Scott Podmore
Scott Podmore is an editorial leader and senior journalist at Starts at 60, specialising in health, ageing and the realities of life after 60 for a large digital lifestyle audience. His coverage is distinguished by its focus on how medical issues, money decisions and cultural touchpoints shape identity, purpose and connection in later life. He brings more than three decades of media experience across reporting, editing and content strategy, which he uses to blend news, features and service pieces for readers navigating modern ageing.
Health, dementia and carers’ stories
Health is a primary strand of Podmore’s work, with regular reporting under the masthead’s health news vertical and health issues archives.
His health coverage ranges from clinical topics, such as neurological conditions and motor neurone disease, to everyday check‑ups and overlooked blood tests, always framed for an over‑60s readership. He also reports on medical breakthroughs, including advances that offer fresh hope in the fight against Alzheimer’s, signalling an interest in dementia research and its implications for patients and families.
A defining feature of his health reporting is the attention he gives to carers and the emotional cost of long‑term illness in a family. In one in‑depth feature he profiles a national Carer of the Year caring for her mother with dementia while raising a young family, drawing out themes of exhaustion, identity loss and the quiet sacrifices carers make. He uses strong direct quotes and narrative detail to show how caring responsibilities reshape a person’s sense of self, positioning the story as part of a broader “caring” experience that many families share. This emphasis on lived experience marks his health reporting as more human‑centred than purely clinical.
Podmore also tackles ageing through long‑form health and lifestyle profiles, including a “Big Read” sit‑down with a 94‑year‑old author and philanthropist about staying engaged and purposeful later in life. In that piece he spends extended time with his subject, weaving biography, health habits and reflections on planning for the future into a single narrative.
Across these stories he connects medical issues, personal resilience and the practical steps readers can take to stay healthy and active.
Money, pensions and retirement resilience
Alongside health, Podmore writes frequently in the money section, focusing on retirement income, pensions and everyday financial resilience. His money stories often revolve around policy changes and their impact on retirees, such as quiet pension adjustments that affect household budgets and indexation shifts described as the biggest boost since a previous benchmark year. He writes service‑driven explainers that translate complex rules into clear consequences for readers, showing what changes mean at the weekly payment level.
He also reports on retirement savings behaviour, warning about the long‑term cost of decisions like early access to superannuation that can “decimate” savings.
Headlines such as “Would you take $44 a week now if it cost you $11,500 later?” show his tendency to frame financial choices in concrete trade‑offs, making abstract sums tangible. Other pieces look at survey findings on how many people have less than $1000 saved and at small earning opportunities like monetising an empty driveway, illustrating the pressures on savings and the creative ways retirees seek extra income.
Through this money coverage he positions financial security as another pillar of ageing well, linking pension policy, personal discipline and side‑income ideas into a coherent view of retirement resilience. The tone is pragmatic and direct, aimed at helping readers understand the risks and levers they can control.
Ageing, identity and entertainment
Podmore’s features in the news and entertainment stream focus on ageing and identity through well‑known cultural figures. In a major interview with Shaun Micallef he explores how getting older has prompted the comedian to look back on his life and shed carefully constructed versions of himself, connecting this to a television series about tracing ancestry and family stories.
The piece blends discussion of the show with deeper reflections on self‑knowledge and how uncovering the past reshapes the present.
His coverage of the Neil Diamond musical similarly centres on ageing and the enduring power of music, following an actor’s journey of portraying the singer later in life after Parkinson’s disease has forced him off the stage.
Podmore frames the production as a story about identity, ageing and the way a lifetime of songs can carry meaning into older age, rather than simply a promotional preview. In an obituary for rock musician Angry Anderson he reports on the singer’s death at 79, noting recent health issues and situating the news within a lifetime of work and public presence.
Across these cultural pieces he uses interviews and narrative storytelling to show how ageing intersects with performance, illness and legacy for familiar names. This gives his coverage a reflective, character‑driven quality that extends beyond standard entertainment reporting.
Lifestyle, hobbies and modern retirement
Podmore’s lifestyle work looks at how people reshape their days and identities after full‑time work, often through hobbies and new routines in retirement. In a widely discussed piece on hobbies that make retirement more fun than expected, he surfaces activities like gardening, dancing, Men’s Sheds, music, walking groups, volunteering, travel and photography.
