The Shift with Sam Baker

Hello and welcome to SEASON 22(!) of The Shift with Sam Baker podcast. That's 300 fascinating conversations with women in midlife and beyond, if you're new here and fancy diving in. (To think that when I started it back in 2020, I thought I'd only do six!)

My guest today is Sarah Hiscox. Now a counsellor for NA and AA, amongst other things, the first three and a half decades of Sarah’s life were marked by turbulence and addiction.

Sarah was just eight years old when she first experienced the oblivion dr...

Ever since I wrote about Stacey Duguid's campaign to shine a light on women's midlife career crisis loads of you have messaged me to say, 'Get her on the podcast!' Well, I have news for you - Stacey has been on the podcast! She first shared her midlife experience with me in September 2023, but now she's made it her mission to life the lid on the secret midlife career shame so many of us are suffering it felt like the right time to revisit our conversation. This is not about the unfolding career crisis but I think there's...

This episode first aired in the summer of 2022. I'm replaying it now because Altered Images are going back on the road this autumn, touring their iconic album, Happy Birthday, 45 years (45!!!) after its release....

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...

This episode first aired June 2022...

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 2022, 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...

This episode first aired in autumn 2022. I'm replaying it now because Dawn's new memoir, Hungry Eyes, borne of her love of food (and her Celebrity Masterchef almost triumph!) is out now...

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 th...

This episode first aired last autumn, but I'm replaying it now because last week Lyse won The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction for her remarkable people's history of Afghanistan, The Finest Hotel in Kabul...

My guest today is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet.

Since starting work at the corporation almost forty years ago, Lyse has covered all the major wars in the Middle East, reporting from Afghanistan Iraq Iran Jordan Israel Pakistan Egypt Libya and most recently Gaza. And that’s before we get started on the rest of the worl...

My guest today is the woman who put Cleanse & Polish cleanser and muslin cloths in bathroom cabinets all over the country, Liz Earle.

Back in the 1980s, Liz started her career as a beauty editor, before going on to found a skincare empire that started with the aforementioned Cleanse & Polish - and grew beyond her wildest expectations. 

In her own words, she then spent 15 years ‘travelling the world selling face cream’.

Then a period of intense personal upheaval in her 40s led to a total...

My guest this week is a historian columnist television presenter and vocal advocate for better sex for women!

I first encountered Dr Kate Lister when I stumbled across her brilliant instagram account @whoresofyore, along with half a million others. 

In a world where even back in the late 20-teens where we thought the work was, if not done, then at least going in the right direction - laughs hollowly - it was still radical for someone to stand up and say that women demanding better sex didn’t arrive wit...

My guest this week is Maria Semple the author of one of my favourite books of all time, Where’d you go bernadette,.

Once encountered, Bernadette Fox is never forgotten. I wasn’t alone, Bernadette was translated into 40 languages, sold over 200k copies in the UK alone, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and was made into a movie starring Cate Blanchett.

Maria, who was previously a TV writer for Saturday Night Live and Arrested Development, amongst others, has written two other novels, and is now back with a four...

Today’s episode will take you ricocheting back to the 90s - in all the ways.

Canadian singer, songwriter, photographer and producer Melissa Auf der Maur is best known as the bassist of Hole throughout the  mid/late 90s, and consequently had a front row seat at the pillorying of Hole’s legendary front woman Courtney Love. As she puts it, ‘I watched society burn a woman at the stake’.

For a few years, she was at the heart of two of the era’s biggest bands - moving from Hole t...

My guest today is Dr Katriona O’Sullivan. 

Katriona grew up in Coventry and her early life was marked by poverty, addiction and abuse. She became pregnant and subsequently homeless at 15, let down and written off by the adults who were meant to care for her.

In 1998 she moved to Dublin with her son and entered Trinity College through the access programme. There She earnt a Phd in psychology and is now a professor at Maynooth university, directs the National Centre for inclusive higher education and writes a regular col...

My guest today is the acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt.

The author of seven novels (including my personal favourite What I Loved and the Booker longlisted The Blazing World), five essay collections, a poetry collection and a memoir, The Shaking Woman, or a history of my nerves. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is also a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical college.

Siri’s work has always explored the liminal space between mind, memory and heart but perhaps none more so than her la...

There aren’t many people I let make a repeat visit to The Shift, but sometimes a guest proves so popular that I have to make an exception. That’s the case with journalist and author Bryony Gordon.

