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Indhold leveret af Sam Baker Ltd and Sam baker. Alt podcastindhold inklusive episoder, grafik og podcastbeskrivelser uploades og leveres direkte af Sam Baker Ltd and Sam baker eller deres podcastplatformspartner. Hvis du mener, at nogen bruger dit ophavsretligt beskyttede værk uden din tilladelse, kan du følge processen beskrevet her https://da.player.fm/legal.
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Episode Notes [03:47] Seth's Early Understanding of Questions [04:33] The Power of Questions [05:25] Building Relationships Through Questions [06:41] This is Strategy: Focus on Questions [10:21] Gamifying Questions [11:34] Conversations as Infinite Games [15:32] Creating Tension with Questions [20:46] Effective Questioning Techniques [23:21] Empathy and Engagement [34:33] Strategy and Culture [35:22] Microsoft's Transformation [36:00] Global Perspectives on Questions [39:39] Caring in a Challenging World Resources Mentioned The Dip by Seth Godin Linchpin by Seth Godin Purple Cow by Seth Godin Tribes by Seth Godin This Is Marketing by Seth Godin The Carbon Almanac This is Strategy by Seth Godin Seth's Blog What Does it Sound Like When You Change Your Mind? by Seth Godin Value Creation Masterclass by Seth Godin on Udemy The Strategy Deck by Seth Godin Taylor Swift Jimmy Smith Jimmy Smith Curated Questions Episode Supercuts Priya Parker Techstars Satya Nadella Microsoft Steve Ballmer Acumen Jerry Colonna Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin Tim Ferriss podcast with Seth Godin Seth Godin website Beauty Pill Producer Ben Ford Questions Asked When did you first understand the power of questions? What do you do to get under the layer to really get down to those lower levels? Is it just follow-up questions, mindset, worldview, and how that works for you? How'd you get this job anyway? What are things like around here? What did your boss do before they were your boss? Wow did you end up with this job? Why are questions such a big part of This is Strategy? If you had to charge ten times as much as you charge now, what would you do differently? If it had to be free, what would you do differently? Who's it for, and what's it for? What is the change we seek to make? How did you choose the questions for The Strategy Deck? How big is our circle of us? How many people do I care about? Is the change we're making contagious? Are there other ways to gamify the use of questions? Any other thoughts on how questions might be gamified? How do we play games with other people where we're aware of what it would be for them to win and for us to win? What is it that you're challenged by? What is it that you want to share? What is it that you're afraid of? If there isn't a change, then why are we wasting our time? Can you define tension? What kind of haircut do you want? How long has it been since your last haircut? How might one think about intentionally creating that question? What factors should someone think about as they use questions to create tension? How was school today? What is the kind of interaction I'm hoping for over time? How do I ask a different sort of question that over time will be answered with how was school today? Were there any easy questions on your math homework? Did anything good happen at school today? What tension am I here to create? What wrong questions continue to be asked? What temperature is it outside? When the person you could have been meets the person you are becoming, is it going to be a cause for celebration or heartbreak? What are the questions we're going to ask each other? What was life like at the dinner table when you were growing up? What are we really trying to accomplish? How do you have this cogent two sentence explanation of what you do? How many clicks can we get per visit? What would happen if there was a webpage that was designed to get you to leave? What were the questions that were being asked by people in authority at Yahoo in 1999? How did the stock do today? Is anything broken? What can you do today that will make the stock go up tomorrow? What are risks worth taking? What are we doing that might not work but that supports our mission? What was the last thing you did that didn't work, and what did we learn from it? What have we done to so delight our core customers that they're telling other people? How has your international circle informed your life of questions? What do I believe that other people don't believe? What do I see that other people don't see? What do I take for granted that other people don't take for granted? What would blank do? What would Bob do? What would Jill do? What would Susan do? What happened to them? What system are they in that made them decide that that was the right thing to do? And then how do we change the system? How given the state of the world, do you manage to continue to care as much as you do? Do you walk to school or take your lunch? If you all can only care if things are going well, then what does that mean about caring? Should I have spent the last 50 years curled up in a ball? How do we go to the foundation and create community action?…
Indhold leveret af Sam Baker Ltd and Sam baker. Alt podcastindhold inklusive episoder, grafik og podcastbeskrivelser uploades og leveres direkte af Sam Baker Ltd and Sam baker eller deres podcastplatformspartner. Hvis du mener, at nogen bruger dit ophavsretligt beskyttede værk uden din tilladelse, kan du følge processen beskrevet her https://da.player.fm/legal.
