The Shift with Sam Baker

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. And her readers.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 Together, Again 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Blackie 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices