The Shift with Sam Baker

Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week is the brilliantly outspoken author Kit de Waal. This episode first aired in July. --- Today’s guest is the award-winning writer, Kit De Waal. Until she was 21, Kit had never read a book voluntarily. But once she started there was no stopping her. Kit started writing in her m...

Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week, let stylist and Instagrammer Kat Farmer motivate your wardrobe overhaul. This episode first aired in March. --- Totally lost sight of your personal style? Feel like your clothes hate you? Whether it’s the result of two years in and out of lockdown, emerging from the motherho...

Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week's, journalist, power-lifter and body image and mental health activist, Poorna Bell, is just the tonic if you're having a January moment. This episode first aired in July. --- By her own admission, today’s guest, award winning journalist Poorna Bell, wasn’t looking forward to...

Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. This week is acting legend, national treasure (she hates that) and my old bird role model Sheila Hancock. This episode first aired in June. --- Today’s guest is nothing less than an acting legend. Although she probably wouldn’t have any truck with that. Dame Sheila Hancock is that rare...

Over the Christmas period and into January I'm going to be replaying some of my quiet favourite episodes of 2022. First up is screenwriter Abi Morgan. This episode first aired in March. --- Today’s guest is a woman I’ve admired for the longest time: stage and screenwriter Abi Morgan. Throughout her thirty year career Abi has written some of our most memorable drama: Shame, Sex Traffic, The Queen,...

In the run up to Christmas I'll be dropping two special live episodes recorded live at the Birmingham Literature Festival earlier this autumn. The second conversation is with one of the funniest, warmest women you’re ever likely to encounter: Ruth Jones.  TBH Ruth needs little introduction. The co-writer and star of Stella and the BAFTA award winning Gavin and Stacey, she is also the bestselling a...

In the run up to Christmas I'll be dropping two special live episodes recorded live at the Birmingham Literature Festival earlier this autumn. The first conversation is with one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever interviewed: the activist, author and academic, Elif Shafak. The author of 19 books, including the novels Ten minutes 38 seconds in this strange world which was shortlisted for the B...

Somehow, it's the end of season 10! How did that even happen? And I'm so thrilled to end the season with this week's guest. I’ve fangirled Nadiya Hussain ever since she gave her groundbreaking speech on Bake Off “I’m never going to put boundaries on myself ever again. I’m never gonna say I can’t do it. I’m never gonna say maybe. I’m never gonna say I don’t think I can. I can and I will.” Cue milli...

My guest today is the journalist and broadcaster Kaye Adams. Kaye is the host of BBC Radio Scotland’s morning show and a longstanding panellist on ITV’s Loose Women, amongst other things. But if you’re a fellow Strictly addict, you maybe more likely to know her from her sadly brief but memorable stint in the current series where she partnered Kai… more of that later. A journalist by training, Kaye...

Today’s guest has a talent for tapping into what people are thinking, not to mention an enviable BS radar. Since we first met almost 15 years ago, Sali Hughes has become a leading journalist and presenter. Her beauty column for the Guardian is responsible for the contents of a million makeup bags and she has just turned her YouTube series In the bathroom with into a podcast, Beyond The Bathroom. I...

My guest today is the dose of salts that is Milly Johnson. Milly started writing books in her late 30s when the birth of her first son showed her the direction she’d been struggling to find. Now on her 20th novel, Together, Again, self-described northern bird Milly has sold over 2 and a half million books and won the Romantic Novelists association Outstanding achievement award.  But you’d never kn...

Today’s guest is my personal hero, Caryn Franklin. Caryn started her career in the 80s as a fashion editor before moving into TV where she presented, amongst other things, BBC’s The Clothes Show. Always outspoken, Caryn has spent four decades being a thorn in the fashion industry’s side. Championing diversity of all forms LONG before it became the cool thing to do.  She cofounded All Walks Beyond...

