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exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details. If you know anything about Samantha Bee, it's that she's not afraid to joke about pretty much anything. At this point, you might be having a negative opinion, which brings me to my next lesson. I don't give a shit about your personal opinions.
The Emmy-winning comedian and writer spent seven years as the host of her own show, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Before that, she was a correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the only female correspondent at the time. But now, Samantha's taking her jokes to a place she's never gone before.
It is so satisfying for me to talk about all the bulls**t that goes along with menopause in a way that is totally raw and dumb. It's cleansing. In a new one-woman show, Samantha's bearing all and talking about her journey through menopause. Something that, as she points out, half the world's population will experience, and yet many of us don't want to talk about it. Samantha says she even got pushback on the concept of a show about menopause. Definitely.
Definitely have talked about it as a show and had people say the words, can you just take the word menopause out of it?
I just turned 40. So as the internet keeps reminding me, menopause could be right around the corner. And I'm already learning firsthand just how right Samantha is. Menopause is still something we don't talk about enough, whether it's in medicine, as a culture, or just among friends and family. So this week, Dr. Sanjay Gupta is passing me the mic, and Samantha and I are confronting menopause head-on. I'm CNN medical correspondent Meg Terrell, and this is Chasing Life.
Samantha B., thank you so much for doing this. Are you kidding? It is – it's a pleasure. I love talking about menopause. I really do. How much of your time is taken up talking about menopause these days? A surprisingly large amount. I mean, yeah, it's not – my son definitely who's 16 was like, can you please –
Just give me a break and not say the word menopause for one day. Did it work? Yeah. I'm like, okay, I take that point. You don't necessarily. It's not top of mind for you. You could just call it the change. The change. That's right.
So we are just really, really excited to get to talk with you about all of this. And a lot of your focus on menopause, I guess, recently has been through your show, How to Survive Menopause. Yes. I mean, menopause obviously is something that women have been going through for as long as we lived long enough to reach menopause. Yeah, I know. I know. It's not that long. So why
do you think it is that even now in 2025, there's still such hunger? Like I was on a train and a woman sitting next to me overheard a conversation I was having for a story I was reporting out on a health topic. It was like something kind of random, honestly. And she's like, oh, are you a reporter? Yeah, I cover health. And she's like, anything you can do on menopause, I will read it. I will consume it. And I was like, wow, we had just met.
Yeah. Yes. You are looking, I feel like you're out there and your spider senses are just like, you're just like looking for someone to say the word to.
in life. You're just like, let me find an ally in this moment. Let me make eye contact with someone who I think is having a hot flash, just like me right now. People want to tell their own stories because it's unique to everyone and it's kind of hard to talk about, or it has been. Yeah. Well, so I'll ask you to talk about it if you don't mind. Can you tell us about your own experience as you were kind of going through this and how you realized what was going on?
It was a really long road, to be perfectly honest. When I first started to notice changes in my body, I was probably like 40, like late 40s, 46, 47-ish. And I was starting to do my own show. Full Frontal had just kind of started. And I was under just an immense, like immense amounts of stress, no question. And
I really started to feel like I was not coping well. Like I just, my body was changing. Like I was having physical changes and I didn't know what was, I actually literally didn't know what was happening. Like I just like stopped getting my period for a couple of months here and there.
My hair started falling out, like not in a way that felt typical, like big chunks, like falling, like I couldn't wear a black sweater. It was just hair was cascading down off my head. And really I had like emotional changes, like I couldn't control my emotion. I could control them. I absolutely could absolutely control my emotions, but
and be fine on the outside, but inside I just was roiling. Like I really was just like a, it was just an emotional roller coaster. I wasn't really a hot flash person, but I was like sweating at night and my good, good friends are all just like a little younger than me. So I would just kind of looked around and I was like, it's my job.
I'm going crazy for my job. I mean, those all sound like things that could happen when you're just really stressed out. Really stressed out. A hundred percent. And I think less than 10 years ago, nobody was talking about menopause. And I mean like zero people. So we're all kind of talking about it now and you can read about it and people are like, yeah, but eight years ago?
zip, like zero information, nobody in the conversation, not cool, very unsexy, mention it and you are just like a witch crone who lives in a cave. Don't come out. Okay. And this is like, so we're talking less than 10 years ago. So I didn't think, I would never in a million years have thought, oh, I'm in perimenopause. I didn't know the word. I would not have thought of the concept.
