# Catherine Newman on surviving the midlife sandwich – THE SHIFT LIVE

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838/catherine-newman-on-surviving-the-midlife-sandwich-the-shift-live
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838/catherine-newman-on-surviving-the-midlife-sandwich-the-shift-live.md
Podcast: [The Shift with Sam Baker](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838)
Published: 2026-02-10T05:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com/
Audio file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/AUDD5655253606.mp3?updated=1770629796
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Duration seconds: 3481

## Resource

This is a special live episode of The Shift with Sam Baker podcast, recorded live at the wonderful Portobello Bookshop in Edinburgh. Catherine Newman is the author of some of the most on-the-nose books about being a woman in midlife that I’ve ever read - her bestselling debut, We All Want Impossible Things, Sandwich and, now, Wreck. Imagine if Nora Ephron and Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy Barton met in a bar and did edibles together and you have something approximating Catherine’s creation, Rocky, and her family - Nick, Willa and Jamie and her 93 year old dad. A normal loving, anxious, messy, unpredictable, relatable, family, living through a year of what ifs that veer uncomfortably close to home. Wreck asks, how do we live when we don’t know what next? I think that’s something we can all identify with right now! Catherine has also written two memoirs and a couple of children’s books, is an award-winning writer and columnist and contributes regularly to the New York Times and O, the oprah magazine. For ten years she also wrote Real Simple’s etiquette column and she has an excellent substack, Crone Sandwich. Which I highly recommend you check out. Catherine and I chatted generational (mis)understanding, surviving the midlife sandwich, giving up drinking, life after menopause, rewriting your family's life and being a covert cookbook nerd. f you’re listening to this on the podcast, you can get a signed copy of Wreck by going to Portobello Bookshop’s website - theportobellobookshop.com. * Alternatively, you can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, including Wreck and Sandwich by Catherine Newman as well as the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself a…

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