sam baker
314 episodes listed below
Midlife, told without shrinking it.
The Shift with Sam Baker gives midlife women the kind of long, serious attention they are not always given. Through patient interviews with writers, artists, educators, and public figures, it treats ageing as a place of disruption, grief, appetite, humor, and new authority.
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The Shift with Sam Baker is an interview show about what happens when women move beyond the age culture likes to flatten. It is candid, warm, and willing to stay with discomfort. The conversations are not quick advice segments. They are long enough for a guest’s story to change shape as it is being told. Midlife appears here as a physical event, an emotional reckoning, a creative threshold, and sometimes a private crisis that nobody prepared anyone for. Abbey Morgan’s episode turns a house into a map of recovery, with Jacob returning after many months in hospital and the family learning how memory, color, rooms, and small domestic marks can help rebuild connection. Dr. Emily Nagoski’s conversation brings sex and long-term intimacy into the real conditions of stress, burnout, body image, and professional vulnerability. Elif Shafak widens the frame toward older women, exile, fiction, political pressure, and the possibility that menopause can loosen old shame. Christy Watson’s story is messier and more bodily, moving through perimenopause, medical training, single motherhood, unresolved trauma, and the shock of feeling like a stranger to herself. Martha Wainwright brings music, motherhood, family inheritance, and difficult love into the same room. Prue Leith talks about being old with appetite and impatience, not apology. Poorna Bell challenges the fear-based story women are handed about ageing and asks what a richer map of later life could include. Elizabeth Gilbert brings candor about love, control, addiction, grief, and the hard assignment of telling the truth. The show’s strength is its refusal to make any of this tidy. It gives midlife women complexity without pathologizing them, humor without making the body a punchline, and seriousness without turning experience into a lesson plan.
Made for: For listeners drawn to intimate, thoughtful conversations about women’s lives after 40. It especially suits anyone interested in menopause, ageing, desire, creativity, family change, and second acts without glossy self-help packaging.
What sets it apart: The show stands apart through its patient emotional pacing and its focus on lived detail: a hospital return, a car park, a family legacy, a body that no longer follows old rules. It gives public women room to speak personally without flattening them into inspiration stories.
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...) is changing? Each week, award-winning author and journalist Sam Baker asks a d...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Sam Baker's focused guest interviews offer the Music catalog a candid, practical account of midlife change, health and personal reinvention.
Sam Baker builds each conversation around the point where an idea becomes personal. Gretchen Rubin moves from habits and happiness to family personalities; Emily Nagoski connects long-term intimacy with exhaustion, stress and body image.
Midlife stops being a euphemism here: you get frank talk about sex and being dismissed by doctors.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A quiet, exact account of one family chapter and the work of getting through it.
Sam Baker opens on Abbey Morgan's 30-year career, touching Shame, Sex Traffic, The Queen, Iron Lady, The Hour, Suffragette, and The Split. But the piece keeps circling back to the harder material underneath those credits: the upheaval that started when Jacob collapsed at home…
A grounded conversation about intimacy, burnout, and pressure-free honesty.
Sam Baker keeps the conversation grounded while Emily Nagoski talks through the harder edges of long term intimacy: burnout, body image, trauma history, and plain exhaustion. The episode does not try to tidy any of it up.
A clear-eyed look at how wellness can turn into another kind of pressure.
Sam Baker treats wellness as a language game that promises care while leaving women post-40 on a constant tightrope. The strongest stretches move past slogans and into ordinary rituals: the lipstick that feels affirming, the sauna that settles the body, the exercise class that…
Gretchen Rubin turns happiness into habits, patterns, and compact rules for everyday life.
The episode traces Gretchen Rubin's long interest in happiness and how that thinking has settled into habits, patterns, and short rules for daily life.
A blunt, humane look at menopause, dismissal, and the relief of finally being believed.
Melanie Sanders makes menopause and perimenopause feel less like a general health topic and more like a real argument about what counts as evidence.
