I'm Absolutely Fine! by The Midult

Listen, it's all pretty hideous/hopeless out there. But buying beauty bits can be properly feel good. Annabel rifles through her drawers to find her current beauty stars - some are new, some are classics. Some are budget, others are treats. All will blur, blend and burnish where we need them to. Head to TheMidult.com for all the shoppable links, but we discuss: Botanico Vida Omega Oil Kopari Deodo...

We all feel stressed, right? We feel dread-full. We’ve done Pilates and lit a candle and had a bath and, in Annabel’s case, fallen asleep in it. But still. The panic. WE NEED SOLUTIONS. So this week we’re thrilled to have Dr Sam Akbar on the podcast. She's at the frontline of serious, heart-breaking stress; a clinical psychologist who treats refugees and survivors of torture with post-traumatic st...

Are you worried about the wreckage that is your face? We are. This week we have one of the country’s foremost beauty experts on the podcast…. whether it's writing her unmissable Guardian beauty columns, building the charitable initiative Beauty Banks or breaking the internet with her decision to go fully grey, Sali Hughes is honest and outspoken about beauty standards and how the beauty industry m...

Regular listeners of the podcast will know how totally demotivating we find motivational quotes – however there is one exception to this rule… Veronica Dearly, whose whole-hearted warmth and empathy is at the cornerstone of her illustrations. Veronica's funny blend of stress and self-awareness is a lovely corner of the internet - she stares into the abyss and finds a little bit of hope there. Her...

Are you so bored of cooking that you’d quite happily throw all the utensils out of the window? Have you abandoned any attempt at culinary imagination? Are you worried about how to feed everybody, let alone with any kind of flair, without going insane and bankrupting yourself? Well, we are delighted to welcome the delicious Thomasina Miers to the podcast. She won Masterchef (FFS!) before founding W...

We are slightly awestruck by our guest this week – she’s a BAFTA and Emmy award-winning screenwriter of such magnificences as The Hour, The Split, Iron Lady and Suffragette. But she’s soon to be famous for her bestseller This is Not A Pity Memoir. Ok, so we should warn you that this is a book about a series of heart-breaking events: her husband had a catastrophic reaction to MS drugs; he woke up f...

Recently someone said to us – as they do – just go with the flow. Our first thought – obviously – was…’Have you ever met us?’ Swiftly followed by, ‘What time does the flow start?’ And ‘What do we wear?' We have never knowingly or unknowingly gone with the flow. Anyway, we are unlikely to tell anyone to go with the flow, but there are a lot of things we are currently saying to people who have annoy...

This week we’ve got a veritable powerhouse of a guest. Maybe you started needlepointing during lockdown? Or baked a dodgy sourdough loaf or two? But if you’re Steph McGovern, you started a whole television show…. from your front room. In fact, Steph’s Packed Lunch, was just nominated for a BAFTA. We talk about our dire knicker situation, dealing with IBS and what it’s like to be a northerner who d...

If you are ever depressed about the chilly perfection of Instagram then we have the antidote…. Em Clarkson, who uses this platform to call out the constant cultural undermining of women and to smash our own internalised misogyny one awkward-yet-joyful post at a time. We talk about the power of changing your mind, what will happen if we just keep letting ourselves be coated in shame and judgement,...

We have a question: at what point does your ‘manner’ become your horrible personality? Because – somewhere – we all have a horrible personality. Even Emilie. This week we discuss why we need to own our anger, and why all our inner people - Inner Warrior, Child and Diva - are malfunctioning at the moment. Plus lots of ways to get Midult high AND ways to say no without saying no - because we are, af...

Has there ever been a better time to talk about sex education? Girls, women and their bodies are under siege. Supposed protectors of laws and rights are watching porn in the Commons. Young people are deluged with mixed messages about what they should and shouldn’t expect. There’s an orgasm gap, along with all the other gaps FFS. It’s enough to make you want to start burning everything down. So thi...

What’s the word for when you’re very clever but can’t remember anything and know literally nothing…? Because that’s where we live now. This week on the podcast we talk about why we need entire essay prompts to remember anything; all the stuff we shall never understand (like why does watching documentaries about serial killers help us to relax); and why we are low-level suspicious of anyone who loo...

