The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker: Recent Episodes

sam baker

The Shift is a podcast that aims to tell the truth about being a woman post-40, created and hosted by writer and broadcaster, Sam Baker. 

Did you ever wonder why you stop hearing so many women's voices once they pass 40? That's where The Shift comes in - a frank, funny, sometimes heartbreaking, always honest look at what it means to be a woman in midlife and beyond. Work, life, love, health, sex, money, identity, body image... What does it all mean when everything around you (and inside you...) is changing? Each week, award-winning author and journalist Sam Baker asks a different woman how she got here, where she's going - and how it feels to be where she is right now. Expect intimate conversation, big laughs, occasional tears and an awful lot of ripping up the rule book and stamping on it... Past guests have included Nicola Sturgeon, Marian Keyes, Philippa Perry, Anita Rani, Tracey Thorn, Isabel Allende, Bobbi Brown, Barbara Blake-Hannah and many more, talking everything from confidence to career reinvention, mental health, menopause and so much more.

If you love The Shift and would like to become a member of our community and receive a weekly newsletter, join The Shift bookclub and so much more, please visit https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

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CONTENT WARNING: There are many moments of joy in this conversation, but please be aware that Liz talks candidly about grief and the sudden death of her son, which some listeners may find upsetting.

My guest today is the writer and climate activist Liz Jensen. Half Danish and half-anglo Moroccan, Liz started out as a journalist, working in radio before becoming a BBC producer. Then, Liz turned her hand to novels. She has now written nine, perhaps the best known of which is The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, which was turned into a movie starring Jamie Dornan.

Now she has written memoir, one no-one would ever want to write.

Your Wild and Precious Life, is, at its heart the devastating story of the nine months after her youngest son Raphael died suddenly at the age of 25. Raph was a zoologist and climate activist, and this is also the story of Liz’s own awakening.

She is a founder of Extinction Rebellion Writers Rebel, which combines words and action to highlight the climate and ecological emergency.

Liz joined me to talk about surviving the loss of a child, translating grief into hope and opening herself up to the natural world. We also discussed magical thinking, the concept of kairos, the unexpected solace of being part of the terrible club and why she used to want to marry an ape!

A note: The episode of The Shift Liz and I discuss in the first five minutes is my conversation with 103-year-old Dr Gladys McGarey, you can listen to it here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Your Wild and Precious Life by Liz Jensen and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I first came across today’s guest, Dr Emily Nagoski, on this very podcast, when my then guest Sarah Knight (creator of the NoFucks Given franchise) raved about the transformational power of her runaway bestseller, Come As You Are.

I hunted it down and, like millions of women the world over, I was blown away. A sex expert speaking our language? Taking the pressure off, rather than piling it on? Never!

So when I heard that the Kinsey-educated sex educator had turned her attention to long term relationships in her new book, Come Together, I was obsessed. Not least because it turns out that sex experts are human too and Emily had experienced her own fallow period.

But instead of wallowing in it or panicking or buying uncomfortable knickers, Emily used her own story of sexual disconnection and reconnection as an opportunity to look at what makes and breaks sexual connections.

And guess what: it’s not what you think.

Emily joined me from her home in New England to discuss coming out as a sex expert who lost her sex drive, taking the shoulds out of your sex life, why passion is overrated, how to get the weeds out of your sexual garden! being told she no longer had a “young vagina” And Why she only has one inarguable piece of advice: lube is good!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Come As You Are and Come Together by Emily Nagoski and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is a fashion editor on a mission to improve the representation of all women over 40 - not just the thin white ones with a ton of spare cash! Anna Cascarina has worked in the fashion industry for over 25 years, first as a fashion editor and stylist, then as a teacher.

But as she got older and so did her body, something rankled. Yep - she was starting to feel like she and women like her (ie women over 40 and not a size 10) were not welcome here. In the stores she’d always shopped at, in the magazines she’d worked for, in ad campaigns and on screen.

And so Anna started her Instagram account to help women who didn’t fit the mould feel empowered through fashion. 120,000 followers later it seems like she’s not the only one who’s hacked off with the fashion industry for invisibling her.

Anna joined me to talk about her new book The Forever Wardrobe, Being a size 16 woman who loves fashion when it doesn’t love her back, The impact the fashion industry has had on her Body image and the responsibility she feels not to pass it on to her daughter. We also discussed how her epilepsy has impacted perimenopause and some ugly truths about ageing that no-one wants to tell you (hello arthritis!).

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Forever Wardrobe by Anna Cascarina and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today has blazed a trail through the British poetry scene ever since her work was first published in 1991. Born in Edinburgh, Jackie Kay MBE was brought up in Glasgow by her adoptive parents, Helen and John Kay, of whom much more later. She has had countless poetry collections, short stories and novels published to acclaim, as well as her glorious memoir Red Dust Road which tells the story of meeting her birth parents. The winner of over 20 awards, Jackie is a professor of creative writing at Salford University and for five years she was the Scottish Makar (that’s basically poet laureate).

Her new collection May Day is an elegy to her beloved parents who (died within a year of each other) and taught her the meaning and power of protest. Something Jackie took to heart marching for women’s rights, gay liberation and Black Lives Matter.

I went to Glasgow to meet Jackie while she was on tour. Her beloved older brother Maxie had just died and she spoke candidly about love, loss and absence, living with nothing between you and the sky and how poetry helps her survive. We also discussed coming back into yourself in your 50s and 60s, why there should be lists after white male writer’s names, the art of living together apart and why her emotional age is 150!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including MayDay by Jackie Kay and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the writer, actress and comedian Helen Lederer. Helen began as a stand-up comedian in the “comedy swamp” of the 1980s, where women were like hen’s teeth and rose to fame with her sloaney girl at the bar in the BBC Comedy ‘Naked video’. Then came Saturday Night Live, The Young Ones, French and Saunders and Bottom with Rik Mayall. But she’s probably best known as Catriona the dippy journalist in the TV series Absolutely Fabulous.

It was after writing her first novel, Losing It, that Helen set up the Comedy Women In Print prize to put funny women’s writing on the map and help ensure the next generation wouldn’t have to put up with the lack of recognition she endured. (Also, she was pissed off!)

Now the woman Dawn French calls “the third funniest woman in the world” has written a hilarious and frequently painful memoir about surviving that swamp, Not That I’m Bitter. She tells truths, she names names and she gives herself an absolute hiding!

Helen and I got together over a Zoom cuppa to discuss life as the lone woman on the 80s comedy circuit and why being a pioneer is all very well, but she’d rather have had mainstream success! She also talked about professional jealousy, not “being in the A team”, fear of authority, why she’s spent her life on a diet (remember Limmits biscuits?!) And being tougher on herself than anyone else.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Not That I'm Bitter by Helen Lederer and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Every so often you get the chance to interview someone whose work has fascinated you for, well, forever. And today is one of those days.

Miranda July is an artist, performer, film maker and writer who has been doing it her own way since she was in her teens. She has made three films - The Future, Me and You and Everyone We Know and Kajillionaire, held countless exhibitions, written several books and won a bunch of awards. You get the picture.

Now 50, Miranda has turned her attention to midlife with her first novel in a decade. All Fours is a painful, poignant, hilarious and extremely hot exploration of what happens when “a curious, creative, sexually active woman reaches the midpoint of her life, goes off the oestrogen cliff and starts to question her direction?”

It is wholly unlike anything else I’ve read about this life stage. And is sure to change a few games.

Miranda joined me to talk about her own trip off the oestrogen cliff, reimagining relationships as we get older, conscious co-parenting and moving into the house in the backyard. We also discussed the menopause whisper network, outing herself as “no longer young”, getting out of the anxiety cul de sac and why ageing is “unexpectedly wild”.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including All Fours by Miranda July and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the writer, film-maker and women’s health campaigner Kate Muir. Until perimenopause struck, Kate was the chief film critic of The Times, then all hell broke lose (as anyone who’s found themselves in the midst of the peri-maelstrom will understand). Her life and her job underwent massive turmoil. Now out the other side, she has produced two smash-hit documentaries for Channel 4 about the menopause, with Davina McCall, and followed that up with Davina McCall’s Pill Revolution.

Alongside that she has written two books Everything You Need To Know About the Menopause (but were afraid to ask) and now Everything You Need to Know About the Pill (but were ALSO afraid to ask).

In short, she’s a woman on a mission - to demystify, educate and empower women to have agency over their own body.

A lifelong troublemaker, Kate joined me to talk about the menopause bomb that made her upend her life, going to film school at 50(ish), the story of her mum’s last period and the HRT/Alzheimers equation. We also discuss the fatberg of gender bias consuming women’s healthcare, why her daughter’s contraception experience made her turn her attention to the pill and the chameleon power of ageing.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Everything You Need to Know about the Menopause and Everything You Need to Know About The Pill by Kate Muir and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today has lived a lot of lives in her 50 years.

If you were knocking around in 1990, Amanda de Cadenet burst into your world when she became presenter on the seminal late night TV show, The Word, at 18 and appeared most days on the front of the British tabloids.

Like many young women trapped in the public gaze, she has spent the rest of her life wresting back control.

Since then she has achieved international success as a photographer (she was the youngest woman ever to shoot a Vogue cover), created and hosted The Conversation podcast series in which she’s interviewed the likes of Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton and Jane Fonda… And founded GirlGaze, which saw her named one of the Most creative people in business by Fast Company.

But what does 50 look like when you’ve been in the public eye since the age of 16?

Amanda joined me from her home in LA to talk about the lifelong project of reclaiming her own narrative, surviving on-stage perimenopause moments, going back to basics after losing her dad, Not having a five year plan for the first time in her life And why The new love of her life is a camper van.

We started by talking about the impact of being constantly shamed by the British press in her teens…

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest this week is one of the most enduring movie actresses of our (by which I mean my!) generation. Minnie Driver made her first film, Circle of Friends in 1995, and went on to follow that with a lead role in Stanley Tucci’s gorgeous ode to Italian food, Big Night, an Oscar nominated turn in Goodwill Hunting. And my personal favourite Grosse Point Blank.

Now 52, with a 13yo son, Henry, and over fifty roles under her belt, Minnie is still “doing Hollywood” very much her own way. As well as two albums and a podcast (Minnie’s Questions), she’s now written a memoir, Managing Expectations, a book about how things not working out for her inevitably led to other things working out.

Minnie joined me from her LA home to tell me why being called outspoken makes her want to punch walls, overcoming the curse of other people’s expectations (and her own!), why she always felt like a failure for not being married, how getting fired never feels any less unjust and embracing her vengeful streak! She also introduces me to the concept of is-ness, shares her big hair survival tips and has things to say about why Hollywood dudes can be creased, but women can’t!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Managing Expectations by Minnie Driver, Minnie's book recommendation Send Nudes by Saba Sams and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and this episode was edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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A couple of weeks ago, journalist and broadcaster Mariella Frostrup stepped down from her presenting role at Times Radio so she could concentrate full-time on the women's health advocacy that has become her life's work. Seemed like a good time to look back at our episode from two and a half years ago when she discussed why she was on a mission to make menopause mainstream. Original show notes below:

My guest this week was known for her willingness for say it like it is even before she made a TV show about the menopause. No, not THAT one. The one BEFORE. Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup was banging the menopause drum back in 2018 when her own ignorance about her symptoms at first shocked her and then prompted her to do something bout it. The resulting documentary, The Truth About Menopause, was a smash hit.

And she’s now followed that up with a book, Cracking The Menopause, written with her friend, journalist Alice Smellie. If you’re a fan of the book of this podcast - The Shift (how I lost and found myself after 40 and you can too) - Mariella’s book will be right up your street.

Mariella and I talk candidly about all things menopause - from menopause ignorance to sleeplessness to “the bubble of poison bile” that surrounds the whole subject! She also has plenty to say about the insidiousness of women being “scrap heaped” at 50, why fearlessness is so much sexier than the ability to look 28 and why the time has come to just stop bloody putting up with it!

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Cracking The Menopause by Mariella Frostrup and Alice Smellie and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This week, Marian Keyes celebrates the publication of her 16th novel, My Favourite Mistake. So it seemed like as good a time as any to revisit the second ever episode of The Shift podcast. Yes, the goddess Marian Keyes was one of the first people to say, "Sure, why not?" when I told her I was starting a podcast that celebrated women in midlife and beyond and, not to worry because nobody might listen. Back then in 2020 we were banging the drum for menopause and we're still banging that drum right now! Original show notes below.

Ask any group of women to name a woman they love and I guarantee you someone will name this week’s guest, because Marian Keyes is beloved of women the world over. (She won’t believe that, but she is!) And you know why? Because she speaks the truth. She can’t not speak the truth. Which could well be why she’s sold over 35 million books. Her trademark: the silk glove of laugh out loud funny stories that conceal within them the iron fist of tough contemporary issues. The latest of which is the frankly fabliss and immensely truth-telly no. 1 bestseller Grown Ups.

Over the next 45 minutes Marian will tell the unvarnished truth about menopause (how different would it be if it happened to men???), invisibility, infertility grief, HRT, Botox and learning to be shameless. (Oh and her passion for fashion. And beauty products. And…) In short, this episode is not to be missed.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including My Favourite Mistake, Marian Keyes latest novel and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and this episode was edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest this week is the first female main presenter of Channel 4 news, Cathy Newman. Cathy joined Channel 4 News as political correspondent in 2006 after more than a decade working in newspapers, including The Independent, Financial Times and Washington Post. She is an award-winning investigative journalist whose scoops include the sexual harassment allegations against the liberal democrat peer Lord Rennard.

That’s the first four days of the week! On the fifth, she hosts her own show on Times Radio. Oh, and on the side, she’s a pretty accomplished amateur violinist. But Google her name, and will you see all those achievements? Nope, just reams and reams of the kind of internet abuse that will be familiar to almost every woman in the public eye.

Cathy joined me to talk about her new book, The Ladder, a collection of wisdom from women who've climbed it - and why “the ladder” doesn’t work for women or minorities. Her own personal sliding doors moment, sexual harassment and discovering she was paid less than the bloke at the next desk. We also discussed learning not to give a monkeys about internet trolls, menopause, heavy periods, HRT and why turning 50 really does feel like a superpower to her.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Ladder by Cathy Newman and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the writer Helen Garner. I’m pretty sure that right now you are either going, wow I LOVE her, or looking a bit vague. Because despite being one of Australia’s greatest living writers she is surprisingly little known here.

But not for much longer because, at the age of 81, she is finally about to see almost all her books in print in the UK and US for the first time.

Born in 1941 in Geelong, Victoria, the eldest of six, Helen has lived a fascinating life and one that has found its way into her 13 books. Her debut Monkey Grip, published in 1977 when she was a single mother, is still in print today; her second novel, The Children’s Bach (which is where I recommend you start if you’ve never read her), has been compared with Hemingway and Fitzgerald; and, her true crime classic, This House of Grief, has been declared one of the best books of the 21st century.

Not bad for a regular kid from, as she puts it, “an ordinary Australian home - not many books and not much talk.”

I was lucky enough to get to chat to Helen (and her chooks) from her home near Melbourne. In fact she kept me up long past my bedtime (!) as we discussed the difficult father-daughter relationship, making peace with the older generations and the emotional impact of being a war baby. She also told me why getting married a fourth time would have been the definition of madness, how she couldn’t give a shit about the withdrawal of the erotic gaze and why grandmothering has been the greatest pleasure of her life.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Monkey Grip, The Children's Bach and This House of Grief by Helen Garner and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the American author and essayist, Leslie Jamison. Leslie has the kind of CV that makes other writers weep with envy: the memoir of her alcoholism, The Recovering was an NYT bestseller as was her essay collection The Empathy Exams. That’s the tip of the iceberg, but we only have so much time!

Often compared to such legends as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag (no pressure), Leslie has now written Splinters: a glorious and heart-rending memoir of what it means to be a mother and a daughter, divorce and dating, of learning how to be many women in one occasionally (OK, often) unravelling package.

Leslie joined me from her home in Brooklyn - wearing her earrings of power! - to tell me how her parents divorce shaped her, why her small daughter forced her to live in the now and her penchant for an unhappy ending! We also discussed finding the parts of ourselves we don’t yet know, why she’s no longer ashamed of her ambition and that perennial discovery of midlife women - how to say no!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Leslie's memoir, Splinters and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is a woman who knows all about reinvention. For 45 years, Lyn Slater was a professor of social work with a side-passion for fashion. Feeling burnt out, she started a blog aimed at women like her who wanted to talk about clothes and the way they shape our identity.

And, just like that, the phenomenon that was Accidental Icon was born.

Suddenly, the professor found herself an “influencer”. And For the best part of her 60s, Accidental Icon’s million Instagram followers and countless brand campaigns took over her life. Until she reached a point where she began to wonder precisely where LYN had gone.

Now, in How To Be Old - a story of ageing, identity and what it means to be comfortable in your own skin - she has done it again. At 70, she’s a debut writer. Something she has dreamt of from the age of seven.

Lyn joined me from her home on the Hudson to talk about why we need a new narrative for ageing, intergenerational belligerence, her rebel grandmother and the unlikely feminism of nuns.

We also discussed how she lost herself to life online, how accidental icon gave her body image issues, deciding to swap fashion for family and why she’s finally realised she doesn’t have to be the good-bad girl any more.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Lyn's book, How To Be Old and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Regular listeners have probably noticed that I’m trying a few different things with this series. I wanted to hear more women’s voices, with more varied experiences and today’s guest is one of those! I first met Karyn McCluskey 12 years ago when I was editor of Red magazine and we gave her a woman of the year award for her role in reducing gang violence by 50% in Glasgow, formerly known as the murder capital of Europe. In large part, thanks to Karyn, Glasgow became one of the safest cities in the UK.

Karyn has been advocating for a more enlightened and empathetic approach to violent crime for most of her career. She became a nurse at 17 before training as forensic psychologist, and then joined the police where she has worked - extremely successfully - to bring a public health approach to violence reduction. All this while being a single parent.

I met Karyn at her office, off a busy road on the outskirts of Edinburgh, as you’ll hear!, where she is now Chief Executive of Community Justice Scotland to talk about constantly being the only woman in the room, breastfeeding in the police car park, and how she’s avoided vicarious trauma. We also discussed why she was “slightly terrified of the menopause” (no not Glasgow knife gangs, menopause…), why parenting is just an exercise guilt, high heels, HRT and why her mantra is “feel bad move on”

CW there is discussion of violence, sexual abuse and domestic violence

• If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like my chats with Nicola Sturgeon and Val McDermid.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Annie's new book, The Mess We're In and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Last time Annie Macmanus came on The Shift she was about to make a MASSIVE change. Then, in her early 40s, one of the country’s biggest female DJs was on the brink of walking away. The prescribed way of doing things - climbing, climbing, climbing, until you were Johnny Big Balls, as she put it, was not for her. She, like so many women at this life stage, wanted to find a new way, to build her own decks.

Since then Annie, now 45, has written two novels, the latest of which is The mess we’re in, out now in paperback, helmed two hit podcasts and launched the so-fabulous-I-can’t-believe-nobody-thought of it-before club night, Before Midnight. Aimed at those of us who love to dance but don’t want to stay up til 3am to do it.

Annie joined me for one of those conversations that goes to all the places. We discussed the emotional upheaval of leaving a big job after 17 years and how she rediscovered who she was when she wasn’t on the radio. Plus the loneliness of working from home, the hormonal chaos of perimenopause, the scary urge to “set fire to something”, making new friends in your 40s, getting back on the football pitch and leaning into who she really is now she no longer has to waste time getting manicures!

You can read Annie's piece on the shock of realising she was lonely here.

• If you loved this episode, you might also like my earlier conversation with Annie where she talks about reaching the decision to leave Radio 1, and my chats with Jo Whiley and DJ Paulette.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Annie's new book, The Mess We're In and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

  • If you enjoyed this episode and you fancy buying me a coffee, pop over to my page on buymeacoffee.com

• And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is a woman whose style I have admired for a very long time.

To quote the fashion journalist Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion director, stylist and curator Lucinda Chambers has the kind of style you just can’t buy. And, like many other women, I’ve certainly tried.

Lucinda has worked in the fashion industry for more than three decades. For 25 years she was fashion director of British Vogue, as well as creative consultant to brands ranging from Prada and Marni to H&M and River Island.

Five years ago, she left Vogue in the kind of blaze that will be familiar to many midlife women who intentionally or otherwise put a bomb under everything. She went on to co-found Collagerie, a digital platform that curates, frankly, lovely things that range in price from the very affordable to the very much not. TBH I took one look at Collagerie’s site and practically handed over the keys to my bank account.

Lucinda joined me from her beautiful toasty TV room to tell me why being pushed out of Vogue was a blessing and the joy of embracing BIG change in her 50s. We also discussed the difference between drive and ambition, why you can’t be stylish if you’re not comfortable and how to put some colour confidence in your wardrobe.

• If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with India Knight and Times Fashion Director Anna Murphy.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today I’m delighted to welcome back one of The Shift’s very first guests, journalist and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon.

Bryony has been a columnist on the Telegraph for over 20 years and for ten of those she has been writing candidly about her own experiences of addiction and mental illness. She is the best selling author of Mad Girl and The Wrong Knickers and in 2016 she founded Mental Health Mates a global peer support network that encourages people with mental health issues to connect, for which she has won several awards. She also, FWIW, ran the London marathon in her knickers.

Three years after her first visit to The Shift, Bryony is back - older, wiser (yes really) - and with a new book, the pertinently titled, Mad Woman, which discusses her struggles with burnout, binge eating and, yep, you guessed it, fluctuating hormones.

Bryony joined me from bed in south London to talk about maintaining a public facade when you’re privately falling apart, finally learning to feed herself properly at 43, discovering all the women in her family went into menopause in their early 40s, why she’s done with feeling like she’s the problem and how Davina McCall saved her life!

If you'd like to sponsor Bryony's Big Challenge, you can find out more here.

• If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Sharon Blackie and Ruby Wax.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Mad Woman by Bryony Gordon and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today has lived, well, a life like no other. The writer Jennifer Clement grew up in 1960s Mexico, at the tail end of the Mexican Golden Age, next door to the former home and extended family of seminal artist Frida Kahlo. As a teenager she moved to New York, where she inhabited the artistic downtown world of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and Andy Warhol. She was - and still is - a magnet for the creative and surreal.

But Mexico had her heart. Since returning to Mexico City, she has written many books, including the cult classic Widow Basquiat and Prayers for the Stolen which became an award-winning Netflix film. Jennifer was also the first and only woman president of the writers human rights organisation PEN International in its 100+ year history.

In her memoir, The Promised Party, Jennifer looks back at an extraordinary youth spent with artists and revolutionaries, and examines the way it shaped her.

Jennifer joined me from her home in Mexico City to talk about playing in Frida Kahlo’s bathtub and why Kahlo’s art speaks to so many women, why so much women’s art is still sidelined, and how she developed a passion ethic not a work ethic. We also discussed rebellion, running away, the power of girlfriends, how acting on dreams can change your life and why her mother has been taking HRT for 50 (yes five oh) years

If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Isabel Allende and Esther Freud.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Promised Party by Jennifer Clemenetand the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is a true trailblazer. If you’ve ever been a clubber, DJ Paulette will need zero introduction. If you haven’t, well, all you really need to know is she has been breaking barriers since day one. One of the Hacienda’s first female DJs, she became a stalwart of the Manchester music scene in the 90s, before being catapulted to stardom playing crowds of tens of thousands all over the world. All this in a world that’s a notorious boys club; where women famously have to do it backwards in high heels. And as a black queer woman she’s had to do triple back flips as well, just to get a fraction of the recognition.

In November 2022 she became the first female of colour to win DJ Magazine’s lifetime achievement award, amongst an all-male roll-call. (Surprise!)

Now she’s reliving those years in her first book. Welcome to The Club - the life and lessons of a black woman DJ, discusses the highs and lows, the sexism, racism and ageism, she’s navigated throughout her 30 year career.

Paulette joined me from Manchester to talk about how perimenopause knocked her sideways at 39. 39! Being told no-one would book her bc she was too old at 41. The career-kids conundrum. Back fat, underarm vaginas & a kangaroo pouch. Being older at 24 than 54. And why she will never stop sticking her neck out.

If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Annie Macmanus and Karen Arthur.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Welcome to the Club by DJ Pauletteand the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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For the last of our January archive episodes, we're revisiting an emotional and uplifting chat with screenwriter Delia Ephron. Next week, we're back with a brand new season of The Shift with Sam Baker.

My final guest of the season is the acclaimed screenwriter and bestselling author, Delia Ephron. Unfailingly wise, warm and witty, Delia is perhaps best known as co-writer of the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks smash hit You’ve Got Mail, with her sister, the writer and director Nora Ephron,.

Delia’s new memoir, Left On Tenth, is the kind of story that would out-rom if not out-com - anything Nora could have come up with. Except… every word is true.

At 72, Delia found herself quite literally left on Tenth street in Manhattan, when her husband of 37 years, Jerry, died of cancer, just three years after the death of her beloved big sister Nora. A year later Delia reconnected with Peter, a man she didn’t even remember dating in college. It was love at second sight. But that was only the start of the story. Because just four months later, Delia was diagnosed with the same cancer that killed her sister.

Now 77, and recovering from a successful bone marrow transplant, Delia joined me from California to talk about getting a second chance at life and love in your 70s, the imperfection of sisterhood, being a lifelong worrier, why friendship is her superpower and shy she's addicted to blow dries (and pastries!). Oh, and, “if someone wants to crush your dreams with their big fat foot get out!”.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Left On Tenth by Delia Ephron and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Been meaning to get going on those Morning Pages since forever? Well, as part of our January motivation series, this week we're revisiting my fascinating conversation with the woman who brought us The Artist's Way.