The first time Bryony came on The Shift we talked mental health, alcoholism and the gratitude she felt in reaching 40 . A couple of years later it was all about perimenopause. Today, Bryony is back and we’re talking about what happens when you hit that pinch point in midlife where the people pleasing hormone heads for the do...

My guest today is the pioneering publisher, Margaret Busby. It is safe to say that without Margaret’s lifelong work the publishing industry today- and indeed our bookshelves - might look very different. 

In 1965, at just 22, she became Britain’s youngest first black female publisher, when she formed Allison and busby with Clive Allison, who she met at a party at university.

Margaret was editorial director there for 20 years - when the business was bought, the buyers retained Allison, but not Busby. Hmmm...

Since then...

This episode first aired in May 2022.

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 hers...

This episode of The Shift first aired in June 2024.

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 tu...

This episode of The Shift first aired in August 2021.

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 year...

This episode of The Shift first aired in June 2022.

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 wonder...

This episode of The Shift revisited was first aired in February 2023.

I first met today's guest, Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright, when I interviewed her in Glasgow at the end of 2022. 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.

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Somehow it’s the end of our 20th season and I’m delighted to say that my guest today is a woman who has spent the last decade giving us a masterclass in ageing. One of my very own old bird role models, Prue Leith.

Now 86, Prue has lived a multitude of lives. Chef, businesswoman, author, food columnist, board director, DBE, campaigner for Dignity in Dying and television host, most recently, of course, a nine year stint on Great British Bake Off, which she quit earlier this year.

She open...

This week I’m delighted to welcome back the powerhouse Poorna Bell. Poorna is a journalist, author and speaker known for her advocacy on body image and diversity. And now she’s adding ageing to the list of things she is not about to shut up about.

When Poorna first came on The Shift she had not long turned 40 and it’s fair to say she was a little trepidatious about the ageing process. Hardly surprising since the narrative that’s pedalled to younger women is that there’s nothing worse than being...

My guest today doesn’t really need an introduction. Elizabeth Gilbert is many things - an internationally bestselling author of the global phenomenon, Eat Pray Love, a Time 100 most influential person, a speaker and a teacher, with millions of online followers. But she is also, to put it in her own words, a ‘human permission slip’, the woman who told an entire generation of women it was OK to do whatever they needed to do, to travel for the sake of travelling.

EPL sold millions of copies worldwide, was translated into 46 languages and the movie...

My guest today, Fatima Bhutto, knows more than most about loss and living with a traumatic family legacy.

Now 43, Fatima is descended from one of Pakistan’s most prominent political dynasties. When she was just 14, her father, the politician Murtaza Bhutto, was killed by his political opponents during the premiership of his sister, Benazir Bhutto. Her grandfather, the former President and Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was also killed by the state.

I tell you this because, despite now being a prominent writer and speaker in her own right, Fa...

This is a special live episode of The Shift with Sam Baker podcast, recorded live at the wonderful Portobello Bookshop in Edinburgh. 

Catherine Newman is the author of some of the most on-the-nose books about being a woman in midlife that I’ve ever read - her bestselling debut, We All Want Impossible Things, Sandwich and, now, Wreck.

Imagine if Nora Ephron and Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton met in a bar and did edibles together and you have something approximating Catherine’s creation, Rocky, and her family - Nick, W...

Say the word wellness and it conjures an instant image in our minds… glowing skin, enviable abs, sludgy looking juice, tasteful muted leisurewear and lots and lots of money.

Where we used to have diets and anti-ageing cream, we now have peloton and ashwaghanda gummies and collagen powder. Or we do if we can afford to.

So I’m delighted to welcome to The Shift, the award-winning American journalist Amy Larocca, who has written an entire book on the subject, How To Be Well, aptly subtitled ‘finding a way throug...

Hello and welcome to The Shift - the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds barred truth about being a woman post-40. Created and hosted by me, journalist and author, Sam Baker.

Have I got a treat for you today. Because my guest this week is Gretchen Rubin, one of the most influential writers on habits, happiness and human nature. 

Gretchen is the author of the NYT bestsellers The Happiness Project and Better Than Before, she’s sold millions of copies worldwide in more than 35 languages and every week hun...

Hello and welcome to SEASON 20! 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.

At any one time, approximately 13 million women in the UK are ‘in menopause’, in the US that number rises to a humungous 75million. And yet, as you will be well aware, until just a few years ago, if you said the word menopause out loud in public the response was…. Tumbleweed. At best.

