{"podcast":{"title":"The Shift with Sam Baker","slug":"the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838","podcast_index_feed_id":1305838,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/AUDD5911261185","website_url":"https://theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com/","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/ca307044-48da-11ef-bc54-4b542b9ff10c/image/eb51c7bae8ff572c9c63cd96c36f576f.jpeg?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"Sam Baker Ltd","episode_count":296,"summary":"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…","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838"},"episode":{"title":"Katriona O'Sullivan on women's bodies, hunger & why women shrink","slug":"katriona-o-sullivan-on-women-s-bodies-hunger-why-women-shrink","published_at":"2026-05-12T00:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838/katriona-o-sullivan-on-women-s-bodies-hunger-why-women-shrink","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838","url":"https://theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com/","audio_url":"https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/AUDD7097949730.mp3","summary":"My guest today is Dr Katriona O’Sullivan. Katriona grew up in Coventry and her early life was marked by poverty, addiction and abuse. She became pregnant and subsequently homeless at 15, let down and written off by the adults who were meant to care for her. In 1998 she moved to Dublin with her son and entered Trinity College through the access programme. There She earnt a Phd in psychology and is now a professor at Maynooth university, directs the National Centre for inclusive higher education and writes a regular column for the Irish Independent. Amongst other things. Katriona’s debut memoir, Poor, an intimate personal examination of the complexities of growing up in poverty, spent an incredible 114 weeks in the bestseller lists. Now she’s written Hungry, a fierce and moving examination of her own battle with body image and the way trauma, class and gender shape the way women see themselves. Katriona joined me to talk about spending a lifetime trying to shrink herself to fit and how the world benefits from women hating our bodies. We also discussed why over yogaing is a class issue, holding mothers to a different standard, ambition hunger, parenting boys, really bad sex, how hunger comes from the soul not the stomach and why no longer being an object of sexual interest is a bloody enormous relief. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, including Hungry by Katriona O'Sullivan 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…","meta_description":"My guest today is Dr Katriona O’Sullivan. Katriona grew up in Coventry and her early life was marked by poverty, addiction and abuse. She became pregnant…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4242,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838/episodes/katriona-o-sullivan-on-women-s-bodies-hunger-why-women-shrink/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-shift-with-sam-baker-1305838/katriona-o-sullivan-on-women-s-bodies-hunger-why-women-shrink.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}