The Shift with Sam Baker

I first encountered today’s guest, Marina Benjamin, when I was researching The Shift book and stumbled across her memoir, The Middlepause. An insightful look at what middle age means today, it was prompted by Marina’s own sudden menopause after a hysterectomy. The sense of dislocation she described was the first time I’d ever seen the way I felt put down in black and white.

She followed it up with Insomnia (clue’s in the name) and has now completed her loose midlife trilogy with A Little Give a stunning book about the “unsung, unseen, undone work women do” - and what happens when we tire of being a human rehab centre for everyone around us.

I inhaled this book, dog-earing page after page and internally yelling YES! and I’m pretty sure you will too.

Marina joined me to talk about emotional labour, why “cleaner guilt” doesn’t seem to affect men (strange that!), time poverty and wresting control of the to-do ticker tape. We also discussed why women’s manual work is invisible and men’s is a skill, how to get maximum benefit from your feminist inner critic, the two way pain of caring for elderly parents and why you should always ALWAYS run towards yourself.

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including A Little Give: the unseen, unsung, undone work of women by Marina Benjamin 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
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I can’t be cool about today’s guest, so I’m not even going to try. Ever since I started The Shift I have had a Wishlist and high up on it from day one was Dame Zandra Rhodes.

Yes, that Zandra Rhodes. There can only be one after all.

For over 50 years, Zandra has been a leading figure in the British fashion industry, renowned for her prints and her use of colour.

Over the years she has dressed everyone from Princesses Diana to Freddie Mercury, Diana Ross and Debbie Harry, and collaborated with everyone from M&S to Ikea. Zandra is nothing if not egalitarian.

Now 83 (and in remission from the terminal cancer she was diagnosed with at the start of covid), she has no plans to stop any time soon, as evidenced by her new book Iconic, My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects, a whistle-stop tour through her incredible life hanging out with ossie clark, lunching with Truman Capote, making a lifelong friend of legendary vogue editor Diana Vreeland.

Which is how I get to be on my way to Bermondsey to hang out at her fabulous flat to talk about her equally fabulous life. I know!

Zandra and I sat down with a cuppa to discuss how a “boring little girl” became synonymous with big, bold, uncompromising style, her lifelong workaholism, living a child-free life, using clothes as armour and the rejection that was the making of her...

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including Iconic: My Life in Fashion in 50 Objects by Zandra Rhodes 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.
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You can be swimming along nicely and then all of a sudden everything you thought you had is gone.

That’s what happened to today’s guest, the best-selling Irish novelist, Louise O’Neill.

She was 38 and had just taken on a big mortgage with her partner of five years when he blindsided her by pulling the plug. In the wake of losing the future she thought she wanted, suddenly everything she’d achieved throughout her career lost its meaning.

Known for her fearless feminist writing, Louise had written six award-winning novels and been compared to Margaret Atwood.

For months she struggled. Then, heartbroken but defiant, she made a decision: she was going to spend the next year saying yes to everything that comes her way - except the one thing society teaches women to say yes to, settling for the first man who shows an interest.

The result is her first memoir, A Bigger Life, about that radical experiment in learning to bet big - on yourself.

Louise joined me to talk about the Christmas her life descended into chaos and her subsequent midlife dating odyssey. We also discussed the eating disorder that devoured her, why we still ask ‘why didn’t you leave?’, the downside of her crack-on, can do mentality, learning to recognise your own appetites, putting the humanity back into dating, feeling younger at 41 than 31, and why she really really doesn’t want her parents to read her book!

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, including A Bigger Life by Louise O'Neill as well as the book that inspired this podcast, ⁠The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too⁠, by Sam Baker.

* 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 is created, hosted and produced by Sam Baker and this episode was edited by Kelsey Bennett at Pineapple Audio Productions.
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It's two and a half years since I first interviewed Miranda July for this podcast and wow, what a change! Her novel All Fours became a must-read, got shortlisted for the Women's Prize and has been optioned for screen - a far cry from the moment she asked me, will you have my back? We did Miranda, we did! Here it is again...

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 Juliette Nicholls @ Pineapple Audio Production. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is the writer and award-winning poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths.

Eliza is a woman who has been through A LOT in a short space of time. In September 2020, on the day she married her second husband, the globally renowned novelist Salman Rushdie, her best friend of 17 years, her ‘chosen sister’ Kamila Aisha Moon, died. Then, eleven months later, in the midst of her grief, her husband was brutally attacked as he prepared to go on stage to give a talk. For a time his life hung in the balance.

Salman survived, with life-changing injuries, and the dual traumas left Eliza transformed forever.

Now, five years on, Eliza has written her first memoir, The Flower Bearers, in which she revisits those two terrible griefs and the glorious relationships that lay at its foundations. It’s a story of friend love, romantic love and self-love, of trauma and recovery, and it’s a gut punch.

Eliza joined me from her home in Manhattan to talk about her two great loves, Aisha and Salman, and how she found her way through a kaleidoscope of grief. We also discussed the importance of not prioritising romantic love and why everyone needs an inner village of women, being denied access to your intuition, her extensive toolbox of coping mechanisms, learning to swim in her 40s and Tina Turner.

• The documentary Eliza refers to in this conversation is KNIFE: The attempted murder of Salman Rushdie, directed by Oscar Winner Alex Gibley and including never before seen footage shot by Rachel Eliza Griffiths. It's released on 2 October.

* You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, including The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffiths⁠ as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by Sam Baker.

* 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 is created, hosted and produced by Sam Baker and edited by Juliette Nicholls at Pineapple Audio Productions.
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