Radical Unlearning: The Art and Science of Creating Change from Within

A road map for rewiring our brains to unlearn harmful beliefs, heal broken bonds, and transform our communities

The beliefs that hold us back--inherited prejudices, self-limiting thoughts, destructive patterns--often feel permanent. But what if they’re not? In Radical Unlearning, you’ll learn about how neuroplasticity--the brain’s ability to form new neural pathways--plays a key role in how we learn (and unlearn) behaviors and biases. Journalist and activist Lewis Raven Wallace likens the process to how footpaths are created by countless people walking the same route over years. We can choose to disrupt existing neural connections, to create new paths that lead to meaningful change.

Weaving personal stories with scientific research, Wallace shows how anyone can break free from harmful patterns and beliefs, no matter how deeply ingrained. This book invites you to begin your own unlearning journey with practical exercises and reflection questions. It includes insights from people who have fundamentally changed their worldviews such as:

• A former white nationalist who is now a transgender anti-racist activist
• An ex-Israeli soldier who has transformed into a radical anti-Zionist advocate
• Wallace’s own grandmother, who overcame decades of racism and transphobia in her 80s

Our mental patterns don’t just affect us--they shape how we treat others and form the foundation of larger social problems. Radical Unlearning is a road map for collective healing and growth, proof that transformation flourishes in community. With this book, you’ll learn how to let go of harmful beliefs and practice new ways of thinking that foster connection, empathy, and justice.

Lewis Raven Wallace (they/ze/he) is an award-winning independent journalist based in Durham, North Carolina. He’s the author of The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity (University of Chicago Press, 2019), and the host of The View from Somewhere podcast. Lewis was the 2022-2024 Abolition Journalism Fellow with Interrupting Criminalization, a 2021 Ford Global Fellow, and a 2020 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. In 2019 he cofounded Press On, a southern movement journalism collective, and he was also a proud cofounder of Black and Pink Southwest Ohio in 2014, the Chicago Childcare Collective in 2007, and Riot Youth, Michigan’s first youth-run space for queer teens, in 1999. When he’s not working, he plays the accordion, writes poetry, and spends time with his pitbull named Frankie and his potbellied pig, Dogwood Daffodil.