This week it is Mental Health Awareness Week so to talk through his own journey, specifically his experience with psychosis, is actor, director and now author, David Harewood, best known for his roles as CIA Counterterrorism Director David Estes in Homeland. From Birmingham, born to parents from Barbados, David has had huge success on stage, in TV and in Hollywood. Yet, in his recent memoir ‘Maybe I Don’t Belong Here’, David details the racial abuse he suffered as a black British boy and man gro...
May 09, 2022•52 min•Season 9Ep. 2
This week is Deaf Awareness Week, so we welcome Eastenders actor and 2021 Strictly Come Dancing champion Rose Ayling Ellis to Changes, our first deaf guest. Rose has been deaf since birth and is a British Sign Language user, recently backing the campaign to make it a recognised language in England. This year, Rose received the Visionary Honours Award for Inspirational Person of the Year whilst her appearance on Strictly last year has significantly helped in changing people’s perceptions of ...
May 02, 2022•39 min•Season 9Ep. 1
Changes Revisited is a chance to revisit some of our most compelling and entertaining episodes from the archives. This week we look back at highlights from two very different episodes and two very different people - Kelis and Dr Larch Maxey (a climate activist). Kelis, the multi-platinum, Grammy nominated artist, fashion icon, entrepreneur, mother, and now Cordon Bleu chef and farm owner, talks about these changes in her life including going from city life to tending to animals. She also shares ...
Apr 25, 2022•41 min•Season 8Ep. 15
It's difficult not to divide Grace Spence Green's story into a before and after. The event that splits the two is one of the most dramatic instances of change that you can possible imagine: in 2018, Grace, then a 22 year-old medical student, was walking through a London shopping centre when a man jumped from a balcony, three storeys above, and landed on her. When she awoke, seven minutes later, surrounded by people, she realised she couldn't feel her legs. So began a painful process of coming to...
Apr 18, 2022•33 min•Season 8Ep. 14
Douglas Stuart is the 2020 Booker Prize winning author. His story is one of survival, perseverance and defying people’s expectations. Douglas’ incredible debut novel Shuggie Bain was inspired by his upbringing in Glasgow, a time when he describes himself as a young queer son of a single mother struggling with addiction and poverty. Following his mother’s death, Douglas fended for himself and remarkably went on to study fashion at the Royal College of art in London where he was rec...
Apr 11, 2022•49 min•Season 8Ep. 13
Mark Ronson is one of the most celebrated and successful music producers around. Oscar, Golden Globes, Grammys, you name it he’s been awarded it for his services to era defining pop music. He’s made records with Amy Winehouse, Adele, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Queens Of The Stone Age, Bruno Mars, and the list goes on and on. Annie has interviewed Mark Ronson countless times in her career, but this was a different flex of interview, where they were able to zoom out on his whole journey, ...
Apr 04, 2022•44 min•Season 8Ep. 12
This week we bring you a conversation with TV legend Scarlett Moffatt. Gogglebox legend, I’m A Celeb winner, Podcaster and now documentarian. Scarlett joined me to talk through her biggest changes, from road accidents to bell's palsy to bullying to TV stardom, to extreme celebrity to how she eventually found her way back to herself. Scarlett experienced brutal changes in her childhood and surreal and extreme changes in adulthood but none of them have held her back thank god. Talking to Sca...
Mar 28, 2022•43 min•Season 8Ep. 11
Danila Khomutovsky is a 38 year old Ukrainian man. He is a husband and a father to a 7 year old son, a voice artist, co-founder of the radio station Aristocrats and has lived in Kyiv for the last 10 years. On 24th February 2022, his life and the lives of millions was upended when Russia invaded Ukraine. Despite peace talk efforts, Russian artillery and warplanes are continuing to pound cities and towns across Ukraine. More than three million people have now fled Ukraine ...
Mar 21, 2022•49 min•Season 8Ep. 10
For the vast majority of the Irish Diaspora, St Patrick's Day offers a regularly scheduled opportunity to get in touch with all of those warm, fuzzy notions of Ireland and home. But what if your relationship to home is a little bit more complicated? Emma Dabiri is the best-selling author of Don't Touch My Hair and What White People Can Do Next – two monumentally important discussions about race that have offered vital nuance and context at a time where more and more people have become engaged wi...
Mar 14, 2022•46 min•Season 8Ep. 9
For International Women's Day tomorrow, we wanted to highlight women who experience homelessness. The average age of death for women sleeping rough or in emergency accommodation is four years lower than a man at just 41 years old. Women are at much greater risk of physical and sexual violence, and more likely to be struggling with complex trauma, mental health issues, physical health, domestic abuse and/or substance misuse and some are permanently separated from their children. These traum...
