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.. ...
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Baroness Lola Young: "you can't be what you can't see, but somebody has to go first"
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My guest today is one incredible woman. Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey is an actress, academic, campaigner for social justice and a cross bench peer in the House of Lords. By anyone’s standards she has achieved. She studied at the New College of Speech and Drama and started her career as an actress in the 1970s and 80s, before becoming professor of…
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Jennifer Cox: why women are furious (and getting angrier)
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My guest today is the forensic psychotherapist Dr Jennifer Cox. She trained at the Tavistock and now has an extensive practice specialising in treating women with undiagnosed anger. As part of this work she developed the Women are Mad approach to help women who can’t afford therapy to “think below the surface” about where their rage might be coming…
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Louise Doughty on the unrealised potential of older women
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My guest today is Louise Doughty, the woman behind some of the knottiest thrillers to grace our bookshelves and TV screens in recent years. Her bestseller, Apple Tree Yard about a sensible middle aged woman who makes a very unsensible decision (involving sex in the house of commons!) sold over half a million copies and was turned into a smash hit B…
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Kate Weinberg on the kindness of women & living with a mother-shaped hole
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Today’s guest is a personal favourite. I first met Kate Weinberg (the bestselling author of The Truants) when I was stricken with long covid and a mutual friend put us in touch. “You need to talk to Kate,” she urged. “She’ll be able to help. Kate was able to help - and did. Thanks in large part to her I went from feeling like my old, functioning li…
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Vanessa Feltz on divorce, dating and finally shaking off her inhibitions at 62
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My guest today is the broadcaster Vanessa Feltz. Ever since the mid-90s, Vanessa has been a fixture on British TV and radio - and also, for better or worse, our front pages. She became known as the “British Oprah” and that applied not just to her consummate skills as a broadcaster and talent for saying the unsayable, but also what she describes as …
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Jane Campbell on reinventing herself at 40 – and again at 80!
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If you sometimes worry you’ve left it too late to follow your heart, today’s guest should give you hope. At 40, Jane Campbell got a divorce and took herself off to university where she trained as a group analyst. 40 years later, at the age of 80, she had her first short story was published, after she sent Cat Brushing to the London Review of Books …
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Marianne Power: how to build a happy single life
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My guest today knows a thing or two about being single, and she’s hear to tell you that there’s more than one way to live an emotionally fulfilling life. Marianne Power is a journalist who made a perfectly decent living testing things so you didn’t have to - mascara, spa retreats, you get the gist - until the decision to spend a year testing self h…
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Louise Minchin: why midlife is the time to take more risks
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My guest today is author, endurance athlete and ex BBC breakfast presenter Louise Minchin. Louise is, of course, best known for her twenty year stint on BBC Breakfast’s sofa but she has also been main news anchor on the BBC News, presented The One Show and participated in a host of reality TV shows including I’m a Celebrity get me out of here. Sinc…
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Moon Unit Zappa: "We're all just growing each other up"
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Today’s guest is the American actress, writer and singer Moon Unit Zappa. Moon shot to fame in her early teens when her vocals featured on her father Frank Zappa’s unlikely hit Valley Girl. Subsequently she has been an actor, singer, presenter and artist. I’m about a year older than her and I know I’ve pretty much been aware of her ever since But s…
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Carol Vorderman on finding her voice (and how!) at 60
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My guest today is a woman who has truly come into her own in middle-age. A broadcaster, engineer, statistician and entrepreneur, at the age of 63 Carol Vorderman is now best known for fearlessly calling power to account. Sick of the sleaze and corruption she saw emanating from our politicians she decided it was time to speak up. And her million twi…
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Bella Mackie: "Nobody tells you motherhood is a choice"
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My guest today is Bella Mackie. Until her mid-30s Bella was a journalist, then she wrote a book called Jog On and her trajectory changed - dramatically. Ostensibly a book about running, Jog On was actually a soul-baring account of Bella’s battle with anxiety, OCD and depression and how, ultimately, running saved her. It was one of a wave of books t…
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Ruth Crilly: "This is my face, I don't want to tweak it"
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My guest today is the award-winning… well what is she? Writer? Content creator? Blogger? Influencer? Ruth Crilly is all of the above. She started her blog A Model Recommends in 2010 - before it was really a thing - and became one of the UK’s first social media stars. She’s got 500k followers on YouTube and instagram and unbelievably she’s - gulp - …
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Deborah Harkness on witches, wising & the cancer diagnosis that upended her life
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My guest today is the creator of the global bestseller and smash hit TV adaptation, The Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness. Now, I’m not sure if you know this about me, but I’m a bit obsessed with all things witchy, and I’ve been a devotee ever since the proof of the first book landed on my desk and I tumbled headlong into the world of Diana Bi…
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Fearne Cotton on the joy of embracing her second chapter
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Today’s guest is the queen of embracing the second chapter. Fearne Cotton started young. She became a children’s TV presenter at 15, presented Top of The Pops at 19 and took over Jo Whiley’s mid morning show on Radio One at just 27. But it’s what she’s achieved since turning her back on live radio and TV that’s really remarkable. In 2018 she launch…
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Lindsay Nicholson on resilience, recovery and the pursuit of perfection
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I have known today’s guest for quite some time. Decades in fact. To begin with she didn’t really know me, because she was close friends with my first ever boss. During the time I sat on the sidelines of Lindsay Nicholson’s life, the unimaginable happened and her husband and then daughter both died of a rare form of leukaemia. Then she picked hersel…
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner: "Everyone taught me to be afraid of middle age - I wish I could have started in it!"
