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 own academic background and current interests, intertwining history and politics, society and culture, and science.
I value reason and empiricism, rationality and skepticism, intellectual honesty and inquiry. If you share these values, maybe 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, 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 following the typical path of humanities graduates wondering what to do with their degrees: law school. I qualified as a Barrister in 2009 and spent almost a decade practicising law in Dublin, Ireland. In 2015 I started an MSc in nutrition, purely out of personal interest initially, 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 (thesis entitled, ‘Effects of Timing of Food Intake and Behaviours on Daily Rhythms of Human Metabolism’).
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.