My guest today is the author of the cult bestseller The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron. Part book, part tool-kit, part spiritual guide, The Artists Way has sold over 4 million copies globally and has inspired countless artists, writers, and creatives including Elizabeth Gilbert, Alicia Keyes, Pete Townshend and many more.

In the 30 years since that was published, Julia has written a movie, 7 plays and 23 books, including her memoir Floor Sample. Written in her late 50s she looked back over the first half(ish) of her life: her catholic education, alcoholism and drug abuse, her brief marriage to director Martin Scorsese, and her subsequent search for meaning, for herself, for home, ultimately for a way to be comfortably sober.

Speaking from her home in Santa Fe, Julia shared her incredible journey from “just a girl” at Catholic school to The Artists Way by way of leaving Washington a writer and landing in Hollywood a wife. She spoke candidly about losing the love of her life, getting and staying sober, how the nuns were her introduction to women with power and how the morning pages transformed her life. Now 74 and 45 years dry, she says, she’s braver than ever.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Artists Way by Julia Cameron and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me! Julia's recommendation, Creative Ideas by Ernest Holmes is out of print, but you can buy it here.

* And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Yes, it's still January! And this week we're revisiting an episode with psychologist, folklorist, mythologist and all-round one-woman campaigner for us to embrace our inner crone!

How do I want to age? What does the rest of my life look like? Those are questions I know many of you have given A LOT of thought. Well, my guest today has some answers.

Dr Sharon Blackie is a psychologist and folklorist who is passionate about reimagining the ageing process for the better. Her last book If Women Rose Rooted was an ecofeminist sleeper hit about finding your place in the world that was passed from woman to woman with the words “you MUST read this”.

Her new book, Hagitude: reimagining the second half of life, does JUST that. What, she asks, would ageing as a woman in the west be like if we embraced it. If we saw it as an adventure, not something to be dreaded, dodged, denied. At its heart is the radical idea: what if older women knew how to use the power and influence many of us don't know we have. What if we recognised our value? What if we wrote our own narratives?

Sharon joined me to talk about the power of myth, embracing your inner hag and why she’d rather be the old woman in the wood than a boring old fairytale princess any day. She also told me what she learnt from THREE midlife crises, her decade of hot flushes and the joy of no longer having skin in the mating game.

I found this conversation so motivating and inspiring. I hope you do too.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Hagitude and If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackieand the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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It's January (Again! So soon!) so, rather than give up everything, this month we're revisiting a host of episodes that are all about a little inspiration. First up the one and only Raynor Winn...

One hundred episodes... how did that happen?! The little podcast that started on a whim and a prayer (and no, that's not a typo!) is still here and soaring. So I could not think of a more fitting guest for such a landmark episode than a woman whose life is a tribute to the power of hope...

Where do you turn when everything feels hopeless? My guest today knows the answer to better than most. Nine years ago, in the space of one week, Raynor Winn lost her home, and her husband, Moth, was diagnosed with a degenerative disease. In the face of such loss, there was only one thing to do: they packed what little of their life they could carry into their backpacks, and walked.

That walk - 630 miles along the South West Coast path - became the bestseller The Salt Path. It sold a million copies, spent more than 90 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller lists and changed thousands of lives - not least Raynor and Moth’s.

Despite defying the medical odds, two years ago Moth’s health began to decline again. Clutching at hope, they set out for one last walk: this time 1000 miles, from Cape Wrath in the far North West of Scotland back home to Cornwall. But in walking back home, could they really walk Moth back to health a second time?

Raynor joined me to talk about the book of that epic journey, Landlines, and how walking The Salt Path wiped her clean. We also discuss the power of walking, why nature has always been her safe place, putting yourself in the way of hope and how a shy girl hiding behind the sofa became a public person at 60.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Landlines by Raynor Winn and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This week we're revisiting one of my favourite episodes from one of the first series. It was back in the day when it was still taboo to talk about menopause, so getting a so-called hardened war reporter to do just that was, well a bit of a coup. Here's Lindsey Hilsum admitting to hiding behind a tank!

You know when people say you’re “brave” because you’ve got a few grey hairs?! Well, my guest this week is the living proof - as if it were needed - that that is a right old load of BS. Channel 4 International Editor Lindsey Hilsum is an acclaimed foreign correspondent who has reported from all over the world including Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Kosovo and Rwanda. She also won the James Tait Black Award for In Extremis, her devastating biography of her friend, the foreign reporter, Marie Colvin who was killed reporting from Syria in 2012.

Lindsey is just as bold as her job might lead you to expect. She takes no prisoners as she talks about managing menopause symptoms in a war zone, being in a minority on the box and why there needs to be more “old trouts on TV” (and, no, she’s not bloody brave for going grey on screen), and how she finally found the perfect answer to “Give us a smile love”. Only took forty years…

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and In Extremis: the life of war correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsey Hilsum.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Last week, Nina Stibbe joined me on The Shift bookclub (if you're not a member, I've taken the "lock" off for a week or so, so you can check it out on Youtube) to talk about her new memoir, Went to London, Took The Dog - what happens when a 60-year-old menopausal woman does a runner. So now seemed like a good time to revisit the episode of The Shift that was recorded just before she did that runner!

What happens when “one of the great comic writers of our time” hits menopause? That’s the conundrum that faced this week’s guest, award-winning novelist Nina Stibbe when she sat down to write her new novel.

With five bestselling books under her belt, including her first memoir, Love Nina, which was turned into a hit TV series starring Helena Bonham Carter. And three novels centred around the turbulent teens and twenties of her alter-ego Lizzie Vogel, Nina decided it was time to turn her hand to middle age.

In One Day I Shall Astonish The World, Nina examines the heartbreak, hilarity and occasional hatred of a friendship that stretches from late teens to mid-50s by way of very different love, life and career choices.

Nina joined me to talk about being hit by the menopause truck, the pressure to be always funny and why her greatest midlife inspiration has come from comedy women. She also said she looks older than her mum and shared her ultimate midlife relationship-saver (or not!): the sofa bed.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including One Day I Shall Astonish The World and Went to London, Took The Dog by Nina Stibbe and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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It’s the final episode of the season and all my podcasting dreams have come true. Because my guest this week - by popular demand and a whole ton of begging - is the one, the only, the legend that is Miriam Margolyes.

Miriam started her career in theatre and radio, voiced some of the best known ads of the late 20th century (hello Cadburys Caramel bunny), won a BAFTA for her role in Martin Scorsese’s Age of Innocence and millions of tiny hearts as Professor Sprout in Harry Potter.

At 82, she is busier than ever; A Vogue cover star, one of TV’s best-loved documentary makers and the bestselling author of two memoirs, This Much Is True and Oh Miriam! Can you tell how excited I was?!

I met Miriam in Glasgow ahead of her live show to talk about everything from having her womb out in her mid-30s (she only went to the dr for a sore nose!), wearing trainers to Buckingham palace (before that was a thing) and why she’s really really bored of being labelled “just a lesbian”. We also discussed never wanting children, her 54 year love match and the power of living a life with no secrets.

If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Sheila Hancock and Janey Godley.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Oh Miriam! and This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyesand the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is a food writer’s food writer. Beloved by such luminaries as Nigella Lawson, Diana Henry and Yotam Ottolenghi, Bee Wilson may be a bestselling food writer and newspaper columnist (she has published seven books and currently writes the popular Table Talk column for the Wall Street Journal), but she is also a home cook with her own fair share of mess and imperfection. Bee understands the anxiety so many of us share around food and cooking it; And how getting a meal on the table is often about so much more than what that meal is.

In her new book, The Secret of Cooking, Bee shares a lifetime of “cooking secrets” that will make even the most culinary phobic - by which I mean me! - feel a glimmer of interest in doing something with a recipe book other than read it.

Bee joined me to talk candidly about how cooking brought her back to herself after the trauma of unexpected divorce and how she came around to seeing that separation as a gift. We also discussed overcoming disordered relationships with food, cooking as a love language, getting back in touch with your greedy inner child - and why everybody needs a spider! (Never one to overlook a shopping opportunity, I’ve already bought one!)

If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Aasmah Mir and marina Benjamin.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Secret of Cooking by Bee Wilson and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest this week is the crime writing legend, Patricia Cornwell. Patricia wrote her first novel about forensic pathologist kay scarpetta in 1990. Called Postmortem, it was such a hit it became the first book ever to win all four major crime awards on both sides of the Atlantic in the same year. (It also scared the bejesus out of me.) But Kay Scarpetta was more than a hit, she was a breakthrough. Because mad as it might sound now, if you were looking for a crime novel where the female characters were actually alive in the late 1980s, you weren’t exactly spoilt for choice.

Now 39 books and 100 million copies later, Patricia’s 27th Kay Scarpetta novel, Unnatural Death, is about to hit bookshops and the one and only Jamie Lee Curtis is bringing her to our screens.

Patricia zoomed from her home in Boston, where she lives with her wife Staci to talk about, well, everything. We ran the full gamut from gun crime and serial killers to how writing books enabled her to take back control after a difficult childhood, feeling like a failure and the danger of self-loathing. We also discussed how she narrowly escaped being a minister’s wife, marriage second time around and the enormous debt she owes Jamie Lee Curtis.

If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Val McDermid and Barbara Kingsolver.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Unnatural Death by Patricia Cornwell and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Anyone else feel in serious need a romcom right now? I know I do. And my guest today has your back. Lindsey Kelk’s unashamedly feel good fiction has won her a legion of fans from the queen Marian Keyes and Jane Fallon to Emily Henry and Mhairi McFarlane.

Born in Doncaster and now living in LA by way of New York, Lindsey has written 19 novels and sold 2.5million copies. The most recent of which are Love Me Do - a fun gender-flipped Cyrano de Bergerac meets The Holiday - and The Christmas Wish, which turns Christmas Day into Groundhog Day. Sounds more like a horror story than a romcom to me!

Self-confessed oversharer and cat lover, Lindsey hung out in my kitchen with Sausage the cat (but of course) to tell me about losing both her mother and grandmother in the space of the year, how she learnt that often what looks like a wall is actually a door and how a Northern girl who grew up in a diet-y household, maintains a semblance of self-esteem in the city of beautiful people.

We also discussed Lindsey’s gynaecological history FROM HELL (and as regular listeners will know, it takes one to know one), finally finding a partner who’s all about a green flag and how she’s fully sick of ageism in romcoms.

If you loved this episode, you might also like my conversations with Jane Fallon and Marian Keyes.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Love Me Do by Lindsey Kelk and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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A few months ago I read an article that took my breath away. The author was 102 years old and in it she wrote candidly about losing her partner in life and work after 46 years. Not because he passed away, but because he handed her divorce papers!

That would have floored most of us, but despite being sideswiped, Dr Gladys McGarey, picked herself up, started a new medical practice with her daughter before becoming a speaker, author and all-round inspiration. All this at the age of 70.

Since then Dr Gladys, who is known as the mother of holistic medicine, has received countless awards including the Humanities Award for Outstanding Service to Mankind.

At 85 she travelled to Afghanistan to teach rural women safer birthing practices. At her 90th birthday party she jumped out of her birthday cake. At 102 she became the proud owner of an adult tricycle.

Who is this woman? And how does she do it? I HAD to know.

Now on the cusp of 103, Dr Gladys joined me from her home in Arizona to tell me her secrets to health and happiness. We discussed ageing into health, femifesting (as opposed to manifesting), how divorce was the remaking of her, finding her voice at 93 and why we should all spend our energy wildly!

I know this isn’t the first time I’ve said I found my old bird role model, but seriously. Dr Gladys is IT.

If you loved this episode you might also like my conversations with Hilma Wolitzer and Isabel Allende

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Well-Lived Life by Dr Gladys McGarey and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is the Sunday Times’ Style’s beauty columnist India Knight. Every week thousands of women turn to her column for beauty advice - not beauty junkies, not trend followers, just regular women like you and me who want to know what works, why it works and what’s worth spending their hard earned cash on.

Now India has turned that column into a book, “India Knight’s Beauty Edit: what works when you’re older” giving practical advice if you’ve suddenly found your skin, body, hair, or all three, are changing and your tried and tested “look” is no longer working for you.

India joined me to talk about Why she doesn’t miss anything about being younger (no, not a single thing), how she gained a sense of self in her 50s, why skincare is the foundation of everything and what happened to make her - a loud and proud tweakement refusenik - finally cave. If you can’t be arsed hunting down beauty tutorials on tiktok and there is no way on earth you’re going to use 35 products where 2 or 3 will do this chat is for you. Finally I understand the point of serum.

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like my conversations with Sali Hughes and Anita B. You’ll find a link to them in the show notes.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including India Knight's Beauty Edit and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest, Tracy-Ann Oberman has made a career out of defying expectations. After training as an actor she went straight to the RSC before deciding to study standup so she could switch between comedy and drama. She has starred in Dr Who, Friday Night Dinner, It’s a sin, amongst many others But It was when she got the role of Chrissie Watts (Dirty Den’s second wife on Eastenders - sorry kids if you don’t know WTH I’m talking about!) That she became a household face and name.

Right now, she is breaking more new ground, as the first actress to play Shylock in a landmark production of the Merchant of Venice. Shakespeare’s classic is transported to 1930s London and Tracy-Ann plays Shylock as a tough, no-nonsense jewish matriarch inspired by her grandmother.

Tracy-Ann and I zoomed during a break in rehearsals to talk about the matriarchs that shaped her, refusing to be put in a box, standing up to anti-semitism, making your own opportunities as you get older, in praise of “pushy”, the importance of “putting your face on” and the power of older women in amazing shoes.

This episode was recorded before the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like my conversations with Minnie Driver and Sheila Hancock. For more info on the Merchant of Venice 1936 tour dates visit The Merchant of Venice 1936.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest for this very special live episode of The Shift is the entrepreneur, CEO, fashion and beauty expert, presenter and author Trinny Woodall.

Trinny, as you know, bounded onto our screens in 2001, with her friend Susannah Constantine, when they created What Not To Wear, a groundbreaking TV makeover show that showed women all over - first the country and then the world - how to look and consequently feel better.

In 2017, at the age of 53, when many women feel they’re being overlooked and even shoved out of the workplace, Trinny founded Trinny London, an online beauty business aimed at women over 35.

Now one of the fastest growing beauty brands in Europe, Trinny London is rumoured to be worth $250million and is beloved by millions of women with 1.2milion followers on instagram, 400k on YouTube… Not bad for a business idea investors didn’t think would work because it wasn’t aimed at millennials…

Now Trinny has written Fearless. A book about style, about beauty, about life. About overcoming the everyday barriers we encounter along the way. Because Trinny knows, better than any of us, that those things are intertwined.

Trinny joined me on stage at Cheltenham Literature Festival to talk about finally starting to feel better about herself in her 50s (and how she felt "too far from the ground" in her 20s (I love that)), imposter syndrome, learning to fear less, how menopause made her lose her mojo and the power and importance of futurproofing your mind and body.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including FearLess by Trinny Woodall,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today we’re celebrating Menopause Awareness month (now there’s a phrase I couldn’t have imagined saying four years ago when I was writing The Shift book and everyone was telling me no-one was interested in menopause or women over 40…) And I’m delighted that my guest is a leading light in the British menopause movement.

Dr Louise Newson is a GP and menopause specialist who is passionate about increasing awareness of menopause and perimenopause care for all women. (That ALL is crucial.) As well as her own private practice specialising in menopause, Louise is founder of the Balance app and the Menopause Charity. Plus author of the bestseller, the definitive guide to perimenopause and menopause.

Louise joined me to talk about her personal menopause experience (sorry to say, even doctors struggle to get help), the lack of female role models in medicine and what drives her menopause mission. She recalls being ‘told off’ for prescribing HRT, her battle to get women’s health front and centre on the agenda and answers some of your most asked questions.

If you’d like to hear some alternative menopause perspectives, try my episodes with Dr Jen Gunter, Mariella Frostrup and Karen Arthur. Listenn to the Dr Louise Newson Podcast here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Definitive Guide to the Perimenopause and Menopause by Dr Louise Newson,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I’m delighted to welcome back one of my most popular guests ever, Philippa Perry.

Philippa is an artist, psychotherapist, agony aunt and TV presenter, but she has become best known for her smash hit book, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read which sold over 2million copies and spent 41 weeks in the bestseller lists. Thanks to that book, and her agony column in The Observer, she has become known as “the voice of sanity”.

Last time we spoke, I remember saying Philippa should turn her particular brand of wisdom to the other relationships in our lives…Well, now she has. In The Book You Want Everyone you Love to read (and maybe a few you don’t) Philippa brings her no-nonsense wisdom to everything from how we love, to how we argue or don’t (if you’re me).

Philippa (and her cat Kevin) joined me to talk about how physical ageing sucks, why it took her until she was 50 to realise a thing didn’t have to be perfect to be worth doing and how she learnt to ditch the shoulds. She also talks about prioritising enjoyment, How to change the stories we tell ourselves, and why learning to please yourself can make your relationships better.

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like my conversations with Julia Cameron and Sarah Knight. Find out more about Philippa's tour here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Book You Want Everyone You Love To Read by Philippa Perry,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest and I have lived parallel-ish lives. Growing up “ordinary” her in the north, me in the south, Grace Dent and I both spent our childhood eating baked beans, angel delight and funny coloured school custard, we both “thought we were IT” apparently and we both got our first break on the weekly real life magazine, Chat and somehow wangled our way into glossy magazines. But there our paths diverged because Grace Dent went on to become “one of the nation’s best loved food writers” quote unquote and the woman who brought true potato love to Masterchef.

As well as being a Masterchef regular, she is the guardian’s restaurant critic, fortnum restaurant writer of the year, host of the Comfort Eating podcast and the author of two memoirs, the bestselling Hungry, and now Comfort Eating, about what we eat when no-one’s looking. It would be understating it to say I over-identified.

Grace joined me to talk about how the hell of secondary school never leaves you, deciding it was time to get sober, balancing her problematic gen x body image with eating for a living, why she moved home in her 40s to care for her mum and dad and The actual crime of being 50

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like my conversations with Kate Spicer and Marina Hyde. Find out more about Grace’s podcast, Comfort Eating with Grace Dent here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Comfort Eating by Grace Dent,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Before I got to know today’s guest, Stacey Duguid, I thought she was a bit scary TBH. Fierce in all the ways. And then I got to know her - when I was editor of Red and she worked on Elle - and discovered she wasn’t. At all.

Because Stacey, like so many of us, is just exceptionally good at putting on a front. And that front served her well, until it didn’t. She was 45 when everything collapsed. Or, more accurately, she put a grenade under it. The thing she’d been trained to want ever since she was tiny: the house, the husband, the children, the career, the happy ever after. All blown to smithereens.

Now 49, a single mum and a successful journalist, very much back from the brink, Stacey has written In Pursuit of Happiness, the most brilliant book about a midlife collapse and ultimately recovery. I know you are going to love it.

As candid in person as she is in print, Stacey talks frankly about the pain of divorce, searching for a self you’ve never met, self-blame, “hotness syndrome”, perimenopause mayhem (and I mean MAYHEM), making peace with her mother, rediscovering her creativity, midlife sexuality and… toyboywarehouse.com.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might like my conversations with Rosie Green and Natalie Lee.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including In Pursuit of Happiness by Stacey Duguid,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This week’s guest is the comedian, writer, and all-round screen hogger, Sara Pascoe. Host of The Great British Sewing Bee, presenter of Last Woman on Earth and ubiquitous panel-show presence. She has written and starred in her own sitcom Out Of Her Mind (before TV realised women could write sitcoms too!) And she’s also the author of two brainy non-fiction bestsellers, Animal and Sex Love Money.

Sara came and sat in my kitchen with Sausage the cat (who was still a bit poorly after his encounter with Ecoli. Thanks for asking) to talk about her debut novel, Weirdo, the tale of a woman desperate to seem like a ‘normal’, well-adjusted grown up...

We talked about everything from cat-love, the rhesus monkey theory of motherhood, Happy Valley, Strictly and her short-lived teenage rebellion, to IVF, the importance of sharing salary info, how she learnt to stop doing things resentfully and why she won’t be sad to be done with menstruation!

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like my conversations with comedians Josie Long and Cariad Lloyd. Find out more about Sara & Cariad’s Weirdo’s bookclub here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Weirdo by Sara Pascoe,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the journalist and human rights activist, Natasha Walter. She is the author of two generation-defining books about feminism - The New Feminism, published in the late 90s and Living Dolls, published just over ten years later, a shocking polemic in which she questioned her own previous beliefs that equality was on the way to being a given and old fashioned sexism was just that, old-fashioned. Oh, how we laughed.

Her new book, Before The Light Fades is very different and yet has a lot in common with those books. A memoir of grief and resistance it follows Natasha, now in her 50s, on a journey into her mother’s past after losing her to suicide in her mid-70s. What she finds not only makes her question what she thought she knew about her mother but also what she wants for her future self.

Natasha joined me to talk about getting to know your parents as people, rejecting her mother’s feminism and why we MUST keep talking across the generations. We also discussed What feminine rebellion looks like, Doing civil disobedience in her 50s and Why she’s so over organising other people. Oh and thanks to Natasha’s mum I have a new mantra: You HAVE shoes!

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like our conversations with bestselling novelist Kate Mosse and broadcaster, therapist and agony aunt, Philippa Perry.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Before The Light Fades and Living Dolls by Natasha Walter,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Like most of the rest of the world, I first discovered today’s guest Maggie Smith (no, not the legendary British actress, the American poet) when her poem, Good Bones went viral on social media thrusting her into the news on both sides of the Atlantic, featured on primetime TV and was read at an event by Meryl Streep.

It’s the kind of exposure people dream of, but in Maggie’s own words “my marriage was never the same after that”. And I know that sentiment is something that will resonate with so many of you.

Maggie’s new book, her debut memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful is about the collapse of that marriage, but it’s also about the start of something new, how in losing their shared history and knowledge of the future, she began to build a new story - her own.

Maggie joined me from Ohio to talk about putting herself back together after sudden success destroyed her marriage, being a service provider in your own home, how she got herself back after years of bargaining herself away and why we keep having the same conversation about women and ambition. We also compared our Strong First Daughter Energy and she introduced me to the concept of an emotional alchemist.

If you liked this episode you might enjoy my conversations with Dani Shapiro and Curtis Sittenfeld.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the farmer, business woman, cook, conservationist, mother and now writer, Helen Rebanks. She has been cooking and baking, professionally and domestically, for more than 30 years, and with her husband, has turned the farm that has been in their family for generations into a global beacon for regenerative farming. (No, I didn’t know what that was either - in short, it’s farming in nature-friendly ways.)

Now she’s put all her experience of food, farming and nurturing into one beautiful book, The Farmer’s Wife. A moving and honest account of the daily grind of life on a farm, as a woman whose work too often goes ignored.

Helen joined me from the Lake District, where she lives with her husband, four children, Six sheepdogs, 2 ponies, 20 chickens, fifty cattle, 500 sheep and 110 different species of flowers and grasses (!) to talk about the reality of being a farmer’s wife, paying tribute to our foremothers and the invisible work of wifedom (yes it’s that domestic load conversation again). She also explained why she’s passionate about sustainability and being part of the climate solution, What it means to live a good life and The messy dirty joyful stuff of life.

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like the episodes featuring Marina Benjamin and Tamsin Calidas.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Farmer's Wife by Helen Rebanks,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Productions. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today has made history – more than once. Dawn Butler, MP for Brent Central was only the third Black woman elected to parliament, when she became an MP in 2005, aged 37. She was the first Black female whip and then the first Black woman to stand at the dispatch box four years later. You might know her, though, as the person who was ejected from the House of Commons for saying what so many people were thinking and using her parliamentary privilege to call Boris Johnson a liar.

But before all that Dawn was a computer programmer - no small achievement for a black woman who grew up in the 70s. She also worked in a job centre and then for the GMB union. In short, she is not your common or garden privileged career politician.

Now 53, Dawn joined me to talk about what drives her, putting her mission down on paper for her new book A Purposeful Life and how being diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago caused a total rethink. We also discussed menopause, learning to be still in the moment, why she has no time for women who pull the ladder up behind them and the power of a lime green suit

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like the episodes featuring Nicola Sturgeon and Sabrina Pace-Humphreys.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including A Purposeful Life by Dawn Butler,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Productions. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is the singer-songwriter Miki Berenyi. If you were a teenager in the late 80s or early 90s with even vaguely alternative taste you can’t have missed Miki and her band, Lush. Miki’s distinctive look and bright red hair was an icon for anyone who didn’t quite fit in. When the band split, Miki went on to build a new career as a - wait for it - magazine sub-editor. A job that on the face of it could hardly be more different than the rock’n’roll glamour of life on the road. Holidays! Maternity leave! Leaving at 6!

But once you’ve drunk the Kool Aid, there’s no going back and now 56 Miki still plays and tours with her band Piroshka.

I met Miki in her north London kitchen to talk - and talk and talk! Believe me, this conversation goes EVERYWHERE! From revisiting her teenage diaries for her memoir, Fingers Crossed, to breaking free of the wrong kind of woman narrative and how the macho music industry made her feel “over the hill” at 30. We also discussed, the double standards around ageing and the joy of freeing yourself from the anxiety of youth.

Note: Miki refers to someone called Nora a few times in this episode. Nora was her paternal grandmother.

