Pop Culture Diaries: Lily Morris

This week: A Master's student in Climate Law from Bristol, UK, balances university studies, quiz competitions, and work on her second novel with baking and curating Taylor Swift-themed trivia.

This is a free post for subscribers of Landline, a pop culture and history newsletter for people who care about the Titanic, and the the Kate Winslet vehicle of the same name. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it.

Welcome to Pop Culture Diaries. Forget tracking calories and dollars—here, we follow the consumption that actually matters: books, music, TV, movies, threads, podcasts, YouTube videos, memes, and more. Think of this as a guilt-free way to read someone else’s diary and discover new pop culture obsessions, one week at a time.

If you’d like to submit your own Pop Culture Diary, you can do so using this online form.

Name: Lily Morris

Occupation: I’m taking a pivot year this year! After working for a bank since I finished undergrad (the last five years of which was in sustainability), I’ve become a full-time student again - I’m working towards a Master’s in Climate Law. I also have a substack at Pull Up A Chair (though I’m taking a break from regular posting) and I’m working on my second novel.

From: Bristol, UK

Week Covered: 14 - 20 January, 2025

Tuesday

Like most days, I start off the morning by playing Catfishing - it’s a fun daily general knowledge quiz game where you have to guess the Wikipedia page from a list of the categories that pages falls into. It was created by a friend of a friend of a friend and since I shared it with my university quiz society group chat, we all share our scores every day. There’s a couple of people who consistently get 8 or more out of 10 - I could never! On this day, I manage not to get ‘The Gunpowder Plot’ and I feel incredibly stupid.

More importantly, it’s my best friend’s birthday, so I send him an effusive text. He’s away this week, so he’ll get my present when he gets home; we give each other presents on our birthdays instead of Christmas. We met through Model UN towards the end of high school (we both turn 31 this spring, to give you an idea of how long ago that was…), and I genuinely don’t know what I’d do without him.

On my run, I listen to my Main Character Moment playlist - Nicola Coughlan’s amazing track Shoes … More Shoes comes up on shuffle and it powers me through the last few minutes of the workout.

Later in the day, I listened to What Should I Read Next episode 461 - this is always one of my favourite bookish podcasts. This episode was particularly up my street: the guest, Nell Cavallo, is a single childfree woman in her 40s, and I loved hearing about how she leads her life in a way that puts her friends at its centre. Anne Bogel, the host, and Nell talk about a bunch of books I hadn’t heard of, and in particular I add You Be Mother by Meg Mason to my To Be Read list (which, in practice, means adding it to my Amazon Kindle book wishlist, as it doesn’t seem to be on my library’s ebook service).

After my uni lecture in the afternoon I have a Quiz Society practice session - and then we go to the pub. Hanging out with the QuizSoc gang always feels a little bit like the “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme, but I guess it could be described as a bit of a cultural exchange (they explain Gen Z and Gen A slang to me, and I tell them what it was like to be a teenager in the 00s).

Wednesday

I have a bit of a potato morning watching YouTube videos - I have hypothyroidism, which means I have to be a bit careful about ‘spending’ too much energy for too many days in a row, and I tend to plan in a rest day once a week or so. Plus, it’s ‘results day’ from the autumn term’s university assessments, and I know I won’t be able to concentrate anyway.

I spend the first part afternoon continuing my current Lego build, the harbour and cargo ship (60422), and listening to the Book Riot and Culture Study podcasts. This is one of my favourite ways to unwind - I can switch the ‘solving big problems’ part of my brain off and just find the next piece to follow the instructions, and then, abracadabra, I’ve built (in this case) a cargo winch and quay!

After my results come through (I’m on track for a distinction!) I have a bunch of emails to send, and then I switch off my computer and make dinner and a loaf of banana bread. Dinner is a gorgeous mushroom and leek pasta with miso paste (gift link); I don’t cook mushrooms very often but this is delicious. I’ve ended up with a truly unholy amount of overripe bananas in my freezer, so I defrost a few of them and make this ‘easy banana bread’ (gift link) which lives up to its name (of course, I add chocolate chips!).

In the evening I have an online quiz league match, followed by joining some friends for the board games group we have in my apartment building. We play Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, Pizza, which I bought a copy of over the Christmas break. It’s super easy to pick up and really addictive.

Thursday

After a couple of missed days, I spend some time writing in my journal first thing - I did The Artist’s Way last summer and I like to think I do some variation of ‘morning pages’. Whenever the world feels a bit too much, it’s often because I haven’t been taking the time to write in my journal. While I’m writing, I listen to Minnz Piano covers of Taylor Swift’s Red album. I love Minnz Piano - she was in my top 5 artists in both 2023 and 2024’s Spotify Unwrapped.

Then I go for my run; today I use the BBC Sounds ‘Pace Setter’ Rock and Indie mix playlist. You probably can’t access these outside the UK - but this series of playlists is a recent discovery for me and they make a nice change from choosing my own playlists.

