Los Angeles–based journalist Doree Shafrir sees beauty in the particular challenges faced by those who find their footing a bit later in life. She identifies as one such person, having married at 38 and become a mother at 41. “I had so much shame about that for a long time,” she says, noting that she felt out of sync with her peers. “It took me a while to really come to terms with it, and to understand that this is what made me who I am.” Shafrir, who was among the first editors hired by Gawker and BuzzFeed, pours her lighthearted yet critical perspective on her experience into Forever35, a self-care podcast she co-hosts with her longtime friend Kate Spencer, and into her new memoir, Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer (Ballantine Books), out this week. In the book, she interrogates the often overwhelming pressure that people—particularly women—feel to achieve specific benchmarks by specific moments in their lives, and why taking the time to find one’s way can be a more fruitful, and ultimately more rewarding, approach to existence. Here, we ask Shafrir about her media diet, which focuses, perhaps unsurprisingly, on stories about complex social and cultural phenomena that are at once intelligent, amusing, and real.

How do you start your mornings?