This text is about talk. By talk we mean gossip, complaints, conversations, and other marginalised communicative processes that are often overlooked  – idle  – in architecture and urban studies. Why do we bring up the notion of “idle talk”? Drawing on our separate research on gender, ethnographically– and practice-oriented studies, we share the assumption that it is necessary to challenge dominant ways of knowing that often take for granted what and who should be formally included in the circulation of information. We therefore compiled the annotated bibliography that follows by asking: how might idle talk reveal issues in the material world other than those foregrounded by established ways of communicating, recording, and archiving?