‘LIFE IS FULL OF TURNING POINTS’ DJ Annie Mac on accepting change

Annie Mac may be synonymous with raving and Radio 1, but the DJ and broadcaster has also spent the past six months hosting thoughtful interviews on her podcast, Changes. She shares with Anna Bonet some of the lessons she’s learned about change along the way

Change is inevitable; it’s inescapable,’ says Annie Macmanus – or Annie Mac, as she’s more popularly known. ‘Sometimes it feels more overwhelming than others, but it’s remarkable how quickly we adapt, and how often we get through it.’ These words are certainly what I need to hear right now, and after the year we’ve had, my guess is that you need to hear them, too. We’ve all had to deal with a seismic shift in 2020. Many of our lives have shrunk beyond measure, we’ve had to adapt the way we work and some of us have lost loved ones. We know that change is the only constant, and in theory, it’s this that makes us more resilient in the long term. But how do we cope in the meantime? It’s these kinds of questions that Macmanus has been putting to a diverse mix of guests on her podcast Changes, which she launched in May. In each episode, the effervescent Irish DJ asks a different interviewee about three changes: one they experienced in childhood, one in adulthood, and one they want for themselves or the world. Dig into the archive and you’ll find Zadie Smith talking about how the pandemic changed life in New York; Romesh Ranganathan reflecting on his dad going to prison; and Caitlin Moran sharing the lessons she learned when she was pulled out of education, aged 11, to be homeschooled. But alongside big names, you’ll also find episodes with guests from all walks of life, who might be little-known, but have big, life-altering changes to speak about: take Susan Herdman, who won the lottery in 2010, for example, or 18-year-old Jhemar Jonas, who campaigns for an end to knife crime after his brother was fatally stabbed.

Like many of us, this year has impacted Macmanus’s own outlook on life. ‘It has given me a change of perspective and a change of expectation as to what is needed to be a happy person,’ she says over the phone from her north London home, where she lives with her husband, music producer Toddla T (Tom Bell), and their two sons, who are three and seven. ‘I’ve learned that sometimes going for a walk in the local park is as nourishing for the soul as achieving big ambitions.’

Macmanus explains that the ‘forced simplification’ of her world has done her good, because she gets ‘teased all the time’ for her schedule. Once, she and fellow broadcaster Alice Levine went swimming: ‘We got there and Alice was like, “Okay, so you’re going to schedule five minutes for floating, maybe 10 minutes for laps, then 15 minutes for getting changed…”’ Macmanus laughs.

Since starting the podcast, there are two big changes in Macmanus’s own life that she now looks at with a new sense of perspective. The first took place when she was 18, and her then-lifelong plan to be an actor was derailed by a rejection letter from the drama course at Trinity. She proceeded to chop her bum-length hair short, take it to her mum in a plastic bag and say: ‘My life’s over, I’m not going into drama.’ (‘I clearly had a lot of drama in me,’ she quips.) Instead, she went to Queen’s University in Belfast to study literature, which is where she discovered club culture and ended up doing radio. ‘I now think back to that fork in the road, and I’m curious as to what would have been had I stayed in Dublin. Who would I have been?’

The second big change happened more recently and much more gradually; she describes it as similar to a cruise liner turning in the ocean. (‘You know when they change course in the sea and it’s really slow? It’s that vibe.’) It happened as her 30s came to a close, which coincided with her youngest child starting to sleep through the night. ‘I felt like I was coming out of a fog that I didn’t realise I was in until I was out of it,’ she says, with her soft Irish lilt. ‘Suddenly, I wasn’t tired any more, and I was seeing everything with a lot more clarity. I was able to really look backwards at my life for the first time ever. I realised that for so long I’d been doing the same thing.’

She explains that her career as a DJ and broadcaster has been ‘incredible’, but it dawned on her that she’d been ‘coasting’. ‘I had this urge of wanting to learn something new or do something different,’ Macmanus says. One creative writing course later and she had the beginnings of what would become her debut novel, due out in May 2021. The book, Mother Mother, set in Belfast, is a gritty comingof-age story about family, addiction and love. Writing it has been monumental to Macmanus. ‘It feels like I’ve come out the other side of 15 years of noise, sound systems and travelling,’ she says. ‘It feels like a real turning point.’