Sam Baker speaks with Abbey Morgan about the work and the personal upheaval that have shaped her last four years.
Sam Baker talks with Emily Nagoski about what long term intimacy asks of women post-40.
This episode features an interview with writer Elif Shafak discussing the power of older women, menopause as a liberation from shame, and her experiences with exile and political persecution in Turkey.
This episode features an interview with former nurse and award-winning writer Christie Watson, discussing her personal experience with perimenopause, its impact on identity and daily life, and broader themes of midlife challenges for women.
Canadian singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright discusses her journey through music, motherhood, and finding love in midlife, while navigating her famous family legacy and sharing candid personal stories.
Sam Baker interviews Prue Leith about aging, life after 40, and reclaiming being an old woman.
Sam Baker interviews Porna Bell about rewriting the fear-based narrative around aging and reimagining life for women over 40.
Sam Baker interviews Elizabeth Gilbert about her new memoir and her journey through love, addiction, and creativity.
Sam Baker interviews Fatima Bhutto about her traumatic family legacy, coercive relationship, and longing for motherhood.
A live interview with author Catherine Newman about her novel 'Wreck' and navigating midlife uncertainties.
Sam Baker reflects on the wellness industry and the language wrapped around it.
Sam Baker welcomes Gretchen Rubin and frames the conversation around what it means to be a woman post-40.
Sam Baker opens the conversation around menopause, perimenopause, and what it takes to be taken seriously.
Sam Baker interviews actress Miriam Margolyes about her career, personal life, and the power of living authentically without secrets.
Sam Baker interviews Bobbi Brown about her journey creating a makeup brand and navigating midlife.
Sam Baker interviews Jen Hatmaker about her midlife crisis of faith and marriage after 45 years of following the rules.
Host Sam Baker interviews BBC chief international correspondent Lise Doucette about her career covering wars and her new book on Afghanistan.
Host Sam Baker interviews beauty columnist India Knight about her book on skincare and beauty for older women, discussing practical advice for changing skin and hair.
Host Sam Baker interviews writer Hilma Wolle about her life, writing career, and experiences as a woman from childhood to old age.
Sam Baker interviews Karen Franklin about her four-decade fight for diversity in fashion, aging, and women's midlife experiences.
Sam Baker interviews novelist Lisa Jewell about her career, menopause, parenting, and success in midlife.
Host Sam Baker interviews cook Tomasina Myers about her career and life journey as a woman post-40.
Sam Baker interviews novelist Betsy Lerner about her debut novel, sibling rivalry, aging, mental health, and family secrets.
An interview with former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon about her experience with menopause symptoms while in power and her resignation.
Sam Baker interviews novelist Sarah Perry about her latest novel Enlightenment and her life in a closed religious community.
A podcast exploring the realities of being a woman over 40, featuring a guest who spent a month in Paris seeking pleasure and connection.
Sam Baker interviews cartoonist Alison Bechdel about her new graphic novel, fitness fads, and the Bechdel Test for women over 40.
Host Sam Baker interviews novelist Esther Freud about her life, family legacy, and midlife experiences including menopause and motherhood.
Sam Baker interviews Molly Jong Fast about her memoir on losing her mother to dementia and growing up in a famous family.
This episode features an interview with Jo Hamilton, a former sub-postmaster who was wrongfully prosecuted in the UK Post Office scandal, discussing her 20-year ordeal, the impact on her life, and her new memoir.
Journalist Reeta Chakrabarti discusses her career transitions, embracing opportunities, and getting bolder with age in an interview about her experiences and new novel.
This episode features an interview with novelist Jeanine Cummins discussing her experiences with the American Dirt controversy, her journey as a writer, and themes of identity and resilience in her new book Speak to Me of Home.
This episode features an interview with BBC presenter Naga Munchetty about her diagnosis with adenomyosis and her 30-year struggle to have her painful periods taken seriously by medical professionals.