Is changing your mind a sign of intellectual honesty—or betrayal? These days, it can feel like most people think it’s the latter. We live in an age where rethinking a position becomes a gotcha moment—a chance for someone to pull up your old social media posts to prove you’re a hypocrite or a fraud. The pressure to not admit to changing your mind—to stick to your guns—has never been greater.
But the ability to change your mind is a sign that you think for yourself. It takes curiosity, honesty, courage, and humility. And so it is worth understanding how it happens.
That’s why we’re launching a new video interview series called Confessions.
In each episode, I sit down with someone who has abandoned a belief that was once central to who they were: a former climate activist who now thinks the movement has lost the plot; an anti-Israel protester turned Zionist; a body-positivity activist turned Ozempic evangelist. Whatever the subject, the goal every time will be the same: to understand why someone changed their mind—and what it took to walk away from a set of beliefs they once lived by.
We’re kicking off the series with Richard Hanania. Once upon a time, Hanania was an alt-right extremist posting hateful diatribes online. Those pseudonymous posts came back to haunt Hanania years later, after he had found mainstream success as a political commentator, thanks to an exposé by HuffPost. Hanania reckoned with his past in an essay titled “Why I Used to Suck, and (Hopefully) No Longer Do.”
In my interview with Hanania, he describes his journey from the fringe to the mainstream. Watch it here:
To mark the launch of the series, we’re also publishing an essay by Hanania about why you shouldn’t be afraid to change your mind. Hanania writes about a more recent change of heart, this time about Donald Trump. Hanania voted for the president but now thinks that was a mistake. He regrets his vote, but not admitting he was wrong. Read Richard on why the path of intellectual honesty is the only one worth taking:
To make sure you don’t miss the next installment of Confessions, subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you are a socialist turned capitalist, a capitalist turned socialist, a former Scientologist, a former Groyper, a former vegan, or—you get the picture—write to us at confessions@thefp.com.
When C. S. Lewis talked about change, he didn’t mean just fixing a few habits or trying a little harder.
What he meant was something much deeper.
For Lewis, Christianity isn’t about becoming a slightly better version of yourself.
It’s about becoming a whole new kind of person transformed by Christ.
While on a journey from being a almost-life-long faithful, committed Evangelical Christian with anti-Catholic leanings to joining the Catholic Church at 44, a wise man said this to me, “Very few people are willing to challenge their tightly-held assumptions.” I’ve watched that statement be fleshed out in opinions from diets to politics. This sounds like a great forum for assumptions to be challenged!! Looking forward to the conversations.