If you liked this episode, you might enjoy my interviews with Martha Wainwright and Tracey Thorn.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Fingers Crossed by Miki Berenyiand the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Productions. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the prize winning author, Leila Slimani. Leila was the first Moroccan woman to win France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt for her spine-tingling novel Lullaby. She has since written three more novels, including Watch Us Dance, the second in a Moroccan trilogy loosely based on her own family history, and two works of non fiction including The Scent of Flowers At Night, about art and motherhood and daughterhood.

Leila was born in Rabat in Morocco and moved to Paris at 17, where she stayed until lockdown drove her out of the city. As it did so many people. She and her family now live in Lisbon.

Leila joined me to talk about growing up across cultures and building her own identity, How women’s lives have changed across generations - and how they haven’t ... - and the mystery of how your life ends up exactly like your parents, no matter what you do to avoid it! We also discussed how she worked out what sort of woman she wanted to be, how to teach your daughters not to be afraid, the power of I don’t know, and why she really - REALLY - just wants a break! I’m guessing you’ll know how that feels...

If you enjoyed this episode you might also like the episodes featuring Elif Shafak and Isabel Allende.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Scent of Flowers at Night and Watch Us Dance by Leila Slimani,and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Productions. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lullaby

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Welcome to season 12 of The Shift! Season 12! How did that happen?!

My guest today is the actor hyphen screenwriter hyphen comedian hyphen novelist - all the hyphens! - Andi Osho.

You might recognise her from Line of Duty or Blue Lights or Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You or Death in Paradise or Shazam! or Good Omens or Sex Education or or or! And as if that’s not enough, in her previous incarnation as a standup comedian, Andi won the Funny Women Award. Well, now she’s turned her hand to fiction. Her new book, Tough Crowd, is a laugh out loud romantic comedy about a subject very close to my heart: what it means to be a step-parent - or sparent as she so brilliantly dubs it. And, crucially, how to survive it.

Andi joined me to talk about being a teenage dork, how getting back in touch with her estranged dad gave her renewed respect for her mum and giving herself permission to be creative. She also told me about checking in with your heart, why it’s OK to mourn your younger self and how she realised she didn’t want kids but she did want a family. We also, of course, talk about the challenge of taking on someone else’s kids. I think this is the first time we’ve discussed this, which is ironic, in the circs.

If you enjoyed this episode. You might also like the episode with Salena Godden, author of the book Andi recommended.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Tough Crowd by Andi Osho and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including exclusive transcripts of the podcast, why not join The Shift community, come and have a look around at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Productions. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Back in season 4, I spoke to Annie Macmanus just as she was about to make the big leap from mega-DJ to... something entirely new. It's fascinating to see how much of what we talked about has since come to pass.

My guest this week is a business woman, broadcaster, curator, tastemaker and DJ. She headlines festivals, hosts one of BBC Radio 1’s flagship shows, was Europe’s biggest female DJ and has her own hit podcast Changes with Annie Macmanus. And now, as if that wasn’t e-bloody-nough (bc let’s not forget the two kids), Annie has written her first novel, Mother Mother. Oh and she’s cool. And nice. (In the best possible way. Not in the I’m too lazy to think of a proper adjective kind of way.)

Over the next 45 minutes, Annie talks about the unexpected impact of turning 40, growing up with her fans and why middle aged women are a force to be reckoned with. Although this was recorded before she resigned from her job hosting Radio 1's flagship show, she’s candid about saying goodbye to DJing and how it feels to start again professionally, why she’s a control-fan and how she learnt to be comfortable in her own skin. Plus she gives me a lesson in radical no-ness!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and Mother Mother by Annie Macmanus.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Back at the very beginning, when The Shift was still a hair-brained idea, I sat in Emma Freud's kitchen chatting about being old birds. It ended up being the final episode of the first series. Here it is again.

Where to start with this week’s guest? Now 58, Emma Freud is a broadcaster, presenter, columnist and fund-raiser, for want of a better way of putting the incredible work she and her partner Richard Curtis do with Comic Relief. And she’s got four kids. And a bazillion pets (listen on for kittens!). And she lives in my Pinterest board. And she’s not afraid to call a spade a spade. Lots of spades, in fact.

In a no-holds barred conversation, Emma talks frankly about reshaping Comic Relief for a new generation, how being the mother of one of the country’s most outspoken millennials, Scarlett Curtis, has changed her attitudes to just about everything, the contradictions of ageing (will dye, won’t Botox) and why she will never ever deny her age.

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Find out more about Comic Relief here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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This week we're revisiting cartoonist and creator of the Bechdel test, Alison Bechdel. This episode first ran back in season 4.

My guest this week is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Probably best known for the Bechdel test - a tongue in cheek method she came up with in the 80s for assessing gender bias in movies. She became a household name when Fun Home, her graphic novel/memoir about coming out and her father’s death, became a bestseller and was turned into an award-winning musical. Her new autobiographical graphic novel, The Secret To Superhuman Strength is a funny-not funny exploration of her own search for inner and outer strength through the lens of 60 years of fitness fads.

Alison and I go on a “rambling stroll” through the six decades of her life as we chat about everything from tarot to very much not being a team player. Alison talks candidly about escaping self-consciousness, coming to terms with ageing, why men are scared of women who can do push ups and why she’s forever nine years old.

And together we come up with a Bechdel test for women over 40. Challenge you to come up with a movie that passes it.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Secret To Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This week we're revisiting the legendary Jamaican journalist Barbara Blake Hannah. I spoke to Barbara at the start of last year and she blew me away. What. A. Woman.

My guest today is the Jamaican author, journalist, film maker and (no exaggeration) living legend Barbara Blake Hannah.

Already an experienced journalist when she arrived in London in 1964, Barbara was shocked to discover her achievements counted for nothing because of the colour of her skin. But she made headlines anyway, in 1968, when she became the first Black TV journalist in the UK. She lasted nine months before being dismissed - almost certainly as a result of a racist backlash, in which her employers sided with the racists… It was several years before another black journalist appeared in a news role on British screens. Without Barbara, arguably, there would have been no Moira Stuart or Trevor Macdonald.

Now 80, Barbara has led a pioneering life, so it’s a joy to celebrate it with the republication of her groundbreaking 1982 memoir, Growing Out - Black Hair And Black Pride in The Swinging Sixties, as part of Bernardine Evaristo’s Black Britain Writing Back series.

From her home in Kingston, Jamaica, which she shares with her son, Barbara told me what she learnt from being at the sharp end of racism, why the Black Lives Matter movement gives her hope, feeling new again at 80 and how she learnt to love herself as a Black woman. She also talks about the power and politics of hair and how she has the skin of a 12 year old! Plus she introduced me to my new mantra: time is longer than rope.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Growing Out, Black Hair and Black Pride in the Swinging Sixties by Barbara Blake Hannah and all the other books in Bernardine Evaristo's Black Britain Writing Back series. You can also get the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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While we take our summer hiatus we're revisiting some classic episodes of The Shift with Sam Baker. Since I recorded this interview with Tracey back at the start of 2021, she and her partner Ben Watt have released a new Everything But The Girl album, Fuse, that's rocketed them back into the charts.

Like many 80s kids, I grew up with today’s guest. Tracey Thorn started early, forming The Marine Girls (once described as looking like they would “break your arm before they’d let you break their hearts”), while still at school, and Everything But The Girl, with her musical and life partner Ben Watt, whilst at university. Since then she’s released three solo albums, three critically acclaimed memoirs - and had three children.

Her fourth book - My Rock’n’Roll Friend - about her 37 year on-off friendship with Lindy Morrison (drummer of Australian band The Go-Betweens) is my favourite yet.

Tracey talks success, power, the “constant slog” of making women’s voices heard and why equality is a numbers game. She also tells us why menopause made her feel like she’d gone mad, the painful-but-liberating process of ageing and what to do about your statement hair going grey (asking for a friend!).

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and My Rock'n'Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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To celebrate the DJ's 27th year of presenting Glastonbury on the BBC, we revisit one of the very first episodes of The Shift podcast, back in 2020, with Jo Whiley

Career crises are tough at the best of times, but imagine being in the midst of menopause – hot flushes, anxiety, brain fog, the lot – and finding your thirty year career is crashing down around your ears. That’s what happened to this week’s guest, the brilliant DJ and broadcaster Jo Whiley when she was given the job of co-hosting BBC radio 2’s drive time slot with Simon Mayo. She talks honestly about coming through the most turbulent year of her career, regaining her confidence, learning to listen to your heart not your detractors, going outside your comfort zone, empty nest syndrome, why she’s obsessed with fitness and why “age appropriate” dressing can do one.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, and exclusive bonus episodes, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker, is out now in paperback and available to buy here.

• Hear Jo on BBC Radio 2 Monday-Thursday 8-10pm and see her hosting Glastonbury on the BBC all weekend – 22-26 June.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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For this bonus episode of The Shift, I’m delighted to welcome a very special guest: the award-winning author of ten bestselling novels, Barbara Kingsolver.

Every so often, a book comes along that you want to press into the hands of everyone you meet. For me, Demon Copperhead, is one of those books. A reimagining of the Dickens classic, David Copperfield, translated to the Appalachian mountains in the midst of the opioid crisis that has gripped the area. It’s funny, it’s furious and its hero Demon is a character you will never ever forget.

I’m not the only one who thinks so. Earlier this year Barbara was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and now she’s become the first person ever to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice (she won over a decade ago for her novel, The Lacuna).

A couple of weeks ago, Barbara foolishly let me and my little mic into her Edinburgh hotel room to tell me how growing up weird, bookish and poor shaped her and how she discovered she was a so-called hillbilly. We also discussed being an introvert in an extrovert world, finding love second time around, not winning the jackpot in the mothering department and why life gets better with every decade – and at 68 and the top of her game, she's living proof.

She also shares her killer packing tips and, I have to say, if you ever wanted to do a three week holiday with just a carry-on, Barbara is your woman!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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If 18-year-old Sam was here now, today’s episode would be a real pinch-me moment. Back in the mid-80s, I was a student in Birmingham when I first stumbled upon the dark green spine that was the hallmark of a newish publisher called Virago. It started with one book in particular – The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood. Reading that book changed my life, as I don’t doubt many Virago books have done for many people over the years.

Virago launched 50 years ago this month and, for much of that time, my guest, Lennie Goodings, was at the heart of things. Lennie joined virago in 1978 as part-time office slave. Rose to Publisher and is now Chair. Lennie has published a host of influential writers including Atwood, Angela Carter, Sarah Waters, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde and many more. She has also, latterly, become a much needed advocate for the rights of older women in the workplace.

I met Lennie at home in North London to talk about 50 years of feminism and publishing books by and for women, the moment she realised her life didn’t have to be defined by who she married and where she got her drive to make a difference. We also discussed the older women who’ve shaped her, the importance of bringing your A-game and why ageism is the next frontline.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including A Bite of the Apple by Lennie Goodings and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the award-winning broadcaster Aasmah Mir. Born and brought up in Glasgow, of Pakistani Heritage, Aasmah started in newspapers before moving to the BBC, where she worked for twenty years - most famously as co-host of Saturday Live. She joined Times Radio three years ago, as cohost of the Breakfast Show and is a two-time winner of a Sony Gold Award, kind of like a radio Oscar. She’s also been named audio presenter of the year at the broadcasting press guild awards AND, she won celebrity mastermind. we’re talking brainiac!

But before all this, Aasmah was a teenage loner, the third of four children, growing up between two cultures in the 1970s and 80s. A childhood that could not have been more different than her mother, Almas, growing up in the 1950s in Pakistan. It is those two childhoods that are the subject of Aasmah’s moving memoir, A Pebble In The Throat, which interweaves Aasmah’s childhood and teenage years with those of her mother.

On a trip to Scotland, Aasmah came and hung out in my kitchen to discuss writing a book with her mother, how the racism of her childhood shaped her, learning to be visible, deciding to end her marriage and rebuilding life after divorce. We also discussed her "unexpected daughter”, menopause, her monster to-do list and how she finally dislodged the pebble in her throat

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including A Pebble In The Throat by Aasmah Mir and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I’m pretty sure there isn’t a woman who was alive in the 90s who didn’t own one of this designer's dresses (or at least one heavily inspired by her from the high street). From the moment they hit the shops, the bias cut slip dress became ubiquitous and it still is. And for that we have to thank Tanya Sarne, the founder of Ghost. Personally I still have five of her dresses and I’m neither a dress girl nor a sentimental clothes hoarder. Those frocks are keepers.

Tanya was a single mum of two in her thirties and on benefits when she founded Ghost. Divorced and grieving the death of her mum, she thought she was unemployable, until she took one look at the lack of well-priced, multifunctional, comfortable, feminine clothes which went in the washing machine and didn’t need ironing, and resolved to put that right. She borrowed two thousand pounds and fuelled by fury and, frankly, necessity, the brand that changed a thousand wardrobes was born.

Now, 78 and still beyond fabulous, Tanya joined me to talk about her memoir, Free Spirit, the snobbery of the fashion industry and the sexual harassment you “just had to put up with” in the 60s and 70s. We also discussed her alcoholism, the pain of losing her beloved business, the joy of marrying a younger man, her horrific menopause and why she longs to go back on HRT.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Free Spirit by Tanya Sarne and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is the comedian Josie Long. Josie started early – and I mean EARLY. She has been performing standup since she was 14, and by 17 won the BBC New comedy award. She was the first woman to be nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award three times and is co-founder of the education charity, Arts Emergency.

Josie is also a regular on those terrifying panel shows where you just know you’d think of the smart thing to say when you were on the bus home (if at all!) has written for TV, radio and stage and has now turned her hand to short stories with Because I Don’t Know What You Mean And What You Don’t, a funny, dark, poignant (and occasionally jaded!) look at life

Josie and I are both Scottish emigres, so we met up in her publishers atmospheric 16th century office in Edinburgh’s old town to talk about everything from house prices to climate change, how hormones and ADHD affect pregnancy and perimenopause (clue, it’s not great), breaking free of diet culture, living in a two comedian household and why she hopes she’ll still be performing stand up at 80. Oh and she shares her secret past as a fake tarot reader!

AND IF ANYONE KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT HOW ADHD AFFECTS PERIMENOPAUSE PLEASE MESSAGE ME ON INSTAGRAM @THEOTHERSAMBAKER!

See Josie on tour - find out more at linktr.ee/josielongtour.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Because I Don't Know What You Mean And What You Don't by Josie Long and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest for Mental Health Awareness Week 2023 is mental health campaigner, psychiatrist and bestselling novelist Joanna Cannon.

Jo left school at 15 only returning to complete her A levels when she decided to train as a doctor in her late 30s. She specialised in psychiatry before leaving medicine to write in her mid-40s. (How many life shifts can one woman handle!?) But Jo’s passion for psychiatry, her patients and the way their stories changed her has stayed with her. Which is why she has compiled Will You Read This Please, a unique collection of stories of 12 mental health patients in the hope of shining a light on the stigma and isolation that still impact those living with mental illness.

Joanna joined me to from her home in the peak district, where she was born and still lives, to talk about the long family history of mental illness that formed her lifelong fascination with psychiatry, training as a doctor in midlife and the grim reality of working in the NHS. We also discussed why your date of birth is irrelevant, why you don’t have to have loads of friends to live a meaningful life, being a bad feminist and how red lipstick helped her change her attitude to life.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Will You Read This Please and A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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OK, I admit it, I’m a bit in awe, because today’s guest is someone I’ve wanted to get on The Shift for the longest time. You might know Ruby Wax as a successful comedian and presenter, one of the funniest women of her generation. Or you might know her as a mental health campaigner and best-selling author. One thing’s for sure, she has been using humour to make the rest of us feel better for decades.

Having suffered depression her whole life, Ruby had a breakdown after losing her job on the BBC in her 50s (hold that thought!). Determined not to “go down with the career ship” she took herself off to Oxford university where she got a masters degree in mindfulness based cognitive therapy, was subsequently awarded an OBE for services to mental health and has written several bestselling books about our brains - and hers.

Then, last year, 12 years after her last bout of depression, she discovered she wasn’t actually as well as she thought she was… Cue the inspiration for a new book, and tour.

Ruby and I met in an office overlooking the Thames the day after a big birthday (which we will not be talking about!!) to discuss why depression is the wrong word for mental illness and the journeys to find meaning that saw her end up on a journey to a 6 week stay in a mental clinic.

We also talked about building a new emotional toolkit for the second half of your life, the secret to her 35 year marriage and why we need to stop talking ageing and start talking evolving. There’s also hair dye, mindfulness, a Carrie Fisher love-in, jewellery and toe nails. It’s all going on in this episode!

Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, the book Ruby talks about in this episode, is available here.

You can catch Ruby on a UK wide tour, starting in September, tickets are available now via LiveNation.co.uk

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was by Ruby Wax and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How does it feel to walk into a room and know that everyone already thinks they know all there is to know about you. That’s the position today’s guest, Melanie Sykes has found herself in repeatedly over the last thirty years.

After starting out modelling and then moving into TV and radio presenting, Melanie decided she’d well and truly had enough in her 40s, and stepped back from broadcasting to reclaim her own narrative. She launched her magazine Frank in 2016 and has now followed that up with a book, Illuminated: Autism and all the things I’ve left unsaid. In it she discusses the good, the bad and the often ugly of a life lived under the camera’s glare, and of being, as she puts it, "too young and too famous for comfort."

I met Melanie in a studio in North London to talk about discovering her creativity in her 40s, the relief of being diagnosed with autism and ADHD at 51 and what she learnt from her subsequent breakdown.

Melanie talks candidly about the way the media has portrayed her, being sapiosexual, taking a year out from sex, why men her own age don’t have enough energy and she won’t be settling any time soon. As you’ll hear, after a lifetime in the male gaze, nobody’s telling Melanie’s story but her.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Illuminated: Autism and all the things I've left unsaid by Melanie Sykes and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This week's guest is the rural poverty campaigner Natasha Carthew. Natasha was born and brought up in Cornwall, in the 19th century fishing and farming village of Downderry where the Carthews had been resident from the very start.

Natasha has spent her life noisily campaigning to give working class writers a voice. Where some might tire of banging their heads against the closed door of the affluent middle classes in general and the London media scene in particular, Natasha has been relentless. And now, finally FINALLY her efforts are being heard. Loud and clear.

She founded the acclaimed Working Class Writers Festival in Bristol in 2021 and has written nine books, but the one that’s destined to make her truly impossible to ignore is her furious new memoir, Undercurrent, A Cornish memoir of Poverty Nature and Resilience.

Natasha joined me from Cornwall to talk about her lifelong refusal to stay in her lane, growing up gay in the 80s, learning to harness her uncontrollable rage in her 30s and how it felt to return to the hometown she left at 19 to write her memoir. We also discussed her passion for wild writing, the calming power of nature and Why sometimes getting fuckity is the only way.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Undercurrent by Natasha Carthew and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I first encountered today’s guest, Marina Benjamin, when I was researching The Shift book and stumbled across her memoir, The Middlepause. An insightful look at what middle age means today, it was prompted by Marina’s own sudden menopause after a hysterectomy. The sense of dislocation she described was the first time I’d ever seen the way I felt put down in black and white.

She followed it up with Insomnia (clue’s in the name) and has now completed her loose midlife trilogy with A Little Give a stunning book about the “unsung, unseen, undone work women do” - and what happens when we tire of being a human rehab centre for everyone around us.

I inhaled this book, dog-earing page after page and internally yelling YES! and I’m pretty sure you will too.

Marina joined me to talk about emotional labour, why “cleaner guilt” doesn’t seem to affect men (strange that!), time poverty and wresting control of the to-do ticker tape. We also discussed why women’s manual work is invisible and men’s is a skill, how to get maximum benefit from your feminist inner critic, the two way pain of caring for elderly parents and why you should always ALWAYS run towards yourself.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including A Little Give by Marina Benjamin and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the bestselling author of American Wife and Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld. I first came across Curtis when both our debut novels were named “ones to watch” by Time Magazine. They turned out to be right about one of us. It wasn’t me!

Since that first novel, Prep, hit the big time, Curtis has written six more novels and two short story collections. The most famous of which is the transatlantic bestseller American Wife, a fictionalised look at the life of Laura Bush, wife of George W Bush that ponders the question of whether she would have voted for him!

Her latest novel, Romantic Comedy is a total departure and absolutely the tonic we need right now. It asks, pertinently, how come hot accomplished women persistently marry average blokes, but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. And what if… it did?!

Curtis joined me from her home in a very snowy Minneapolis to talk about how men constantly punch above their weight, why rom-coms are having a comeback and how she found her funny. We also discussed writing out your emotions, why old is not a synonym for bad and how weird shit has happened to everyone by the time they reach their 40s.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Romantic Comedy By Curtis Sittenfeld and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is the anti-guru behind the massive No Fcks Given franchise, Sarah Knight. What started life with the Marie Kondo pastiche, The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving A Fck, now comprises 7 guides and three journals which have sold three million copies and a TED talk that’s notched up ten million views.

But Sarah wasn’t always the queen of giving zero f*cks. Scroll back to her mid-30s and you’d have found her having a panic attack in the Manhattan office where she worked. So started ten years of anxiety and depression, a massive leap into the freelance unknown (which let’s face it, worked out pretty well!) and a 1500 mile geographical from Brooklyn to the Caribbean, where she now lives.

Sarah joined me from her home in the Dominican Republic (grrrr) to talk about her new book, Grow The Fck Up, how sometimes it takes getting what you want to realise you don’t want it, Why we often need permission to make a change and having the courage to recognise you really don’t have enough left in the tank. Sarah also told me how she learnt to give fewer but better fucks, what to do if you’re married to a “big fcking baby”, why selfish shouldn’t be a four letter word and she gives us a masterclass in learning to say no.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Grow The F*ck Up by Sarah Knight and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest, Anita Bhagwandas, is that rare thing, a beauty journalist who’s prepared to call out the beauty industry.

Anita B, as she's known, is currently a beauty columnist on the Guardian. But throughout her career she has worked on some of the biggest names in women’s magazines and consulted for some of the most famous brands. It’s not exactly the CV of someone you’d expect to see campaigning to break free of prevailing beauty standards.

But Anita’s new book, Ugly, does just that, by examining how women are trapped by the way we’re supposed to look, regarded as lesser if our face doesn’t fit the norm. If we’re not white with caucasian features and hair, if we’re not size 10, if we’re not 25.

[insert quote from Anita]

Anita joined me to talk about the first time she felt “wrong”, growing up in a world of Barbie and how her perverse inner masochist led her to end up working in the very industry that made her feel not good enough. Plus she takes us on a whistle stop tour of anti-ageing beauty advertising, tells us why otherwise smart women fall for the promise of “glow” (by which I mean me! And or probably you!) and why middle age is such an utterly pointless term. If you want to see off beauty anxiety, start right here!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Ugly by Anita Bhagwandas and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is one of the most stylish women I know, but I also know that she won’t mind me saying, it wasn’t always that way. Now Fashion Director of The Times, I first met Anna Murphy when we were both regular stalwarts of the second row at the biannual ready to wear fashion shows. She was then editor of the Telegraph magazine Stella and I was editor of Red, both magazines deemed not quite fashion enough by the fashion industry. I certainly dressed not to be seen, I think it would be fair to say the same of her. Oh how things change.

Somewhere between 41 and 51 Anna went from anonymously chic editor to colourful fashion industry doyenne with cascading grey curls and a wardrobe that manages to be both outré (there’s a fashion word for you) AND wearable. You go quietly into middle age if you want to, but she’s not having any of it.

Anna joined me in a brief pause between Paris shows to talk about her take-no-prisoners approach to ageing, how going grey was the most visible thing she’s ever done and how she learnt to dress to match. She also shared her philosophy of “why not try it”, her one-word-trick to sorting your midlife personal style and why she wouldn’t have surgery if you paid her. Oh, and the lifechanging power of yoga!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Destination Fabulous by Anna Murphy and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

Find out more about: Living Proof hair products; Boucleme's hair towel; and the Hayou method.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you're already a member, did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the bestselling writer Dani Shapiro. Dani is best known for the memoirs that made her name. Startlingly honest works of self-investigation like Slow Motion, in which she examines the questionable decisions her younger self made (let’s face it, whose younger self didn’t?). And the book that catapulted her to the top of the bestseller lists, Inheritance.

In Inheritance, Dani explored the impact of taking a DNA test - just for fun! - in her mid 50s only to discover that her beloved dad was not actually her biological father. That book led to the top 10 podcast, Family Secrets featuring guests who have uncovered life altering secrets.

It was unlocking those family secrets that enabled Dani to write her first novel in 15 years, Signal Fires, a bestseller since the day it was published in the states last year and praised by, my fave Jamie Lee Curtis, amongst others. It looks at what happens when one tragic mistake changes a whole family’s lives.

Dani joined me from the East coast of America to discuss how it feels to discover that you are your family’s secret, her allergy to Empty Nest Syndrome and why there should be a handbook for middle age. We talked about coming into your full potential at 60, "losing your looks" when you’ve been told they’re your currency and learning to count ordinary blessings.

Listen to Family Secrets here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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We’ve all had those moments in our lives when everything feels… darker, colder, a little (or a lot) less hopeful. Those emotional winters were perfectly encapsulated by today’s guest, Katherine May in her transatlantic bestseller, Wintering, the power of rest and retreat in difficult times. Her new book is another soothing antidote for the way we live now, Enchantment, Reawakening wonder in an exhausted age.

I don’t know if it’s the aftermath of the pandemic, our always on culture, or just… life, but this spoke to me in exactly the way Wintering did. So, that’s a thumbs up from me.

