Louise Minchin: why midlife is the time to take more risks

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. Since leaving the sofa, she has chaired the Women’s Prize for Fiction, honed her skills as an endurance athlete (she qualified for the Great Britain Age-Group Triathlon Team in 2015 for the World Triathlon Championships in Chicago, and completed the Norseman triathlon - she doesn’t do things by halves!) and turned her hand to writing. Louise’s latest book is a heartstopping thriller called Isolation Island, which takes ten celebrities and dumps them in a derelict monastery on a remote scottish island. Think I’m A Celebrity meets Traitors with a splash of Big Brother and you’re halfway there! Louise joined me to talk about the importance of putting women of all ages centre stage and how she built a new career off the breakfast TV sofa. We also discussed how perimenopause robbed her of herself, the power of adventure, how she learnt to love her body for what it can do not how it looks and why she wants to encourage more women to take a risk in midlife. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Isolation Island by Louise Minchin 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices