Rachel Mann — Identity, Darkness & Divine Mystery [Revisited] (N361)
Nomad Podcast
Nomad
4.7 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 23 January 2026
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Nomad Revisited episode, we return to a 2017 conversation with Anglican priest, poet, and writer Rachel Mann. As the first trans person interviewed on Nomad, the exchange unfolds in a spirit of curiosity and vulnerability, with questions that are sometimes tentative and awkward, met by Rachel’s remarkable patience, clarity, and generosity of spirit.
The conversation explores identity as something lived into rather than solved, faith as something encountered in vulnerability rather than certainty, and God as a presence found in darkness, woundedness, and becoming. Rachel reflects on transition, embodiment, sexuality, and the slow work of becoming a self who can live a life rather than perform one — offering not answers so much as an invitation into mystery, nuance, and transformation.
After the interview, Nomad hosts Tim and Nick reflect on what it means to live with questions rather than conclusions — exploring identity as something embodied, evolving, and discovered over time, rather than fixed or declared.
Interview starts at 17m 43s
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The |
| 0:07.0 | The Welcome back to Nomad Revisited. I'm Tim Nash and this is Nick Thorley. |
| 0:41.6 | Hello there. That's right, beloved listener. This is the precious Nomad Revisited, lovingly transported from Patreon to the main feed. |
| 0:49.3 | It's the show where me and Nick delve into Nomad's ample back catalogue and reflect on where we were then, how we got |
| 0:55.5 | to where we are now, and often cringe and die inside a little along the way. |
| 0:59.6 | Sounds like a euphemism. |
| 1:03.8 | The fact that it's a Nomad Revisited means, of course, I wouldn't normally have started it in the way I did. |
| 1:08.3 | I'll start more like this. Welcome back to Nomad Revisited. |
| 1:12.1 | New reflections on the one and only nomad guest to have called God a Git. Ah yes. But before we talk |
| 1:18.6 | about which episode we've dusted off from the archive, I think it's very important that I make |
| 1:23.5 | absolutely clear that Nick's here. Hi there. How are you, mate? I'm okay, thanks. What essential insights into your day-to-day life do the listeners need to know about? Well, I've had this weird virus that have been fighting off. I've thought about this before. I don't think so. I feel normal, and then at night, about like, between six and eight o'clock, I get very tired. That's quite specific, isn't it? Yeah, not every night. |
| 1:45.1 | So I thought I was getting better. I was okay for a few days. And then on Saturday at 8 o'clock, I thought, I just gotta have a nap. I just cannot stay awake. And I was like, this is ridiculous. You can't have a nap at 8 o'clock at night. But I did, Tim. I had a nap for 50 minutes. My alarm waked me up because I set it for 50 minutes. Set it for another 50 minutes. And after I woke up, after that 50 minutes, I thought, I just, I'm not going to set an alarm. And I was just lying on my sofa, Tim, over there from once we record. And the next thing I woke up, it was half one. And I called into bed and slept through till seven. Gosh. So I had 11 hours sleep. |
| 2:18.0 | I've never had 11 hours sleep in my life. It's quite pleasurable. Yeah. But hopefully I'm getting better. Last night I didn't sleep very well, so maybe I'm better. Yeah. So there's that. Secondly, have I talked about my cats being overweight? That does sound familiar. but whether or not you've told the beloved listener, I don't know. Well, briefly, I took my cats to the vet and they're overweight. I do. So I need to stop feeding them dreamies. Got no idea what that means. They're little cat treats, but they're full of calories apparently. They don't look overweight to me. They look pretty normal, aren't they? Yeah, I know. They're sort of both half a kilo overweight. |
| 2:34.4 | Which for a small creature, I guess, is quite a lot, isn't it? Yes. But they're not happy to him. They're a bit annoyed. Although I think they're learning quite quickly. Chuckley stopped biting my feet when I'm in the kitchen now. I think he's got the picture. I mean, there's not much else to say, me, fake. For the last two weeks, I haven't really left the house very much because I've been writing an assignment about human development theories |
| 3:08.1 | and their centrality to a relational, developmental, integrative approach to psychotherapy. |
| 3:12.2 | I don't think you've ever uttered those words on Nomad before. There's not much to talk about. |
| 3:17.8 | It's all I've been doing. I've just been reading, reading, reading, making notes, making notes, |
| 3:23.6 | making notes, planning an assignment. Just started writing it. Yeah. But Tim, I've got a little |
| 3:27.6 | geeky podcast thing to chat about. Go. Do you know that now, the rest is history, |
| 3:33.0 | world famous podcast, is on BBC Sounds. I did not know that. Yeah, isn't that crazy? So, Adam Bogson's podcast is on there, and now they've got that as well. So you can still get it in a normal way, like, you know, like from Gollhanger. Yeah. But it's like the BBC are hoovering up people's podcasts. |
| 3:39.0 | I don't know if they haven't to pay to do that? |
| 3:57.9 | They must be, |
... |
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