Sarah Knight: why selfish isn't a four letter word - THE SHIFT REVISITED

I first encountered today’s guest back when I was editor of Red magazine and - for some crazy reason - went to an Oprah convention in Atlanta. I know right? I can literally hear everyone who knows me in real life laughing. So, Yes! I went to Atlanta to see Oprah but really I went to see someone else - a woman who Oprah described as “one of the smartest women I know”. Martha Beck. Martha is a Harvard trained sociologist and life coach who was Oprah’s no-nonsense agony aunt on O magazine for almost two decades. she has not one not two but three degrees, as you do. And is the author of ten bestselling non-fiction books, including Steering by Starlight which you might have heard Lindsay Nicholson raving about on a recent episode of The Shift. (And it’s not just me, Lindsay and oprah, Martha is beloved by such self help luminaries as Elizabeth Gilbert and Glennon Doyle.)  Her new book Beyond Anxiety could not be better timed! Martha joined me from her home in Pennsylvania to give us all a mahoosive pep talk on how to manage our anxiety. We also discussed surviving the 3am panic spiral, why she only got a handle on her own anxiety at 60, being a late blooming lesbian and what she’s learnt from parenting at 20 and 60 - and frankly a whole lot more. Listen to Martha's podcast with Rowan Morgan Bewildered and her solo podcast The Gathering Room.   * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck 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 at Pineapple 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

25 Feb 1h 7min

My guest today is the novelist, journalist and critic Diana Evans. Diana is the award-winning author of four novels 26a, The Wonder, Ordinary People and A House for Alice. She has been shortlisted for countless awards including the Women’s Prize and won the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature for Ordinary People. She has, as she puts it, been writing against invisibility her entire life.  Before all that she was a dancer, with the Brighton-based African and Caribbean troupe Mashango, and then a journalist (she was arts and music editor of Pride magazine). Some of her best work is now published as I Want To Talk To You, a collection of essays in which she examines the personal and the political, interviews icons and looks at the realities of ageing and thwarted expectation. Like many of you listening, Diana is also a woman caught in the middle aged sandwich of children and parents. She joined me from her home in south London to talk ageing, experience and expectation. We covered compulsive worrying, growing up in a house of seven women, the hazards of being a “doer”, the pain of turning 50 without her twin, how caring for a parent can be “bigger than childbirth” and why we no longer need an aesthetic licence in middle age.   * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including I Want To Talk To You by Diana Evans 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 at Pineapple 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

18 Feb 51min

This week's guest is the Emmy award-winning American journalist Kate Fagan. Kate started out playing college basketball before making the move into sports journalism. She worked for the American cable channel ESPN (for brits, that’s THE sports channel in the US) and wrote the number 1 NYT bestseller, What Made Maddy Run.  Then, just before she turned 40 and at the top of her professional game, Kate took a hard left. She stepped away from the career that made her famous, moved to Charleston and married her wife Kathryn Budig. Now she’s written a novel The Three Lives of Cate Kay that pushes all the buttons. A dissection of success and ambition, and the true cost of living a lie, it was Reese Witherspoon’s first bookclub pick of the year.  While Kate was on the Edinburgh leg of her book tour, she came to hang out in my flat and ply Sausage the cat with Dreamies (no cash has changed hands but he’s always open to a conversation!)  While she was here we discussed the moment she was bitten by the ambition bug (and how she’s still struggling to shake it off), the lack of female sporting role models when she was a young athlete, coming out at 30 and The stories we tell ourself about what it means to be a successful human. We also chatted age dysmorphia, crossing the 40 threshold and the conversation she wishes she’d had with her mum. She also introduced me to the concept of TODs. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Three Lives of Cate Kay by Kate Fagan 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 at Pineapple 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