Katherine joined me from her home by her beloved seaside (hence the seagulls!) to talk about her midlife autism diagnosis, why she believes we’re living through the burnout decade and how to wrest back control of our lives from our work. She told me about entering perimenopause at 29 but still being absolutely livid in her mid-40s, how she’s fully over “white male gurus” and why she wants to open up the conversation about meaning.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Enchantment by Katherine May and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I first met todays guest, Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright, when I interviewed her in Glasgow a few weeks ago. We got talking about the nuts and bolts of midlife in the green room and I was thrilled when she agreed to continue the conversation on The Shift.

One of our foremost singer songwriters, Martha has released seven critically acclaimed albums. The latest of which, Love Will Be Reborn, is on repeat on my personal playlist.

She’s also - let’s just get this out of the way now - the daughter of “folk royalty” Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III and sister of singer Rufus Wainwright. In short, she comes from a family of very distinct voices, which made finding her own a particular challenge.

Martha joined me from her home in Montreal to discuss her extraordinarily frank memoir, the aptly titled Stories I Might regret telling you. This conversation goes to all the places: the struggle to make motherhood and the music industry mix, surviving her grim divorce, finding new love with a good man, leaning into your looks, and the agony of being unable to conceive in her 40s. Martha is as candid as her songwriting. Oh and she gave us a guided tour of her enormous vagina painting!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Stories I Might Regret Telling You by Martha Wainwright and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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This episode is a first for me: it’s the first time I’ve interviewed someone without knowing who they are. Because today’s guest, Carolyn Hays, is a bestselling novelist who has chosen to publish her new book under a pseudonym to protect her family’s privacy. That book is one of the most powerful memoirs I’ve read in a long time. A Girlhood is a moving, compassionate, thought-provoking letter to Carolyn’s now-teenage transgender daughter, who was considered a boy at birth, but insisted she was a girl as soon as she could talk.

This is a story of motherhood, authenticity, identity and learning to be true to yourself. It’s a story about transphobia: a subject that’s become a powder keg in recent years. And, above all, it’s a story about understanding and how other people can change us.

Carolyn joined me from her home on the East Coast of America to share the reality of being a parent supporting a trans child, the seismic impact of Child Protection turning up on your doorstep and how the fear of losing custody led the family to move across America to a state where they hoped their youngest daughter would be accepted.

I want to thank Carolyn for her candour and I hope you’ll find this conversation as eye-opening as I did. In the light of the recent murder of trans teenager Brianna Ghey, it feels more important than ever.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including A Girlhood: A Letter To My Transgender Daughter and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. This Body I wore by Diana Goetsch is available from Amazon.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I’ve been trying to get today’s guest into The Shift hot seat for the longest time - after a mixture of long covid (me) and impromptu trips to the jungle (Her!), we’ve finally made it.

Charlene White has been a journalist for over 20 years. She was the first black woman to present the ITV News At Ten (in 2014… I know, right?), and is that rare thing a news journalist who actually sounds like a human being when she presents. Charlene has featured on the Black Powerlist countless times, co-presents Loose Women and has a column in the i-paper. She also, of course, starred in last year’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.

Charlene joined me to talk facing your fears, the tyranny of the ticking clock and surviving the onslaught of small kids in your 40s. She told me about having to grow up fast to care for her siblings when her mum got cancer, the power of lifelong friendship and the enraging way "serious media" looks down on anything loved by women. We also talked about our yoyo weight, learning to work the red carpet in her 40s and why she wouldn’t have had the first clue about menopause if not for her Loose Women gang.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I’m delighted to welcome back my good friend Jojo Moyes. Jojo was one of the very first people I interviewed for the pod back when it was just a random idea. Like all good friends do, she had my back! For that and many other things, I owe her.

As I’m pretty sure you already know, Jojo is the global bestselling novelist of Me Before You, and 16 other novels. I think! She’s sold 51million copies globally and several of her books have been turned into hit movies, including Me before you, for which she wrote the screenplay.

Her latest, Someone Else’s Shoes, will definitely be joining them. It’s an action packed, emotionally astute, laugh out loud look at what happens when two very different women accidentally pick up each other’s gym bags. It tells the good, the bad and the ugly about middle age, it’s a love letter to female friendship and an ode to the totemic power of shoes.

I met with Jojo for a very long overdue catch up. We talked the liberation of being in our 50s, growing into your looks in middle age and surviving the midlife maelstrom of divorce, kids leaving home, parental death, perimenopause and workaholism! She talked candidly about the mental health crisis that made her put the brakes on her career, and she wouldn’t have got through it without her female friends. Oh, and guess what? She’s a secret petrolhead! Who knew?!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Someone Else's Shoes by Jojo Moyes and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello and welcome back to The Shift. Somehow we're onto our 11th season and I'm thrilled to start 2023 with podcasting legend, the creator of Griefcast herself, Cariad Lloyd.

If you’ve been unfortunate enough to join what she calls The Grief Club, chances are you’ve already encountered Cariad, through her conversation-changing, taboo-busting, award-winning podcast Griefcast. A much-needed place to talk about the many messy faces of grief.

Now in her 40s, Cariad lost her dad, Peter, to pancreatic cancer when she was just 15. In the late 90s, nobody talked about death, let alone what it was like to join "the dead dad club" in your mid-teens. Now she’s written a funny, frank book about her experience, You Are Not Alone: a new way to grieve.

Cariad is also a comedian, actor, improviser and writer who has appeared on Peep Show, Have I got News For You and QI amongst others. So whilst this episode is moving, illuminating and thought-provoking, it is far from sad. I promise.

Cariad joined me to talk grief (of course), how pregnancy, therapy and approaching 40 collided, doing "grief maths", why thinking about the future makes her twitchy and how she feels about approaching the age her dad died. We also compared our inner goths and she advised me on how to ask your partner if they want to be buried or scattered!

You can listen to Griefcast wherever you get your podcasts.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including You Are Not Alone by Cariad Lloyd and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. The Death Book is available from Victoria Health.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Over the Christmas period and into the new year, I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet-favourite episodes of 2022. This week is the utterly fearless Clover Stroud. This episode first aired last March.

It takes courage to lay yourself bare on the page the way today’s guest does. Journalist Clover Stroud has written three memoirs - The Wild Other, My Wild and Sleepless Nights and, now, The Red of My Blood. Each more visceral, more exposing, than the last.

But then Clover has lived no ordinary life (whatever that is). Hers features adventure, divorce, trauma, lots of sex, depression and five kids aged between 21 and 5. But before that, when Clover was 16, her mother suffered a catastrophic fall from a horse which left her permanently brain damaged. A state in which she remained until her death 22 years later. Then, two years ago her sister Nell Gifford, to whom Clover was exceptionally close, died of breast cancer, aged 46.

The darkness that descended in the wake of Nell’s death informed The Red of My Blood - an emotional read about living with and learning from grief.

Clover joins me from her bedroom in Oxfordshire (excellent wallpaper!) to talk - extremely candidly, so please brace yourself if you’re feeling vulnerable - about grief and trauma, bearing the unbearable and how, out of loss, she’s finding a new person to be. But It’s not all sadness. We also discussed midlife sex, sobriety, looking forward to menopause and why we’re bloody lucky to be middle-aged.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Red Of My Blood and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week is the brilliantly outspoken author Kit de Waal. This episode first aired in July.

Today’s guest is the award-winning writer, Kit De Waal. Until she was 21, Kit had never read a book voluntarily. But once she started there was no stopping her. Kit started writing in her mid-40s and published her award-winning debut, My Name Is Leon, at 56. Since then she has used her success to work tirelessly to promote the voices of working class writers. Using some of her advance to set up the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Fellowship (aka the Fat Chance scholarship!) and editing Common People, an anthology of working class writing.

Now she’s turned her attention to her own childhood. Her memoir, Without Warning And Only Sometimes, is the story of growing up in poverty, one of five children with a Black father and Irish mother who brought them up Jehovah’s Witness…

Kit joined me from possibly the most envy-inducing workroom I’ve ever ogled via zoom (and I’ve ogled a few!) to talk being single and reclaiming your own space at 60. We discussed race, class, privilege, the impact of a childhood spent not stepping on the cracks and why she hates that “fucking overused word resilience”. Plus why she’s not interested in a man on the downward slide, being a Tuesday friend and her exceedingly cool hair

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Without Warning And Only Sometimes by Kit de Waal and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week, let stylist and Instagrammer Kat Farmer motivate your wardrobe overhaul. This episode first aired in March.

Totally lost sight of your personal style? Feel like your clothes hate you? Whether it’s the result of two years in and out of lockdown, emerging from the motherhood tunnel or the advent of menopause, many of us no longer have a clue how to get dressed.

Enter this week’s guest: Kat Farmer, better known by her instagram handle @doesmybumlook40 - best friend to every woman with nothing to wear for who they want to be today.

But scroll back a decade and Kat wasn’t a style savvy influencer with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, she was a mum of three small children, in her late thirties, who had completely lost her way.

Kat’s now written a book - Get Changed, finding the new you through fashion - a typically friendly and low-key guide to just that.

TBH I was hoping that when I spoke to Kat I’d also get a free wardrobe detox - bloody covid! Instead, we ended up on zoom talking everything from reinventing your career to why clothes are the key to our identity, how the fashion industry is finally wising up to older women and why her rule of three will put an end to all your shopping mistakes.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Get Changed by Kat Farmer and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week's, journalist, power-lifter and body image and mental health activist, Poorna Bell, is just the tonic if you're having a January moment. This episode first aired in July.

By her own admission, today’s guest, award winning journalist Poorna Bell, wasn’t looking forward to 40. She feared, as society had taught her, that it might be the beginning of the end. And so, she set out to prove herself wrong.

Poorna has written two memoirs about grief and mental health in the wake of her husband, Rob’s death by suicide. And followed those up with Stronger, an inspiring reevaluation of women’s strength interwoven with her own discovery of power lifting (I kid you not. This woman could bench press Johnny Depp - but I fear she’d have to join the queue.) It’s no surprise that Poorna has become an advocate for diversity, mental health and body image.

Now she’s turned her hand to fiction. Her debut novel, In Case Of Emergency is a warm, funny, immensely entertaining story of friendship, sisterhood, being single in a couples world and a brown woman in a white world.

Poorna joined me to talk about taking back power, finding her strength and how fitness changed her. Why she’s all in favour of marriage but has no plans to get back on the relationship escalator, why ageing is her superpower, finding clarity post-40, her search for midlife role models as a brown woman and embracing being a 40something goddess.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including IN CASE OF EMERGENCY by Poorna Bell, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

podchaser token: 0XeeihrspYQYlmZOFLzt

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Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week is acting legend, national treasure (she hates that) and my old bird role model Sheila Hancock. This episode first aired in June.

Today’s guest is nothing less than an acting legend. Although she probably wouldn’t have any truck with that. Dame Sheila Hancock is that rare thing – a successful actor with working class roots, an 89 year old who’s still beating off offers with a stick and a woman who refuses to be afraid to speak her mind.

Sheila has done EVERYTHING from Shakespeare to sitcoms. A member of the National Theatre Company, she was the first woman to direct at the Olivier Theatre in her 50s and has been nominated for 6 Olivier Awards, written two novels and a loose trilogy of memoirs (the second of which was about her marriage to Morse and Sweeney legend, John Thaw). The third is Old Rage, which started out as a book about the wisdom and fulfilment of old age ended up…. not!

Ninety next year, Sheila is taking less prisoners than ever. She joined me from her living room to talk education and inequality, corruption, climate change and Brexit, suffering from the empathy “disease” and why being seen as a strong woman is a double-edged sword. She also told me what it was like being a working class woman in TV in the 1970s, how she learnt the consequences of speaking out the hard way and why she’s no longer bothering to conceal her rage. Sheila Hancock for PM!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including OLD RAGE by Sheila Hancock, Sheila's book recommendation, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. First up is screenwriter Abi Morgan. This episode first aired in March.

Today’s guest is a woman I’ve admired for the longest time: stage and screenwriter Abi Morgan. Throughout her thirty year career Abi has written some of our most memorable drama: Shame, Sex Traffic, The Queen, Iron Lady, The Hour (for which she won an Emmy), Suffragette and, most recently, the BBCone hit, The Split. In her work, female characters took centre stage long before that became the fashionable thing to do.

But now, Abi has been forced to take centre stage herself. Four years ago, she returned home one lunchtime to find her partner of 20 years, Jakob, collapsed on the bathroom floor. It was the start of a sequence of events that would upend their family forever. And it’s the subject of perhaps the most extraordinary memoir I have ever read - This is Not a Pity memoir. And it isn’t. It’s about love, trauma and ultimately - weirdly! - about hope. And just in case you haven't heard me wanging on about it, it is, without doubt, my non-fiction book of 2022.

Abi joined me to talk candidly about the cataclysmic impact of Jake’s illness, the long - and ongoing - journey to rebuild their family and how, in the midst of all that, she coped with her own breast cancer diagnosis. She also told me about being a lone woman in a world of white men in leather jackets, budging up to make room at the table and why she’s done with being “user-friendly”.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including This Is Not A Pity Memoir by Abi Morgan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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In the run up to Christmas I'll be dropping two special live episodes recorded live at the Birmingham Literature Festival earlier this autumn. The second conversation is with one of the funniest, warmest women you’re ever likely to encounter: Ruth Jones.

TBH Ruth needs little introduction. The co-writer and star of Stella and the BAFTA award winning Gavin and Stacey, she is also the bestselling author of three Sunday Times bestsellers: Never Greener (which was also WHSmith Fiction book of the year), Us Three and now, Love Untold.

Warm, open-hearted and generous, Love Untold sees Ruth turn her attention to motherhood and daughterhood as we meet four generations of the women of the Meredith family: Grace, Alys, Elin and Beca and encounter the minefield of complications that form the mother-daughter bond - love, hate and everything in between. You will laugh, you will cry, you will wince and above all you will recognise the feelings that Ruth evokes in the four women.

Ruth joined me in front of a live audience at the Birmingham Rep to talk about the complex mother-daughter relationship, why so few people talk about daughterhood, the power and importance of cross-generational understanding and the impossibility of living up to a fantasy life. She also opened up about menopause, HRT, her irrational fear of turning 40 and her favourite new role.... that of Nanny Ruth!

This episode includes an exclusive reading from Love Untold by Ruth. And Ruth's book recommendations for Christmas reading.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Love Untold by Ruth Jones and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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In the run up to Christmas I'll be dropping two special live episodes recorded live at the Birmingham Literature Festival earlier this autumn. The first conversation is with one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever interviewed: the activist, author and academic, Elif Shafak.

The author of 19 books, including the novels Ten minutes 38 seconds in this strange world which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and her latest, The Island Of Missing Trees which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, amongst many others. Elif is an advocate for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights and freedom of expression.

The bestselling female novelist in Turkey, Elif has been unable to return to her homeland for several years, since she was charged with insulting Turkishness based on the behaviour of her characters in her bestselling The Bastard of Istanbul.

Elif joined me in front of a live audience at the Birmingham Rep to talk about the changing face of protest and the inspirational young women on the frontline, why we need to be aware not just of the glass ceiling but the glass walls that keep us apart, intersectionality and the alarming backlash against women’s and LGBTQ+ rights. She also talked about feeling like an outsider, getting the courage to come out in her 40s, learning self-compassion and how she's evolved as she's aged.

This is Elif's second time on The Shift with Sam Baker. You can hear the first here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me. Elif's recommendation, Poetry Unbound by Padraig O'Tauma is available from amazon.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Somehow, it's the end of season 10! How did that even happen? And I'm so thrilled to end the season with this week's guest. I’ve fangirled Nadiya Hussain ever since she gave her groundbreaking speech on Bake Off “I’m never going to put boundaries on myself ever again. I’m never gonna say I can’t do it. I’m never gonna say maybe. I’m never gonna say I don’t think I can. I can and I will.” Cue millions of women and girls air punching on the sofa.

Nadiya has been breaking boundaries ever since. As well as presenting several TV series, Nadiya is now the author of 8 cookery books including her latest, Nadiya’s Everyday Baking, a novel and a moving memoir, aptly titled Finding My Voice.

Nadiya has well and truly found her voice and I could not be more thrilled she chose to use it on The Shift.

Nadiya joined me from a room of her very own (and as you will hear, that is no small thing), to talk learning to take up space (even in her own home), the moment she realised being a boy opens doors that don’t even exist for girls, and changing the shame narrative. She also told me about out-earning every single man in her family, becoming the independent woman her nan was scared of and her life changing mantra… elbows out! (Try it, it works!)

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Nadiya's Everyday Baking and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest today is the journalist and broadcaster Kaye Adams. Kaye is the host of BBC Radio Scotland’s morning show and a longstanding panellist on ITV’s Loose Women, amongst other things. But if you’re a fellow Strictly addict, you maybe more likely to know her from her sadly brief but memorable stint in the current series where she partnered Kai… more of that later.

A journalist by training, Kaye is also the co-author of Still hot: 42 brilliantly honest menopause stories in which she and a host of women share their very different menopause experiences; and the co-host of the podcast, How To be 60 which she started because she found the prospect of turning 60, well, terrifying.

Kaye joined me from her home in Glasgow to talk being an age-denier, coming out as menopausal and the time she lost her ability to feel joy (but didn’t realise that was a symptom of peri menopause). We also discussed making peace with ambition, being a confident person with a shedload of insecurities and how Strictly taught her she never wants to subject herself to reality TV judgement again. She also opened up about her parents death and the hearing loss that makes her feel old.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Still Hot by Kaye Adams and Vicky Allan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

And if you already subscribe - did you know you can buy a Gift Membership of The Shift for a friend at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/gift_plans

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest has a talent for tapping into what people are thinking, not to mention an enviable BS radar. Since we first met almost 15 years ago, Sali Hughes has become a leading journalist and presenter. Her beauty column for the Guardian is responsible for the contents of a million makeup bags and she has just turned her YouTube series In the bathroom with into a podcast, Beyond The Bathroom. In 2018 she co-founded the award-winning charity Beauty Banks, with Jo Jones, providing essential toiletries to people living in poverty. Arguably we have never needed that charity more than we do right now.

Sali's new book, Everything Is Washable* is what you’d get if Nora Ephron took on Mrs Beeton. An empathetic, no-nonsense guide to navigating almost everything modern life has to throw at us. From stain removal to how and when to have maintenance sex by way of egg poaching, freezer defrosting and fitted sheet folding!

Sali joined me to discuss how being homeless in her teens created her obsession with home, the power of making women feel can-do and why you should never EVER give up your own bank account. We also talked learning to parent when you haven’t been parented and healthcare privilege. Plus she had PLENTY to say about the way brands (mis)represent perimenopausal women…

If you'd like to make a donation to Beauty Banks you can do so by donating physical products online or at Superdrug Beauty spots. You can also donate money directly via text or online. For more information on how to donate please visit https://www.beautybanks.org.uk/donate

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Everything is Washable* by Sali Hughes and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the dose of salts that is Milly Johnson. Milly started writing books in her late 30s when the birth of her first son showed her the direction she’d been struggling to find. Now on her 20th novel, Together, Again, self-described northern bird Milly has sold over 2 and a half million books and won the Romantic Novelists association Outstanding achievement award.

But you’d never know it, because Milly - along with hundreds of other highly successful women - writes books that are considered fluff, lesser, not serious and consequently the literary establishment turns its nose up at her.

Well, as you will hear, “the queen of feelgood fiction” is not putting up with any of that nonsense. Or anything else for that matter!

Milly joined me from her home in Barnsley, where she’s lived her whole life, to talk about being a single mum, life as a sandwich woman and the benefits(ish) of having been ‘kicked around the ring a few times!” We also discussed grafting, How writing greetings cards shaped her approach to fiction, the importance of making readers feel seen and why a comfort zone is just a cosy prison.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Come, Together and The Woman In The Middle by Milly Johnson and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Today’s guest is my personal hero, Caryn Franklin. Caryn started her career in the 80s as a fashion editor before moving into TV where she presented, amongst other things, BBC’s The Clothes Show. Always outspoken, Caryn has spent four decades being a thorn in the fashion industry’s side. Championing diversity of all forms LONG before it became the cool thing to do.

She cofounded All Walks Beyond The Catwalk to promote body equality in fashion, chaired Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, is an ambassador for the Eating Disorders Association and was awarded an MBE for her services to fashion. Now she’s written Skewed, with Professor Keon West, to examine how media bias distorts our views of others.

To bring it back down to my usual level, She is also the owner of my fantasy hair!

Caryn joined me by popular demand (she’s one of the most frequently requested guests) to talk 40 years of fighting for diversity, Why the fashion industry is still so bloody bad at catering for older women and why clothes should be a superpower. She also shared her experiencing of being a carer to her first daughter’s father in her 30s and how that changed the way she felt about ageing, how going grey nearly cost her her job and how HRT gave her her life back.

  • You can buy Skewed by Caryn Franklin and Professor Keon West from audible. All the books mentioned in this podcast are available at Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

* And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today has been lauded as “the most lethal, screamingly funny truth-teller of our time”. Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has made her name as the master of the takedown. Through the political shit-storm of recent years (or should that be weeks?!) she has taken a scalpel laced with laughing gas to the establishment and made us weep (in a good way, usually) in the face of the coming apocalypse and earned two Political Commentator Of The Year Awards. Now those columns have been turned into a book, What Just Happened? A rampage through the heroes, villains, chancers, tossers and shysters that have made the last decade what it is. Like all of Hyde’s writing it’s howlingly funny and terrifyingly true.

But how do you get to be a “lethal truth teller”? Marina joined me to talk about lucking into journalism (like me, she learnt to type and started as a temp), thriving not surviving in male-dominated environments and why the pram in the hall turned out to be her superpower. She also told me why she wishes she’d taken more risks, why white wine is her nemesis and why she’ll be forever grateful to the menopause movement.

[this episode was recorded before the UK political scene got even more chaotic than normal!]

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including What Just Happened?! by Marina Hyde and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today has packed a helluva lot into her 43 years. Dawn O’Porter started her career in TV production, before finding her way in front of the camera to host a series of attention-grabbing documentaries on everything from polygamy to Dirty Dancing. By the time she hit her 30s, like many women, Dawn was moving faster and faster to stand still. By the time she was married (to the actor Chris O’Dowd) with the first of her two sons, running a vintage fashion label and the refugee charity now known as Choose Love - AND writing books - she realised something had to give!

In this case, that was Dawn herself. She is now a full-time author of eight books including the Richard and Judy pick So Lucky and her latest, Cat Lady - a funny and frank look at the boxes we squeeze ourselves into to try to fit other people’s expectations.

Dawn joined me from her home in LA to discuss the cats-in-the-bedroom conundrum, what she learnt from launching and losing a business, why the need to be liked is exhausting and how ageing helped her recognise her own value. We also talked Botox, whether perimenopause makes you smell strange and why she’ll never stop advocating for kaftans!

Hankering after a Cat Lady jumper like Dawn's? Visit Joanieclothing.com.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Cat Lady by Dawn O'Porter and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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How do I want to age? What does the rest of my life look like? Those are questions I know many of you have given A LOT of thought. Well, my guest today has some answers.

Dr Sharon Blackie is a psychologist and folklorist who is passionate about reimagining the ageing process for the better. Her last book If Women Rose Rooted was an ecofeminist sleeper hit about finding your place in the world that was passed from woman to woman with the words “you MUST read this”.

Her new book, Hagitude: reimagining the second half of life, does JUST that. What, she asks, would ageing as a woman in the west be like if we embraced it. If we saw it as an adventure, not something to be dreaded, dodged, denied. At its heart is the radical idea: what if older women knew how to use the power and influence many of us don't know we have. What if we recognised our value? What if we wrote our own narratives?

Sharon joined me to talk about the power of myth, embracing your inner hag and why she’d rather be the old woman in the wood than a boring old fairytale princess any day. She also told me what she learnt from THREE midlife crises, her decade of hot flushes and the joy of no longer having skin in the mating game.

I found this conversation so motivating and inspiring. I hope you do too.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Hagitude and If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackieand the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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You might think you know all there is to know about today’s guest. Posh girl who once dated Princess Margaret’s son. Half of the early noughties style duo Trinny and Susannah. Plus a short-lived and strangely identifiable turn on Strictly as the slightly embarrassing older woman who can’t really dance. (Hands up who over-identified!)

Because that’s what the media has told us.

But look at it another way, Susannah Constantine is a novelist, writer and broadcaster with over 25 years experience. She’s a hit podcaster (My Wardrobe Malfunction is a hoot - check out the episode with Kristin Scott Thomas!) and, on the cusp of 60, she’s just written a game changing memoir that will make you think more than twice about what it really means to be a girl brought up in privilege; a girl brought up to be Ready For Absolutely Nothing.

Susannah joined me from her swanky kitchen to talk extremely candidly about hitting rock bottom before she could confront her alcoholism, her complicated relationship with her mother, rediscovering her identity after it was ripped away and how she experienced a mental menopause. PLUS surviving Strictly humiliation, Dolph Lundgren and having tea with the queen.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Ready For Absolutely Nothing by Susannah Constantine and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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One hundred episodes... how did that happen?! The little podcast that started on a whim and a prayer (and no, that's not a typo!) is still here and soaring. So I could not think of a more fitting guest for such a landmark episode than a woman whose life is a tribute to the power of hope...

Where do you turn when everything feels hopeless? My guest today knows the answer to better than most. Nine years ago, in the space of one week, Raynor Winn lost her home, and her husband, Moth, was diagnosed with a degenerative disease. In the face of such loss, there was only one thing to do: they packed what little of their life they could carry into their backpacks, and walked.

That walk - 630 miles along the South West Coast path - became the bestseller The Salt Path. It sold a million copies, spent more than 90 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller lists and changed thousands of lives - not least Raynor and Moth’s.