Even though I knew that it existed, we never really talked about it in my family. Not that we were ashamed. It just never came up. People went through it. Nobody ever talked about it. That's for damn sure. So I had no idea what was happening. I was like, my very stressful job is making me like randomly want to drive my car into the side of a, like as a restaurant. Yeah.
Like, I'm not going to do it. But I'm so enraged by, like, these tiny things, like little weird things that would –
And I was like, it's me. It's me. I'm – it's me. Something's wrong with me. And of course, I was too busy to go talk to anybody else. I was like, I'm working so much and taking care of my family. And I – it was just compartmentalizing. It was just like my brain was the container store. And I was just taking all of those feelings and those extreme worries –
and putting them in a tiny box and like closing the lid of the box, sticking it in my brain, coming home, making dinner, going grocery shopping, being a very normal looking like outside person, but just inside going like, I don't sleep. And I stopped sleeping. Oh no. Like one of the things that happens to a lot of people in perimenopause is you just cannot get a night's sleep. And
And then I developed frozen shoulder. And it was so excruciatingly painful that I thought I would not make it through. I was like, oh, I'll never have the use of my arm again. So it just added to being in constant physical pain, like to the degree that I would see stars. Like sometimes someone would hit my, like touch my arm accidentally. Yeah.
And I would fall down on my knees. Like I saw like birds were chirping around my head like in a car. It hurt so much. It was awful. But it's like, you know, when you have like these kind of compounding issues, especially in your –
I mean, anyone but a woman, let's be honest. A lot of people give you the advice. They're like, are you drinking enough water? Are you eating eggs from stressed out chickens? Like, what are you doing that's causing this? Like, you need to breathe more. And you're like, well, what if it's medical? Yeah. Could it be something medical? Yeah.
And then finally, I went to my doctor, my gynecologist, who I love, and I really trust her. And I was like, I don't sleep anymore. I don't sleep at all. Like I'm turning into Lady Macbeth. Like I see, like I'm seeing like ghosts going behind the couch. Like this doesn't feel okay. And she was like, oh. She was like, how old are you again? And I was like, 47. And she was like, oh, you're in perimenopause. And I was like, there's a word?
What do you mean? What are you talking about? I'm like, no, I'm too young for that. I'm too young. I'm only 22. And she was like, oh, no, you're not. You're quite old enough. And this is what it is. And this is what's going to happen. And we're going to work through it and you're going to be okay. And I was like, oh, it didn't solve every problem to have a conversation about it. But it helped me so much to just be, take one step on a path of knowledge.
And it took probably two years to get to that point. That you actually had a name. Yeah, where I had like a framework, just even a framework for something like, oh, this is – you're just depubertizing. She was like, remember all the torment you felt? Like remember all of that stuff that you felt, like that turmoil that you felt when you were 15? Yeah.
And you were just like every zit was an operatic tragedy. She was like, that's what that is, but just in the other direction. But the stakes are higher. Now you have a job. You have people. There's people who rely on you. People come to you at your job and there's 25 problems a day that you have to solve in addition to being bouncy and buoyant and doing the work well. And like the stakes are so much higher, but you're in the same emotional state.
Your life is an opera now. Everything is magnified. We're going to take a quick break. But when we come back, Samantha shares the biggest tip that helped her through menopause. We'll be back in a moment.
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So I just turned 40 and like you, I was like, this is way too early to be hearing the words perimenopause. Well, I didn't even know what perimenopause was until recently. Anything.
Anybody ever tells you that they are experiencing during perimenopause is true. You should never, ever question it. Why are your ear canals itchy? Oh my God, you've had a UTI for three whole years? You smell like you're aging dead now.
That's not fair. All the things that you used to love to do, such as cook for your family and be a nice person, you never ever want to do again. And chocolate now tastes like cat turds. What were some of the things that after you realized what you were going through helped you?
I would say that the number one thing, and this, I do talk about this in the show, like very vigorously is that you have to find a community of people that you can talk to, even if it's just one person. And I don't suggest that we need to have like a coven of great friends around us at all times. It's not that. It's not like we have to just gather in the, again, in a cave and like sing about it. We just have to be able to say the words.