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If there’s anything more daunting than interviewing a professional interviewer it’s interviewing an award-winning professional interviewer. Today’s guest Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff-writer on the New York Times and a legend amongst journalists who often find themselves on the monosyllabic side of a celebrity. (Her interview with Bradley Cooper…
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Zandra Rhodes: the legendary fashion designer on ageing uncompromisingly
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I can’t be cool about today’s guest, so I’m not even going to try. Ever since I started The Shift I have had a Wishlist and high up on it from day one was Dame Zandra Rhodes. Yes, that Zandra Rhodes. There can only be one after all. For over 50 years, Zandra has been a leading figure in the British fashion industry, renowned for her prints and her …
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Terri White on work, class and mental health - FROM THE ARCHIVES
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In the last of our FROM THE ARCHIVES episodes, I'm revisiting one of the most important conversations I think I've had on this podcast (not to mention one of my favourites) - with Terri White, the brains behind the award-winning podcast, Finding Britain's Ghost Children, which explored why so many children are missing from Britain's class rooms. Ea…
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BONUS EPISODE! Katie Price on taking back control of her own life at 46
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There are plenty of famous women who we think we know all there is to know without ever having met them. Women we judge based on some random unsubstantiated headline, but there are few women that applies to quite so much as Katie Price. Katie has been in the public eye for thirty years. She started as the glamour model Jordan at just 17 years old a…
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Kate Mosse: Why caring is a feminist issue - FROM THE ARCHIVES
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I'm not sure there's anyone quite like Kate Mosse. The driving power behind the Women's Prize for Fiction which is now in its 27th year (the winner was VV Ganeshananthan's Brotherless Night) and now the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction (whose inaugural winner was Doppleganger by Naomi Klein), she also manages to write a book a year (and they're not sm…
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Gabby Logan on resilience, reclaiming middle age and why equality begins at home - FROM THE ARCHIVES
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It's Gabby Logan's summer. First there's the Euros and then the Paris Olympics are hot on their heels. Plus, she has a new book, The Midpoint Plan, out so it seemed like a fine time to revisit my conversation with her from a couple of years ago... My guest this week has hosted everything from Final Score to the Six Nations to the Olympics. Formerly…
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Kathy Lette’s midlife mantra: if it doesn’t spark joy, it’s time to toss it away!
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It's season finale time! And my guest today is the whirlwind also known as Kathy Lette. Australian Kathy smashed her way into the global bestseller lists at the age of 17 with the novel Puberty Blues. Since then she has turned her irreverent, en pointe pen on the peaks and troughs, triumphs and total BS of female existence. I first read her with Gi…
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Molly Roden-Winter on becoming an ambassador for polyamory in your 50s
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My guest today is the teacher, musician and writer Molly Roden Winter. Molly hit the headlines earlier this year when her memoir More was published in the United States and caused… let’s just call it “a storm”. Why? Because Molly’s book is an incredibly candid account of her open marriage. Which, lets face it, shouldn’t be that big of a deal in 202…
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Liz Jensen on learning to love life again after devastating loss
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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 be…
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Emily Nagoski: what happens when a sex expert loses her sex drive?
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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? Taki…
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