Despite defying the medical odds, two years ago Moth’s health began to decline again. Clutching at hope, they set out for one last walk: this time 1000 miles, from Cape Wrath in the far North West of Scotland back home to Cornwall. But in walking back home, could they really walk Moth back to health a second time?

Raynor joined me to talk about the book of that epic journey, Landlines, and how walking The Salt Path wiped her clean. We also discuss the power of walking, why nature has always been her safe place, putting yourself in the way of hope and how a shy girl hiding behind the sofa became a public person at 60.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Landlines by Raynor Winn and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

Want to take advantage of the offer of 30-day free membership of The Shift newsletter and community? Go to* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/ Offer ends 17 October 2022.**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hello and welcome to this special bonus episode of The Shift with Sam Baker. Consider it a taster for season 10, which starts next Tuesday.

If you’re in your 40s or 50s (or even 30s or 60s) and feeling a bit what-next, my guest today is just the motivation you need. Seven years ago Deborah Frances-White was sitting in a bar with a comedian friend, when they came up with a crazy idea for a podcast. You might have heard of it. It’s called The Guilty Feminist! Now about to celebrate 100 million downloads, its catch phrase, I’m a feminist but… has become part of internet lingua franca and the standup comedian, podcaster, activist and screenwriter has never been busier. She’s written a bestselling book of the same name and launched a whole host of spin off podcasts under The Guilty Feminist banner. And there’s another book on the way.

Deborah joined me to talk about feminism, being diagnosed with ADHD in her 40s, the way we change our behaviour in male-dominated spaces and being true to your own brilliant self (!). We also discussed that old chestnut likability, infertility and the conundrum of wanting a child but wanting the life you would have had without one too, exfoliating your guilt and the doctor who told her that post-menopause women’s skin ages in dog years! Cheers much.

*Listen to The Guilty Feminist here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Guilty Feminist by Deborah Frances-White and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

Want to take advantage of the offer of 30-day free membership of The Shift newsletter and community? Go to* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/ Offer ends 17 October 2022.**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the new season. I had long been an admirer of Dr Jen Gunter's no-bull approach to women's health before I met her eighteen months ago. She didn't disappoint!

Here are the original show notes:

The best way I can think of to describe this week’s guest is that she’s a women’s health vigilante. (A vagina vigilante if you will!) Dubbed twitter’s resident gynaecologist, and the nemesis of snake oil salesmen everywhere, Dr Jen Gunter is the living embodiment of “information is power”. She has made it her life’s mission to give you the information you need to make life better for you - and for your vagina.

Best known for her book The Vagina Bible, and publicly taking Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop to task for, amongst other things, flogging jade eggs. “Dear Ms Paltrow,” she wrote back in 2017, “It is the biggest load of garbage I have read on your site since vaginal steaming.” Now Jen is bringing that same, erm, direct approach to the menopause with her new book, The Menopause Manifesto. A banger of a book that tells you everything you could possibly need to know and plenty of stuff you don’t but will be glad you do.

Jen is characteristically no-bull as she talks menopause, mental health, why we all need to know WTF is going on and why women need more menopausal role models. And whatever you do, don’t get her started on manufacturers who think shoving “meno” in front of a product name is a licence to print money…! Join me and Jen as we cross the crimson bridge and throw ourselves a meno partiy! Welcome to the order of menopause!

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Menopause Manifesto by Dr Jen Gunter.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the new season. I had never heard of Nana-Ama Danquah before I started The Shift and speaking to her was one of my most enlightening conversations. Nana-Ama's writing has recently found a new audience and was shortlisted for this year's Caine Prize.

Here are the original show notes:

My guest today is the Ghanaian American writer Nana-Ama Danquah. Nana-Ama found herself in the public eye when, in the late 90s, she published her memoir Willow Weep For Me about suffering from clinical depression - one of the first books to openly discuss black women’s mental health experience. Critically acclaimed by the likes of the late, great Maya Angelou, its description of the shame, dismissal, denial and out and out despair experienced by many black women started a much-needed conversation that was widely credited with “saving lives”. (It's currently not published in the UK - publishers I AM LOOKING AT YOU!)

Now 53, Nana-Ama joined me from her home in (sunny) California (grrr) to talk about the double - in fact, make that triple - burden of mental health, menopause and being black, why black women are driving change right now, how menopause turned her into a hot mess and how she’s finally learnt the joy of doing what you do until you die.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker. Willow Weep For Me by Nana-Ama Danquah is not published in the UK, but you can buy it from amazon.co.uk or abebooks.co.uk.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the next season. This is a replay of one of my all time favourites, with the inimitable Anita Rani.

I did this interview in June 2021. Here are the original show notes:

What even is the “right sort of girl?” That’s a question my guest this week has long struggled to answer. Growing up in Yorkshire, TV presenter and self-proclaimed misfit Anita Rani always felt that she was somehow wrong - a feeling that was exacerbated when she moved to London to break into the media - and found herself too brown, too northern, too female. Oh, and too gobby. A triple threat with bells on. Now 43, she co-fronts two national institutions - Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and BBC’s Country File - and has finally reached a point where she felt able to answer (or at least tackle) the question: who even am I? in her memoir, The Right Sort of Girl.

Join Anita and me as we journey from 1970s Bradford to her perch on the top of the media tree via eldest-Punjabi-daughter-guilt, never ever ever talking about periods, grunge and Oprah-worship. On the way, Anita tells me why south asian women are badasses, why shapeshifting to fit other people’s expectations is a waste of energy and how she learnt to own her anger. This is a celebration of being in your 40s, being yourself and finding your purpose and I’m pretty sure that you, like me, will love her for it.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Anita Rani's memoir, The Right Sort of Girl, and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is one of Britain’s best loved novelists, Lisa Jewell. Her career started with a smash hit debut novel Ralph’s Party - which she started writing as a bet at the age of 27 while she was unemployed, and, according to her, “totally lacking in direction and ambition”. It was the book of the moment and for 14 novels it looked like her career - although ticking along nicely - would never hit those heights again.

Then her writing took a turn for the dark and her career took a turn for the stratospheric. Lisa Jewell, it transpired had a knack for a killer twist. That knack propelled her to the top of the bestseller lists on both sides of the atlantic with And Then She Was Gone. That was six books ago and she’s never been more successful.

I went to see Lisa in her envy-inducing North London home to talk about her latest book, The Family Remains, the debt she owes Bridget Jones and the sequel she wishes had never seen the light of day. We also chatted about hitting “a golden seam” in her 50s, her unexpectedly scary perimenopause symptoms, testosterone overload, and her extremely proactive ovaries! Plus she shares her controversial secret to successfully parenting teenage girls.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Family Remains by Lisa Jewell and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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My guest today is the writer Hilma Wolitzer. Born in 1930, Hilma had her first poem published at the age of 9. She then shelved that ambition in favour of marriage and children, as women were expected to in the 1950s. 26 years later she had her first short story published. Then there was no stopping her.

Her first novel was published at the age of 44 and since then she has published 14 books. The most recent of which is the career-spanning short story collection - the brilliantly named, Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket. If you, like me, love Elizabeth Strout, I guarantee you will love this.

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to speak to Hilma from her apartment in New York about writing at 9 and 90, being raised to be a housewife by a housewife and how feminism changed her life. She also talked about losing her husband of 68 years to covid during lockdown, why she can’t think of anything worse than dating again, why she’s not done yet and why she doesn’t mind being an old woman but she definitely doesn’t want to be an old girl.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Today A Woman Went Mad In The Supermarket and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I can’t remember the first time I met my friend Clare Grogan. But like many Gen-Xers, I remember the first time I saw her in the cult movie Gregory’s Girl, and then, later the same year, on Top of the Pops with Altered Images, performing the band’s top 10 hits Happy Birthday and I Could Be Happy. (I have a bit of a soft spot for that last one.)

Still in her teens, she was living a life the rest of us could only dream of. Until, at 25, with three top ten albums under her belt, she left it all behind so she could, as she puts it, “feel where I came from again”.

Since then she has had countless presenting and acting roles in everything from Eastenders to Skins. And now, 38 years after her last outing!, she’s back with a new Altered Images album Mascara Streakz.

Clare zoomed in to talk about deciding where you want to go in life, doing every show like it might be your last and being back on the road at 60. We discussed the unexpected impact of her daughter hitting the age she was when Altered Images hit the big time, her “difficult 40s” and why it’s never too late to start a band.

Mascara Streakz is released on 26 August.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Who hasn’t looked at those things you should have done by the time you’re 30/40/50/whatever lists and rolled their eyes? And yet consciously or not many of us still live our lives according to those timelines.

But what does middle age feel like if you’ve been acing those lists since you were 16 - and then suddenly you’re not?

Today’s guest Emma Forrest was an early achiever. She had a newspaper column by the age of 16, had written three novels by 30 and then moved to Hollywood and became a screenwriter. There, she seemingly “had it all” - Big job, famous husband, fabulous house, beautiful daughter.

And then she didn’t.

So How does it feel to be hitting 40 and walking away from the dream? Swapping An LA mansion for an attic flat in north London. And A glamorous marriage for a relationship with yourself. Someone who, by Emma’s own admission, she thought she might never get to see again.

Emma joined me to talk about her new memoir Busy Being Free and how she freed herself from a lifelong obsession with romantic attachment. We discuss how Trump contributed to her decision to step away from sex post-divorce (sorry, you’ll never unsee that!), rediscovering yourself in your 40s, why women who choose to be alone unnerve people, off-loading the “female factory reset” of gratitude and what an Enfant Terrible looks like at 45.

CW: I should warn you there’s also discussion of eating disorders, cutting and suicide.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Today’s guest is the award-winning writer, Kit De Waal. Until she was 21, Kit had never read a book voluntarily. But once she started there was no stopping her. Kit started writing in her mid-40s and published her award-winning debut, My Name Is Leon, at 56. Since then she has used her success to work tirelessly to promote the voices of working class writers. Using some of her advance to set up the Kit de Waal Creative Writing Fellowship (aka the Fat Chance scholarship!) and editing Common People, an anthology of working class writing.

Now she’s turned her attention to her own childhood. Her memoir, Without Warning And Only Sometimes, is the story of growing up in poverty, one of five children with a Black father and Irish mother who brought them up Jehovah’s Witness…

Kit joined me from possibly the most envy-inducing workroom I’ve ever ogled via zoom (and I’ve ogled a few!) to talk being single and reclaiming your own space at 60. We discussed race, class, privilege, the impact of a childhood spent not stepping on the cracks and why she hates that “fucking overused word resilience”. Plus why she’s not interested in a man on the downward slide, being a Tuesday friend and her exceedingly cool hair

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Without Warning And Only Sometimes by Kit de Waal and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest today is the author of the cult bestseller The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron. Part book, part tool-kit, part spiritual guide, The Artists Way has sold over 4 million copies globally and has inspired countless artists, writers, and creatives including Elizabeth Gilbert, Alicia Keyes, Pete Townshend and many more.

In the 30 years since that was published, Julia has written a movie, 7 plays and 23 books, including her memoir Floor Sample. Written in her late 50s she looked back over the first half(ish) of her life: her catholic education, alcoholism and drug abuse, her brief marriage to director Martin Scorsese, and her subsequent search for meaning, for herself, for home, ultimately for a way to be comfortably sober.

Speaking from her home in Santa Fe, Julia shared her incredible journey from “just a girl” at Catholic school to The Artists Way by way of leaving Washington a writer and landing in Hollywood a wife. She spoke candidly about losing the love of her life, getting and staying sober, how the nuns were her introduction to women with power and how the morning pages transformed her life. Now 74 and 45 years dry, she says, she’s braver than ever.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Artists Way by Julia Cameron and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me! Julia's recommendation, Creative Ideas by Ernest Holmes is out of print, but you can buy it here.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Have you always wanted to wreak revenge on your worst enemies? Those who’ve wronged you, conned you or just crossed you? Well, if you’ve ever lain in the bath (or on the sofa or wherever) fantasising about how you’d get your own back, my guest today is your woman! Jane Fallon - aka the mistress of the revenge romp!

Formerly a TV producer (Jane gave us the era-defining This Life amongst other things), she did a massive handbrake turn at 45 after a flash of overnight inspiration (lucky her!) And chucked it all in to write a novel. Her debut Getting Rid Of Matthew was a hit and 12 novels later she hasn’t looked back. Her latest Just Got Real, looks at what it means to be unexpectedly single again in mid-life and tackles the world of online dating.

Jane joined me to talk about giving voice to women over 40, how perimenopause induced her creative midlife crisis, why, for some reason, she thought she could get through menopause without telling anyone (hoho), the liberation of embracing 60, being a Botox holdout and how she trained herself to stop catastrophising. I’m grateful to Jane for telling me about the decision not to have children and her deeply held belief that she would have made a terrible mother.

Oh, and BTW Jane, I'm still waiting for photographic evidence of that cartwheel!

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including JUST. GOT. REAL. by Jane Fallon and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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How does it feel to be catapulted to Internet fame, literally overnight. My guest this week, CJ Hauser, found out when she wrote a little essay back in 2019 about cranes (as in, the birds, not the machines!). Except CJ had just called off her wedding and The Crane Wife wasn’t about cranes, so much as the shapes we contort ourselves into in order to please other people. about denying our own needs and accepting LESS.

Forty eight hours after it was published The Crane Wife had gone viral, been read millions of times and identified with by just about everyone who read it. I read it. I couldn’t believe how much it spoke to me. Nor, it seemed, could anyone else.

Now CJ has written a memoir in essays - also called The Crane Wife - about love, relationships and the stories we tell ourselves, not, it seems, in order to survive, but in order to set the bar so high we spend the rest of our lives failing to reach it.

CJ (and her dog Moriarty @thedogphilosopher on instagram...) joined me to talk about the unnerving impact of overnight success, being “a breakup pro” and learning to live your own dreams, not other people’s. We also discussed her Schrodingers biological clock, the life lessons she’s learnt from Dr Who, she introduced me to the concept of "bucking" and her unified theory of shitty men!

  • Read CJ’s original essay The Crane Wife here.

  • You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including THE CRANE WIFE by CJ Hauser and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at* https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/**

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Hello everyone! I just wanted to let you know about a new initiative coming from The Shift.

I launched The Shift with Sam Baker podcast 18 months ago on a hunch: I figured that if the way women's voices were silenced after 40 bugged me (OK, bugged is a bit of an understatement!) then the chances were it bugged you, too. I had no idea how right I was. Now, thanks to you, my regular listeners, The Shift is approaching a million downloads and is growing fast. As well as a podcast and a book, The Shift is now (drum roll) a newsletter and a community!

The reasons for this are two-fold:

1) You keep telling me you want more of The Shift - more women's voices, more stories, more content about the issues that affect you - and I want to give you more. Rather than four short seasons a year, my plan is to make The Shift podcast a weekly affair landing every Tuesday morning, with breaks for Christmas and summer holidays. As well as that, there will be a weekly newsletter and a community, plus access to podcast transcripts, early bird access to events, live podcast recordings and more.

2) Making The Shift takes time and money and I need your help. If you value The Shift and would like to support the work that goes into it - as well as getting a newsletter in your inbox every week, membership of The Shift bookclub, community and more - I'd love it if you'd consider becoming a member and being part of The Shift as it grows.

Interested? You can find out more and join at steady.media/theshift

Thanks for listening

Samx

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By her own admission, today’s guest, award winning journalist Poorna Bell, wasn’t looking forward to 40. She feared, as society had taught her, that it might be the beginning of the end. And so, she set out to prove herself wrong.

Poorna has written two memoirs about grief and mental health in the wake of her husband, Rob’s death by suicide. And followed those up with Stronger, an inspiring reevaluation of women’s strength interwoven with her own discovery of power lifting (I kid you not. This woman could bench press Johnny Depp - but I fear she’d have to join the queue.) It’s no surprise that Poorna has become an advocate for diversity, mental health and body image.

Now she’s turned her hand to fiction. Her debut novel, In Case Of Emergency is a warm, funny, immensely entertaining story of friendship, sisterhood, being single in a couples world and a brown woman in a white world.

Poorna joined me to talk about taking back power, finding her strength and how fitness changed her. Why she’s all in favour of marriage but has no plans to get back on the relationship escalator, why ageing is her superpower, finding clarity post-40, her search for midlife role models as a brown woman and embracing being a 40something goddess.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including IN CASE OF EMERGENCY by Poorna Bell, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest this week is never happier than when she’s making her readers feel uncomfortable. Lisa Taddeo was a skint journalist when she wrote the groundbreaking book, Three Women - the true story of the intimate desires of three American women.

A bestseller on both sides of the atlantic, it is now being made into a TV series starring Shailene Woodley as the author. But more than that, Three Women made millions of women take a long hard look at their own wants, needs and desires and the many ways they’d sublimated them.

Lisa followed that up with her first novel, Animal, and has now published a collection of short stories, Ghost Lover, in which she analyses, love, grief, obsession, ageing, body image, and, of course, sex.

I’ve interviewed Lisa before, so I thought I knew what to expect: sex, rage, more sex, more rage. But this was not the chat I expected to have. Lisa was in a contemplative mood and we found ourselves dissecting women and power - or the lack of it (and this was before the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade); the way power is given with one hand and taken with the other and how success stitches up women or families. Lisa also opened up about how her mother’s fear of ageing affected her and learning not to be afraid to put a value on herself.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including GHOST LOVER by Lisa Taddeo, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest today is the “queen of Scottish comedy”, Janey Godley. Janey has played Broadway, won loads of awards and written a bestselling memoir, Handstands in The Dark about her grim childhood. But you might know her for the viral VoiceOver videos she did of Nicola Sturgeon during lockdown. (If you haven’t seen them, check out her twitter.)

Now Janey has turned her hand to fiction, with Nothing Left Unsaid, a moving but coffee-snortingly hilarious story of five single mums struggling to survive in 70s Glasgow. Think Big Little Lies set in 1970s Govan! I inhaled it in one sitting.

Last November, Janey was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer - and covid, on the same day. Ever since, in true Janey style, she has shared her ups and downs on social media, on a mission to make sure everyone knows more about the signs of ovarian cancer than she did.

Janey joined me from her home in Glasgow not long after what was hopefully her last chemo to talk about the shock of ovarian cancer, writing a love letter to her mammy Annie and the wee warrior women she grew up with, feeling like a hand grenade in the family, how she finally kicked the compulsion to say “I’m fine”, not wearing a wig to make anyone else feel comfortable and why she’ll always be proud to be gallus.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including NOTHING LEFT UNSAID by Janey Godley, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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This week’s guest will make you wonder what you do with your time! Sabrina Pace-Humphreys is an award-winning business woman, a social justice activist, an ultra-runner, a mother of four and grandmother of three. (And as if that wasn't enough, right now, as of June 19th, she's running 268 miles along The Spine of the UK!) Not bad going for 44.

But it is none of those things that led her to write her memoir, Black Sheep - a story of growing up Black, on the poverty line, in small town England. As a child, and the only Black person in that town, she experienced constant bullying, verbal and physical racist abuse. She didn’t know who she was, or where she belonged.

Sabrina joined me to talk about why she’s decided it’s time to speak out about rural racism. The impact of growing up in a place where literally no-one looked like her and How she finally found the identity she craved. Sabrina is incredibly frank about burying herself in workaholism and alcoholism, her battles with anxiety, and how learning to run - after a lifetime of mocking runners! - saved her. If you’re looking for motivation to start running look no further. In fact, if you’re looking for motivation full stop, you’ve found it.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including BLACK SHEEP by Sabrina Pace-Humphreys, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Last night Ruth won the Women's Prize for her wonderful novel, The Book Of Form And Emptiness, so I thought I'd give this another listen. Here are the original show notes:

My guest this week is a novelist, film-maker - and Zen Buddhist priest. Ruth Ozeki was born in Conneticut in the 1950s to a Japanese mother and, as she puts it, caucasian anthropologist father. Despite always wanting to write, she didn’t publish her first novel until she was 40, because, in part, she “didn’t feel entitled to”. She needn’t have worried. That novel, My Year Of Meats, won the Kiriyama Prize and the American Book Award, and her third A Tale For The Time Being, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2013. Her latest novel, The Book Of Form And Emptiness, looks destined to go the same way.

But buddhism has informed Ruth’s life just as much as - if not more than - writing. She joined me to run the conversational gamut! We talked meditation, ageing, grief, living through the death of our parents, writing out her teenage mental health crises, why objects mean so much to us, the appeal of Marie Kondo, coming to terms with our ageing face and why menopause and adolescence have so much in common.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Book Of Form And Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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I’ve lost count of the number of women I’ve spoken to who were taken totally by surprise by perimenopause but, to date, none of them actually had medical training. Todays guest changes all that. Before she was an award winning writer, Christie watson was a nurse. She spent 20 years on children’s intensive care before her debut won the Costa first novel award and altered the trajectory of her life.

Since then Christie has written two bestselling nursing memoirs, including the wonderful The Language of Kindness, and a second novel. Then, aged 42, perimenopause totally floored her. A single mum of two teenagers, she suddenly found herself a “blubbering snot crying wreck” in Sainsburys car park - a stranger, inside and out. Sound familiar?!

I met Christie to talk about her memoir about that experience, Quilt On Fire, in a no-man’s land opposite the US embassy. As you do. We discussed being blindsided by menopause, grey pubic hairs, biblical bleeding, and the impact of unresolved trauma. Plus Being single in midlife and braving the dating shark tank, her own personal menopause club (lucky woman), having a vulva the size of Brazil, the joy of becoming visible to older women and why nobody really has their shit together. Oh and an unexpected use for frozen fish fingers.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including QUILT ON FIRE by Christie Watson, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Today’s guest is nothing less than an acting legend. Although she probably wouldn’t have any truck with that. Dame Sheila Hancock is that rare thing – a successful actor with working class roots, an 89 year old who’s still beating off offers with a stick and a woman who refuses to be afraid to speak her mind.

Sheila has done EVERYTHING from Shakespeare to sitcoms. A member of the National Theatre Company, she was the first woman to direct at the Olivier Theatre in her 50s and has been nominated for 6 Olivier Awards, written two novels and a loose trilogy of memoirs (the second of which was about her marriage to Morse and Sweeney legend, John Thaw). The third is Old Rage, which started out as a book about the wisdom and fulfilment of old age ended up…. not!

Ninety next year, Sheila is taking less prisoners than ever. She joined me from her living room to talk education and inequality, corruption, climate change and Brexit, suffering from the empathy “disease” and why being seen as a strong woman is a double-edged sword. She also told me what it was like being a working class woman in TV in the 1970s, how she learnt the consequences of speaking out the hard way and why she’s no longer bothering to conceal her rage. Sheila Hancock for PM!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including OLD RAGE by Sheila Hancock, Sheila's book recommendation, Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest today is a 42-year-old mum of two on a mission to kick sexual shame into touch. Natalie Lee was just like many of the rest of us. Not mad keen on her body, not as familiar with orgasm as she’d have liked to be and, by her own admission, a latecomer to masturbation. Hands up if that sounds familiar. (And don’t worry, no-one can see you!)

That is until she had her daughters and realised that if she wanted them to grow up free of sexual shame, she needed to sort out her own first. After a long, hard look at herself, Natalie started her body- and sex-positive instagram account @stylemesunday and took her first semi-naked ‘this is my body, like it or lump it’ photo. Now, 110k followers later, she has shared her own journey to sexual freedom in Feeling Myself (clue’s in the name), in the hope it will help you start yours.

Nat joined me in a full and frank (!) conversation about finding the confidence to end her marriage, how she overcame self-loathing, sexual experimentation, why it’s so important to talk to our children about sex (no matter how much they wish you wouldn’t!), embracing pansexuality and why the jeans don’t fit you, not the other way around

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Feeling Myself by Natalie Lee and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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When you enter a relationship, you rarely consider how it might end. Let’s face it, how many of us would ever do anything if we crossed THAT bridge before we came to it.

For today’s guest, writer and therapist Amy Bloom, THAT BRIDGE came all too soon when her husband Brian was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers and decided he would rather “die on his feet than live on his knees”. It was a decision that sent the couple on a journey from the East coast of America to Dignitas in Switzerland. Amy’s memoir In Love is the heartbreaking account of that journey. But as the book’s title suggests this is also a tender, hopeful and passionate love letter to a man whose belief in human agency extended to his own death.

CW: Just in case it doesn’t go without saying - in parts, this is not the easiest listen, Amy talks openly about the reality of an early dementia diagnosis, the right to die and living with her husband’s decision to do so.

But ALSO the advantages of being older when you fall in love, why you should marry because of each other’s faults not in spite of them, why women often blow up their lives in their 50s plus her lifelong love of tarot

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including In Love by Amy Bloom, her book recommendation, Childhood, Youth, Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Welcome to this special bonus episode of The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds barred truth about being a woman post 40. Created and hosted by me, writer and broadcaster, Sam baker.

Listeners often ask why I don’t put myself on the receiving end of The Shift!? Well, a couple of weeks ago I did just that. When I was interviewed about menopause, misogyny, the HRT lottery and all things midlife by my friend Jennifer Crichton, creator of The Flock, at Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival.

As you will hear, it’s not the highest quality, as it was recorded in an auditorium with a live audience, but I hope it gives you a taster of what The Shift Live could be like. (Watch this space for more on that!)

And if you enjoy this, why not sign up to The Shift newsletter for features about everything from menopause and midlife to money, relationships, sex, you name it. Plus you'll get first dibs on exclusive podcasts, transcripts of your favourite episodes, book recommendations and much more. Find out more and sign up at steady.media/theshift

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest this week is one of the most enduring movie actresses of our (by which I mean my!) generation. Minnie Driver made her first film, Circle of Friends in 1995, and went on to follow that with a lead role in Stanley Tucci’s gorgeous ode to Italian food, Big Night, an Oscar nominated turn in Goodwill Hunting. And my personal favourite Grosse Point Blank.

