Skip to content
Brain fog and perimenopause episode artwork

Nov 29, 2025 23 min

Brain fog and perimenopause

from The Documentary Podcast Hosted by BBC World Service

BBC Tech Editor Zoe Kleinman was about to go live on TV to explain a global outage affecting dozens of websites and apps. Millions would be watching, but she kept forgetting a key technical phrase and had to resort to reading from notes. The ‘brain fog’ Zoe experienced coincided with perimenopause – the start of the menopause and time in life for women where hormone levels are changing. She wrote about the experience on social media, attracting thousands of views and hundreds of supportive comments. Zoe says that, at the time, she felt she had failed and her “professional pride had been dented.” We bring together Zoe with two women with similar experiences.

Episode details come from the podcast's RSS feed.

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Brain fog and perimenopause

0:00 23:10

No transcript yet.

Requests help us decide what to transcribe next.

Frequently asked questions

How long is this episode of The Documentary Podcast?

This episode is 23 minutes long.

When was this The Documentary Podcast episode published?

This episode was published on November 29, 2025.

Can I download this The Documentary Podcast episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.