I'm in perimenopause. Oh, my God. I can't believe my frozen shoulder is like, I can't even put on my blazer. And then I need somebody to go, I can't even put on my bra. Like, I haven't done up my bra, which I wear every day religiously. I have not done up my bra in a state of comfort and ease since the year 2017. Oh, no.
You know what I mean? Like, it's helpful to me. It's just helpful to me to say that out loud. Makes me feel less insane. I don't know. Like, so I don't know what community doesn't always look the same, but just saying the words out loud and like normalizing it. It's like, it's, it's normal. It literally happens to 50% of the population. Like it,
at various stages of life, but it is going to happen. It's happening. My doctor was literally like, did you think you were Jesus dying on the cross for all our sins? And I was like, that's not, but it was funny. She's funny. And like, it was, it's good to make a joke about. It's good to say it out loud. That's actually the main thing that has helped me
And it was really a journey to get to a place where I could talk about it with total humor, as I can now. But there was a lot of shame. I felt a tremendous amount of shame about it. Why? Well, you know, we're visual. I'm a television person. Yeah.
I have like normal levels of human vanity, but I just was like, what am I going to do with my hair's all falling out? Like, like it causes you to feel, it caused me, I'm not going to say, you know, it's not true for everyone, but it caused me to feel like, am I just like,
Is my sexuality over? Am I the same person? My hair used to be like something so on brand for me that I cared for and cared about. And now it's all falling out in chunks. Like,
I can't move my body. I can't do exercise in the same way. Like I can't take my body for granted in the same way. I can't take, you know, I, well, I mean, not to get too graphic, but like you lose a lot of vaginal moisture and that's, it's very tricky to like figure out how you're going to function in the world. Like,
I started thinking about my vagina like all the time. I could feel it walking down the street. I was like, I can feel it. Like I've never experienced that before. I was like, why am I so conscious? Why is there a direct thought connection from my brain to my vagina? Like I don't want to think about her. I treasure her. She's great. But she's not working the way that she used to without even thinking about it. So you have – and those things make you – I don't know. For me –
It was very hard to talk about those things. It was very, very tricky, I felt.
It's kind of embarrassing. It's like we work in television. We work in entertainment. These are only my experiences, but I can't imagine what it would be like to have a full hot flash in a boardroom down on Wall Street because I know it wasn't that easy for me in rooms full of young writers and young TV people. It's pretty embarrassing. Yeah. It's like a thing when you say it out loud. Yeah.
among people who are not experiencing it or have no awareness of it at all, it makes you sound very old to them. They don't have a framework for it because no one was ever talking about it because it's not seen as part of the natural spectrum of someone's life, which it is. It just is. How do
How do you react to the social media piece of all of this? Because as a 40-year-old Instagram user, I have served a lot of perimenopause content. And it's to the extent that I'm like, oh, I'm learning that perimenopause is a thing and it's something I will encounter in the not too distant future. And do I need a walking vest? Am I consuming enough protein? Is my face puffed?
because I have too much cortisol? Do I need to be lifting really heavy weights and not doing any cardio? Right. This is the kind of stuff that's constantly coming to us. And I don't know if that's helpful, but at least the awareness might be. I think the awareness part is very helpful. What's not helpful to me, I generally don't turn to social media for stuff like that because...
well, this is just a personal, this is just me, this is just me, CMB, human woman talking. I don't like to take advice from people who are trying to sell me any type of product ever. So if someone's thoughts or their tips or their advice comes with a request to try some type of
moisturizer for your undercarriage or like a pajama that keeps you cool at night, which is bullshit. And you should be sleeping naked always. Don't even buy, what are you putting? Why are you putting pajamas on at all? Um, if, if it's related in some way, um,
to buying something, then I generally don't have any interest in it. This is just my metric. If there's a supplement at the end of this conversation, no. I have some very hard and fast rules about supplements and all of the things that you can use. I think most of them are pretty useless. I don't know.
If it's helpful to your brain to do something like that, then that's one thing. But for me, it's not helpful. And so I generally make a pretty strict – I have a pretty strict line about it in my own – in my life. Yeah.