Now 52, with a 13yo son, Henry, and over fifty roles under her belt, Minnie is still “doing Hollywood” very much her own way. As well as two albums and a podcast (Minnie’s Questions), she’s now written a memoir, Managing Expectations, a book about how things not working out for her inevitably led to other things working out.

Minnie joined me from her LA home to tell me why being called outspoken makes her want to punch walls, overcoming the curse of other people’s expectations (and her own!), why she always felt like a failure for not being married, how getting fired never feels any less unjust and embracing her vengeful streak! She also introduces me to the concept of is-ness, shares her big hair survival tips and has things to say about why Hollywood dudes can be creased, but women can’t!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Managing Expectations by Minnie Driver, Minnie's book recommendation Send Nudes by Saba Sams and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Today’s guest is a woman I’ve admired for the longest time: stage and screenwriter Abi Morgan. Throughout her thirty year career Abi has written some of our most memorable drama: Shame, Sex Traffic, The Queen, Iron Lady, The Hour (for which she won an Emmy), Suffragette and, most recently, the BBCone hit, The Split. In her work, female characters took centre stage long before that became the fashionable thing to do.

But now, Abi has been forced to take centre stage herself. Four years ago, she returned home one lunchtime to find her partner of 20 years, Jakob, collapsed on the bathroom floor. It was the start of a sequence of events that would upend their family forever. And it’s the subject of perhaps the most extraordinary memoir I have ever read - This is Not a Pity memoir. And it isn’t. It’s about love, trauma and ultimately - weirdly! - about hope.

Abi joined me to talk candidly about the cataclysmic impact of Jake’s illness, the long - and ongoing - journey to rebuild their family and how, in the midst of all that, she coped with her own breast cancer diagnosis. She also told me about being a lone woman in a world of white men in leather jackets, budging up to make room at the table and why she’s done with being “user-friendly”.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including This Is Not A Pity Memoir by Abi Morgan and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest this week is the award-winning journalist Chitra Ramaswamy. And, lucky me, Chitra lives in Edinburgh so - before I go any further - let me revel in the joy that was recording this episode IRL! With an actual RL person! I know…

Anyway, back to Chitra. Her first book, Expecting: the inner life of pregnancy was garlanded with praise and won the Saltire First Book award. Her new memoir-come-social-history, Homelands, is the moving story of a most unlikely friendship - between Chitra, who was born in London in the 1970s to Indian immigrant parents, and Henry Wuga, a 98 year old jewish refugee who fled Nazi Germany in 1939.

Sitting in Chitra’s kitchen (with her rescue dog, Daphne, who you will hear plenty of snoring in the background!) we discussed the importance of finding commonalities, learning to talk about shame, living with a mother-shaped hole and what her friendship with Henry taught her about a talent for happiness. We also talked about the midlife “gift” of responsibility, the tyranny of the life list, and why she hopes she’ll age eccentrically.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Homelands by Chitra Ramaswamy and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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What happens when “one of the great comic writers of our time” hits menopause? That’s the conundrum that faced this week’s guest, award-winning novelist Nina Stibbe when she sat down to write her new novel.

With five bestselling books under her belt, including her memoir, Love Nina, which was turned into a hit TV series starring Helena Bonham Carter. And three novels centred around the turbulent teens and twenties of her alter-ego Lizzie Vogel, Nina decided it was time to turn her hand to middle age.

In One Day I Shall Astonish The World, Nina examines the heartbreak, hilarity and occasional hatred of a friendship that stretches from late teens to mid-50s by way of very different love, life and career choices.

Nina joined me from Cornwall to talk about being hit by the menopause truck, the pressure to be always funny and why her greatest midlife inspiration has come from comedy women. She also said she looks older than her mum and shared her ultimate midlife relationship-saver: the sofa bed.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including One Day I Shall Astonish The World by Nina Stibbe and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Back in the before times, I had an idea to launch a podcast that celebrated the achievements and lives of women over 40. With a couple of friends and an idiot-proof microphone I recorded the first series of what was to become The Shift. This is a replay of one of the first episodes I ever recorded - with my friend Jojo Moyes. Little did we know that two and a half years later we would only have seen each other a handful of times and EVERYTHING would have changed irrevocably. It's a real blast from the past in so many ways.

Here are the original show notes:

How does it feel to suddenly become ultra-visible just as the world is trying to invisible you? That’s what happened to this week’s guest, mega-selling novelist Jojo Moyes, when the book her old publishers didn't want to publish - Me Before You - became a global bestseller and smash-hit movie in her mid-40s.

Since then every book Jojo has written has been a bestseller and she’s sold the movie rights to pretty much everything she’s ever written. (Not remotely jealous.) Her latest, The Giver Of Stars, the transporting story of a group of women setting up a horseback library in the Appalachians is currently at the top of the bestseller lists and a movie is underway.

But life wasn’t always like that. Far from it. Jojo is funny and frank about the impact of stratospheric success on her professional and personal life. How it felt to be suddenly visible in her late forties. Health, fitness, freedom, a new found love of clothes and why she feels better than ever at 50. She also reveals how she finally overcame Imposter Syndrome, why she no longer suffers fools and how making new friends at 50 has been a revelation.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

The Giver Of Stars by Jojo Moyes is out now in paperback and available to buy here.

Jojo's book recommendation: Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, out now in paperback and available to buy here.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
THREE WOMEN
The Giver of Stars*

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Since I recorded this episode with Philippa Perry she's gone from strength to strength. Her already bestselling book has spent even more weeks at number one, she's got a new problem page in The Observer magazine - and it's brilliant. And now she's back on our screens with husband Grayson (and more importantly, Kevin the cat) in Grayson's Art Club. (It should be Grayson and Philippa's Art Club, but hey ho...)

Here are the original show notes:

How's 2021 for you so far?! I know, right? Well, who better to grab us by the scruff of the neck at just the point our meagre enthusiasm is starting to wear off than Philippa Perry? Philippa has been a psychotherapist for 20 years. She’s also an agony aunt, presenter and author of the bestseller, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and your children will be glad you did) - a clever, funny - and SANE - guide that acknowledges ‘they f*ck you up, your mum and dad’, and then helps you try not to do the same.

Philippa is completely fascinating as she talks about “getting hold of the steering wheel of life”, why plummeting oestrogen levels made her “homicidal not suicidal”, why women should stop playing “mine’s smaller than yours” and her own battle to silence her inner critic. And if you want to know how to make a sweary cushion you’ve come to the right place.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too and The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read and Couch Fiction.

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One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. This is a replay of one of my all time favourites. I was in awe of the indomitable Channel 4 international editor Lindsey Hilsum when I interviewed her 15 months ago and even more so now, as we watch her daily reporting from the devastation that has been wrought on Ukraine by Russian troops.

Here are the original show notes:

You know when people say you’re “brave” because you’ve got a few grey hairs?! Well, my guest this week is the living proof - as if it were needed - that that is a right old load of BS. Channel 4 International Editor Lindsey Hilsum is an acclaimed foreign correspondent who has reported from all over the world including Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Kosovo and Rwanda. She also won the James Tait Black Award for In Extremis, her devastating biography of her friend, the foreign reporter, Marie Colvin who was killed reporting from Syria in 2012.

Lindsey is just as bold as her job might lead you to expect. She takes no prisoners as she talks about managing menopause symptoms in a war zone, being in a minority on the box and why there needs to be more “old trouts on TV” (and, no, she’s not bloody brave for going grey on screen), and how she finally found the perfect answer to “Give us a smile love”. Only took forty years…

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and In Extremis: the life of war correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsey Hilsum.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My final guest of the season is the acclaimed screenwriter and bestselling author, Delia Ephron. Unfailingly wise, warm and witty, Delia is perhaps best known as co-writer of the Meg Ryan-Tom Hanks smash hit You’ve Got Mail, with her sister, the writer and director Nora Ephron,.

Delia’s new memoir, Left On Tenth, is the kind of story that would out-rom if not out-com - anything Nora could have come up with. Except… every word is true.

At 72, Delia found herself quite literally left on Tenth street in Manhattan, when her husband of 37 years, Jerry, died of cancer, just three years after the death of her beloved big sister Nora. A year later Delia reconnected with Peter, a man she didn’t even remember dating in college. It was love at second sight. But that was only the start of the story. Because just four months later, Delia was diagnosed with the same cancer that killed her sister.

Now 77, and recovering from a successful bone marrow transplant, Delia joined me from California to talk about getting a second chance at life and love in your 70s, the imperfection of sisterhood, being a lifelong worrier, why friendship is her superpower and shy she's addicted to blow dries (and pastries!). Oh, and, “if someone wants to crush your dreams with their big fat foot get out!”.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Left On Tenth by Delia Ephron and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Totally lost sight of your personal style? Feel like your clothes hate you? Whether it’s the result of two years in and out of lockdown, emerging from the motherhood tunnel or the advent of menopause, many of us no longer have a clue how to get dressed.

Enter this week’s guest: Kat Farmer, better known by her instagram handle @doesmybumlook40 - best friend to every woman with nothing to wear for who they want to be today.

But scroll back a decade and Kat wasn’t a style savvy influencer with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, she was a mum of three small children, in her late thirties, who had completely lost her way.

Kat’s now written a book - Get Changed, finding the new you through fashion - a typically friendly and low-key guide to just that.

TBH I was hoping that when I spoke to Kat I’d also get a free wardrobe detox - bloody covid! Instead, we ended up on zoom talking everything from reinventing your career to why clothes are the key to our identity, how the fashion industry is finally wising up to older women and why her rule of three will put an end to all your shopping mistakes.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Get Changed by Kat Farmer and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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When was the last time you read a book where the central character was not just perimenopausal but also talked and thought about menopause and its impact on her life. And she wasn’t a laughing stock?

I’m prepared to bet never.

That was the driving force for my guest this week, novelist Dana Spiotta. What if, she asked herself, the lead characters of some of her favourite books had had a hot flush? Think Mrs Dalloway on HRT.

The resulting novel, Wayward, is the story of 53 year old Sam who, in the midst of the chaos and perverse clarity of perimenopause falls in love with a rundown house, buys it and leaves her husband, teenage daughter and the suburban security of married life in pursuit of a new her.

Wayward is a blast of fresh air; funny, furious and extremely close to home! Dana joined me from her home in Syracuse, upstate New York, to talk about accidentally writing a “menopause novel”, how her own perimenopause informed her characters (cue, rage, insomnia and midlife misogyny), what happens when menopause and puberty collide and why people are still grossed out by the truth about female bodies.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Wayward by Dana Spiotta and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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It takes courage to lay yourself bare on the page the way today’s guest does. Journalist Clover Stroud has written three memoirs - The Wild Other, My Wild and Sleepless Nights and, now, The Red of My Blood. Each more visceral, more exposing, than the last.

But then Clover has lived no ordinary life (whatever that is). Hers features adventure, divorce, trauma, lots of sex, depression and five kids aged between 21 and 5. But before that, when Clover was 16, her mother suffered a catastrophic fall from a horse which left her permanently brain damaged. A state in which she remained until her death 22 years later. Then, two years ago her sister Nell Gifford, to whom Clover was exceptionally close, died of breast cancer, aged 46.

The darkness that descended in the wake of Nell’s death informed The Red of My Blood - an emotional read about living with and learning from grief.

Clover joins me from her bedroom in Oxfordshire (excellent wallpaper!) to talk - extremely candidly, so please brace yourself if you’re feeling vulnerable - about grief and trauma, bearing the unbearable and how, out of loss, she’s finding a new person to be. But It’s not all sadness. We also discussed midlife sex, sobriety, looking forward to menopause and why we’re bloody lucky to be middle-aged.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Red Of My Blood by Clover Stroud and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest today is the Jamaican author, journalist, film maker and (no exaggeration) living legend Barbara Blake Hannah.

Already an experienced journalist when she arrived in London in 1964, Barbara was shocked to discover her achievements counted for nothing because of the colour of her skin. But she made headlines anyway, in 1968, when she became the first Black TV journalist in the UK. She lasted nine months before being dismissed - almost certainly as a result of a racist backlash, in which her employers sided with the racists… It was several years before another black journalist appeared in a news role on British screens. Without Barbara, arguably, there would have been no Moira Stuart or Trevor Macdonald.

Now 80, Barbara has led a pioneering life, so it’s a joy to celebrate it with the republication of her groundbreaking 1982 memoir, Growing Out - Black Hair And Black Pride in The Swinging Sixties, as part of Bernardine Evaristo’s Black Britain Writing Back series.

From her home in Kingston, Jamaica, which she shares with her son, Barbara told me what she learnt from being at the sharp end of racism, why the Black Lives Matter movement gives her hope, feeling new again at 80 and how she learnt to love herself as a Black woman. She also talks about the power and politics of hair and how she has the skin of a 12 year old! Plus she introduced me to my new mantra: time is longer than rope.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Growing Out, Black Hair and Black Pride in the Swinging Sixties by Barbara Blake Hannah and all the other books in Bernardine Evaristo's Black Britain Writing Back series. You can also get the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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By the time we hit our 50s, most of us have… let’s just say… lived a little. But few have been through the mill to quite the extent that Christina Patterson has. Christina was 49 and recovering from breast cancer when she lost the job that she not just loved but that defined her. Rebuilding her life and career in her 50s formed the basis for her first book - memoir-come-survival manual, The Art of Not Falling Apart.

As if that wasn’t enough for one person to cope with, on top of this crushing loss, she has lived through a second cancer diagnosis and multiple family deaths. She is, in her own words, the last one standing.

Her new memoir, Outside, The Sky Is Blue tells of the dynamics of a family in the grip of one child’s mental health crisis; it’s a story of love and loss, but ultimately, unexpectedly, a celebration.

Christina and I talked about all the big stuff: success and failure, guilt and grief, the lifelong impact of family dynamics... Plus how to cope when your body starts saying the things your mind can’t, failing at relationships and then finding love in your 50s and why there is nothing but NOTHING like a good party.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Outside The Sky Is Blue by Christina Patterson and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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This week’s guest needs zero introduction - and not just because she’s been here before. Marian Keyes was one of the first guests on The Shift and her episode [episode 2 if you’re interested!] is still one of the most popular. So I’m delighted that she’s agreed to come back to chat about her new book - the long awaited sequel to her smash hit Rachel’s Holiday. The wonderful Again, Rachel revisits Rachel Walsh, the Walsh family and everybody’s favourite fictional fantasy, LUKE COSTELLO, 25 years after we saw her leave rehab and it’s no spoiler to say that, like its main characters, it’s older, wiser and hotter than ever.

So I’m not going to wang on about the fact she’s sold over 39million copies globally and still worries she’s not good enough. (My heart). OR that she’s just launched a podcast Now You’re Asking with her friend Tara Flynn, I’m going to let Marian do the talking. And boy did we TALK.

With typical generosity, wisdom and humour, Marian opened up about infertility, addiction, embracing change, how it feels to revisit your best loved character - and yourself! - 25 years on and fecking Fitbit addiction. She also throws in body shaming, self-forgiveness, mid-life sexuality, falling in love with your mother in your 50s and the many many joys of being “unyoung”.

CONTENT WARNING: infertility.

To hear Marian's earlier episode on menopause etc listen to episode 2 here.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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We all tackle ageing in different ways but very few of us do it the way this week’s guest did - by packing up her entire life and moving thousands of miles to a new city and a new life.

Until her mid-forties, writer Jami Attenberg sofa-surfed her way around America - the year she turned 40 she slept in 26 different beds in seven months! Even for the daughter of a travelling salesman, Jami’s litany of sofas, spare beds and floors is enough to give even the most nomadic back ache!

The author of seven novels, including four bestsellers, I Came All This Way To Meet You, is Jami’s first memoir. A moving, candid, unexpectedly funny look at becoming grown up (ish), stopping running and how she, quite literally, wrote herself home.

Jami joined me from New Orleans to tell me how she finally stopped moving, being the daughter of a motherless mother and how she was scarred by summer camp! She also talked about embracing the mid-life move, why you don’t always have to give people what they want, just because they ask, and the life changing impact of having a hysterectomy. Oh and that “neck thing”? It’s real…

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including I Came All This Way To Meet You by Jami Attenberg and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest today is the international bestseller Dorothy Koomson. She started young - she had her first stab at writing a book at 13 - and, like me, worked on Just Seventeen, amongst many other magazines, before actually publishing her first novel at 30. She has now written 16 Sunday Times bestsellers and is the biggest selling Black author of adult fiction in the UK - not bad for a woman whose debut novel was turned down for, amongst other things, having a Black character but not being about “the Black experience”.

Her latest, I know what you’ve done, is just out in paperback and has been described as “Desperate Housewives but darker”. It’s also completely stuffed with brilliant parts for midlife women - ITV, I’m looking at you!

Dorothy joined me from Brighton to talk about feeling like you’re “enough”, 80s TV crushes, the gynae and thyroid hell that gave her constant hot flushes, facing up to grey pubic hair and why there’s still A LOT of work to do when it comes to telling all women’s stories. Oh and why we need to bring back Golden Girls. I’m here for that!

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including I Know What You've Done by Dorothy Koomson and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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I’m really thrilled to launch this season with one of my long time fantasy guests. Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland since 2015, has been dubbed one of the most powerful women in British politics, if not in Britain, and she shows no sign of stopping.

Now 51, she grew up the eldest of two in an ordinary working class family in Ayrshire. Her mum was a dental nurse, her dad an electrician, she went to a state school and was the first in her family to go to university. In the 1970s and 80s - not a world where ordinary working class girls were expected to branch out - she was taught by her parents that she could - and she believed them, joining the SNP at 16 and becoming the youngest candidate standing in the 1991 election.

Unfortunately Omicron stopped us meeting in person (shame because I’ve heard the loos at Bute House are worth a snoop!), but Nicola joined me remotely to talk about what it means to be a fifty something woman in the corridors of power - from having to work twice as hard to be taken half as seriously and why a little bit of self doubt is good for you. ( I can think of a few male politicians who might benefit…)

She was also incredibly open about “being in the foothills of menopause”, preparing to take HRT and what happens if you have a hot flush in parliament. It’s always been my aim to ask powerful women to speak up about menopause so I couldn’t be more grateful to Nicola for taking time out to have this conversation.

PLUS she’s shared a whole host of brilliant book recommendations at the end.

You can buy all the books Nicola recommends at Bookshop.org, plus the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter, please join The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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It's season finale time. And have I got a festive special for you!

There is no child of the 80s who won’t remember today’s guests. For a decade, Pepsi Demacque-Crockett and Shirlie Kemp - better known as Pepsi and Shirlie - were a fixture of the charts. First as part of Wham! With Shirlie’s school friends George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, then as a duo - their first single, Heartache, reached number 2 - only being beaten to number one by their good friend George. Even now they enter most of our homes at least once a year, thanks to the legendary Wham hit, Last Christmas.

Now friends for almost 40 years, Pepsi and Shirlie have written a memoir. It’s All In Black and White records the highs and lows of being thrust into the tabloid limelight while still in their teens, coping with fame - and then the loss of it; public success, personal memories and private grief.

They joined me to talk about their crazy journey from ordinary working class girls to global chart-toppers, their lifelong friendship, confidence, hormones, miscarriage, mental health and so much more. Hope you enjoy the nostalgia trip as much as we did

Trigger warning: this episode contains candid discussion of the emotional impact of miscarriage.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including It's All In Black And White by Pepsi and Shirlie and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest this week is a woman who - to coin a bit of 1980s jargon - punched through the glass ceiling for women in TV, creating not just one but a series of female lead characters who broke the mould. And not just any old female lead but OLDER female leads. There would be no Happy Valley or Scott & Bailey if it wasn’t for Lynda La Plante’s groundbreaking creation, detective Jane Tennison, brought to life by Helen Mirren. The BAFTA and Emmy award winning screenwriter of Prime Suspect, Widows and many other hit TV shows, Lynda has written 43 bestselling books, including the young Tennison series - the latest of which is Unholy Murder - that takes Jane Tennison back to the 80s as she battles to break through in the macho Met.

Lynda is now 78 and it’s 30 years since her groundbreaking creation hit our small screens (back when there were only four channels and primetime telly really mattered). But Lynda started out as a dyslexic drama student who, she says, was “too short and plain” to get good parts. Lucky for us, she decided to try her hand at writing them instead. Lynda tells me what it was really like to be a woman in TV in the 80s and 90s (and noughties!), the humiliation that shaped her, how she learnt not to let things get to her and why you should always always ALWAYS read the small print!

She has a few things to say about contemporary crime TV drama, but this is a bit of a masterclass for any wannabe crime writers.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Unholy Murder by Lynda La Plante and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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What do you do if the person you love turns out to hold the seeds to your own destruction? My guest this week has lived through it and discovered the answer to that question the hard way. Writer and broadcaster Liz Fraser was a divorced mother of three in her 40s when she met and fell in love with M. They moved in together, she became pregnant, and when they had a daughter they decided to move to Venice. So far, so idyllic. But M was an alcoholic and Liz’s life was about to descend into a hell we all think is reserved for other people.

In her astonishingly visceral memoir, Coming Clean, Liz writes about love, addiction, mental health and recovery with rage and clarity to create an unlookawayfromable story of - well, I want to say pain and healing - but I have to be honest and say it’s mainly pain. But she also writes about love. The love that brought them together. The love that kept them that way through unimaginable trauma. The love that, against all odds, still exists.

I want to thank Liz for her candour throughout this conversation. She talks with generosity and honesty about the urge to fix everything, her sense of failure and the consequences for her own mental health. Unsurprisingly it’s upsetting in places. But I know if you’ve ever been a situation remotely like this, you’ll find what Liz has to say immensely helpful.

WARNING: this conversation includes discussion of alcoholism, addiction, emotional abuse, violence, mental health issues, self-harming, eating disorders, trauma and PTSD.

If you've been affected by any of the issues discussed in this podcast, these organisations may be able to help you.

AL-Anon - al-anon.org

Nacoa - nacoa.org.uk

Refuge - helpline: 0808 2000 247, refuge.co.uk

Samaritans - helpline: 116123, samaritans.org

Shelter - shelter.org.uk

Women's Aid - womensaid.org.uk

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Coming Clean by Liz Fraser and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest this week was known for her willingness for say it like it is even before she made a TV show about the menopause. No, not THAT one. The one BEFORE. Broadcaster Mariella Frostrup was banging the menopause drum back in 2018 when her own ignorance about her symptoms at first shocked her and then prompted her to do something bout it. The resulting documentary, The Truth About Menopause, was a smash hit.

And she’s now followed that up with a book, Cracking The Menopause, written with her friend, journalist Alice Smellie. If you’re a fan of the book of this podcast - The Shift (how I lost and found myself after 40 and you can too) - Mariella’s book will be right up your street.

Mariella and I talk candidly about all things menopause - from menopause ignorance to sleeplessness to “the bubble of poison bile” that surrounds the whole subject! She also has plenty to say about the insidiousness of women being “scrap heaped” at 50, why fearlessness is so much sexier than the ability to look 28 and why the time has come to just stop bloody putting up with it!

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Cracking The Menopause by Mariella Frostrup and Alice Smellie and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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If you, like me, have lived most of your life in fear of foundation, this week’s guest is your saviour. Because this woman saved us no-make-up girls’ lives. Back in 1991, Bobbi Brown was a makeup artist frustrated by the fact that most makeup looked like a mask so she produced a range of 10 lipsticks that actually matched people’s lips. Shocker! Those lipsticks were the start of something huge: the first eponymous make up artist led beauty brand. A brand that Bobbi sold to Estee Lauder just four years later for who knows how much. Now, after 22 years at Estee Lauder and a few years rejuvenating, Bobbi is back doing what she loves - being her own boss - and with a brand new line, Jones Road.

Bobbi joined me from her house in the Hamptons to talk about reinventing yourself in your sixties, the emotional wrench of leaving her name and her legacy behind, how to get what you want at work (and at home), seeing the beauty in growing older - emotionally and physically - and the joy of nobody trying to fix you. Oh, and how not to look like sh*t!

(By the way, Jones Road Miracle Balm is your new best friend! I’m a convert)

Find out more about Jones Road Beauty at JonesRoadBeauty.com.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest this week is a novelist, film-maker - and Zen Buddhist priest. Ruth Ozeki was born in Conneticut in the 1950s to a Japanese mother and, as she puts it, caucasian anthropologist father. Despite always wanting to write, she didn’t publish her first novel until she was 40, because, in part, she “didn’t feel entitled to”. She needn’t have worried. That novel, My Year Of Meats, won the Kiriyama Prize and the American Book Award, and her third A Tale For The Time Being, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2013. Her latest novel, The Book Of Form And Emptiness, looks destined to go the same way.

But buddhism has informed Ruth’s life just as much as - if not more than - writing. She joined me to run the conversational gamut! We talked meditation, ageing, grief, living through the death of our parents, writing out her teenage mental health crises, why objects mean so much to us, the appeal of Marie Kondo, coming to terms with our ageing face and why menopause and adolescence have so much in common.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Book Of Form And Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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How do two sensible middle aged broadcasters become the voices of a generation of pissed off older women? My guests today can tell you aaallll about that. Fi Glover and Jane Garvey were off-air colleagues who turned their on-air sensible reputations (as hosts of The Listening Project and Woman’s Hour respectively) on their heads when they launched a weeny little podcast called Fortunately.

