The Shift with Sam Baker

Updated: 09 Sep 2025 • 258 episodes
theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com

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 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/ For advertising enquiries, email sales@auddy.co

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Hello and welcome to the final episode of season 18. 18!!!! My guest today is the cook, Thomasina Miers. Despite being taught to cook as a child, Tommi didn’t really embrace her love of food until her late 20s when a trip to Mexico inspired a love of Mexican food that was to change her life. In 2005, she became the fir

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A few weeks ago, I was pootling around on substack where The Shift newsletter lives - https://theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com/ - and I noticed I had a DM from a new subscriber. It turned out to be from one of my favourite crime writers - the award winning Laura Lippmann, who some of you might know from the recent app

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This season is dedicated to helping you pick your summer reads and my guest today is the novelist Charlotte Mendelson whose writing has been compared to “late Shakespeare meets Modern family!” So you know where to turn if you’re looking for a painfully funny, on the nose look at the dynamics of love and marriage. Charl

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My guest this week is the novelist Betsy Lerner.  Now Betsy is here to talk about her critically acclaimed debut novel, Shred Sisters, which takes us from the 1970s to the 90s and tells us the story of two troubled sisters, Amy and Ollie. No less a legend than Patti Smith described it as “moving like a souped up pick u

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This week I’m delighted to welcome back to The Shift one of my most listened-to guests, Nicola Sturgeon. When we last spoke, at the start of 2022, Nicola was First Minister of Scotland - the first woman to hold the role, the first woman in 600 years to be the keeper of the seal. And During her tenure, she was widely ac

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My guest today is the award-winning novelist Sarah Perry. Sarah is the internationally bestselling author of four novels, but the one you will almost definitely heard of (and may well have watched) is The Essex Serpent. Published in 2016, it sold over half a million copies, and won both British Book of the Year and Wat

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