Mar 07, 2022•48 min•Season 8Ep. 8
In this special bonus episode of Changes, Annie talks about nightclubs with The Blessed Madonna - their history, their cultural significance and their tenuous future after Covid restrictions ravaged the industry in the last two years. Through statistics, lived experience and passion for what night-clubs can do to and for a person, Marea and Annie explore exactly why clubs matter. We couldn’t think of a better person to speak with than Marea; with years of DJing experience at some of the mos...
Mar 03, 2022•48 min•Season 8Ep. 7
What entity better captured the spirit, energy, and atmosphere of the '90s than the Spice Girls? From the outside, it was a fairytale: five girls, all utterly relatable and recognisable, were plucked from obscurity and turned into the world's biggest popstars. Melanie Chisholm was one of those girls, but we didn't know her by that name. To us, she was Mel C, or Sporty Spice – and all these years later, she's still figuring out where one identity ends and the other begins. The Spice Girls, in its...
Feb 28, 2022•46 min•Season 8Ep. 6
In recent years, there has been a huge change in eating habits, with many of us choosing to eat more plant-based foods. Even some of the biggest fast-food chains in the world are now offering plant-based alternatives and nearly 1 in 3 Brits drink plant-based milk alternatives. In this bonus episode of Changes, sponsored by Oatly, we explore this transition with the help of vegan chef Rachel Ama. We discuss why it’s happening now, the trends and the myth...
Feb 25, 2022•34 min•Season 8Ep. 5
Can you imagine not knowing anything about your family, being rejected by the one you thought you knew and, at 17, finding out your real name and that your mother did in fact want you? In honour of Care Day, the world's largest celebration of the successes and achievements of children and young people with experience of care, which took place on Friday, we welcome to Changes, the hugely celebrated poet, writer and phenomenal human, Lemn Sissay. A man who was stolen from his mother, rejected by h...
Feb 21, 2022•50 min•Season 8Ep. 4
We bring you a very unique episode this week, where Annie speaks to her husband Tom (a music producer who goes by the name Toddla T). It’s an incredibly insightful and generous conversation about being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, becoming sober and how they have both navigated those changes together. ‘Four years after meeting Tom at Fabric nightclub, we had a baby together. We had another kid just under four years later. We’ve been together for 13 years in all. We’ve both had to grow ...
Feb 14, 2022•54 min•Season 8Ep. 3
Damon Albarn is a man whose whole creative ethos is based on change. His career spans over three decades now, with thirty albums released. His band Blur have released 8 studio albums, with Park Life released in 1994 the same year that Oasis released Definitely Maybe. It defined an era, making Blur synonymous with the 90s and the term Britpop. As co-founder of Gorillaz with Jamie Hewlett he has sold over 25 million records worldwide. He is prolific collaborator, forming various bands, like ...
Feb 07, 2022•40 min•Season 8Ep. 2
Changes is back for a new year and kicking off with an emotional and inspirational conversation with award winning journalist, broadcaster and author Elizabeth Day. From the outside Elizabeth Day’s career has been an indisputable success story, a double first in history at Cambridge, a British Press Award for Young Journalist of the Year in 2004, endless writing credits and five novels. But it’s her podcast How To Fail and her memoir How To Fail: Everything I’ve Ever Learned From Things Go...
Jan 31, 2022•51 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Changes is back for one last lap of 2021. It's been a year of high hopes, broken promises, and, in amongst it all, some fairly profound changes (end of Trump! Vaccine! Billionaires flying to space in rockets!). To help us make sense of it all, we've invited the excellent comic and actor, Lolly Adefope onto the show for a bit of a debrief on the year that was. Lolly's been busy charming audiences on both sides of the Atlantic for the last few years – with roles in Ghosts, This Time with Alan Part...
Dec 27, 2021•42 min•Season 7Ep. 14
Series finale time, and we're not just talking "a" change, we're talking THE change – with a bona fide national treasure, no less. Davina McCall is part of the fabric and texture of day to day life in the UK. As a TV presenter she has been a warm, generous, and deeply empathetic fixture on our televisions since the dawn of Big Brother at the beginning of the millennium. The path she'd taken to that point was pretty bumpy, and you'll hear her talk a little bit about that in this conversation, but...
Dec 07, 2021•50 min•Season 7Ep. 13
Prue Leith is a living legend, and one of the most joyous conversationalists we've ever hosted on Changes. It's difficult to know where to start with the life that Prue has led. Most will know her as one of the judges of The Great British Bake Off, but you can pretty easily get dizzy reading her CV – novels, cook books, michelin star winning restaurants, catering companies, cookery schools – etc ad infinitum. Prue believes that life should be punctuated by plenty of little revolutions, and she's...