Described as “two friends chuntering waspishly” - or as Fi and Jane put it “talking complete s**t!”, it’s now “quite successful” according to the BBC - a runaway success according to their millions of listeners.

Now they’ve written Did I Say That Out Loud, a book that’s so funny that coffee (and some other, not so pleasant stuff) came out of my nose. I joined Fi and Jane in a box room by the Thames where we chuntered about friendship, being judgemental, making involuntary noises (Jane), pushing boundaries in your fifties and why older women’s voices are relevant to everyone. Amongst many other things. Frankly, it’s like herding cats!

Is there anything these two won’t talk about? There’s only one way to find out…

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Did I Say That Out Loud by Fi Glover and Jane Garvey, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Today’s guest is former fashion journalist turned interiors blogger, Paula Sutton.

For twenty years Paula lived a typical busy busy busy 9-to-9 London life. But the birth of her third child made her question everything. Ditching her glamorous job, she and her husband and three kids decamped to rural Norfolk. There, jobless, cash-less and identity-less, she began documenting the boot-strapped doing up of their new house on Instagram, as Hill House Vintage.

And that might have been that until Paula posted a picture of herself picnicking in her gorgeous garden and found herself at the centre of a twitter storm.

Suddenly @HillHouseVintage had half a million followers and an enjoyable hobby had become a whole new career. Paula tells me about the twitter storm that upended her life, being an older black woman in the public eye, kicking the curse of “I used to be dot dot dot”, what vintage means to her, the rejuvenating power of dressing up, and why age has liberated her.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Hill House Vintage, the art of creating a joyful life by Paula Sutton, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Dubbed the Queen of Crime, Val McDermid has written 35 books (she thinks, but she’s stopped counting), sold over 17million copies and been translated into 40 languages. At the vanguard of female crimewriters, she’s created countless female sleuths but is probably best known for one of her male ones - Dr Tony Hill of the TV series Wire In The Blood. She also created Traces the BBC series aired earlier this year starring Martin (Line of Duty) Compston.

Now 65, she’s gone back to her youth. In her new book, 1979, Val explores what it was like to be a young female journalist in the male dominated tabloid newsrooms of the late 70s. And she should know because she was that hack.

But Val started out over 60 years ago as a working class kid in Fife where, at 16, she became the first ever state school educated pupil from Scotland to go to St Hilda’s College Oxford. Val lives not far from me in Edinburgh, so she popped round to hang out with Sausage the cat and chat being a young lesbian in a hetrosexual white man’s world, anger, ageing and discovering an unexpected ‘cure’ for hot flushes.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including 1979 by Val McDermid, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest this week has always been a self-starter. From flogging Blue Peter badges in the playground to earn a few extra quid to joining theaudience while she was still at school (famously telling her mum, ‘Sod school I’m going on a tour with NME’), Sophie Ellis Bextor has been doing it her own way for a very long time.

Famous almost before she was born – thanks to her mum, Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis – she’s made seven albums, aced Strictly, had five children (all boys, aged 2-17) and given us two enormous dance hits in Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) with Spiller and Murder On The Dance Floor. And that was before she brought some levity to lockdown with her sequin-strewn Kitchen Disco.

Now Sophie has written a memoir, Spinning Plates. Named for her podcast, it’s an unexpectedly candid and down to earth look at music, men and motherhood, and how her attitude to all three has changed as she’s got older.

Sophie joined me from the kitchen of Kitchen Disco fame to talk about giving voice to her 17-year-old self, reshaping her career in her 40s, the art of bouncing back and learning when to say no.

• You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Spinning Plates by Sophie Ellis Bextor, and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

• You can listen to Sophie's podcast, Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis Bextor, on apple, acast, Spotify, amazon or wherever you get your podcasts.

• The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford (isn't she brilliant?!). If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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The Shift has so many new listeners that it seemed like time to say hello, welcome and thank you for your support. It's been SO gratifying to see how many of you agreed with my hunch that there was a big appetite to hear older women talking about their lives, loves, losses and learnings.

This is a replay of the first episode I ever recorded. We weren't even sure it would be an episode - we just recorded it as a test pilot to see how it went down. Over a year, almost 50 episodes and hundreds of thousands of downloads later, it's safe to say it went down a storm. SO, in case you haven't heard it, here it is the first episode. The one recorded in my friend Tammy's kitchen. The one that started it all.

My guest this week is the ultimate career pivoter, novelist, journalist, screenwriter, (potter!) Tasmina Perry. I’ve known Tasmina (Tammy) since we were both baby editors and stuck on the management training course from hell together. We have been firm friends ever since. She’s since gone on to write 15 (!) novels - 13 as Tasmina Perry, 2 psychological thrillers as JL Butler and is now, “pushing 50”, a screenwriter. But she started life as a lawyer and is the queen of reinvention. Exactly the woman you need right now when the world is going to hell in a handcart!

She shares her advice on getting your confidence back on track, learning to put yourself out there and how not to get “stuck at the amber lights” where career is concerned. (Oh and Take That!) The new you starts here!

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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Sam's book, The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now and available to buy here

Friend of the Family by Tasmina Perry is out now in paperback and available to buy here

Mine by JL Butler is out now in paperback and available to buy here

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
Mine: The page-turning thriller of 2019 - gripping and dark with a breathtaking twist
Friend of the Family: You invited her in. Now she wants you out. The gripping page-turner you don't want to miss.

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This is the second episode I ever recorded and the most popular episode of The Shift bar none. Marian Keyes has a legion of fans and for good reason. I thought I'd replay it in preparation for the upcoming 25th anniversary of her greatest hit, Rachel's Holiday, and its long-awaited sequel, Again, Rachel, coming February 2022.

Ask any group of women to name a woman they love and I guarantee you someone will name this week’s guest, because Marian Keyes is beloved of women the world over. (She won’t believe that, but she is!) And you know why? Because she speaks the truth. She can’t not speak the truth. Which could well be why she’s sold over 35 million books. Her trademark: the silk glove of laugh out loud funny stories that conceal within them the iron fist of tough contemporary issues. The latest of which is the frankly fabliss and immensely truth-telly no. 1 bestseller Grown Ups.

Marian and I holed up in a hotel in Liverpool and recorded this with the mic propped on an ironing board. It's all glamour round these parts.

Over the next 45 minutes Marian will tell the unvarnished truth about menopause (how different would it be if it happened to men???), invisibility, infertility grief, HRT, Botox and learning to be shameless. (Oh and her passion for fashion. And beauty products. And…) In short, this episode is not to be missed.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and Grown Ups by Marian Keyes.

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This is a replay of an episode from earlier this year. If I had to choose one episode as my favourite - tough call, like choosing a favourite child! - this would probably be it. If you've heard it before, give it another listen - Isabel Allende is iconic, truly. If you haven't, you are about to meet your old bird role model....

The main word I can think of to describe this week’s guest is wise. (Well there are other words - fabulous and no-bull for starters - but wise is the biggie.) Bestselling author Isabel Allende has written 25 books including her debut, the global smash hit The House of the Spirits, published when she was 39, and two memoirs, one about the death of her daughter Paula, at the age of 29. Her latest is a memoir, The Soul of A Woman. In it, the 79 year old Chilean who has been in self-imposed exile since 1975, takes a candid look at her own life, sexuality and evolution as a feminist. What, she asks - and tries to answer - do women want?

From her home in Northern California, Isabel told me why she’s been a feminist since she was five and what feminism means to her (“Not what we have between our legs but what we have between our ears.” Love her!); being “fatally heterosexual”, and why she’s spent her life in training to be a “passionate old woman”. I defy you not to want to be her when you grow up by the end of this podcast!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende.

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This is a replay of an episode first broadcast last autumn. I'm replaying it now to coincide with the publication of Denise's new novella, Rizzio, a gripping contemporary reimagining of the 1566 murder of Mary Queen of Scots' right hand man. (And also because Denise is a total legend (not to mention extremely straight-talking) and I'm pretty sure that the new devotees The Shift has acquired over the last year will love her.)

This week’s episode comes to you from the Glasgow kitchen of straight talking crime writer Denise Mina. She’s written 15 novels, including the award-winning The Long Drop, and her last, Conviction, was scooped up by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Bookclub. But her latest, The Less Dead, based on a real life Glasgow serial killer, focusses on what makes a “good” victim versus a “bad” one, and takes her right back to her political roots.

Over an enormous pot of strong tea (she truly has the biggest tea pot I have ever seen) Denise and I go to all the places. And I mean ALL OF THEM. I could have stayed there all day. From sexism in crime fiction and what it was like growing up in the 1980s to channelling her anger, plus HRT, withering vaginas and creaking joints and so much more... Plus Denise tries (in vain) to teach me the art of confrontation; all while taking a delivery from John Lewis and baking a mean pecan pie - but don’t tell her I told you so!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, and edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

• Rizzio by Denise Mina is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

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Less Dead
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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My guest today has been MP for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. Jess Phillips still lives in Birmingham, with her husband and two sons, not far from where she grew up with her activist parents, going to women’s liberation playgroup and hanging out with her nan who listened to Prime Ministers Questions while ironing. Before becoming an MP, Jess worked for Women’s Aid - and is currently Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding.

She has also written four books (because she’s obv got so much spare time on her hands). the latest is Everything You Need To Know About Politics - a typically no bull guide to the ins and outs of being an MP. (I don’t want to prejudge anything, but I’ve got to say it reads an awful lot like a manifesto for a new kind of politics that is a touch less pale male and stale than the one we’re used to.)

Jess is quite unlike any other MP I’ve ever met. And I’ve met a few. (For my sins.) She joined me to talk about believing you CAN, why Carrie Bradshaw’s behaviour is problematically coercive and every girl has a “Cousin Anne”. She also says she won’t be standing for leader of the labour party any time soon, older women are woefully under represented and when the time comes, she’ll be wearing her menopause proudly in parliament. (Jess, we will be holding you to that!)

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Everything You Really Need To Know About Politics by Jess Phillips and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Ever wanted to chuck it all in? I mean ALL of it? My guest today did just that - baby, bathwater AND bath. For 30 years, journalist Lucy Kellaway was a columnist on the Financial Times. Then, in the space of just a couple of years she ditched not only that but her home of 15 years, her husband of 25 years - and even her hair! (Not in that order.)

In her new book, Re-educated, she talks about the overwhelming urge to remake our lives that often hits women in our 40s and 50s and why she decided to upend her life, chucking in her enviable - and some might say cushy! - highly paid job to retrain for one that er, isn’t… teaching in an inner London secondary school. Over the next 40 minutes Lucy tells me about her newfound freedom, why fear is one of the most important emotions, how her house became a physical symbol of a marriage that no longer worked for her and why going grey was possibly the biggest shift of all. (And don’t get her started on the inequities of internet dating…)

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Re-educated by Lucy Kellaway and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me! The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest today is one of the most intelligent, thoughtful people I’ve ever interviewed - and I’ve interviewed A LOT. Writer and academic, Elif Shafak has written 19 books and 12 novels and been shortlisted for countless literary prizes, including the Booker Prize. Known for her bravery and outspokenness in the face of oppressive regimes, she has almost 2million followers on social media and is the best-selling female novelist in Turkey - a country to which she has been unable to return for the past 5 years after being put on trial for, amongst other things, insulting Turkishness.

Her latest novel, The Island of Missing Trees, about the partition of Cyprus, is also about love, longing, exile and the environment. I think it might be the most beautiful thing she’s ever written, but you’ll have to judge for yourself.

Elif talks about what home means to her, the importance of freedom and sharing your truth, the two very different women who made her, the importance of lifelong learning and the art of storytelling, and why menopause signals the end of “ayip” (shame). Oh, and being a middle-aged metalhead!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including The Island Of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest today is a woman who I’m pretty sure you’ve heard of, but you may not think you have. Her name is Paula Hawkins, but you probably know her as the author of the global bestseller The Girl On The Train. A book she wrote in her early 40s after - I’m sure she won’t mind me saying - an awful lot of also-rans. The girl on the train went on to sell 23 million copies, be published in 50 countries and is one of the top 5 selling hardbacks since records began. It was also turned into a film starring Emily Blunt.

But does that level of success - and let’s face it, cash - bring with it massively liberating freedom… or the fear of never being able to live up to your own legend? Paula talks about the shock and salvation of sudden mid-life success when you’re totally broke, the importance of being able to “leave if you need to”, the likability curse that plagues women, why she always knew she didn’t want children and her hopes for her third novel, the taut, tense A Slow Fire Burning, which has some of the best older female characters I’ve read in a long time.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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How does it feel to have your life turned upside down in your mid 40s? That’s what happened to Laura Friedman Williams when, after 27 years with her husband, she discovered he was having an affair. It was something Laura had always thought they’d somehow get past but, confronted with the reality that he was in love with someone else, she knew this was it. They. Their marriage. Life as she knew it, was gone. Faced with the choice of going through the motions or getting back in the saddle, Laura realised it was time to move on.

Three years on, her funny, frank, refreshingly rude account of that sexual reinvention, Available, will bring hope to anyone who feels like they’ve just been tossed on the scrap heap. And, crucially, for all those women who are wondering what might happen if they took that leap. (I know you’re out there…!) Laura talks laughing through the pain, finding your identity when you’ve lost yourself in motherhood and marriage, the joy of first time sex second time around, the politics of pubic waxing and learning to love her body at 50.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Available by Laura Friedman-Williams and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guest this week has spent a fair part of this year at the eye of a storm. Torrey Peters’ novel Detransition, Baby - a gloriously gossipy comedy of manners - was rapturously received when it was published in January, chosen for bookclubs by everyone from Oprah to Roxane Gay, and TV rights were optioned by the team behind Grey’s Anatomy. It was lauded as “the first great trans realist novel” in one review and has been called the true heir to Sex And The City. Then Torrey became the first trans woman long listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and - surprise surprise - the haters came for her.

Torrey tells me about the bonkers year that’s changed her life: writing a surprise bestseller, becoming an unwitting poster girl for trans issues and how fiction became fact for her in the most unexpected way. She’s a total breath of fresh air on the pressure to pass and why society can shove its eyeliner requirements!; candid on the “bracing” experience of being on the receiving end of transphobia; and fascinating on finding a roadmap for ageing as a trans woman and learning to be a stepmom. Want to know why trans women and divorced cis women are natural allies? Listen on.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest this week has come a hell of a long way - from the Derbyshire village where she grew up, to London and the editor's seat of Empire magazine, by way of New York where she was one of Folio magazine’s top women in American media. Ostensibly Terri White was living the 'single woman in Manhattan' dream.

But, uber-competent at work, she was clinging by a thread in her personal life, struggling with chronic depression, self-harming and self-medicating with alcohol and prescription pills. When she was admitted to a psychiatric ward it marked the beginning of a remarkable journey that she documents in her extraordinary memoir, Coming Undone. To say it’s raw and unflinching would be a massive understatement.

Brace yourself for some extreme honesty as Terri discusses her mental health struggles, being a working class woman in a middle class world, how becoming a mother affected her relationship with her own mother, curing herself of busy busy busy and why she would not go back to 25 if you paid her. Oh, and her extremely complicated relationship with her hair.

TRIGGER WARNING: I must stress that if you’re feeling vulnerable there is frank discussion of mental health, sexual abuse, self harm and suicidal ideation.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Terri White's memoir, Coming Undone, and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Hello, and welcome to season 5 of The Shift, and I could not be happier to kick off this season with this very special guest.

What even is the “right sort of girl?” That’s a question my guest this week has long struggled to answer. Growing up in Yorkshire, TV presenter and self-proclaimed misfit Anita Rani always felt that she was somehow wrong - a feeling that was exacerbated when she moved to London to break into the media - and found herself too brown, too northern, too female. Oh, and too gobby. A triple threat with bells on. Now 43, she co-fronts two national institutions - Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and BBC’s Country File - and has finally reached a point where she felt able to answer (or at least tackle) the question: who even am I? in her memoir, The Right Sort of Girl.

Join Anita and me as we journey from 1970s Bradford to her perch on the top of the media tree via eldest-Punjabi-daughter-guilt, never ever ever talking about periods, grunge and Oprah-worship. On the way, Anita tells me why south asian women are badasses, why shapeshifting to fit other people’s expectations is a waste of energy and how she learnt to own her anger. This is a celebration of being in your 40s, being yourself and finding your purpose and I’m pretty sure that you, like me, will love her for it.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Anita Rani's memoir, The Right Sort of Girl, and the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by me!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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The best way I can think of to describe this week’s guest is that she’s a women’s health vigilante. (A vagina vigilante if you will!) Dubbed twitter’s resident gynaecologist, and the nemesis of snake oil salesmen everywhere, Dr Jen Gunter is the living embodiment of “information is power”. She has made it her life’s mission to give you the information you need to make life better for you - and for your vagina.

Best known for her book The Vagina Bible, and publicly taking Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle website Goop to task for, amongst other things, flogging jade eggs. “Dear Ms Paltrow,” she wrote back in 2017, “It is the biggest load of garbage I have read on your site since vaginal steaming.” Now Jen is bringing that same, erm, direct approach to the menopause with her new book, The Menopause Manifesto. A banger of a book that tells you everything you could possibly need to know and plenty of stuff you don’t but will be glad you do.

Jen is characteristically no-bull as she talks menopause, mental health, why we all need to know WTF is going on and why women need more menopausal role models. And whatever you do, don’t get her started on manufacturers who think shoving “meno” in front of a product name is a licence to print money…! Join me and Jen as we cross the crimson bridge and throw ourselves a meno partiy! Welcome to the order of menopause!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Menopause Manifesto by Dr Jen Gunter.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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How does it feel to come from a family with a legend? If you’re today’s guest, novelist and playwright Esther Freud (daughter of painter Lucian Freud and great granddaughter of Sigmund Freud) you work with that legacy to produce some of the finest novels of the last thirty years. Her first Hideous Kinky, based on her unusual childhood, was made into a film starring Kate Winslet and after the follow-up, Peerless Flats, she was named one of Granta’s Best Young Novelists. Scroll forward a couple of decades and her ninth novel, I Couldn’t Love You More, comes full circle, this time exploring aspects of her family’s history through the lens of three generations of mothers. (Bring tissues!)

Over the next 40 minutes Esther talks candidly about motherhood, guilt, shame, the way women are constantly judged, her own entangled family history, how the onset of menopause made her question everything and why now 57 she’s happier than ever.

CONTENT WARNING: There’s some conversation about forced adoption and Ireland’s mother and baby homes that some people may find upsetting.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and I Couldn't Love You More by Esther Freud.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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This is a replay of an episode published at the start of the year in which Kate Mosse talked about her experience of caring for both her own elderly parents, and her husband's mother. I'm replaying it now to coincide with the publication of her memoir, An Extra Pair of Hands, in which she writes movingly about that experience and its profound effect on her family.

Kate is also founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction, now in its 26th year, and a bestselling author of seven novels and two short story collections. She is kind, funny and candid as she talks about how easily women's history is erased (and why we should never forget the women who went before us), her “other” job as a full-time carer - and why caring is a feminist issue - the devaluing of women’s work, being a pathological optimist and why she CANNOT WAIT to be 60. Trigger Warning: Kate also speaks honestly about bereavement and grief, three quarters of the way through the episode.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and An Extra Pair of Hands by Kate Mosse.

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This week’s guest is the behavioural and data scientist, Dr Pragya Agarwal. A passionate campaigner for gender and race equality, Pragya is the author of the much-praised Sway, about unravelling unconscious bias, and the host of of the podcast, Wish We Knew What to Say: talking with children about race.

Pragya is also - and I tell you this only because it’s relevant to today’s conversation - the mother of three daughters, the first is now in her early twenties, her twins, now aged five. It’s that journey - from one sort of mother to another that led to her new book, (M)Otherhood: a moving (and rigorous!) personal exploration into what it means to be (or not be) a mother when you don’t fit society’s mould.

Over the next 45 minutes Pragya blows my mind with her braininess about everything from the myth of choice and learning to embrace ambivalence, body image, being a good girl, how motherhood changed her relationship with her own mother and why she wished she was her father’s son.

A self-confessed worrier, she also talks candidly about how brown women are invisible when it comes to fertility, premature menopause and her ultimate decision to pursue surrogacy.

CONTENT WARNING: there is some discussion of infertility

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and (M)Otherhood by Pragya Agarwal.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest this week is a business woman, broadcaster, curator, tastemaker and DJ. She headlines festivals, hosts one of BBC Radio 1’s flagship shows, was Europe’s biggest female DJ and has her own hit podcast Changes with Annie Mac. And now, as if that wasn’t e-bloody-nough (bc let’s not forget the two kids), Annie Macmanus has written her first novel, Mother Mother. Oh and she’s cool. And nice. (In the best possible way. Not in the I’m too lazy to think of a proper adjective kind of way.)

Over the next 45 minutes, Annie talks about the unexpected impact of turning 40, growing up with her fans and why middle aged women are a force to be reckoned with. Although this was recorded before she resigned from her job hosting Radio 1's flagship show, she’s candid about saying goodbye to DJing and how it feels to start again professionally, why she’s a control-fan and how she learnt to be comfortable in her own skin. Plus she gives me a lesson in radical no-ness!

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and Mother Mother by Annie MacManus.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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The phrase force-of-nature was created to describe this week’s guest. Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy has been fighting back and refusing to shut up for the best part of 50 years. She has been assaulted and detained in Tahir Square, banned from an Australian TV network, and has made it her business to be the scourge of the pale male, and stale everywhere. She is also a huge source of inspiration for women and girls the world over through her Feminist Giant newsletter.

In her new book - The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, a fierce, fearless and utterly uninhibited manifesto and call to arms - she tackles head on all the things women are taught from an early age and encourages us to stick two fingers up to the lot of them. Mona doesn’t want equality - she wants to set us free. She wants us to be the star of our own lives. She wants us to sin!

Mona is unashamedly political as she talks anger, perimenopause, ambition, ageing disgracefully, going grey and why she believes it’s up to us to decide how we want to emerge on the other side of menopause.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Seven Necessary Sins For Women And Girls by Mona Eltahawy.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest this week is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Probably best known for the Bechdel test - a tongue in cheek method she came up with in the 80s for assessing gender bias in movies. She became a household name when Fun Home, her graphic novel/memoir about coming out and her father’s death, became a bestseller and was turned into an award-winning musical. Her new autobiographical graphic novel, The Secret To Superhuman Strength is a funny-not funny exploration of her own search for inner and outer strength through the lens of 60 years of fitness fads.

Alison and I go on a “rambling stroll” through the six decades of her life as we chat about everything from tarot to very much not being a team player. Alison talks candidly about escaping self-consciousness, coming to terms with ageing, why men are scared of women who can do push ups and why she’s forever nine years old.

And together we come up with a Bechdel test for women over 40. Challenge you to come up with a movie that passes it.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Secret To Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Entrepreneur and fashion designer Anya Hindmarch is the queen of practicality. The bags for which her eponymous label is famous have long been adored for their pockets, compartments, zips and the fact they’re not weighed down with hardware - I mean seriously who wants a bag that’s too heavy to carry when it’s EMPTY?! It’s that super-sensible but fun, creative approach that saw her lauded as Accessories Designer of the year at the British Fashion Awards. So it’s no surprise that her never-fail piece of advice - if In doubt, wash your hair - has become the title of her first book - Part life manual, part memoir, part business book and all “let’s be having you”.

It also sums her up perfectly - light-hearted on the surface yet with a fiercely common sensical core. Anya joined me over zoom (where else?!) to talk self-doubt and learning to have faith in your own ability, bringing inclusivity and responsibility to the fashion industry, why emotion is a female superpower, being proudly not cool and why she’s passionate about pockets.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and If In Doubt Wash Your Hair by Anya Hindmarch.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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This week’s guest is a writer, photographer, sheep rearer (pretty sure that’s not the right word for it), crofter and expert at the dark art of being alone. Tamsin Calidas lived a relatively anonymous life on a small Scottish island, until she wrote her memoir, I am an island, about her experience of moving from London to the comparatively remote Hebrides.

In doing so, she was living the dream of every midlife woman I know. Or was she?

From her stone croft (no heating - and on the day we talk, bloody freezing!) Tamsin is disarmingly honest about infertility, becoming perimenopausal in her thirties and adapting to life as an older single woman in a community built on family. She also talks about living in nature, how wild swimming saved her and the benefits of choosing the harder path. She was speaking to me from the Hebrides, so apologies for the occasionally shonky sound.

CONTENT WARNING: infertility.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and I Am An Island by Tamsin Calidas.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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Like many 80s kids, I grew up with today’s guest. Tracey Thorn started early, forming The Marine Girls (once described as looking like they would “break your arm before they’d let you break their hearts”), while still at school, and Everything But The Girl, with her musical and life partner Ben Watt, whilst at university. Since then she’s released three solo albums, three critically acclaimed memoirs - and had three children.

Her fourth book - My Rock’n’Roll Friend - about her 37 year on-off friendship with Lindy Morrison (drummer of Australian band The Go-Betweens) is my favourite yet.

Tracey talks success, power, the “constant slog” of making women’s voices heard and why equality is a numbers game. She also tells us why menopause made her feel like she’d gone mad, the painful-but-liberating process of ageing and what to do about your statement hair going grey (asking for a friend!).

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and My Rock'n'Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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I am thrilled to kick off season four - season bloody four! - of The Shift with today’s guest, Mel Giedroyc (and yes I did practice saying that 935 times). Mel is (she reckons) the more punctual half of beloved comedy duo, Mel and Sue, an actress, writer and, drum roll, NATIONAL TREASURE thanks to the best part of seven years spent eating cake. (Nice gig if you can get it) And now - bloody over-achiever - she’s written her debut novel, The Best Things, which is as warm, hilarious and full of pin-sharp observation as you’d expect.

