The longtime BBC Radio 1 host talks about the liberation of leaving broadcasting, her pivot to fiction writing and her party series, Before Midnight.
If you grew up in the UK, chances are you've heard Annie Mac on the radio. The Irish native started on the airwaves in 2004 when she was 26. She hosted a nightly programme called Future Sounds, before eventually moving to a Friday night dance music show, which catapulted her into the pop cultural zeitgeist.
Being at the BBC was a boon to her career, but as she reveals in this Exchange—her second appearance on the series—it also came with its limitations. She left the media giant in 2021 to spend more time with her family, and to pursue her own projects without the inhibition of BBC codes of conduct on matters around free speech. Since departing, she has been outspoken about politics and engaged in ongoing advocacy work and calls for change as an independent curator and podcast host.
Annie Mac also speaks to Exchange host Chloe Lula about the art of interviewing; her popular party series, Before Midnight; her pivot to writing; how getting older has shaped her view of success; and what it means to lead the "good life." She has also published two novels, both of which pull from loosely autobiographical topics: The Troubles in Ireland, the music industry in London and bigger thematic arcs such as navigating motherhood and grief. Listen to the episode in full.
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The longtime BBC Radio 1 host talks about the liberation of leaving broadcasting, her pivot to fiction writing and her party series, Before Midnight.
If you grew up in the UK, chances are you've heard Annie Mac on the radio. The Irish native started on the airwaves in 2004 when she was 26. She hosted a nightly programme called Future Sounds, before eventually moving to a Friday night dance music show, which catapulted her into the pop cultural zeitgeist.
Being at the BBC was a boon to her career, but as she reveals in this Exchange—her second appearance on the series—it also came with its limitations. She left the media giant in 2021 to spend more time with her family, and to pursue her own projects without the inhibition of BBC codes of conduct on matters around free speech. Since departing, she has been outspoken about politics and engaged in ongoing advocacy work and calls for change as an independent curator and podcast host.
Annie Mac also speaks to Exchange host Chloe Lula about the art of interviewing; her popular party series, Before Midnight; her pivot to writing; how getting older has shaped her view of success; and what it means to lead the "good life." She has also published two novels, both of which pull from loosely autobiographical topics: The Troubles in Ireland, the music industry in London and bigger thematic arcs such as navigating motherhood and grief. Listen to the episode in full.
"I'm ready to bring back gatekeeping." The New Yorker staff writer discusses how to protect the underground, experimenting with drugs and her new book, Health and Safety.
Can drugs help us find meaning in music and nightlife? This is a question that today's Exchange guest, New Yorker staff writer Emily Witt, asks in earnest in her new book Health and Safety: A Breakdown. Just released in hardcover in the UK and Europe, the memoir traces Witt's life in her early-to-mid 30s. A journalist living and working in Brooklyn, she began experimenting with psychedelics and club drugs after years of living what she describes as a conservative, straight-and-narrow, middle-class life. She became enamoured with the borough's underground raves, frequenting events like the festival Sustain-Release, the party Unter and sets at Bushwick haunt Bossa Nova Civic Club, all while falling in love with an aspiring DJ and producer she calls Andrew.
As the book progresses, Witt documents the growing MAGA movement in America, gun rights rallies and mass shootings. As the country falls apart, she watches her romantic relationship fall apart, too. Drugs and Brooklyn nightlife, she writes, became both an escape and a way to rearrange a world that she starts to feel no longer makes sense.
Witt shares critical opinions about the underground scene's capacity to be a utopia and place of belonging in an increasingly hostile world, arguing that there should be more gatekeeping in place to protect a scene that's threatened by capitalism and the mainstream. She also interrogates what she calls "woke identity politics" in Brooklyn, the lack of change that came from the Black Lives Matter movement, empty calls for political protest that dominated the early days of the pandemic and why, despite everything, she's chosen to stay in Brooklyn for good. Listen to the episode in full. -Chloe Lula
RA Exchange
The longtime BBC Radio 1 host talks about the liberation of leaving broadcasting, her pivot to fiction writing and her party series, Before Midnight.
If you grew up in the UK, chances are you've heard Annie Mac on the radio. The Irish native started on the airwaves in 2004 when she was 26. She hosted a nightly programme called Future Sounds, before eventually moving to a Friday night dance music show, which catapulted her into the pop cultural zeitgeist.
Being at the BBC was a boon to her career, but as she reveals in this Exchange—her second appearance on the series—it also came with its limitations. She left the media giant in 2021 to spend more time with her family, and to pursue her own projects without the inhibition of BBC codes of conduct on matters around free speech. Since departing, she has been outspoken about politics and engaged in ongoing advocacy work and calls for change as an independent curator and podcast host.
Annie Mac also speaks to Exchange host Chloe Lula about the art of interviewing; her popular party series, Before Midnight; her pivot to writing; how getting older has shaped her view of success; and what it means to lead the "good life." She has also published two novels, both of which pull from loosely autobiographical topics: The Troubles in Ireland, the music industry in London and bigger thematic arcs such as navigating motherhood and grief. Listen to the episode in full.