Then I check in with Finch, or as my group chat calls it, ‘the birb app’. It’s a super cute app that turns looking after yourself into a way to take care of a bird. Kind of making yourself into a human Tamagotchi?

The US presidential inauguration is approaching; while I walk to university I listen to the New Statesman podcast discuss what we might be able to expect from Trump 2.0.

When I get back, I finish my Lego set and listen to Hysteria, from Crooked Media. Erin Ryan, one of the main hosts, is based in Los Angeles, so the discussion of the aftermath of the fires is even more emotionally charged than it might otherwise be - and then she and Alyssa Mastromonaco move onto discussing Trump’s cabinet nominees.

At the end of the day I finish my current fiction read, India Holton’s The Ornithologist’s Field Guide To Love. I mostly read on my Kindle, which is decked out with stickers and has a grip on the back to make it easier to hold. Plus, I can make the text bigger so I don’t need to wear my reading glasses - which makes reading in bed a lot more cosy. I really enjoyed the book - a wacky magical-academia romance with plenty of caper energy and knowing use of the tropes (Too many beds! No beds at all!).

Friday

I get my head down and work my way through plenty of uni reading either side of my seminar today, and then spend a gorgeous half hour swimming lengths of the university pool. I’m a total water baby (and an Aquarius; you’ll never convince me that’s not a water sign) and I always feel better when I’m regularly submerging myself in water. Plus it’s lovely not to be able to check my phone for half an hour.

Then I spend some time working on the new novel draft. After finishing my first novel (but not being able to sell it - it just lives on my Google Drive), a romantic comedy set in the world of Edinburgh’s libraries, I have had a few false starts on novel number 2. This year, I’m determined to apply what I learnt from the ‘Novel In A Year’ course I paid for last year; so I sit down with a big notebook and a playlist to get started.

Then in the evening I have an online quiz competition qualifier - it’s super tough but good fun. I’ve been on a team with two of my three teammates a bunch before, so I can predict what they’ll know, and we work really well together. All four of us manage to contribute answers that the rest of the team didn’t know, which is super satisfying.

Saturday

Saturday is… time for more quiz practice! We do a couple of hours of ‘buzzer quiz’ practicing, with a mixture of serious academic and ‘trash’ questions. The problem is, most of the question sets are American, and so we end up unable to answer multiple questions about baseball and other American sports.

Then I finish a couple of books that have been in-progress for a while. I’ve been reading Ali Abdaal’s Feel-Good Productivity in 5-minute stints for most of the last week, but it’s a library ebook which will be auto-returned at the end of the day. Lastly, I dig back into Dead Lions, the second book in Mick Herron’s Slough House series. It’s a fantastic spy novel, full of twists and turns.

Sunday

It’s long run day. I say ‘long run’ - it’s 3 miles, but it takes me more than 45 minutes. I plug in Spotify’s “Hype Running” Mix which is apparently formulated specifically for me, and it is indeed a great mix. It’s a slow run, but the sun is out and I go along the harbourside. Again, more of me being a water baby - I love being close to water.

Then after that, I spend time burrowed under a duvet reading and warming up - it might have been bright but it was cold and the running leggings I was wearing felt even colder than if I’d had shorts on. I start Whisky Business by Elliot Fletcher, which is an extremely predictable but very entertaining novel.

Then I get showered and dressed and make my way to the pub quiz - which we win! So I walk away from the pub quiz slightly richer than I arrive, which is great. On the way to and from the quiz, I listen to an old episode of Money With Katie about ESG investing; this is my specialist area so it’s always interesting to hear how it’s described for a general audience.

Monday

Back to my desk this morning - I start the day with some more uni reading before meeting a former colleague for lunch. On the way to uni, my winnings from the previous day’s pub quiz are burning a whole in my pocket, so I go into the arts supplies shop and buy some sketching pencils and a sketchbook; I’ve been getting more into art lately and I wanted to get some kit for it. Then I have a lecture about climate law - which is super interesting and I swear I can feel the cogs in my brain turning.

Before heading home, I spend some time working on the Taylor Swift quiz I’m putting together for a pub quiz a friend of mine runs. I’m a pretty dedicated Swiftie, so he asked me to write the quiz for him.

In the evening, I finish Whisky Business.

Call Me! (or not!)

I’d love to hear from you! Drop your thoughts in the comments to share with the Landline community, or reply to this email to contact me. You can also find me on Instagram, or email me. I don’t have a dedicated phone line yet (just like in my youth), but maybe someday I’ll achieve Claudia status and get a Landline.

Thanks for reading!

This is a free post for subscribers of Landline. Consider subscribing to the paid plan to get my weekly email of recommendations and links, a podcast episode, and more! You can also help me spread the word by sharing it with a friend who would love it. Thank you for being a friend!

Note: All books referenced in Landline can be found in my bookshop.org storefront from which I earn a small percentage of all books purchased.