Mel talks ironing - and asks the big question: who actually irons? The terror of hitting the financial skids and walking away from the Bake Off payday. Being a menopause-dodger and the importance of bringing more perimenopausal characters to our screens. AND writing her first novel at 51. 51! There is hope for us all! (Or is Mel just exceptional... I'll leave it to you to decide.) Either way there's tons of juvenile humour and plenty of sniggering. You have been warned.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Best Things by Mel Giedroyc.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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You know when people say you’re “brave” because you’ve got a few grey hairs?! Well, my guest this week is the living proof - as if it were needed - that that is a right old load of BS. Channel 4 International Editor Lindsey Hilsum is an acclaimed foreign correspondent who has reported from all over the world including Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Kosovo and Rwanda. She also won the James Tait Black Award for In Extremis, her devastating biography of her friend, the foreign reporter, Marie Colvin who was killed reporting from Syria in 2012.

Lindsey is just as bold as her job might lead you to expect. She takes no prisoners as she talks about managing menopause symptoms in a war zone, being in a minority on the box and why there needs to be more “old trouts on TV” (and, no, she’s not bloody brave for going grey on screen), and how she finally found the perfect answer to “Give us a smile love”. Only took forty years…

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and In Extremis: the life of war correspondent Marie Colvin by Lindsey Hilsum.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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My guests this week have both lived fascinating lives. Both have experienced ups and downs. Both are now 55 and have found themselves in this place in life that has brought them a surprising new power. Actress, producer, businesswoman and compulsive learner Sadie Frost and award winning actress and singer/songwriter Frances Ruffelle first met at school in 1976 (when they were the scruffy, noisy, naughty ones at the back!) and have been firm friends ever since.

They are also both yoga addicts, so it made perfect sense for them to launch their new business, Yin & Tonic, that combines short soothing routines with mindful music. I zoomed in with the life long besties to talk about how their 45 year friendship is more important than any marriage, being in the middle of the “muddy soup” of menopause (insomnia!) and why Sadie’s looking forward to finally “leaving home” at 55. And yoga, of course. I also got raging house envy.

Find Yin & Tonic's yoga sessions on youtube.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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My guest today is the Ghanaian American writer Nana-Ama Danquah. Nana-Ama found herself in the public eye when, in the late 90s, she published her memoir Willow Weep For Me about suffering from clinical depression - one of the first books to openly discuss black women’s mental health experience. Critically acclaimed by the likes of the late, great Maya Angelou, its description of the shame, dismissal, denial and out and out despair experienced by many black women started a much-needed conversation that was widely credited with “saving lives”. (It's currently not published in the UK - publishers I AM LOOKING AT YOU!)

Now 53, Nana-Ama joined me from her home in (sunny) California (grrr) to talk about the double - in fact, make that triple - burden of mental health, menopause and being black, why black women are driving change right now, how menopause turned her into a hot mess and how she’s finally learnt the joy of doing what you do until you die.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker. Willow Weep For Me by Nana-Ama Danquah is not published in the UK, but you can buy it from amazon.co.uk or abebooks.co.uk.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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The main word I can think of to describe this week’s guest is wise. (Well there are other words - fabulous and no-bull for starters - but wise is the biggie.) Bestselling author Isabel Allende has written 25 books including her debut, the global smash hit The House of the Spirits, published when she was 39, and two memoirs, one about the death of her daughter Paula, at the age of 29. In her latest, The Soul of A Woman, the 79 year old Chilean who has been in self-imposed exile since 1975, takes a candid look at her own life, sexuality and evolution as a feminist. What, she asks - and tries to answer - do women want?

From her home in Northern California, Isabel explains why she’s been a feminist since she was five and what feminism means to her (“Not what we have between our legs but what we have between our ears.” Love her!); being “fatally heterosexual”, and why she’s spent her life in training to be a “passionate old woman”. I defy you not to want to be her when you grow up by the end of this podcast!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende.

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This week is a bit of a “how to cope when your life spirals out of control and goes tits up!” Special! And my guest, journalist Rosie Green, is an unwilling expert on midlife chaos. She was 44 (there’s that age again…) when her contented, settled, literally roses-round-the-door family life was pulled out from under her when her husband and partner of 26 years told her he didn’t love her any more - well, he did, but “like a friend”. Yep, I know.

Three years on, Rosie has flipped the pain of that heartbreak around, rebuilding her life and her career. One of the results is her new book, How To Heal A Broken Heart - and even though it’s specifically about being dumped in midlife, you’ll also find it useful if you’re experiencing any kind of cataclysmic shift that shatters your sense of self. Listen on as Rosie bares her soul and explains how she got back in the saddle - domestically, professionally and sexually.

And because she's a generous kinda gal, Rosie also throws in some midlife beauty tips. Well, why wouldn't you?

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and How To Heal A Broken Heart by Rosie Green.

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Like many women, my guest this week has lived a lot of lives in one. Married and divorced in her 20s, Sarah Pinborough left a career in teaching, became a horror writer and taught herself to script write, but it was when she turned her hand to psychological thrillers, when she was 44 (remember that age, it’s definitely significant!), that things went ‘a little nuts’.

That book, Behind Her Eyes, went onto sell a million copies and is now coming to Netflix as a highly bingeable series (18 February 2021 - get it on your watchlist). Sarah is honestly the only person (OK, woman) I have ever interviewed who has spoken so freely and frankly about money, how it changed her life in her mid-40s and why it can vanish as quickly as it arrived. She made me realise that knowing your financial worth is quite rare even in successful women - and we need to get a lot more comfortable talking about cash. I was quite shocked by how uncomfortable Sarah’s frankness made me feel. (Not to mention unattractively jealous!) This one is a real thought-provoker. She's also gives some fascinating insider info on the way women (especially older women) are portrayed on screen - when they're portrayed at all - and weighs in on the "why is Hugh Grant allowed to look 60 when Nicole Kidman has to pass for 30" debate spawned by The Undoing.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Where to start with the last decade of this week's guest's life? After struggling to get pregnant, Alexandra Heminsley finally conceived at 40 after unsuccessful rounds of IVF. You might hope that was the end of the stress. But no. First came the DNA test that questioned whether the embryo was really hers and then, as she tried to adapt to life as the mother of a much longed-for newborn, her husband D reached a point where they felt they had no choice but to transition. Oh, and She was also assaulted on public transport whilst heavily pregnant.

In her compassionate and brave new memoir, Some Body To Love, Alex explores how it feels to be gaslit by your own body, how she finally found peace with hers and what it even means to be a parent. If you’re struggling with your own body image, feel you’ve lost your sense of self or are coping with radical - or even not so radical - change, you may find some solace here. (Also, Trigger Warning: I should tell you that Alex talks frankly about infertility, miscarriage, sexual assault and her experience of her partner transitioning.)

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and Some Body To Love by Alexandra Heminsley.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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You’d be hard pushed to think of anyone who has done more for women writers than this week’s guest. Twenty five years ago, Kate Mosse was working in publishing when she looked around and realised that everyone on all the awards shortlists looked familiar - pale, male and stale. The result - the Women’s Prize for Fiction - has just celebrated its 25th anniversary, and given a much-needed voice to women’s writing.

Kate is also a bestselling author of 7 novels and 2 short story collections including the millions-selling global smash hit Labyrinth and her new book, The City of Tears. Kate is kind, funny and candid as she talks about how easily women's history is erased (and why we should never forget the women who went before us), her “other” job as a full-time carer - and why caring is a feminist issue - the devaluing of women’s work, being a pathological optimist and why she CANNOT WAIT to be 60. Trigger Warning: Kate also speaks honestly about bereavement and grief, three quarters of the way through the episode.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and The City of Tears by Kate Mosse.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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This week's guest is acclaimed poet, author and activist, Salena Godden. Now in her late 40s, Salena has been writing and performing since 1994 when she moved to London seeking the bright lights and never looked back. In her evocative debut novel, Mrs Death Misses Death, the self-confessed “dreamer” brings death to life as a middle-aged black woman and combines prose, poetry and non-fiction to tell the stories of the invisible women society prefers to ignore.

Over the next half hour, the woman once described as “everything the Daily Mail is terrified of” talks about "not being here for babies” (and how glad is she that she’ll never be asked THAT question again), being in the midst of “all the weather”, why she thinks menopause is a return to the magic of childhood and why 40+ is where the party is.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review, or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker and Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden.

See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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How's 2021 for you so far?! I know, right? Well, who better to grab us by the scruff of the neck at just the point our meagre enthusiasm is starting to wear off than Philippa Perry? Philippa has been a psychotherapist for 20 years. She’s also an agony aunt, presenter and author of the bestseller, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read (and your children will be glad you did) - a clever, funny - and SANE - guide that acknowledges ‘they f*ck you up, your mum and dad’, and then helps you try not to do the same.

Philippa is completely fascinating as she talks about “getting hold of the steering wheel of life”, why plummeting oestrogen levels made her “homicidal not suicidal”, why women should stop playing “mine’s smaller than yours” and her own battle to silence her inner critic. And if you want to know how to make a sweary cushion you’ve come to the right place.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. I'd love to hear what you think - please rate and review or let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including the book that accompanies this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too and The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read and Couch Fiction.

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How can it possibly be season three already?! Time flies when you're locked indoors binge-watching repeats! After full and frank conversations about life after 40 (and I DO mean full and frank!) in the first two seasons with the likes of Marian Keyes, Emma Freud, Jojo Moyes, Jo Whiley, Sara Collins, Bryony Gordon, Jodi Picoult, Gabby Logan and many more, we're back with lots more chat about everything from hormones to cash flow, body image to the portrayal of midlife women on screen to the triple burden of menopause, mental health and being black. Guests to look out for include therapist Philippa Perry, poet Salena Godden, bestselling novelists Isabel Allende and Kate Mosse and international reporter Lindsey Hilsum. PLUS I might have a couple of surprises up my sleeve...

The Shift with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. We'd love to know what you think so please do rate and review - or message me on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

You can find all the books featured and recommended on The Shift with Sam Baker on Bookshop.org.

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My guest this week has hosted everything from Final Score to the Six Nations to the Olympics. Formerly an international gymnast, Gabby Logan moved into broadcasting in her early 20s and neither she – nor the male-dominated world of sports broadcasting – have looked back. Now 47, she’s launched The Mid-Point, a podcast about midlife career change and becoming more comfortable in your own skin. 

Join us as Gabby talks resilience, reclaiming “middle age”, competitive coping, cooking for Mary Berry and why equality begins at home. Oh, and how it feels to be the Dame Judi Dench of sports broadcasting! And… There’s SO MUCH more. You’ll just have to listen on…

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out in hardback and available to buy here.

Listen to series one of The Mid•point with Gabby Logan on apple podcasts, spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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Feel like your wardrobe has turned against you? Your body’s gone awol and you've mislaid your style mojo? This week’s guest is the answer to your sartorial prayers. Fashion journalist and lifestyle blogger Erica Davies’s career spans two decades: at 24 she was the youngest ever national newspaper fashion editor, on The Sun. At 44 she is a legit Instagram influencer – one of very few representing the legion women between 30 and 80! - has over 150,000 followers and has just captured her styling wisdom in a book: Leopard is a neutral.

And no, she’s not loaded and she’s not a size 8. She’s a working mum of two with a body to match. Which is why her book is SO useful. Listen on for her advice on what to do when you feel like the fashion industry is shoving you out the door into granny clothes, how to regain your style identity and why fashion rules are, well, frankly, BS. Plus she shares her shopping tricks, personal style icons and the superpower that means she hardly ever sends anything back.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out in hardback and available to buy here.

• Leopard is a neutral by Erica Davies is out in hardback and available to buy here.

Follow Erica on instagram @erica_davies

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Leopard is Neutral: A Really Useful Style Guide
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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This week’s guest is the award-winning novelist, Maggie O’Farrell. The author of eight novels, most recently the stunning Women’s Prize winner, Hamnet, and one of my favourite memoirs of all time, I Am, I Am, I am. And now she’s written a children’s book, the absolutely gorgeous Where Snow Angels Go, which is a banker for a Christmas Day teatime animation a la The Snowman if ever I saw one.

While Maggie noses through my bookcase and plays with Sausage the (tail-less) cat, we talk being a social media refusenik, giving voice to women’s stories, saying good riddance to the male gaze, why she never thought she was the marrying kind. Oh, and why she still secretly fears someone might take her Women’s Prize away! Frankly, if Maggie O’Farrell has imposter syndrome, what hope is there for the rest of us?

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out in hardback and available to buy here.

• Where Snow Angels go by Maggie O’Farrell and Daniela Jaglenka Terrazzini is out in hardback and available to buy here - the perfect stocking filler!

• Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell is out in hardback and available to buy here.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
Where Snow Angels Go

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This week’s episode comes to you from the Glasgow kitchen of straight talking crime writer Denise Mina. (Lockdown let up long enough for me to leave the house - yay!) She’s written 15 novels, including the award-winning The Long Drop, and her last, Conviction, was scooped up by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine Bookclub. But her latest, The Less Dead, based on a real life Glasgow serial killer, focusses on what makes a “good” victim versus a “bad” one, and takes her right back to her political roots.

Over an enormous pot of strong tea (she truly has the biggest tea pot I have ever seen) Denise and I go to all the places. And I mean ALL OF THEM. I could have stayed there all day. From sexism in crime fiction and what it was like growing up in the 1980s to channelling her anger, plus HRT, withering vaginas and creaking joints and so much more... Plus Denise tries (in vain) to teach me the art of confrontation; all while taking a delivery from John Lewis and baking a mean pecan pie - but don’t tell her I told you so!

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

• The Less Dead by Denise Mina is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

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Less Dead
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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This week’s guest has been in the tabloids since her early teens. In fact, like me, you’re probably guilty of thinking you know all about Meg Mathews just because you read about her marriage to Noel Gallagher, her partying with the “primrose hill set” and her journey off the rails and back on again. But she’s set out to prove us all wrong with her campaign to put an end to the menopause taboo and a new book, The New Hot.

In her immaculate North London living room, Meg talked to me with brutal honesty about the symptoms that almost stole her sanity, “losing the will to live” and - trigger warning - how watching her mum die from osteoporosis made her determined the same would never happen to her - or her daughter Anais. Meg is bold, brave and candid and you may find some of her experience upsetting, but this is a must-listen if you’re either in the throes of perimenopause or forty something and feeling like you’ve lost your marbles! (There is also some vagina talk – which is only to be expected if you put Meg and me in the same room for more than five minutes!)

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

• The New Hot by Meg Mathews is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Find out more at megsmenopause.com.

Get more information at menopausedoctor.co.uk.

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The New Hot: Taking on the Menopause with Attitude and Style
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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This week I’m chatting to a woman who is the very definition of a Bestseller. Jodi Picoult has written 24 global smash hits (including A Spark of Light and Small Great Things) all with her inimitable mix of hard hitting issues and intimate personal stories, and her last eight novels have debuted at No 1 in the New York Times bestseller list.

Her new novel, The Book of Two Ways, is a page turning exploration of life, death, grief and the biggest question of all - what would our lives look like if we’d taken a different path? Who doesn’t wonder that sometimes/often/all the time? (delete as applicable!)? Over a cup of coffee as big as her head, Jodi shares her own ‘what if’ moment, why covid-19 makes her fear for women’s position in society and why she’s angrier than ever. Put it this way she’s a fierce defender of women’s rights and an outspoken critic of Donald Trump…!

(Jodi was sitting in her attic on America's East coast so apologies in advance if the transatlantic quality is occasionally a bit shonky.)

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

• The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Jodi's book recommendation: Beach Read by Emily Henry is available to buy in paperback.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
The Book of Two Ways: A stunning novel about life, death and missed opportunities
Beach Read

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This week’s guest will be no stranger to you but she’s a little bit of a different one for The Shift because, at 40, Bryony Gordon is a mere whipper snapper, but she’s crammed a whole lot of living into those years. Journalism, Mental health campaigning, marathon running, body positivity activism, bestselling books and, as we’ll be hearing, alcoholism.

In her latest bestseller, Glorious Rock Bottom, Bryony gives a painfully candid account of alcoholism, what it does to the alcoholic and the people around them - and, crucially, how it feels to come through it. It is TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH. It is also immensely likeable and - dare I say it because this is not a Bryony thing - heartwarming. Aaaah! Bryony talks openly about everything from addiction and abuse to shame (and shaming yourself), forgiveness, the tyranny of being a "good" mother, the craziness of women lying about their age and why she will never, ever moan about getting older. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

TRIGGER WARNING: Bryony talks candidly about her alcoholism, mental health crises and suicidal ideation.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

• The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

• Glorious Rock Bottom by Bryony Gordon is out in hardback and available to buy here. Her new book, a practical guide to mental health called, No Such Thing as Normal, is published on 7 January. Click here to preorder.

Bryony's book recommendation: Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud. Out now in hardback and available to buy here.

You can follow bryony on instagram @bryonygordon.

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No Such Thing as Normal
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
Love After Love
Glorious Rock Bottom

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My brilliant guest for the first episode of this season is a very special one. You may not have heard of Karen Arthur, but you sure as hell will have done by the time she’s finished with you. Because Karen - the founder of Menopause Whilst Black - is a woman on a mission. In the few months since she launched Menopause Whilst Black on Instagram she has become a force to be reckoned with in the fast-growing “menopause community” (not sure what that is, but it will come as no surprise to you that it was very, very white…) and now she’s launched a podcast of the same name.

For the first three decades of her working life, Karen was a teacher. Then she had a breakdown that caused her to rethink everything about her life (sound familiar?!). She recreated herself as a fashion designer, activist, campaigner, model and set about giving black menopausal women a much needed voice. Join Karen and me for an eye-openingly honest and generous conversation about what can happen when you hit a wall and don’t even know who you are any more.

You can follow Karen on instagram @thekarenarthur and @menopausewhilstblack. Find Menopause Whilst Black podcast on spotify.

The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out now in hardback, and available to buy from Amazon and all good bookshops.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is hosted by Sam Baker, produced by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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Where to start with this week’s guest? Now 58, Emma Freud is a broadcaster, presenter, columnist and fund-raiser, for want of a better way of putting the incredible work she and her partner Richard Curtis do with Comic Relief. And she’s got four kids. And a bazillion pets (listen on for kittens!). And she lives in my Pinterest board. And she’s not afraid to call a spade a spade. Lots of spades, in fact.

In a no-holds barred conversation, Emma talks frankly about reshaping Comic Relief for a new generation, how being the mother of one of the country’s most outspoken millennials, Scarlett Curtis, has changed her attitudes to just about everything, the contradictions of ageing (will dye, won’t Botox) and why she will never ever deny her age.

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Find out more about Comic Relief here.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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This week's guest is journalist and author, Kate Spicer. Kate went from “just another journalist” to national treasure and the country’s most famous dog-lover when her dog Wolfie went missing and she enlisted twitter to help find him. That story became a book, Lost Dog (billed as What did Fleabag do next? But equally a story about the love between a lost human and her four-legged friend), and is now on the way to becoming a film.

There is no-one better than Kate to talk about the way child-free women are stereotyped (dog as baby substitute anyone?), the way menopausal women are stereotyped, the way women are stereotyped fullstop! There’s also swearing. And chemicals (and not just the hormone replacing kind). Kate is funny, frank (and sweary!) as she tells the unvarnished truth about hitting her 50s as a single woman, slowing down her hectic party girl lifestyle and coming to terms with the changes wrought by menopause. (Oh, and her past life as a pyromaniac!)

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Lost Dog by Kate Spicer is out now in paperback and available to buy here.

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Lost Dog
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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Career crises are tough at the best of times, but imagine being in the midst of menopause - hot flushes, anxiety, brain fog, the lot - and finding your thirty year career is crashing down around your ears. That’s what happened to this week’s guest, the brilliant DJ and broadcaster Jo Whiley when she was given the job of co-hosting BBC radio 2’s drive time slot with Simon Mayo. She talks honestly about coming through the most turbulent year of her career, regaining her confidence, learning to listen to your heart not your detractors, going outside your comfort zone, empty nest syndrome, why she’s obsessed with fitness and why “age appropriate” dressing can do one.

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Hear Jo on BBC Radio 2 Monday-Thursday 8-10pm.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too

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This week’s guest this week is the epitome of grown up style - so much so that her effortless look has earnt her almost a million followers on Instagram. At 45, French model and producer Caroline de Maigret is the face of Chanel and co-author of two bestselling books that take a tongue in cheek look at the whole 'cult of the French woman' thing.

So how does it feel when your face (and body) is your fortune and you discover that - yes! - even fashion icons age? Especially when you go to get a mole checked and your dermatologist suggests you “get those wrinkles looked at”! (Seriously...) Listen on for Caroline’s tips on loving your style post-40, how the fashion industry treats older women and why she thinks age is no excuse for anything. Plus you can learn the French equivalent of “old bag”. So, it’s educational too!

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Older But Better (but older) by Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Caroline's book recommendation: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, available to buy here.

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Older, but Better, but Older: From the Authors of How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
The Second Sex (Everyman's Library)

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How does it feel to suddenly become ultra-visible just as the world is trying to invisible you? That’s what happened to this week’s guest, mega-selling novelist Jojo Moyes, when the book her old publishers didn't want to publish - Me Before You - became a global bestseller and smash-hit movie in her mid-40s.

Since then every book Jojo has written has been a bestseller and she’s sold the movie rights to pretty much everything she’s ever written. (Not remotely jealous.) Her latest, The Giver Of Stars, the transporting story of a group of women setting up a horseback library in the Appalachians is currently at the top of the bestseller lists and a movie is underway.

But life wasn’t always like that. Far from it. Jojo is funny and frank about the impact of stratospheric success on her professional and personal life. How it felt to be suddenly visible in her late forties. Health, fitness, freedom, a new found love of clothes and why she feels better than ever at 50. She also reveals how she finally overcame Imposter Syndrome, why she no longer suffers fools and how making new friends at 50 has been a revelation.

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

The Giver Of Stars by Jojo Moyes is out now in paperback and available to buy here.

Jojo's book recommendation: Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, out now in paperback and available to buy here.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
THREE WOMEN
The Giver of Stars*

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My guest this week will give hope to anyone who’s looking at their work life and wondering WTF? The inspirational Sara Collins was a lawyer and mother of five (I know!) when she looked at her life and thought: no more! (The job, not the kids!) She took a creative writing course and wrote the first few chapters of the book that was to become her debut novel and a runaway bestseller on both sides of the atlantic that has received glowing reviews from everyone from Oprah to Margaret Atwood to Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo: The Confessions of Frannie Langton.

Now Sara is writing the TV script for Frannie and working on her second novel. All this while experiencing hot flushes, brain fog and all the other sure signs that menopause is coming for you. Sara talks frankly about turning a midlife crisis into career success, writing the book you’d always wished existed, the power of women’s anger and why she can’t decide whether or not to Botox those pesky frown lines.

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins is out now in paperback and available to buy here.

Sara's book recommendations: Such A Fun Age by Kylie read, out in hardback and available to buy here and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, available to buy here.

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
Such A Fun Age
The Confessions of Frannie Langton: 'A dazzling page-turner' (Emma Donoghue)
Jane Eyre (Baker Street Readers)

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Ask any group of women to name a woman they love and I guarantee you someone will name this week’s guest, because Marian Keyes is beloved of women the world over. (She won’t believe that, but she is!) And you know why? Because she speaks the truth. She can’t not speak the truth. Which could well be why she’s sold over 35 million books. Her trademark: the silk glove of laugh out loud funny stories that conceal within them the iron fist of tough contemporary issues. The latest of which is the frankly fabliss and immensely truth-telly no. 1 bestseller Grown Ups.

Over the next 45 minutes Marian will tell the unvarnished truth about menopause (how different would it be if it happened to men???), invisibility, infertility grief, HRT, Botox and learning to be shameless. (Oh and her passion for fashion. And beauty products. And…) In short, this episode is not to be missed.

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too by Sam Baker is out in hardback on 10 September and available to buy here.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes is out now in hardback and available to buy here.

Marian's book recommendation: Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, out in paperback and available to buy here.

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Grown-Ups
The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
THREE WOMEN

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My guest this week is the ultimate career pivoter, novelist, journalist, screenwriter, (potter!) Tasmina Perry. I’ve known Tasmina (Tammy) since we were both baby editors and stuck on the management training course from hell together. We have been firm friends ever since. She’s since gone on to write 15 (!) novels - 13 as Tasmina Perry, 2 psychological thrillers as JL Butler and is now, “pushing 50”, a screenwriter. But she started life as a lawyer and is the queen of reinvention. Exactly the woman you need right now when the world is going to hell in a handcart!

She shares her advice on getting your confidence back on track, learning to put yourself out there and how not to get “stuck at the amber lights” where career is concerned. (Oh and Take That!) The new you starts here!

Note: this podcast was recorded before lockdown.

The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker, edited by Emily Sandford. I’d love to hear what you think - please let me know on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker

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Sam's book, The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too is out 10/9 in hardback and available to buy here

Friend of the Family by Tasmina Perry is out now in paperback and available to buy here

Mine by JL Butler is out now in paperback and available to buy here

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The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too
Mine: The page-turning thriller of 2019 - gripping and dark with a breathtaking twist
Friend of the Family: You invited her in. Now she wants you out. The gripping page-turner you don't want to miss.

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Sam Baker gives us the lowdown on her new podcast series, The Shift.

Check out Sam's new book, The Shift - How I (lost and) found myself after 40 - and you can too:

At Amazon: https://amzn.to/2XSzw8h

And Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781529329766

The Shift: How I (lost and) found myself after 40 – and you can too