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
Indhold leveret af Sam Baker Ltd and Sam baker. Alt podcastindhold inklusive episoder, grafik og podcastbeskrivelser uploades og leveres direkte af Sam Baker Ltd and Sam baker eller deres podcastplatformspartner. Hvis du mener, at nogen bruger dit ophavsretligt beskyttede værk uden din tilladelse, kan du følge processen beskrevet her https://da.player.fm/legal.
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
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Today’s guest is the anti-guru behind the massive No F*cks Given franchise, Sarah Knight. What started life with the Marie Kondo pastiche, The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving A F*ck, now comprises 7 guides and three journals which have sold three million copies and a TED talk that’s notched up ten million views. But Sarah wasn’t always the queen of giving zero f*cks. Scroll back to her mid-30s and you’d have found her having a panic attack in the Manhattan office where she worked. So started ten years of anxiety and depression, a massive leap into the freelance unknown (which let’s face it, worked out pretty well!) and a 1500 mile geographical from Brooklyn to the Caribbean, where she now lives. Sarah joined me from her home in the Dominican Republic (grrrr) to talk about her new book, Grow The F*ck Up, how sometimes it takes getting what you want to realise you don’t want it, Why we often need permission to make a change and having the courage to recognise you really don’t have enough left in the tank. Sarah also told me how she learnt to give fewer but better fucks, what to do if you’re married to a “big f*cking baby”, why selfish shouldn’t be a four letter word and she gives us a masterclass in learning to say no. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including Grow The F*ck Up by Sarah Knight 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…
Dr Gladys McGarey died, aged 103, in September of this year, so I wanted to honour her by making her episode the last to go out on the last day of the year. Rest In Power Gladys. ---- A few months ago I read an article that took my breath away. The author was 102 years old and in it she wrote candidly about losing her partner in life and work after 46 years. Not because he passed away, but because he handed her divorce papers! That would have floored most of us, but despite being sideswiped, Dr Gladys McGarey, picked herself up, started a new medical practice with her daughter before becoming a speaker, author and all-round inspiration. All this at the age of 70. Since then Dr Gladys, who is known as the mother of holistic medicine, has received countless awards including the Humanities Award for Outstanding Service to Mankind. At 85 she travelled to Afghanistan to teach rural women safer birthing practices. At her 90th birthday party she jumped out of her birthday cake. At 102 she became the proud owner of an adult tricycle. Who is this woman? And how does she do it? I HAD to know. Now on the cusp of 103, Dr Gladys joined me from her home in Arizona to tell me her secrets to health and happiness. We discussed ageing into health, femifesting (as opposed to manifesting), how divorce was the remaking of her, finding her voice at 93 and why we should all spend our energy wildly! I know this isn’t the first time I’ve said I found my old bird role model, but seriously. Dr Gladys is IT. If you loved this episode you might also like my conversations with Hilma Wolitzer and Isabel Allende * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including The Well-Lived Life by Dr Gladys McGarey 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…
For this bonus episode of The Shift, I’m delighted to welcome a very special guest: the award-winning author of ten bestselling novels, Barbara Kingsolver. Every so often, a book comes along that you want to press into the hands of everyone you meet. For me, Demon Copperhead, is one of those books. A reimagining of the Dickens classic, David Copperfield, translated to the Appalachian mountains in the midst of the opioid crisis that has gripped the area. It’s funny, it’s furious and its hero Demon is a character you will never ever forget. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Earlier this year Barbara was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and now she’s become the first person ever to win the Women's Prize for Fiction twice (she won over a decade ago for her novel, The Lacuna). A couple of weeks ago, Barbara foolishly let me and my little mic into her Edinburgh hotel room to tell me how growing up weird, bookish and poor shaped her and how she discovered she was a so-called hillbilly. We also discussed being an introvert in an extrovert world, finding love second time around, not winning the jackpot in the mothering department and why life gets better with every decade – and at 68 and the top of her game, she's living proof. She also shares her killer packing tips and, I have to say, if you ever wanted to do a three week holiday with just a carry-on, Barbara is your woman! * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 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…
