After a week's break from Second Self, we are back for episode four with writer and public intellectual Thomas Chatterton Williams. Thomas is the author of Self Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race, and Losing My Cool: Love, Literature and a Black Man's Escape from the Crowd. He is also a columnist at Harper's and a Contributing Writer at The New York Times Magazine. We discuss Thomas' re-evaluation of his own racial identity and race as a form of collective identity, defying incentives to conform in order to live authentically as an individual, the truly strange cultural moment in which we find ourselves, and the influence of philosophy on his work and ideas.  </p> <a target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href="https://open.acast.com/public/patreon/fanSubscribe/4644586">Get bonus content on Patreon</a><br /><hr><p style='color:grey; font-size:0.75em;'> Hosted on Acast. See <a style='color:grey;' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer' href='https://acast.com/privacy'>acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.</p>

Sarah Maria Griffin

Welcome to Second Self, the podcast about the self we inherit, and the one we create.&nbsp;In this series, I’ll be having conversations with interesting people about the important ideas they’ve adopted and the ones they’ve moved away from through their lives. Though we live in an increasingly polarised landscape where ‘picking a side’ and digging your heels in is incentivised, Second Self is about intellectual curiosity, constructing your own individual identity, and when you need to, changing your mind. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.