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

Dorothy Koomson on how she learnt to be enough

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.&nbsp;
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, Guilty Feminist Deborah Frances-White, Minnie Driver, 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 enjoy The Shift podcast, and you'd like to show the love, you can buy me a coffee at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/theshiftwithsambaker
And if you really love The Shift and would like to hear more conversations with women over 40, why not become a member of our community and receive a weekly newsletter, get exclusive transcripts, join The Shift bookclub and so much more, please visit https://theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com/ 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.

Jackie Kay on absence, adoption & the art of living together apart

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.

Helen Lederer on anxiety, failure & living an “alarmingly truthful” life

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.

Miranda July on the unexpected wildness of ageing

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.

Kate Muir on the menopause experience that turned her into an activist

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.

Dorothy Koomson on how she learnt to be enough

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