We’ve all had those moments in our lives when everything feels… darker, colder, a little (or a lot) less hopeful. Those emotional winters were perfectly encapsulated by today’s guest, Katherine May in her transatlantic bestseller, Wintering, the power of rest and retreat in difficult times. Her new book is another soothing antidote for the way we live now, Enchantment, Reawakening wonder in an exhausted age. I don’t know if it’s the aftermath of the pandemic, our always on culture, or just… life, but this spoke to me in exactly the way Wintering did. So, that’s a thumbs up from me. Katherine joined me from her home by her beloved seaside (hence the seagulls!) to talk about her midlife autism diagnosis, why she believes we’re living through the burnout decade and how to wrest back control of our lives from our work. She told me about entering perimenopause at 29 but still being absolutely livid in her mid-40s, how she’s fully over “white male gurus” and why she wants to open up the conversation about meaning. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including Enchantment by Katherine May and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too , by me. • 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…
If you were a teenager in the late 80s you only have to hear the name Neneh Cherry to conjure the image of Neneh, seven months pregnant, on the Top of the Pops stage performing her hit Buffalo Stance. She was the epitome of cool. She made teenage girls everywhere believe that anything was possible. Now, almost 40 years later, the award-winning singer, songwriter, rapper, producer, mother of three, stepmother of one, grandmother of four, has lived - and continues to live - the most incredible life. She has released six critically acclaimed albums, won two Brits and been nominated for a Grammy. And now she has written a memoir that takes us from her peripatetic childhood moving between Sweden and New York with her mother Swedish artist Moki Karlsson and her step-dad jazz trumpeter Don Cherry to the present day. It quite honestly blew me away. A Thousand Threads takes those strands and weaves them into a story of creativity and collaboration, love and loss, motherhood and daughterhood, and above all what it means to be a woman. I inhaled it. (And if you're in the market I highly recommend having Neneh read it to you on audible.) Neneh and I got on zoom to talk about home, family, losing her mother Moki at just 66 and losing herself to grief and menopause, finding pleasure in the little things, being a gran, staying creative forever and so so much more. TBH teenage Sam is beside herself right now. I hope you love this as much as I loved making it. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including A THOUSAND THREADS BY NENEH CHERRY 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
My guest today is the fashion designer Bella Freud. Bella launched her eponymous label in 1990. Over thirty years later it remains resolutely independent, one of the very few that hasn’t been subsumed by a fashion conglomerate. Bella’s clothes are for wearing and have become a byword for women who want to be glamorous but not girly with a bit of added wit. Her iconic word jumpers are one of the most covetable individual fashion items bar none. (As her instant-sell out collaboration with M&S proved.) Bella has always played with her heritage (her father, the artist Lucian Freud designed her famous dog logo and great-grandfather was Sigmund Freud, widely credited as the inventor of psycho analysis) and now she’s launched a podcast - Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud - where she literally puts celebrities on the couch to analyse their relationship with style. Eric Cantona, Zadie Smith and even Kate Moss have succumbed and, I have to say, it’s an eye-opener. I met Bella at home in North West London to talk about growing up outside convention and how she finally shook off her childhood coping mechanisms. We discussed the “wonderful feeling of progress” that’s come with ageing, what we can gain from unravelling life’s knots and the impact of losing both of her parents in one week. Bella also told me how her body image shaped her designs and how she’s learnt to appreciate her body as she’s aged. Fashion is a magic carpet, she says, and she’s the living proof. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
