About the show
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/
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/
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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 Waterstones book of the year before being made into an apple tv+ series starring Clare Danes and Tom Hiddleston (Sarah was an extra!). Sarah has also been nominated for the booker prize, the women’s prize for fiction and the costa novel award, amongst others.
Born and brought up in Essex, Sarah is chancellor of Essex University, where her latest novel Enlightenment is set. Enlightenment – a novel about the presence and absence of faith draws more directly on her own life than usual – because Sarah, as you may or not know grew up in a closed religious community.
I met Sarah at her publisher’s office in South London to talk about being brought up in the equivalent of 1860, leaving the church, and coming out of the womb as a 45 year old novelist! We also discussed the success that led to incurable illness, the surprisingly difficult transition from a woman who doesn’t have children to a woman who didn’t have children, premature menopause and why she doesn’t want to look like someone who hasn’t seen death.
Btw, I’ve made that sound really depressing – I promise it isn’t!
* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself as well as 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 Bluesky @theothersambaker.bsky.social or instagram @theothersambaker or message me on substack The Shift with Sam Baker.
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