So you mentioned, you know, having to work through those kinds of feelings of shame. Did you encounter, as you were thinking, like, I want to do a show about menopause. Yeah. It sounds like you had to both break through your own potential hesitations about it. But was there anybody in the industry who was like, I don't, that's not for us. We don't want that. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding? Oh, of course. Yeah. So it's a live show for a reason. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Like nobody was like, let's do a show about it. I think it's a TV. I think it's multiple TV shows. But certainly, oh, yeah, definitely, definitely have talked about it as a show and had people say the words. Can you just take the word menopause out of it? What did they want you to call it? Yeah. Like, I don't know. I mean, this is what it is. Like, this is what it's about. I don't.
And you know, it's the way it is. It's the way it is. Like there's still, listen, as I said earlier though, we've only been talking about it for a couple of years now. People have a lot of, are having, they're like all for it, but we have to wait until all of the kind of like TV executives and book executives start to age into it. They go, yeah, we do need books. We do need information about this.
What do you think it was like what broke the damn open on menopause? We're talking about menopause. Well, I do think it's like these Gen X women like me who are like, I'll take the hit. I don't give a shit. I don't care. I'll say it. Yeah, like I'll say it.
Fine. Because we're just used to that. That's the vibe. That's the vibe of our generation is like, well, let's talk about it forever. Let's talk about it and push out the contours forever.
Let's get very uncomfortable in conversations. And it is a very uncomfortable one to have, for sure. So you're a mom. You mentioned you hope when you're 80 that my generation, hopefully the ones after us, have taken the mantle of what you've done and really removed all the awkwardness of talking about stuff like this. What are you hoping your daughters will experience when they get to this wonderful stage of life? Well, I hope that they don't.
have any of the residual shame that I had. That's my main hope. I hope that they don't. And I think that they
they do see their bodies differently. I don't quite know how to describe it, but they are so much more in touch with the reality of their bodies. They have better awareness, very little shame. To my way of thinking, they're proud of themselves. They love their strength. They
They sit with themselves in a totally different way. And I don't quite know how to characterize it, but I want that to continue. And I assume that it will because they just have a totally different understanding of themselves. Like they don't have any of that like Catholic school growing up in the 70s where people were just like trying to pull down your top in the schoolyard all the time. They would never stand for the things that we completely tolerated. Yeah.
They would never subject themselves to that. It's actually kind of remarkable. I don't know if it's just being steeped in social media all the time or just like they'll have other problems. I'm not saying they won't, but they do understand their bodies differently. So I'm sure that that will continue for them. And I think it's good. They see me. We talk about it.
So, you know, at least they think I'm a dork. They see it differently when they start to go through it. I'll be like, remember when I kept talking about it? And they'll be like, oh, yeah. Yeah, we just saw you were an idiot. Well, I mean, they do sound amazing. And it sounds like they obviously have an awesome mom. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. This was wonderful. And I think everybody will really appreciate getting to hear all this from you. Thank you so much. This was a joy. Thank you.
If you want to hear more about Samantha's journey through menopause, her one-woman show is now on Audible. It's called How to Survive Menopause. And now that we've talked about destigmatizing menopause, next week we'll do a little demystifying. Dr. Jen Gunter is an OBGYN, author, and has been called Twitter's resident gynecologist. If you look at women in menopause and what they're doing, sort of the three basics, only 7% are doing all three.
So there's a lot of room to move. Next week, I'll talk with her about the biggest myths she's seeing right now, and she'll share what she told Samantha to help her through it. See you next Friday.
Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Aaron Mathewson, Jennifer Lai, Grace Walker, Lori Gallaretta, Jesse Remedios, Sophia Sanchez, and Kira Dering. Andrea Kane is our medical writer. Our senior producer is Dan Bloom. Amanda Seeley is our showrunner. Dan DeZula is our technical director. And the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Liktai.
With support from Jamis Andrest, John D'Onora, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Lainey Steinhardt, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namarow. Special thanks to Ben Tinker and Nadia Kanang of CNN Health and Wendy Brundage.
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And now, get early access to Memorial Day deals. Save 30% on our most popular smart bed, exclusively at a Sleep Number store near you. See store or sleepnumber.com for details.
This week on The Assignment with me, Adi Cornish. Researchers with the dating app wrote that political alignment isn't just a side note in dating. It's a filter. But isn't love supposed to conquer all? Love can do a lot, but it's not a feeling that's independent of ethics and morals. Dr. Orna Goralnik, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst known for her work on the docuseries Couples Therapy. We're going to talk to her about the politics of love.
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