The Changes Interview - Pandora Sykes

Pandora Sykes is pretty fabulous; ever-chic, a creative multi-hyphenate with a jaw-droppingly impressive career to date. She has worked as Fashion editor at the Sunday Times Style, co-created and co-hosted the now concluded wildly popular podcast The High Low with her friend Dolly Alderton, and published two books, The Sunday Times bestselling essay collection, How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? and the anthology, What Writers Read: 35 Writers On Their Favourite Book, and that’s just the top line credits.

These days she makes prize winning audio documentaries and podcasts, is mother to three young kids and is a prolific Substacker; channelling her love of all things books into her newsletter Books+Bits - which is the number one of its kind in books and culture in the UK.

Pandora lives near me in North West London and we bump into each other occasionally, always it seems, when I am wearing the most bonkers outfits, and I don’t mean bonkers good, I mean bonkers embarrassing. We have been threatening to meet for a drink for a while now, but until then, she kindly agreed to do the Changes interview. Please enjoy..

Historically, fear. I have always said that I Do Not Like Change. I think it’s inherited - my parents have lived in their house for over 50 years. We’ve been in our house for 8 years, and similarly, I can’t ever imagine moving - although, that’s partly because you can’t take wallpaper with you. (And we have a lot of wallpaper, Annie.) That said! I must subconsciously enjoy change, because I’ve never done a job for longer than 4 years. I left my job as a columnist and fashion features editor at The Sunday Times after 4 years. (Everyone thought I was mad.) We ended The High Low after almost 4 years. (Everyone thought we were mad.) I’m coming up to 3 years of Books+Bits, so by that metric, it will end in a year! (It won’t.) So I think maybe I like mental change - need change, in fact, to stay invigorated - but not physical changes that come with a capital C. (Aside from birth, lol.)

Oh, I’m always changing my mind on things. I love having my mind changed! It’s why I’m quite an on the fence person. Or, what gets called, as if it were a bad thing, ‘both sideism’. Everyone is so sure of everything, now, frequently things they know very little about - The Dunning Kruger Effect - thanks to the internet and the modern habit of headline skimmery, and so quick to write someone off if they don’t hold the same views as them on absolutely everything. I find that kind of tribalism, that refusal to see things from a different perspective, both fascinating and concerning. (A couple of fascinating books on this come to mind, here: Vexed, by James Mumford - yes, brother of the famous Mumford - and Against Empathy, by Paul Bloom.) The most recent examples of this would be people I have been interviewing for an audio doc I am working on. Some of the contributors will bristle and say, “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t agree with you on that”, or “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the answers you wanted” and I always say, You don’t have to agree with me! There are no right answers. It’s fun if you don’t agree with me. You want a bit of tension in a doc.

Every time I have a baby I have had to completely disassemble my mind and body and rebuild it as an entirely new person: a mother of one, a mother of two, a mother of three. The first time I denied that process (didn’t even realise it existed), the second time it destroyed me, and the third time I gave myself the space for it to happen and realised that I will never, actually, assemble fully. Having my youngest child made me realise I couldn’t be the person I’d been before - who always replied to messages and emails, who tried to be everything to everyone - and that was very freeing. I say yes to so much less. I cancel so much more. (And I don’t feel bad about flaking because I never - and I mean never - mind if someone does it to me. I could be in a restaurant ordering, have been twice before in fact, and you could cancel, and I’d say that’s absolutely fine and get out my book and enjoy a lovely solo meal.)

I am still learning this new life - my youngest is only two - but I am so much happier. I want to show up as a writing woman, a reading woman, a curious woman, a joyful woman, and most importantly, a mother, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife (sometimes) and not burn out - which leaves very little time for anything else. I respect that, now, in ways I never used to. As Nesrine Malik once said to me (best thing anyone has ever said to me), “Gain involves loss”. Even the best decision involves some small grief.

I feel changed by a lot of what I read. A good book should change you - or your thinking - even if it’s just in a teeny tiny way. Books that I felt quite radically changed by of late (they’re usually memoirs or non-fiction) include Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li and 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. When I was a kid, it was Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian. We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver also shocked the hell out of me, as a teenager, in a way I felt profoundly changed by. I could go on and on!

I turn 40 next year and I’ve been really looking forward to this decade, because I want it to function differently to my 20s and 30s. I think, being a freelancer, it can be hard to find a sense of peace. I don’t even know what I’m doing in 6 months time, let alone a year. I’m working with new people constantly, who you have to build new relationships with, find a new workflow, and often, prove yourself. I want to find something more sustainable. Something where I can focus on being really creative, and less on admin, and work with the same people, really bed into those working relationships. I love collaboration, and when it’s someone you know well, and trust implicitly, it’s the best feeling.

See above!