You're going to adore these two delightful founders of a very cool startup that features delectable world cuisine, social inclusion, and age and cultural diversity. Yuru Guo and Frankie Docker were Durham University students when they launched Hey! Food is Ready two years ago. They batted back ageist remarks about their ambitious plans - Yuru was 2…

Can you harm yourself by eating too much spinach? Should those baby leaves we know and love as a "superfood" come with a health warning? And what about almonds? Both are super-high in oxalates. If you’re not already rolling your eyes and saying Nooooo Susan, I’ve maxed out on worrying about what to eat when, this fascinating conversation will make …

NEW EPI of The Big Middle drops tomorrowBy Sally K Norton, Susan Flory

How to keep your skin at its healthy best on this episode of The Big Middle, the podcast exploring longer, healthy midlife by design, learning from the sharpest thinkers around. Regulars will know and adore the sharp thinker I’ve invited back on the show. It’s Dr Fayne Frey, crusading age-positive dermatologist and skin cancer specialist - my guidi…

A skin cancer update for you now if you’re a regular listener or viewer of The Big Middle - a mix of the personal and the general. Eighteen months after the first of two operations to cut out a malignant melanoma, I’m happy to report the scar on my outer calf has smoothed out impressively; it’s kinda bumpy-wavy now, nicely faded. I thought it would…

It’s playtime on The Big Middle. I'm celebrating the oft-forgotten fun side of living as older by staying switched-on and active. This is a very particular celebration; we’re meeting five of the 26 winners of a big-money design competition here in the UK. Fun factors into all their design projects. The competition winners are sharing a £20 million …

I'm back with another fascinating guest in my ongoing quest to better understand how our food system became so badly broken and our nutrition beliefs so skewed. Animal foods are demonised. Biologically-dead, factory-made fare that’s poisoning our bodies - and draining health care budgets - is being promoted in the guise of planetary preservation. W…

...on moves to treat animals raised for food more humanely. First, sugared insects:By Susan Flory

Much of the world - rich north and poor south - is drowning in an ocean of hyperpalatable, addictive fakery masquerading as food. Much of that fakery has fed our disconnect with natural food production cycles and practices. And it’s left most of us in a food muddle - moral, environmental, nutritional. We latch on to our dietary tribe with convictio…

COMING UP: The producer of the documentaries Sacred Cow and Death in the Garden (in production) on how our current food fights pull focus away from what's really wrecking our planet.By James Connolly, Susan Flory

Don’t Shoot the Messenger - an admonition I’m invoking right off the top of this episode of The Big Middle. The messenger is my guest Jayne Buxton - journalist-author of The Great Plant-Based Con: Why Eating a Plants-Only Diet Won’t Improve Your Health or Save the Planet. As you might guess, Jayne's been shot and trolled multiple times on the socia…

Health is wealth and expect the unexpected - surely the two most apt truisms of these crazy days on so many fronts. Both ring truer than usual for guest Catherine Foot. She’s been a year in her post as head of Phoenix Insights, a new UK think tank set up to transform the way society responds to the possibilities of longer lives. It’s a workplace mi…

NEXT EPI drops tomorrow, Thursday: The brilliant Catherine Foot on breaking out of the "cosy longevity bubble" - "We need to meet people where they are." In this taster, why Greater Manchester is a stellar example of integration of public services to deliver the social support longer lives demand.By Susan Flory, Catherine Foot

Oh our frazzled brains. Help clearing that fog, curbing that anxiety, finding your focus - and that elusive word - in this fascinating episode with neuroscientist Dr Andrew Hill. He's one of the world’s leading practitioners of neurofeedback. Dr Hill age-stages his best bio-hacks to nourish and rewire our brains for peak performance. Meal-timing is…

It’s as if she’s got a hotline to your head. She gets inside your mind, rummages round all those piles of messy-feely thoughts, even the ones in the darkest corners, then heads for your heart. Scottish writer Donna Ashworth translates our thoughts and feelings about life, love and loss into poetry that stuns in its simple complexity. Her beautiful …

They call themselves retirement recidivists. My guests Bruce Hiland and Ted Kaufman tried but failed several times to call time on busy, high-status careers. They’re the authors of the book Retiring?: Your Next Chapter is about Much More than Money. They say figuring out what you're going to do is job one after you've sorted your financial future. …

I’ve always given the notion of retirement shortest shrift on The Big Middle. What does it even mean in 2022? We don’t retire these days, we shift gears, we make transitions. We keep earning if we need to (and most of us need to) while we grow our minds, feed our passions, soothe our souls and figure out how to give back - do something that matters…

We’re recording this episode of The Big Middle 35 days after Russian President Vladimir Putin started his savagery in Ukraine, compounding our state of psychic trauma just as we learn to live with COVID. The courage and resilience of Ukrainians is breathtaking. The images of the immense suffering of innocents pulverised by Russian shells in their h…