Sometimes it’s hard to even feel like ourselves. Pressure. Confusion. Exhaustion. And then we wonder about menopause and how we are going to handle the storms ahead… so this week we asked Karen Arthur to join us, to talk to us about those choppy waters. Karen was a teacher until menopause floored her, robbed her of her sense of self and led her down a path of anxiety and depression. She left her j...

All this 'going out’ business…well, we are sorely out of practice and in danger of falling at the first hurdle: what to wear. Half of the exhaustion of 'going out' is the bit before. The getting ready. *shudders* So we are delighted that our old friend Kat Farmer has written Get Changed, a book about how to leave the house without leaving your sanity. We talk about bags, belts, budgets and if you...

If someone asked you what you did for fun, would you have a full body panic? Are you living at the intersection where overwhelm meets boredom? Well, LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE OF THE PODCAST with writer and revolutionary, Eve Rodsky. With her latest book, Find Your Unicorn Space, Eve is helping us reclaim time, reclaim energy and reconnect with our creativity. No small task. But this is a woman undaun...

This week’s podcast is all about how and why money makes us crazy. Rising costs are crunching us and we know that financial planning is sensible, so why are we resistant? Can’t afford to do the roof and yet still addicted to athleisurewear that will never witness any athleticism. We talk about money regret: waxing, the futile hunt for the perfect capsule wardrobe, highlights. And, at the end, ther...

We don’t think anyone was prepared for the idea that 2022 might be worse than all the rest put together. So, seeing as so many of us are feeling terrible and guilty and frightened, we are thrilled (and a little relieved ) to welcome Julia Samuel back to the podcast. Julia is a psychotherapist specialising in bereavement and a bestselling author. Her warmth and wisdom has helped thousands. Her late...

One of the areas where we feel we could be more grown-up is... money. Some people are unemotional, practical and organised when it comes to money. Not us. So we are delighted that our guest this week is a money grown-up. Georgie Frost is an award-winning financial journalist and she’s here to tell us how to initiate a financial MOT…and maybe help us calm the money madness in our minds. We talk abo...

Listen, all things considered, we weren’t sure whether to record a podcast this week. But we did…so APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE for all the weirdness. We talk about Spider Ma’am and other reluctant superheroes who might not actually be prepared to pull on the spandex. We talk about all the flare-ups - from emotional incontinence to accessorising. And we wonder what the fuck Meatloaf wouldn’t do for love....

This week we are delighted to welcome a true voyager to the podcast – Clover Stroud travels to the very sharpest edges of human emotion in her writing, taking us with her through the dark woods of grief, loss and what it means to love. You are going to be hearing so much about her book, The Red of My Blood (which is about the death of her sister - out on March 10th) because it is brilliant, truthf...

Our guest this week is the sensational Daisy Buchanan; novelist, journalist. podcaster and an authority on both books and sex. She writes brilliantly sexy books and her latest is called Careering about magazines, millennials and masturbation. Sometimes at once. But today she’s Doctor Daisy – giving us her book prescriptions for all our emotional ailments. Because, wow, do we need them… A book for...

If you’ve ever been heartbroken you will remember the agony. It can be enough to stop you from embarking on new relationships. ‘Can I survive that again?’ you wonder. We very much hope that no one listening to the podcast is going through this right now, but if you are, there is a resource. Our guests this week are psychologist Alice Haddon and writer Ruth Field who founded The Heartbreak Hotel, a...

We’re not being dramatic but… we're under threat from… The Panic Variant. This week we talk about how we are navigating the panicdemic; essential conversations we have with our friends (burial or cremation? Big knickers or bigger knickers?) and whether we are meant to feel bad because Downing Street has hosted more parties in the last two years than we have been to in our entire lives… plus the Mi...

If anyone can shake us out of our January torpor it’s our guest this week. Is there anything that Helena Morrissey can’t do? She runs banks, advocates for women in business, writes books, and has nine children. She’s also a Dame and only 55. Maybe you need a lie down now? Anyway, Helena talks movingly about how the menopause ambushed her and rocked her confidence; how to ask for a pay-rise and why...

Not sure we know a Midult who isn’t currently experiencing that heady mix of exhaustion and panic - what will this year look like? Can I be bothered to care? Am I up to it? Do I look good in high-waisted jeans? Have I turned the gas off? Have I? So this podcast is about all the myriad Januarys we are having and why adulthood is currently not recommended. Yes we’re capable grown-ups (*coughs*) but...