature.
“a hunger artist one of my probably favorite short stories is that kind of a short story it's a pretty long short story of kafka's”— Lex Fridman
The guest here is Michael Malice: Anarchist author, podcaster, and provocateur known for books like Dear Reader, The New Right, The Anarchist Handbook, and The White Pill. A frequent Lex Fridman guest making his fifth appearance. Malice and Fridman ring in 2022 with a warm, sprawling riff on beauty, evil, optimism, writing, and trading New York for Austin.
“you ever read um franz kafka has a great short story called the hunger artist yeah I love that great story”— Rob Reid
The guest here is Rob Reid: Entrepreneur, science-fiction novelist, and host of the After On podcast who founded Listen.com (Rhapsody). Known for his deep research on engineered pandemics and biosecurity, featured on Sam Harris's Making Sense. Rob Reid argues engineered pandemics are humanity's most likely near-term self-destruction risk, and cheap defenses could stop them.
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