Podcasts for midlife women: 11 honest shows for your 40s, 50s and 60s

Nobody hands you a manual at 45. Your body changes the rules, the job that fit for twenty years stops fitting, your parents need more of you and your kids need less, and most of the advice on offer comes from people who have not been there yet.

The 11 podcasts for midlife women on this list are made by people who have: a gynecologist who rebuilt her career around menopause, a news anchor who left the desk after 28 years, two Canadian founders who get generals and Supreme Court justices to talk about real life. Find the one that sounds like your week and press play.

The Honest Talk

I discovered The Honest Talk thanks to a comment in this article. And yes, it was so good I had to update this piece. It has only grown since. Jennifer Stewart, president of Syntax Strategic, and broadcaster Catherine Clark started it in 2020, when the pandemic turned the live events they had planned into a podcast. Today it is produced in partnership with iHeartRadio Canada, and a new episode arrives every second Friday.
The guest list tells you what kind of show this is: Justice Michelle O’Bonsawin, the first Indigenous judge on Canada’s Supreme Court, General Jennie Carignan, the first woman to command the Canadian military, two-time Olympian Lisa Weagle. Jen and Catherine care less about the title than about the woman who holds it: how she got there, how she decides under pressure, what her life looks like away from the headlines. They get to it in about 25 minutes, which is harder than it sounds.
Some episodes to get started? Dr. Jennifer Gunter on the myths and stigma around women’s health, and Marilyn Denis on ageism in the media and the loss of her sister. From 2026, try the two-part menopause conversation with Dr. Sarah Shaw, which goes from brain fog and hormones to sleep, sex and how to advocate for yourself, or Melissa Leong’s no-shame guide to starting fresh with money. And for pure pleasure there is the Mother’s Day episode, where the hosts interview their own mothers, Maureen McTeer and Jane Wilson, both lawyers, about raising kids while building a career.
Why is it great for midlife women? Because it covers the whole of a life at this age, health, money, work and family, and it never talks down to you. It’s inspiring without being preachy. If you’ve been looking for a podcast that speaks to where you are in life, start here.

Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Julia Louis-Dreyfus asks women older than she is what they have learned. Jane Fonda, Fran Lebowitz and Joan Baez have all answered.

The idea is in the title. In each episode of Wiser than Me, the Seinfeld and Veep star sits down with a woman older than she is and asks what the years have taught her. The first season alone brought Jane Fonda, Fran Lebowitz, and Diane von Furstenberg. Season 4, which ran into the summer of 2026, added Jean Smart, Pam Grier, Joan Baez and Cyndi Lauper. Apple Podcasts named it Show of the Year in 2023.
Two habits make the show what it is. Every guest is introduced with her age, said proudly, and every episode ends with Julia calling her own mother, Judith, to talk over what she has just heard. If you are in the middle of midlife, the effect is practical as much as moving. Here are women of 75 and 85 who are still working and still funny, and your own next thirty years get easier to picture. It’s one of the best podcasts for women over 50, and it travels well to any age.

Over 50 & Flourishing with Dominique Sachse

A news anchor’s second act. After 28 years on Houston television, Dominique Sachse asks the questions she wants answered for herself.

Dominique Sachse spent 28 years on air at KPRC in Houston and won three Emmy Awards before she left the anchor desk. By then she already had a second audience: the YouTube channel she started in 2014, which now counts nearly two million subscribers. Over 50 & Flourishing, launched in 2023, is where the two careers meet. “I love to ask questions,” she writes in the show’s description, and it shows. She also turns the questions on herself: one recent solo episode follows her own hormonal history from IVF and postpartum depression to hypothyroidism and perimenopause.
Many of her guests are people who did their best work late. Barbara Bradley Baekgaard tells how she co-founded Vera Bradley after 40, and Joan Lunden, once of Good Morning America, talks about saying yes before she felt ready. In between come practical hours on strength training, GLP-1s and which menopause supplements are worth the money, and one on the fashion rules women over 50 can stop obeying. Few midlife shows take style and science equally seriously. This one does.

Weight Loss for Women Over 40 Podcast

Weight loss through mindset and psychology instead of calorie counting. Real talk on sustainable lifestyle changes. Short, impactful episodes.

