Kathy Lette’s midlife mantra: if it doesn’t spark joy, it’s time to toss it away!

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2024

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's season finale time! And my guest today is the whirlwind also known as Kathy Lette. Australian Kathy smashed her way into the global bestseller lists at the age of 17 with the novel Puberty Blues. Since then she has turned her irreverent, en pointe pen on the peaks and troughs, triumphs and total BS of female existence. I first read her with Girls Night Out and The Llama Parlour in my twenties and met Kathy when I was features editor of New Woman (yet another resident of the magazine graveyard). Foetal Attraction and Mad Cow followed, which was made into a film starring Anna Friel and Joanna Lumley. 20 books later, her latest, The Revenge Club, takes hilarious aim at the way women are scrap-heaped (sometimes professionally and personally) in their 50s. Kathy joined me to play pun bingo and talk about why life is in two acts and the key is surviving the perimenopausal interval, reaping the benefits of the invisibility cloak and chipping away at ageing double standards. She also told me about being told off by her teenage daughter, the power of complaining, why divorce isn’t to be feared and why her midlife mantra is, if it doesn’t spark joy, it’s time to toss it away. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at The Shift bookshop on Bookshop.org, including The Revenge Club by Kathy Lette 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus.
0:04.5	We're having a baby.
0:05.5	We're having a baby.
0:07.2	I've always wanted to be mom.
0:09.4	And we're bringing you on our journey through everything.
0:12.4	I have no idea what we're doing.
0:13.6	Thank you. I have more of an idea.
0:15.6	I think of it like a Tamagocchi.
0:17.8	At the end of all of this...
0:20.0	We're going to have a little baby.
0:21.8	Raising Chelsea, a Hulu original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:27.3	18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.
0:34.7	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-holds barred truth about being a woman post-40, created and hosted by me, journalist and author Sam Baker.
0:45.8	My guest today is the whirlwind, also known as Kathy Lat.
0:50.1	Australian Kathy smashed her way into the global bestseller lists at the age of 17 with the novel Puberty Blues.
0:57.7	Since then, she's turned her irreverent pen on the peaks and troughs, triumphs and total BS of the female existence.
1:06.7	I first read her with Girls Night Out and the Lama parlour in my 20s,
1:11.3	and I met Cathy when I was featured as to have new woman.
1:14.1	Remember that?
1:14.8	Yet another resident of the magazine graveyard.
1:18.0	Fetal attraction and mad cow followed,
1:20.2	which was made into a film starring Anna Friel and Joanna Lumley.
	...

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