Women in the demon grip of menopause - those of us who don’t sail through it with nary a care - might well scoff at men who clamour for attention for their struggles with andropause, the male menopause. Are they even comparable? And don't only a small percentage of men experience it? Questions I put to Dr Jeff Foster, a men’s health specialist here…

She's been called Queen of Orgasms and The Lube Queen. On the socials, she goes by SamTalksSex. Sam Evans is a sexual health and pleasure expert who's exasperated that frank talk and clear, practical information about all aspects of consensual sex is still hard to get, mired in stigma. A former renal and occupational health nurse, she's a tireless …

The pandemic has hammered the job prospects of older workers. We got a measure of how hard in the latest from the UK's official recordkeeper, the Office for National Statistics. Vacancies are at a record high. There are more than 1.2 million job openings. But alongside that unprecedented demand, economic inactivity appears to be rising. Fewer older…

We in The Big Middle years could easily drown in the ocean of information and advice sloshing around about how we should be - how we should reflect, recalibrate, repackage ourselves so we can not only optimise but justify our continued existence in the new age of longevity. What kills me is much of this advice - well-intentioned and variably valuab…

Still croaky from apparently not COVID but a beast of a cold/flu combo I picked up in France; where better huh? We're all in virus-avoidance mode, still, so I can only hope you manage to avoid all the nastiness out there and have the merriest Christmas possible. This is The Big Middle, the podcast free-ranging around all aspects of messy, glorious …

I had to scale back my intentions with this one. I wanted to bring you the testimonies of at least a dozen post-60s women. But I wasn’t prepared for the reticence of the women I asked to share their hopes, struggles, ambitions and menopause stories. Even the chattiest in the changing room at my Aqua Aerobics class clammed up when it dawned that the…

I've got just the right learned guest for you to spill all the tea on the interaction between hormones and food and feeling your healthy best when all is in balance. Achieving that balance is no small feat in The Big Middle years. But functional medicine Dr Jay Wrigley has tried and tested ways to optimise the nutrition and energy bang you get from…

It’s me, Susan Flory, serving up another slice of need-to-know information about the messy glorious stage of life I call The Big Middle. I’ve been exploring the black hole of nutrition in the medical education universe of late. Now, we’re going deep into the perhaps bigger black hole of menopause. Dr Zoe Hodson is on a mission of remedial menopause…

The central thread I’ve been pulling through a raft of episodes with superstar scientists and doctors is there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to what to eat to live healthy for longer - no off-the-peg plan. Every esteemed expert I’ve brought you has reinforced this fact. There are few who can emphatically state “that’s true” more than Tim Sp…

This one's a blend of three core strands of The Big Middle: living healthier for longer, the disconnect between chronological and biological age, and the midlife transition. In this case, let’s call it a mid-course correction with a big dollop of newfound purpose. My guests are #RealFood revolutionaries in the grassroots, global effort to stamp out…

When it comes to nutrition, it’s no big stretch to say the medical education system is broken. The runaway global pandemic of lifestyle diseases confirms that sad fact. Knowledge gaps exist because the stewards of the system fail to prioritise nutrition training. Enter the grassroots organisations of the unstoppable Real Food, Low-Carb movement. In…

Prepare to be amazed and intrigued in turn if you have Type 1 diabetes or know someone who does. Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease we’re learning can be managed into remission by going low-carb - hat tip to Virta Health, UK Dr David Unwin and other primary care doctors across the world. Type 1 is for life. It always involves dosing insulin. Bu…

Another summer holiday replay for you this week. This one’s a gem, a favourite. It’ll get you thinking about the road ahead if you’ve not quite managed to shift your thinking to feeling optimistic about getting to live as an older version of you. As we know, far too many don’t get a chance to stick around and savour The Big Middle years - loosely, …

"The midlife slump is very often, literally, about nothing." One of the many observations of Jonathan Rauch from our conversation about his book The Happiness Curve in December of 2018. It's an upbeat listen that serves up surprises and positive perspectives in equal measure. I'm betting you too could use a small break from the deeply distressing n…

When I first told a member of my family I had Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune attack on my thyroid, I did not expect her to say - Who doesn’t? Everyone I know has it! Insensitive much, I thought. Then I dug around and found, she’s right. Worldwide, more than 200 million of us have some sort of thyroid malfunction. But when we start feeling brain fogged,…

My first encounter with Eranda Wickramasinghe was #RealFood Twitter. He posted a tweet that couldn't be ignored - shirt off, belly out, it was a series of month-by-month side-shots of him starting from the summer of 2019. It was headlined Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Can Be Prevented and Reversed. He might have called it The Incredible Shrinking Man…