His commentary in that work centres on reconnecting with life, identity and purpose rather than simply “keeping busy”, highlighting the psychological and social dimensions of leisure.
Professional profiles describe his speciality areas as travel, food and wine, lifestyle, wellness and entertainment, reflecting a broad lifestyle brief that he tailors to an over‑50s and over‑60s audience. He leads a weekly column branded around food, wine and travel discoveries, inviting pitches from tourism teams, chefs and hospitality figures to feed a regular stream of story ideas.
His author archive at Starts at 60 shows bylines across travel‑focused sections and lifestyle features, reinforcing his role as a cross‑section storyteller for readers navigating post‑work life.
Together with his health and money reporting, these lifestyle stories build a composite picture of ageing as a phase of reinvention, adventure and connection. Podmore’s distinguishing strength is his ability to move between service journalism, long‑form profiles and cultural interviews while keeping the central thread on how people live, care, earn and find meaning later in life.
4 more health journalists.
Abida Tasnim
Abida Tasnim is a health writer for The Daily Star who focuses on clear, practical guidance that helps readers recognise risks early and act before everyday illnesses turn into wider public health problems. She reports on infectious disease prevention, using measles coverage to show how outbreaks start with individual decisions and behaviours, not just hospital statistics. Her work explains what happens during an outbreak and then anchors the story in simple steps people can take, such as avoiding crowded places when symptoms appear, practising good hygiene, and seeking medical advice early. She writes direct, action‑oriented health explainers that turn clinical questions about contagion and disease burden into everyday choices. Across her beat, she stresses early recognition, timely care, and prevention as the foundations of healthier communities.
Adrián Carballo Casla
Adrián Carballo Casla stands out for turning complex cohort data on ageing into clear, food‑level advice on what older adults should eat to protect brain health and slow chronic disease. He is a researcher in nutritional epidemiology focused on ageing and chronic disease prevention and a postdoctoral researcher in geriatric epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet, writing health explainers for The Conversation. He reports on how diet quality, especially Mediterranean and Mind‑style patterns, shapes dementia risk, grey matter loss and neurocognitive ageing, and how healthy versus pro‑inflammatory diets alter multimorbidity trajectories. His articles translate findings on flavonoids, polyphenols, folate, omega‑3 fats and dietary nitrates into specific food choices and small, practical changes. Much of his coverage is anchored in his own studies on multimorbidity, high‑risk older adults and tailored dietary recommendations, often syndicated to other outlets.
Ahmed Elbediwy
Ahmed Elbediwy brings a lab-based understanding of cancer biology and clinical biochemistry to public-facing health reporting, linking drug mechanisms and molecular pathways to everyday choices about medicines and products. He writes for The Conversation on weight-loss injections, cancer overdiagnosis and anti-ageing supplements, focusing on obesity medicine, cancer signalling, screening trade-offs, skincare and supplement science. His pieces on GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro explain why some people do not respond, how gut hormones and appetite signals work, and where psychological support and nutrition fit alongside prescriptions. He co-authors explainers on cancer risk and overdiagnosis and on whether supplements can reverse ageing, separating established knowledge from emerging research. An award-winning senior lecturer at Kingston University, he favours clear, structured explainers, careful definition of key terms and evidence-based appraisal over hype.
Amanda Sheppeard
Amanda Sheppeard is a managing editor and health journalist known for long, detailed explainers that connect complex clinical research, disability policy and political narratives with the daily realities of doctors and patients. She works at The Medical Republic across editorial leadership and commercial content while reporting widely on medicine for its specialist titles. Her real beat spans autism, disability policy, autoimmune disease, infectious threats and system pressures in primary care and hospitals. She covers subjects such as autism diagnosis and the NDIS, rheumatology’s clinical shifts, weight-loss agents in rheumatoid arthritis, infection control, antimicrobial resistance and new modalities like CAR T-cell therapy and microneedles. She reports by doing the synthesis inside the story, linking trial design, molecular targets, funding rules and policy changes to concrete decisions and workflows in clinics and hospitals.