Changing Your Mind is What Should Happen When You Think
A podcast series featuring (very) smart and interesting people
Podcast art by Gráinne Bath Enright
Back in 2021, around the time of the pandemic and before I brought Peak Notions here to Substack, I made a seven-episode podcast series called Second Self. I reached out to some of the people whose work has helped change my mind about certain issues, revealed a new perspective or pushed me to examine my own. When I reconsider the episodes now, I’m struck by the fact that the same themes that drive Peak Notions permeate Second Self. It’s about finding your own view in a world oriented around group identity and team loyalty, and embracing the awkward questions even when the answers are unclear.
For this series, I got the chance to talk with some writers, academics and artists who I really admire. They include people like author Thomas Chatterton Williams, Irish writer and academic Emma Dabiri and my fellow Limerick native, writer, podcaster and mental health advocate Blindboy Boatclub. There’s also bestselling author Helen Pluckrose, who writes here on Substack, novelist Sarah Maria Griffin, writer Tom Cox who you’ll find creating wonderful work here on Substack and Catherine Cho, who is the author of Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness and a London-based literary agent. Episode links, details and summaries below as well as a brief intro to the series, in which I had a cold (or possibly Covid, given the time…) which does not persist in the episodes themselves! I’ve linked to Spotify below but you’ll also find the episodes on Apple Podcasts if that’s your jam.
As Peak Notions has grown, there are more eyes and ears which may have missed a lot of my work the first time round. This podcast series was made completely independently. I funded its creation myself and made it with the help of kind friends and generous guests who miraculously volunteered their time to talk with me when the world was falling asunder. There are things I would change if I made the series now and I hope I’ve got better at speaking into the mic over the last three years but I’m still proud of Second Self.
Many Peak Notions subscribers tell me that they most enjoy the audio content here, which is a perk of paid subscriptions. They take it on walks or listen to articles while waiting in the car or cleaning the kitchen. It occurred to me that here I have several hours of interesting listening most subscribers won’t know about in this podcast, and that I can share it with everyone for free as a way of shining a light on some work that I think has value and of thanking everyone who has supported me here.
If you enjoy the podcast and want to access more content here at Peak Notions or you’d just like to support the work that I do (or be in the loop when I share news of my upcoming book), subscribe below. The very best way to support Peak Notions is with a paid subscription, though. This will give you access to the entire written and audio archive, bonus content, the weekly chat and the Peak Notions Book Club.
A brief introduction to the series. If you’re a regular here, you’ll recognise the themes!
Blindboy is a podcaster and author whose most recent book is the exquisite Topographia Hibernica. He lent me his time for a discussion of our home town (the weirdest place in the world), surrealism, mental health, Jean Baudrillard, and pursuing one’s individuality. We discuss the interesting combination of authenticity and anonymity he plays with as a public figure who always wears a mask (or a bag, to be more precise).
Author of Don’t Touch my Hair, What White People Can Do Next: From Allyship to Coalition and most recently Disobedient Bodies: Reclaim Your Unruly Beauty, Emma Dabiri might be the busiest person alive but kindly shares her time to chat about identity, race, radicalism, Irishness (and butter, because we’re Irish).
I got the chance to speak directly for the first time with Tom Cox, who has since risen to much deserved prominence here on Substack and whose next novel, Everything Will Swallow You, comes out in March. We’ve been ‘internet friends’ for years, and Tom is the sort of writer whose talent and skill makes other writers just want to quit, so it was a delight to talk to him about writing what you want to write even when the world doesn’t always reward you for it. We discuss alternative media and leaving legacy platforms (way before it was cool), navigating failure, class identity and creativity. Also sea swimming!
Thomas Chatterton Williams is an American writer, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, Losing My Cool: Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd and the upcoming Nothing Was the Same. Thomas talks with me about his reevaluation of his own racial identity, race as a form of collective identity, philosophy and stepping away from collective expectations despite the overwhelming pressure to conform in our time.
(When he edited this recording, my producer mercilessly taunted me for having what he described as “a blatantly obvious crush on Thomas” (who doesn’t, frankly?), which is both unprofessional and deeply embarrassing. My husband listened to the episode and promptly joined in the taunting, so almost three years later, I still haven’t listened back over this one… Enjoy!)
I had the chance to talk with my lovely friend the novelist Sarah Maria Griffin, on whom I also have kind of a crush, and whose upcoming novel Eat the Ones You Love is one of the titles of 2025 I’m most looking forward to reading. She is the author of Spare and Found Parts, Other Words for Smoke and Not Lost: A Story About Leaving Home. We discussed choosing the less trodden path in life, retroactively sympathising with your (objectively awful) teenage self, making art, changing your mind and the philosophical power of science fiction.
Author of Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness Catherine Cho is also a literary agent based in London. I read her book, which is a searing account of the realities of postpartum psychosis and the struggle toward recovery, and was changed by it. In this episode, we discuss mental health and illness, the thin line dividing sanity from insanity and the way we collectively consider people with mental health issues. Catherine talks with generous frankness about her route back to health after the birth of her son and the experience of choosing to have another child after postpartum psychosis.
My friend Helen Pluckrose, who writes here on Substack, is author of the bestselling Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender and Identity — and Why This Harms Everybody, and of The Counterweight Handbook: Principled Strategies for Surviving and Defeating Critical Social Justice - At Work, in Schools, and Beyond, which will be published in August. Helen talks to me about her unorthodox route to becoming a public intellectual, why she originally set up Counterweight and the evolution of her thinking over time. We have a frank, occasionally challenging, conversation about feminism, critical social justice and freedom of expression.
I am one of those who prefer to read rather than listen. In general reading is faster and I convince myself that time is short. I will try to listen to the Second Self podcasts (while exercising, perhaps.) Thank you for all your output, which I love