Nov 29, 2021•39 min•Season 7Ep. 12
Billy Porter is a man at the peak of his powers. Emmy, check. Tony, check. Grammy, check. Critically acclaimed memoir, first directorial film, major label recording contract; check, check, check. With a CV that reads like that, you'd be forgiven for assuming that Billy Porter has never had any trouble finding recognition for his creative powers. But the truth is, the man you see before you today, strolling up and down red carpets in a staggering ballgowns, is the product of so much change, traum...
Nov 22, 2021•37 min•Season 7Ep. 11
Emily Ratajkowski has made an unbelievably successful life by commodifying her body. She'd be the first person to tell you that. And for the first part of her career, she felt very comfortable with that reality. On all of her shoots, she believed herself to be strong, capable, and in control. But somewhere along the line, something changed, and Emily began questioning the truth of her out look. She started looking back at the situations she'd been placed into as a young model, and finding new de...
Nov 15, 2021•46 min•Season 7Ep. 10
When you discover that your entire world is based upon a lie, how do you begin to pick up the pieces and move ahead? Bexy Cameron spent the first part of her life convinced that the apocalypse was coming, and that she'd be dead by the age of 15. That's because she was brought up, alongside her 11 siblings, in a cult called the Children of God. No school, no TV, no contact with the outside world; all she knew was what the cult's mysterious and dangerous leader told them. The details of what Bexy ...
Nov 08, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Season 7Ep. 9
When your entire life has been about working towards one goal, what happens when you've reached it? For Nick Grimshaw – that goal was becoming a presenter on BBC Radio 1, and specifically, hosting its famous breakfast show. It's a dream that came true for him in 2012. But now, like Annie, he has decided to leave Radio 1, and set off in pursuit of a new adventure – the specifics of which remain pleasantly undecided in his mind. For both Annie and her old pal, Grimmy, it's been a year of big chang...
Nov 01, 2021•58 min•Season 7Ep. 8
Are we making progress in the war against gender inequality? If anyone should know, it's Caroline Criado Perez. A couple of years ago, she released Invisible Women: Exposing Gender Bias in a World Designed for Men. It was a book, founded upon an enormous amount of research, that made explicit something known instinctively by many: the world we move in was not created with women in mind, and that the repercussions of that oversight are too many to count, ranging in impact from minor annoyance to ...
Oct 27, 2021•49 min•Season 7Ep. 7
How can a stutter or a stammer change the way you move through the world? If you speak fluently, you've likely never given it a great deal of thought, but talk to Lisa Nealan and you'll start to understand the ways a speech impairment might dominate your day-to-day existence. That was the case with Lisa for years. At the age of eight, she suffered an accident that left her speech permanently changed, and she subsequently built her entire life around her stutter, avoiding any and all situations t...
Oct 18, 2021•46 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Perez Hilton is not a popular man. He'd be the first one to tell you that, by his own estimation, 80% of people hate him. That's because he pioneered a certain type of celebrity gossip blog – the kind that trades in secrets, scandal and shame – and he was rewarded handsomely for it. To the outside world, he seemed perfectly comfortable playing the villain, but if Perez is to be believed, something was amiss the entire time. These days, Perez Hilton says he has changed a great deal, even though h...
Oct 11, 2021•42 min•Season 7Ep. 5
When Jimmy Carr was 25 years old, his life looked very different. He was a marketing exec at an oil company, a practicing Catholic, a virgin. And he was sad. In order to change that. He asked himself one question: "What do I want?" He soon discovered that knowing the answer to that question was half the battle. In this conversation, you'll hear exactly how Jimmy Carr turned a quarter-life crisis into an astonishingly successful career in comedy – and why he'd recommend a similar degree of upheav...
Oct 04, 2021•46 min•Season 7Ep. 4
What's it like to say goodbye to your family, your friends, your entire life – and head out into the unknown, never to return? As the Migrant Crisis continues to displace hundreds of thousands of people around the world each year, and as Priti Patel weighs up policies to deter those who wish to seek asylum in the UK, Annie zeroes in on the human experience at the centre of something too often reduced to statistics and rhetoric. Hassan Akkad has lived the world-upending change of seeking asylum. ...
Sep 27, 2021•47 min•Season 7Ep. 3
What does it feel like to stand on the brink of a total, all-encompassing change? Abbey Smith, who releases music as Yebba, would be a good person to ask. After collaborating with Ed Sheeran, Stormzy, Sam Smith, and Drake – and being touted as a 'once in a generation' voice – she is now releasing her long-awaited debut album, and it's poised to make her a superstar. That's about as dramatic a change as life can throw at you, but Yebba is used to upheaval. Five years ago, just as her singing care...
Sep 20, 2021•44 min•Season 7Ep. 2