Wish we indy podders had music rights cuz, for this episode of The Big Middle, I’d fire up Sisters Are Doin It For Themselves, that glorious Aretha Franklin and Annie Lennox feminist anthem from the 80s. People Are Doin' It For Themselves is the tweaked version I’ve had on my brain loop since inviting Sam Feltham to come have a chat. Sam is a healt…

There’s a dark symmetry to what’s happening in this time of COVID when it comes to life expectancy. The global numbers are, no surprise, falling after several years of stall and splutter. The last time they fell so much was 100 years ago, after the Spanish flu killed 20 to 50 million people. The extent of decline this time isn't knowable yet but th…

We know the global population is rapidly ageing. We know longevity scientists are busy developing restorative treatments as they redefine ageing as a disease. It’s that medical model of steady decline that gallops to mind when we think of design for older people. It’s all panic alarms, stairlifts and mobility scooters. Designers shoot past The Big …

The COVID pandemic has thrust many of us into a state of acute stress and anxiety - manageable for some but a cliff edge to a full-blown mental health crisis for others. The loss of a loved one takes the trauma next-level. How we cope is highly personal. I, no surprise, have nothing to add to the explosion of advice out there about stress managemen…

I’ve spent the past few days devouring Ravenous, a cracker of a science thriller written by my guest Sam Apple, who teaches science and creative writing to Masters of Arts students at Johns Hopkins. We learn about the life and work of biochemist Otto Warburg, the German-Jewish Nobel laureate who first proposed cancer as a metabolic disease. And we …

In the second skin cancer special with skin cancer specialist Dr Fayne Frey, why you need to protect yourself by inspecting yourself and not just once a year. She implores us to do it every month. Pick a day and put it in your calendar. Scrutinise every nook, fold and cranny of our skin. If you notice any changes to freckles, moles or random spots,…

One in two of us will get cancer - it’s only a matter of what kind and when. I wouldn’t say I’ve morbidly dwelled on that unsettling fact in recent weeks, but I have had cause to consider it anew. Long story short, a skin cancer specialist has declared a flat brown blob that suddenly appeared on my lower leg is likely a malignant melanoma, the dead…

Many thanks for your emails, reviews and tweets of appreciation of my latest run of episodes on maximising your metabolic health with Prof Tim Noakes, Graham Philliips and Tucker Goodrich. I’m delighted to spoil you now with none other than Ben Bikman, bioenergetics PhD, superstar scientist. He is it when it comes to researching the role of insulin…

You're going to love this one, the second in a new strand of The Big Middle I'm calling Taking Your Shot. This is a story of professional ethics, motivation and agility that will inspire no end in this age of job insecurity. Pandemic unemployment is surging. More of us doing it for ourselves, setting up our own companies by default or design. We're…

What a thrill and privilege to have another peak health masterclass from legendary sports scientist Prof Tim Noakes. This eager student got it while hosting the first podcast for Pro Longevity - the award-winning, precision nutrition service of Graham Phillips. The retired University of Cape Town professor is one of the world’s most influential and…

I’m calling this episode Taking Your Shot. It’s what my guest Tina Woods said about her motivation and determination when we first met nearly two years ago, right after she'd helped launch The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Longevity. She’s a serial social entrepreneur - founder and CEO of Longevity International, Collider Health and Collider Sc…

On this episode of The Big Middle, the compelling case against seed and vegetable oils still being touted as 'heart-healthy'. Those bottles of chemically-extracted fat that take up entire aisles of grocery stores are increasingly seen as hazardous to our health - key drivers of autoimmunity, macular degeneration and the modern plague of lifestyle d…

"You can't join the dots unless you know what those dots are. There is a problem though in that once you've been bitten by this bug and once you understand that there is more to medicine than just prescribing a pill for every ill, it's really quite addictive because it works." The wise words of my wonderful guest Dr Sarah Davies - a functional medi…

It’s often said ageism is the last socially-sanctioned prejudice. Our failure to recognise it, confront it and make it as unacceptable as racism, sexism and ableism sets us up for our own future irrelevance. Thankfully, a global movement to expose it and end it has become an unstoppable force. As more of us live longer and age differently - rejecti…

How to survive COVID by optimising your metabolic health. Eat real food. Ditch sugar. Avoid ultra-processed rubbish 'food'; it's addictive and keeps you hungry. Manage your stress with sleep and exercise. That's the topline advice of Graham Phillips, The Big Middle's resident metabolic science guy. He laments what he sees as a systemic failure to f…

How to survive COVID by taking care of your gut. Graham Phillips is back on The Big Middle in his coveted new role as resident Metabolic Science Brainbox. His knowledge runs deep and he's also a seriously nice guy. Isn't it fabulous he's coming on as a regular now, two months after his first outing as a guest? Listen to episode 64 to catch his debu…