My guest today has been lauded as “the most lethal, screamingly funny truth-teller of our time”. Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has made her name as the master of the takedown. Through the political shit-storm of recent years (or should that be weeks?!) she has taken a scalpel laced with laughing gas to the establishment and made us weep (in a good way, usually) in the face of the coming apocalyps...

My guest today has packed a helluva lot into her 43 years. Dawn O’Porter started her career in TV production, before finding her way in front of the camera to host a series of attention-grabbing documentaries on everything from polygamy to Dirty Dancing. By the time she hit her 30s, like many women, Dawn was moving faster and faster to stand still. By the time she was married (to the actor Chris O...

How do I want to age? What does the rest of my life look like? Those are questions I know many of you have given A LOT of thought. Well, my guest today has some answers. Dr Sharon Blackie is a psychologist and folklorist who is passionate about reimagining the ageing process for the better. Her last book If Women Rose Rooted was an ecofeminist sleeper hit about finding your place in the world that...

You might think you know all there is to know about today’s guest. Posh girl who once dated Princess Margaret’s son. Half of the early noughties style duo Trinny and Susannah. Plus a short-lived and strangely identifiable turn on Strictly as the slightly embarrassing older woman who can’t really dance. (Hands up who over-identified!)  Because that’s what the media has told us.  But look at it anot...

One hundred episodes... how did that happen?! The little podcast that started on a whim and a prayer (and no, that's not a typo!) is still here and soaring. So I could not think of a more fitting guest for such a landmark episode than a woman whose life is a tribute to the power of hope... Where do you turn when everything feels hopeless? My guest today knows the answer to better than most. Nine y...

Hello and welcome to this special bonus episode of The Shift with Sam Baker. Consider it a taster for season 10, which starts next Tuesday. If you’re in your 40s or 50s (or even 30s or 60s) and feeling a bit what-next, my guest today is just the motivation you need. Seven years ago Deborah Frances-White was sitting in a bar with a comedian friend, when they came up with a crazy idea for a podcast....

One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the new season. I had long been an admirer of Dr Jen Gunter's no-bull approach to women's health before I met her eighteen months ago. She didn't disappoint! Here are the original sh...

One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the new season. I had never heard of Nana-Ama Danquah before I started The Shift and speaking to her was one of my most enlightening conversations. Nana-Ama's writing has recently fo...

One of my favourite things about making The Shift podcast is all the fascinating women I get to interview - and learn a little bit from. So I’m revisiting a few of my favourite episodes while I finish putting together the next season. This is a replay of one of my all time favourites, with the inimitable Anita Rani. I did this interview in June 2021. Here are the original show notes: What even is...

Today’s guest is one of Britain’s best loved novelists, Lisa Jewell. Her career started with a smash hit debut novel Ralph’s Party - which she started writing as a bet at the age of 27 while she was unemployed, and, according to her, “totally lacking in direction and ambition”. It was the book of the moment and for 14 novels it looked like her career - although ticking along nicely - would never h...

My guest today is the writer Hilma Wolitzer. Born in 1930, Hilma had her first poem published at the age of 9. She then shelved that ambition in favour of marriage and children, as women were expected to in the 1950s. 26 years later she had her first short story published. Then there was no stopping her.  Her first novel was published at the age of 44 and since then she has published 14 books. The...

I can’t remember the first time I met my friend Clare Grogan. But like many Gen-Xers, I remember the first time I saw her in the cult movie Gregory’s Girl, and then, later the same year, on Top of the Pops with Altered Images, performing the band’s top 10 hits Happy Birthday and I Could Be Happy. (I have a bit of a soft spot for that last one.) Still in her teens, she was living a life the rest of...

Who hasn’t looked at those things you should have done by the time you’re 30/40/50/whatever lists and rolled their eyes? And yet consciously or not many of us still live our lives according to those timelines.  But what does middle age feel like if you’ve been acing those lists since you were 16 - and then suddenly you’re not? Today’s guest Emma Forrest was an early achiever. She had a newspaper c...