When you listen to as many hours of the Changes podcast as I have, it’s clear that nothing is ever certain and life is full of turning points – although, more often than not, it takes hindsight to see them. We’re no doubt going through one now. With that in mind, I asked Annie Mac what she has learned about change from her guests; how it defines us, when it’s good for us and if we can always survive it. Here, she shares some pearls of wisdom…

Change can make you experience life more deeply

‘The writer Clover Stroud is a guest that a lot of people refer to as being really inspiring. We had this very profound discussion about how, when Clover was a teenager, her mother became paralysed and then eventually passed away. She also recently lost her sister Nell to cancer, and a few years ago her husband suffered a terrible accident. It was endless, but she just had this real force and determination to live, and not just live, but live to the max. She said that when you experience death at close range, it kind of magnifies life. She lives life in such a vivid way, she feels everything and she talks about every corner of her emotions. She’s proof that you can experience traumatic change, pull through, and be more resilient and rounded because of it.’

It sets you on a path you might not expect

‘Romesh Ranganathan had his world turned upside down when he was a child – his dad went to prison, his house got repossessed and he had to change from private to state school. He spoke about how these changes have made him into a grafter; he’s always going to work hard because he never wants to be in the situation his parents were. He also realised how much he loved state schools and ended up working in the state sector as a teacher and doing comedy on the side – so it shows how change can really set you on a path.’

Being forced to adapt can result in beautiful things

‘Sinéad Burke is so much smaller in height than anyone around her most of the time. Before becoming the TED Talk speaker, fashion icon and disability advocate that we know her as today, she was teaching a class of 12-year-old boys in inner-city Dublin. She told me this amazing story in which she taught using Powerpoint presentations because she couldn’t reach the blackboard. During the 90 seconds it would take to flick between presentations, she’d let the boys take it in turns to play a song. She came to realise how much it meant to her pupils when they started asking for songs from the 1980s and earlier, because they’d been having these conversations about it over the kitchen table. They were finding out what their parents’ favourite bands were and bringing that into the classroom. Sinéad described it as a beautiful shared experience between school and home that was all because she couldn’t reach the blackboard. It was a lovely moment of realising that because of this obstacle she had to find a way to adapt, and it resulted in something quite special.’

It gives you a dual perspective – and that can be incredibly valuable

‘The music artist Robyn spoke about her parents divorcing when she was a child. She said that going from one parent’s house to another gave her a dual perspective on life that she thinks has been a bit of a superpower, because it gave her a complexity and more empathy. I feel as though you can apply that methodology to the way we’re living our lives now. We all have this second perspective on the world and society now that it has been changed so drastically, which is something we can use to our advantage.’

Changes give you the tools to keep surviving

‘Changes don’t have to define you, but they shape your experience of the world because they often end up affecting the choices that you make in life and all the changes that you then affect. But what comes up again and again from my guests is that changes, even if they feel negative at the time, make you stronger. Even when you’re forced to find them, they give you the tools to keep surviving.’

Be patient, because our paths our winding

‘Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker last year, aged 60, which has led to a huge upturn in her career. I was fascinated when she said she’d been patiently “waiting in the wings” for that change. It was so interesting to hear how long it took for her to get there, and everything she sacrificed along the way. It reminded me that our paths are winding, and that a change you want can come much later in life than you expect.’

You’ll find peace again

‘When we’re thinking “how is life ever going to be all right again?” The answer is: change is happening now. And it will keep changing. So we have to hope that it changes for the better at some point. It will probably be with a new perspective, but there will be a time when everything will feel reasonably peaceful again. Everyone I’ve spoken to on the podcast, no matter how much change they’ve been through, has found peace again.’

Changes With Annie Macmanus is available on all podcast providers. Annie Macmanus’s debut novel

Mother Mother (Wildfire, Headline), released in May 2021, is available to pre-order now