
Changing My Mind
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Julian Barnes
-
By:
-
Julian Barnes
About this listen
'We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater truthfulness to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an end to vacillation, uncertainty, weak-mindedness. It seems to make us stronger and more mature. Well, we would think that, wouldn't we?'
In this engaging and erudite essay, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age and time.
©2025 Julian Barnes. Versions of these essays were first broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s The Essay series in 2016. (P)2025 Bolinda PublishingPeople who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Sense of an Ending
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Andrew Lim on 06-14-21
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
-
-
Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Mitzi on 09-01-23
By: Julian Barnes
-
Levels of Life
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Julian Barnes
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.
-
-
Every love story is a potential grief story.
- By Darwin8u on 09-27-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
Elizabeth Finch
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone's taste. But she will change the way you see the world. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centers of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years.
-
-
Another masterpiece!
- By Davis Perkins on 08-23-22
By: Julian Barnes
-
Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
-
-
The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Sense of an Ending
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 4 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour, and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He’s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove.
-
-
Disappointing
- By Andrew Lim on 06-14-21
By: Julian Barnes
-
The Noise of Time
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Daniel Philpott
- Length: 5 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In May 1937, a man in his early 30s waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to the Big House ever return.
-
-
Art belongs to everybody and nobody.
- By Darwin8u on 06-13-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
Nothing to Be Frightened Of
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.
-
-
Brilliant
- By Mitzi on 09-01-23
By: Julian Barnes
-
Levels of Life
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Julian Barnes
- Length: 3 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
'You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed...' Julian Barnes's new book is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the 2011 Man Booker Prize described him as 'an unparalleled magus of the heart'. This book confirms that opinion.
-
-
Every love story is a potential grief story.
- By Darwin8u on 09-27-16
By: Julian Barnes
-
Elizabeth Finch
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Justin Avoth
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. Her ideas are not to everyone's taste. But she will change the way you see the world. Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration—always rigorous, always thoughtful. With careful empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centers of seriousness. As a former student unpacks her notebooks and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years.
-
-
Another masterpiece!
- By Davis Perkins on 08-23-22
By: Julian Barnes
-
Talking It Over
- By: Julian Barnes
- Narrated by: Steven Pacey, Alex Jennings, Clare Higgins
- Length: 7 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Introducing Stuart, Gillian and Oliver. One by one they take their turn to speak straight out to the camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.
-
-
The Narrative Gimmick Works
- By Alan on 11-22-11
By: Julian Barnes
-
Small Rain
- A Novel
- By: Garth Greenwell
- Narrated by: Garth Greenwell
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A poet's life is turned inside out by a sudden, wrenching pain. The pain brings him to his knees, and eventually to the ICU. Confined to bed, plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what is happening to his body, as someone who has lived for many years in his mind. This is a searching, sweeping novel set at the furthest edges of human experience, where the forces that give life value—art, memory, poetry, music, care—are thrown into sharp relief.
-
-
A Masterpiece
- By Herluf Kanstrup on 09-22-24
By: Garth Greenwell
-
The Mesopotamian Riddle
- An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
- By: Joshua Hammer
- Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.
By: Joshua Hammer
-
I'll Never Call Him Dad Again
- Turning Our Family Trauma of Sexual Assault and Chemical Submission into a Collective Fight
- By: Caroline Darian, Stephen Brown - translator
- Narrated by: Heather Long, Caroline Darian
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The trial of Dominique Pelicot has captured the world's attention. Behind Pelicot's unthinkable crimes are a mother, Gisèle Pelicot, and her daughter, Caroline Darian, who were forced to rebuild their lives. This is their story.
-
-
Beyond Words
- By Debra Nelson on 03-19-25
By: Caroline Darian, and others
-
Unshrunk
- A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance
- By: Laura Delano
- Narrated by: Laura Delano
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At age fourteen, Laura Delano saw her first psychiatrist, who immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and started her on a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant. At school, Delano was elected the class president and earned straight-As and a national squash ranking; at home, she unleashed all the rage and despair she felt, lashing out at her family and locking herself in her bedroom, obsessing over death.
-
-
A Rite of Passage For the Rest of Us
- By Metal Rabbit on 04-16-25
By: Laura Delano
-
The Mighty Red
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Marin Ireland
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Argus, North Dakota, a collection of people revolve around a fraught wedding. Gary Geist, a terrified young man set to inherit two farms, is desperate to marry Kismet Poe, an impulsive, lapsed Goth who can't read her future but seems to resolve his. Hugo, a gentle red-haired, home-schooled giant, is also in love with Kismet. He’s determined to steal her and is eager to be a home wrecker. Kismet's mother, Crystal, hauls sugar beets for Gary's family, and on her nightly runs, tunes into the darkness of late-night radio, sees visions of guardian angels.
-
-
Read this book
- By Jessica on 11-01-24
By: Louise Erdrich
-
Who Is Government?
- The Untold Story of Public Service
- By: Michael Lewis
- Narrated by: Michael Lewis, Sarah Vowell, John Lanchester, and others
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone. Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them.
-
-
Imagine what we could achieve if we actually understood
- By Anonymous User on 03-24-25
By: Michael Lewis
What listeners say about Changing My Mind
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- WH Griesar
- 04-10-25
A wonderful conversation
This short book is really an essay but somehow feels like a conservation with my half just being thoughts that came to mind as I listened to a pleasant voice relating stories, ideas, and opinions full of well read and understood literary references.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Luiz H.S.de Vasconcellos
- 03-26-25
(Very) Well thought of, written and done !
Julian Barnes does not need an introduction. But his short (what a pity!) reminiscing about ideas and facts of his life are intelligent and thought provoking even when kind of hilarious… either for the text or his reading… do not miss it!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carol Randolph
- 04-12-25
Captivating from its beginning to its end.
For people who like to think and reflect, and for wordsmiths, this book is a treasure. Will most likely listen to it a second time.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!