Hillary Frank
Photo courtesy of Natalie Chitwood
Hillary Frank is the host of The Longest Shortest Time, which is (yes you heard it right!) back!
Welcome back! What have you been up to?
A whole lot of things! In 2021, I made a fiction podcast about middle school called Here Lies Me. After that it was a lot of pitching new projects and consulting on other people’s projects. One of the coolest things I got to do was write and direct the audiobook adaptation of Tegan and Sara’s graphic novel Junior High. That gig led to an opportunity to write and direct Wedlocked, my first original audiobook — a feminist domestic thriller coming soon from Macmillan Audio.
For people who haven’t heard of The Longest Shortest Time, can you describe it to us in 10 words or less?
A podcast about the absurdities of life with a vagina.
Who is The Longest Shortest Time for?
When I’m at conferences or events, people often come up to me and say, “I love your show even though I’m not your target demographic.” Usually these are people who don’t have kids. Sometimes they do have kids but the kids are no longer babies. The funny thing is, all of these people are indeed in my target audience!
I think the confusion probably comes from the fact that in podcast apps, LST gets categorized as “Kids & Family.” So I get why people might assume that this is an advice show, geared toward parents of young children. The truth is, I’m not very interested in discussions about parenting style; I’m more interested in hearing people talk about how the act of raising other humans has changed them.
The Longest Shortest Time is a storytelling show in the vein of This American Life, which is not categorized as “Kids & Family” but often tells compelling stories about parents and kids. My approach is to use the universal topics of family and reproductive health as a launching pad to talk about all kinds of other things: dating, relationships, friendship, fertility, work, race, education, loss. Yes, we sometimes tell stories about parents of babies. But we also tell stories about parents of school-age kids, teens, and grown children, as well as people who don’t have kids and never will.
So who is this show for? It’s for new parents, experienced parents, people who care about reproductive health, and anyone who loves a great story about complex interpersonal relationships.
Fill in the blank: you will like The Longest Shortest Time if you like ______ .
The Netflix show Sex Education. It’s got the vibe I strive for: edgy with heart.
How has podcasting changed in the last 5 years?
Oh, wow. So much.
Just before I put the show on hiatus, I still heard industry gatekeepers talking about trying to find “the next Serial.” Or building “IP factories” for documentary or scripted shows with the potential for screen adaptation.
These days, barely any limited series are being made and many of the people who made them have been laid off. Chat shows, and particularly celebrity chat shows, are now king. Bonus points for video.
I think it was 2020 when I started hearing the term “always on” to describe shows with a regular cadence. This term makes me bristle because as a person who makes a show like this, it makes me feel as if I am expected to literally be always on — as a producer, as a public personality. For years, executives have been telling creators to do more with less. But to actually use the words “always on,” and to say that a show will only be successful if it is “always on,” implies that in order to do this work you must have a superhuman ability to churn out content without opportunities to rest and recharge. Burnout in this industry is real, so I wish we could collectively come up with another term like “weekly” or “bi-weekly” and acknowledge that it is to everyone’s advantage to create sustainable shows.
How has parenting changed for you in the last 5 years?
I have a teenager! She just started high school and she’s in the marching band, so now I go to football games. I’m finally, finally, starting to understand the rules of the game. Sort of.
How will The Longest Shortest Time be different?
A big motivator for me to bring the show back has been the fall of Roe and all of the chaos that has followed. So I will be leaning heavily into reproductive health — things like periods, menopause, perimenopause, puberty, bodily autonomy, fertility, birth control, childbirth, and the many ways that babies are made. I will still be telling a variety of stories and many listeners may not notice a difference.
The biggest change is that I will have an LST+ membership with a community and a premium feed with a whole other show in the Longest Shortest universe called You Know What.
Tell us about YOU KNOW WHAT.
You Know What features three college kids speaking candidly about sex, dating, and relationships. In each episode, they tackle a question from the audience, and those questions can come from adults or teens. The panelists all live in different parts of the country and were strangers to each other when we started recording. Since then, they’ve built an amazing rapport, and they’re super funny and thoughtful. One of them became a birth and abortion doula as a teen! Cool, right?
This show is a scaled back version of a concept I was pitching for a couple of years that never found a home. My goal is to use LST+ as an on-ramp for the show and eventually grow it into its full glory.
Coming back, are you nervous about anything this time around? How do you FEEL about all this?
I’m mainly nervous about the financial viability of all of this. Nobody is giving money up front anymore, so I’m relaunching independently and hoping that I’ll bring in enough revenue through ads and membership to support myself and eventually a small team. Even with all of the recent changes in the industry, I’m optimistic because I feel like going indie is actually more possible now than ever before. There are lots of options for ad sales and membership partners (I’m working with QCODE and Supporting Cast), a combo that allows me to retain 100% ownership of my show and brand. So while I’m in a tight spot at the moment, I’m hopeful that this arrangement will be better for me in the long run.
What’s a podcast you’ve loved in the past 5 years that not enough people know about?
Jo Firestone’s Murder on Sex Island. A delightful escapist romp!
What are the 5 best TV shows you’ve watched in the last 5 years?
Reservation Dogs
Somebody Somewhere
I May Destroy You
Severence
Extraordinary
What can we look forward to hearing this year?
My first new episode, “The Staircase," is about my misadventures in trying to get my daughter’s middle school to teach sex ed and consent ed, which are required by New Jersey state law. Things go… awry. We also get my daughter’s perspective on the whole thing.
Other upcoming episodes include a trans man who becomes a single parent by choice; the treachery of navigating the patriarchal obstetrics system as an expecting mom; a woman who opts to be sterilized; and a woman who finds out late in life that she was fertilized with a stranger’s sperm.
If you had 100K for the show what would you do with it?
Hire some help! It’s currently just me and my engineer, so I’m doing pretty much everything other than mixing, which is not sustainable. (Yep, very much in “always on” mode.)
Having some extra hands and ears would not only make daily production much more manageable but would also make it possible for me to get back to doing special series, like the ones we’ve done on “natural” birth, sex & parenthood, and discrimination against working moms. I’ve got ideas for other series that I think will be fun and impactful, but those are definitely team efforts.
If you could get anyone to listen to The Longest Shortest Time who would it be?
Amy Schumer
Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?
Yes. What is the best audiobook you’ve heard in the last year?
Answer: Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Thanks, Hillary!