Nicole Ternay’s podcast starts from an idea most diet shows avoid: by 40 you already know what to eat, and the hard part happens in your head. Nicole is a certified personal trainer, a health coach and a physical therapist assistant, but her episodes are about psychology far more than workouts.
Recent ones make the point. “Why You Overeat at Night (And How to Stop)” argues that the 9 p.m. trip to the kitchen has very little to do with willpower, and her Food Freedom Mindset series makes the case against tracking calories at all. Most episodes run between 20 and 30 minutes and a new one comes out every week, so they fit a walk or a commute.
It’s not just about weight loss. It’s about ending an argument with food that many women have been having since their twenties, and embracing a healthier, happier life after 40.

The Resetter Podcast with Dr. Mindy Pelz

How food, fasting and hormones work together from perimenopause onwards, explained in plain words. Now published as Live Like a Girl.

A note on the name first: you will now find The Resetter Podcast in your app as Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz. The host and the approach have not changed. Dr. Mindy, a doctor of chiropractic and the author of Fast Like a Girl, Eat Like a Girl and Age Like a Girl, publishes twice a week: a long interview on Mondays and a shorter solo episode on Wednesdays, where she works through a single question, such as how much creatine a woman needs or why everything feels harder after 40.
She has a knack for breaking down science in a way that just makes sense, and her guests help. Recent ones include metabolic scientist Dr. Ben Bikman on carbohydrates and psychologist Dr. Marisa Franco on why changing your body does not change how you feel about yourself.
One caution. Her fasting advice is popular and it also has its critics, so take it as the start of a conversation with your own doctor, not as a prescription. Listened to that way, it is one of the clearest explanations around of what your hormones are doing in these years.

HOT FLASHES & COOL TOPICS

Two hosts, a new guest every Wednesday, and no subject off the table for women over 50.

Hot Flashes & Cool Topics is a weekly podcast where Colleen Rosenblum, a former attorney and pilates instructor, and Bridgett Biagi Garratt, a former elementary school teacher, give voice to women in midlife and beyond. They started in 2019, they publish every Wednesday, and their eighth season began in August 2026. 

The range is the appeal. In the space of a few weeks they talked to chef Carla Hall about reinvention and her one woman show, to former CNN anchor Carol Lin about reporting on the morning of 9/11, to Judy Norton, Mary Ellen in The Waltons, about overcoming fear, and to a therapist about setting boundaries without guilt. Health gets the same care: their interview with obesity medicine specialist Dr. Alexandra Sowa is a clear guide to GLP-1 medications, cost and side effects included.

What holds it together is the two of them. Colleen and Bridgett are not doctors and do not pretend to be, so they ask what you would ask if you were in the room, and they laugh easily. The show was a Webby Award nominee in 2024, and a private Facebook group and a newsletter keep the conversation going between Wednesdays. 

unPAUSED with Dr. Mary Claire Haver

Menopause explained by a board-certified OB-GYN, in conversations that run from testosterone dosing to who pays for research into women’s health.

Dr. Mary Claire Haver is a board-certified OB-GYN, a certified menopause practitioner and the author of The New Menopause, a number one New York Times bestseller. She launched unPAUSED with Audacy in October 2025. What sets it apart from the other health shows on this list is who sits across the table: specialists, one subject at a time. A professor of urology from Baylor College of Medicine on testosterone for women. A psychiatrist on why ADHD so often comes to light during perimenopause. A performance scientist on the 3 a.m. wake-up and what light and meal timing have to do with it.
She goes after the bigger picture too. In September 2026 Melinda French Gates came on to talk about the menopause funding gap and the $215 million in new money for women’s health she had announced in a New York Times essay. Another episode was recorded live at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. If you only have time for one, start with “How to Get What You Need From a 15-Minute Doctor’s Appointment” with Dr. Lucy McBride. It is useful at any age, and most useful at this one.

A Certain Age

Say your age out loud. Career reinvention, health and money for women at 40, 50 and 60, with an expert in every episode.

A Certain Age is an age-positive podcast with one house rule: say your age out loud. Katie Fogarty is a New York journalist and career coach whose own path runs through TV news writing, public relations, Capitol Hill and teaching English in Japan. She publishes every Monday, and in August 2026 the show celebrated its sixth birthday.

Her background shows in the guests. Many of them rebuilt a working life in their forties or fifties, and Katie asks for the how, not just the inspiration. Gwen Whiting, co-founder of The Laundress, talks about starting over after a very public product recall. Fran Hauser, a former digital president at Time Inc., shows how to cut an overloaded calendar down to size. Ann Shoket, once editor-in-chief of Seventeen, offers a ten minute habit against loneliness. Health is here as well, from perimenopause sleep to midlife weight gain, always with someone qualified to explain it.

Katie Fogarty also started Age Out Loud, an Instagram community where women share their age and their stories. It gives the show something most podcasts never manage, a place where listeners can answer back and find each other.

The Grown-Ass Woman’s Guide with Jackie MacDougall

The practical side of midlife: insurance, estates, friendship, adult children. Candid, useful and never dull.

Jackie MacDougall worked in on-air marketing at NBC, Disney, Sony and Warner Bros. before she turned to the audience she belongs to herself. Her show has sharpened since this list first appeared. It now speaks to the woman who runs the house, the money and everybody’s calendar and who has, as the show puts it, mistaken exhaustion for competence.

So the episodes are practical in a way few midlife podcasts are. One explains the disability insurance gap that catches women in their fifties. In another, Maria Fraietta, a teacher and single mom who had to untangle her late father’s affairs with no roadmap, explains how to put your own in order before someone else has to. Others look at friendship and ghosting in midlife, or at rebuilding a relationship with an adult daughter once the rules of parenting stop working. 

Jackie brings her signature wit and candor to all of it, and with more than 230 episodes behind her there is plenty to go back to. If you want company while you deal with the paperwork of being a grown-up, TGAWG is the pod that will support you.

Dr. Brooke Show 

Hormone advice without the panic, from a naturopathic doctor who is still in full-time practice.

Dr. Brooke Kalanick is a naturopathic doctor who trained at Bastyr University in Seattle, where she also took a master’s degree in acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine. She is the co-author, with Sarah Fragoso, of the book Hangry, and unlike many online experts she is still in full-time practice. You can hear it. The show is measured and specific, and it has no patience for black-and-white health advice.

Most episodes are solo. Dr. Brooke takes one question and stays with it for 45 minutes to an hour, from hormone imbalances to headaches, stomach acid and why your gallbladder matters more than you think. What stays constant is her search for an approach that fits the individual woman, not a protocol that fits everybody. 

You will find several episodes on topics relevant to perimenopause and midlife. Additionally, one of the episodes was a more personal discussion on midlife. In 2026 she has taken on the questions her patients keep asking: can HRT make you gain weight, should you stay on GLP-1 medication forever, and what gets missed when a DUTCH hormone test is read. 

Dr. Brooke Show has passed episode 468 and no longer keeps a strict schedule. A new episode appears every two or three weeks, and the archive is deep enough to search for almost any hormone question you have. 

Women in the Middle: Loving Life After 50 

Good news about being over 50, from a coach who started again at that age herself. One honest question per episode.

Are you ready to hear some good news about being over 50? Women in the Middle has been delivering it every week since July 2017, and it is now close to 480 episodes. 

Suzy Rosenstein knows her subject first hand. She was laid off around her 50th birthday after a long career in health promotion, trained as a life coach, and built this show on what she learned from starting again. Her central idea is regret-proofing: deciding now what you would be sorry not to have done. 

Her solo episodes run about 25 minutes and ask one uncomfortable question each. “Just Because You Can, Doesn’t Mean You Want To” is about the gap between being capable and actually wanting something. “What Kind of Daughter Do You Want to Be in Midlife?” looks past the appointments and prescriptions of caring for aging parents to the relationship underneath. Guest episodes run longer, like the conversation with Jacqueline St. Joan, who left her judgeship to follow a new direction in poetry. 

Midlife should be as fun, intriguing and vibrant as your young days. However, many women get overwhelmed when so much changes at once. If this is you, Suzy is an upbeat, funny and practical voice to start with, and a good reminder that the second half is yours to plan.

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