Why 3am Thoughts?
3am Thoughts is the name I gave to long-form essays I write as a way of making sense of our tempestuous world.
The themes of the essays reflect my academic background and current interests, which intertwine history and politics, society and culture, and science.
I value reason, empiricism, rationality, scepticism, intellectual honesty, and inquiry. If you share these values, you may find some of the essays here thought-provoking. If you do, consider passing it along.
Who I Am
My name is Alan Flanagan, and I’m a former lawyer now working in science. Currently London-based by way of Ireland, having grown up in Hong Kong.
My undergraduate degree was in History & English, before going to law school and qualifying as a Barrister in 2009. I spent almost a decade practising law in Dublin, Ireland. In 2015, I started an MSc in nutrition, initially out of personal interest, but during which I was bitten by the research bug and met the fork in the road: stay in law and study part-time or move full-time into a PhD. I chose the latter, being awarded my doctorate in 2022.
I came full circle back to long-form essay writing during the first Covid-19 ‘lockdown’ in the UK in March 2020. This Substack was born in 2021 as a permanent home for those essays.