That was my exp...

To celebrate the old bird/broad role models who’ve appeared on The Shift with Sam Baker, I’ll be rerunning some of these conversations throughout December and into January. Last but very much not least is my oldest ever guest Dr Gladys McGarey. Dr Gladys was 102 when we recorded this episode. She has sadly since died, in September 2024, two months before her 104th birthday...

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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...

To celebrate the old bird/broad role models who’ve appeared on The Shift with Sam Baker, I’ll be rerunning some of these conversations throughout December and into January. Next up, bestselling novelist Isabel Allende...

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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 tw...

To celebrate the old bird/broad role models who’ve appeared on The Shift with Sam Baker, I’ll be rerunning some of these conversations throughout December and into January. Next up, screenwriting legend Lynda La Plante...

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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 Vall...

To celebrate the old bird/broad role models who’ve appeared on The Shift with Sam Baker I’ll be rerunning some of these conversations throughout December and into January. Next up is Australian literary legend Helen Garner who, in her 83rd year has finally broken out in the UK and US and won the Baillie Gifford Prize for her collected diaries, How To End A Story...

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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...

• To celebrate the old bird/broad role models who’ve appeared on The Shift with Sam Baker, I’ll be rerunning some of these conversations throughout December and into January. First up Miriam Margolyes...

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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 l...

My guest on the final episode of this season is Anne, Lady Glenconner. 

Now 93, Lady Glenconner has lived to put it bluntly, one hell of a life.

She was born in 1932, the eldest daughter of the 5th earl of Leicester and brought up in the early 20th century’s rigid social hierarchy on the ancestral estate of Holkham Hall in Norfolk. Which, incidentally, she didn’t inherit because primogeniture, of which more later. 

The royal family were a part of her life from birth. She pl...

My guest today is the accidental radical Karen Dobres. Until her early fifties, Karen’s life had taken a path familiar to so many women. From modelling in her early twenties, she trained as a counsellor and worked alongside bringing up a family. So far, so familiar. Then, as she puts it, she had her final period, attended her first football match and everything changed.

Growing up in the 70s, when girls weren’t allowed to play football at school (although the law had changed to technically allow us to play in 1971, Karen had less...

My guest today is a woman on a mission to preserve the language of her grandparents. Playwright, screenwriter and novelist Samantha Ellis is the author of one of my personal favourites How To Be A Heroine. Sam was in her early 40s and a new mum when it dawned on her that her mother tongue - or milk language - was on the verge of dying out.

The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Sam grew up surrounded by the noisy vivid hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, but when she tried to tell her son he...

For many of us losing our memory is our worst nightmare. To be told that that is happening when you are still young (ish) is close to unimaginable. That’s what happened to this week’s guest, writer, teacher and reader in residence at Charleston, Holly Dawson.

Holly was just 40 when she started to lose her grasp of where she was. She was ultimately diagnosed with epilepsy. A scan of her brain revealed a benign tumour and Holly found herself faced with the prospect of losing both her memory and her words, which had alwa...

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-makeup makeup 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 a reporte...

Today’s episode is basically a massive treat for me. Hollie McNish is my favourite poet. I first encountered her over a decade ago when I was doing an event for my thriller, The Woman Who Ran, at a literary festival. Hollie was in the big venue next door. The signing queue went on for miles. Let’s just say, it wasn’t for me. Hollie’s poetry speaks to people, women, mainly, let’s be honest. And we are quite literally queueing up to see her.

Hollie’s poetry has millions of views on social me...

We talk a lot about women who want out, who want to set light to everything and walk away. But we don’t talk so much about the women who find someone else has put a bomb under their lives and left them standing in the rubble. That’s what happened to Jen Hatmaker… 

After 45 years of living life according to the good girl rules, she woke up in the middle of the night to find her husband of 26 years voice texting his girlfriend in bed beside her. In that minute, Everything she thought she kne...

This episode of The Shift podcast, with the High Street legend, Mary Portas, is brought to you live from Cheltenham Literature Festival

Mary is one of the UK’s most high profile and innovative business women. She made her name transforming dusty old Harvey Nichols into global fashion destination Harvey Nicks (with a little bit of help from Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley and Absolutely Fabulous!), leaving after a decade to found Portas her own creative company, helping to transform some of the many companies and brands who’d tried and failed to poach her.

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