My guest today is a woman who is credited with putting poetry back on the map, Donna Ashworth…. Donna came to prominence in 2020, when a poem she wrote about lockdown was read in a viral video to raise money for the NHS. She subsequently self-published her first volume of poetry, To The Women, which sold over 100,000 copies. Unsurprisingly the publishing industry came a-calling. Now The UK’s best selling poet, Donna has written eight books, including the bestsellers Wild Hope and I Wish I Knew and you’ll find them on the bedside tables of millions of women. Her latest, Growing Brave, a collection of words to soothe fear and let more life in, feels once again, perfectly pitched for the times we’re living through. Donna joined me for what is probably the most emotionally intelligent conversation I’ve ever had here on The Shift. We talked about being dubbed “the difficult one” and how we grow into the labels we’re given, how to win the self-worth battle, the secret to being well-boundaried, why she doesn’t care for a “man-made” timeline and finding her calling in midlife. Also, I should warn you that Donna is incredibly generous and candid when it comes to talking about her experience of anorexia and how it feels to age with an eating disorder. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including Growing Brave by Donna Ashworth 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
My guest today is one incredible woman. Baroness Lola Young of Hornsey is an actress, academic, campaigner for social justice and a cross bench peer in the House of Lords. By anyone’s standards she has achieved. She studied at the New College of Speech and Drama and started her career as an actress in the 1970s and 80s, before becoming professor of Cultural Studies at Middlesex University. In 2001 she received an OBE and became an independent peer in the house of lords in 2004, where she has actively campaigned against modern slavery and unethical fashion, amongst other things. But before all that, from the age of just 8 weeks old, Lola moved between foster care placements and children’s homes. Then, at the age of 18, she was pushed off what she calls “the care cliff”. Now that childhood is the subject of Eight Weeks, her stunning memoir of a childhood in care and her journey to discovering her own story. As she says herself, when people say “this is my friend Lola, she grew up in care, now she’s in the house of lords” it misses out rather a lot of steps on the way. Lola joined me to tell me how it felt to start trying to weave together the scattered parts of herself in her 50s and how growing up in care turned her into an activist. We also discussed everyday racism, what it’s really like being a Black woman in the House of Lords, her conflicted relationship with visibility and why somebody has to go first so it might as well be you. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including Eight Weeks by Baroness Lola Young 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
My guest today is the forensic psychotherapist Dr Jennifer Cox. She trained at the Tavistock and now has an extensive practice specialising in treating women with undiagnosed anger. As part of this work she developed the Women are Mad approach to help women who can’t afford therapy to “think below the surface” about where their rage might be coming from. Sounds like it might be useful? I thought so, too. Jen is also the co host of the Women Are Mad podcast and has written a book called Women Are Angry which is very much what it says on the tin. Her mission? To help us identify our rage and let it the hell out. Productively. Of course. Jen joined me for a fascinating conversation about the nature of female rage and why she thinks we’re seeing such a groundswell of fury now. We also discussed the impact of being a young carer, when and why we learn to “bitch”, why it’s easier to be a worried person than an angry one and the moment the anger penny dropped for her. CW: I should warn you that there’s passing discussion of suicidal ideation, eating disorders and depression Note: This was recorded before the November 5 election in the US. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including Women are Angry by Jennifer Cox 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
My guest today is Louise Doughty, the woman behind some of the knottiest thrillers to grace our bookshelves and TV screens in recent years. Her bestseller, Apple Tree Yard about a sensible middle aged woman who makes a very unsensible decision (involving sex in the house of commons!) sold over half a million copies and was turned into a smash hit BBC series starring Emily Watson. She was also the brains behind the breathtaking BBC drama Crossfire that starred Keeley Hawes. Of course What you don’t hear, is that Apple Tree Yard was Louise’s 7th novel, catapulting her to “the big time” at the age of 50. Her latest book, A Bird In Winter, looks set to continue that trajectory. Think The 39 steps if the lead was an extremely resourceful 50something woman on the run. Louise joined me to talk about how her “overnight” success at 50” transformed her life (mainly she finally started a pension!) And why it’s still considered controversial when middle aged women have sex! We also discussed surviving the menopause-puberty collision, the unrealised fury - and potential - of the middle aged woman and the power and importance of realising you’re not for everyone. And that’s fine. Note: apologies for the occasionally disrupted sound quality at the start of this episode. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org , including A Bird in Winter by Louise Doughty 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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