11 Feb 1h 2min

I was the very first person to interview Miranda July about All Fours this time last year. To say she was nervous about how it would be received was an understatement. "Will you have my back?" she asked me (and the rest of the female world) towards the end of our conversation. Yes, I said, yes we will. And how! Since then All Fours has taken the world by storm - women over 40 have a sex life, who knew?! So I've decided to replay this episode for everyone who's new to The Shift and new to midlife. ------ 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 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4 Feb 49min

Today’s guest is someone I’ve wanted to get on The Shift for the longest time. You might know Ruby Wax as a successful comedian and presenter, one of the funniest women of her generation. Or you might know her as a mental health campaigner and best-selling author. One thing’s for sure, she has been using humour to make the rest of us feel better for decades. Having suffered depression her whole life, Ruby had a breakdown after losing her job on the BBC in her 50s (hold that thought!). Determined not to “go down with the career ship” she took herself off to Oxford university where she got a masters degree in mindfulness based cognitive therapy, was subsequently awarded an OBE for services to mental health and has written several bestselling books about our brains - and hers.  Then, last year, 12 years after her last bout of depression, she discovered she wasn’t actually as well as she thought she was… Cue the inspiration for a new book, and tour. Ruby and I met in an office overlooking the Thames the day after a big birthday (which we will not be talking about!!) to discuss why depression is the wrong word for mental illness and the journeys to find meaning that saw her end up on a journey to a 6 week stay in a mental clinic. We also talked about building a new emotional toolkit for the second half of your life, the secret to her 35 year marriage and why we need to stop talking ageing and start talking evolving. There’s also hair dye, mindfulness, a Carrie Fisher love-in, jewellery and toe nails. It’s all going on in this episode! Falling Upward by Richard Rohr, the book Ruby talks about in this episode, is available here. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including I'm Not As Well As I Thought I Was by Ruby Wax 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 www.theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com • 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

28 Jan 52min

My guest today is the bestselling writer Dani Shapiro. Dani is best known for the memoirs that made her name. Startlingly honest works of self-investigation like Slow Motion, in which she examines the questionable decisions her younger self made (let’s face it, whose younger self didn’t?). And the book that catapulted her to the top of the bestseller lists, Inheritance.  In Inheritance, Dani explored the impact of taking a DNA test - just for fun! - in her mid 50s only to discover that her beloved dad was not actually her biological father. That book led to the top 10 podcast, Family Secrets featuring guests who have uncovered life altering secrets. It was unlocking those family secrets that enabled Dani to write her first novel in 15 years, Signal Fires, a bestseller since the day it was published in the states last year and praised by, my fave Jamie Lee Curtis, amongst others. It looks at what happens when one tragic mistake changes a whole family’s lives. Dani joined me from the East coast of America to discuss how it feels to discover that you are your family’s secret, her allergy to Empty Nest Syndrome and why there should be a handbook for middle age. We talked about coming into your full potential at 60, "losing your looks" when you’ve been told they’re your currency and learning to count ordinary blessings. Listen to Family Secrets here. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro 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 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

21 Jan 54min

Today I’m delighted to welcome back one of The Shift’s very first guests, journalist and mental health campaigner Bryony Gordon. Bryony has been a columnist on the Telegraph for over 20 years and for ten of those she has been writing candidly about her own experiences of addiction and mental illness. She is the best selling author of Mad Girl and The Wrong Knickers and in 2016 she founded Mental Health Mates a global peer support network that encourages people with mental health issues to connect, for which she has won several awards. She also, FWIW, ran the London marathon in her knickers.  Three years after her first visit to The Shift, Bryony is back - older, wiser (yes really) - and with a new book, the pertinently titled, Mad Woman, which discusses her struggles with burnout, binge eating and, yep, you guessed it, fluctuating hormones. Bryony joined me from bed in south London to talk about maintaining a public facade when you’re privately falling apart, finally learning to feed herself properly at 43, discovering all the women in her family went into menopause in their early 40s, why she’s done with feeling like she’s the problem and how Davina McCall saved her life! If you'd like to sponsor Bryony's Big Challenge, you can find out more here. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Mad Woman by Bryony Gordon 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 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

14 Jan 49min