Listen To This: The Longest Shortest Time is the parenting show for everyone

To find a support system – and to help build a community – Hillary Frank launched The Longest Shortest Time, a podcast aimed at new parents, to let them know that they are not alone. The baby podcast has grown and evolved, though, and it now covers teens, grown children, and adults questioning whether they should have children at all.

Why you should listen

When Hillary Frank’s daughter was born she found herself traumatized, bedridden by a birth injury, and struggling to find a foothold in the brave new world of parenting.

“I had a rough childbirth and delivery, which left me unable to walk for the first six weeks of my daughter’s life. I was left feeling like I couldn’t be the kind of mom that I wanted to be,” said Frank.

“I couldn’t bounce her, I couldn’t give her a bath, I couldn’t change her diaper.”

She was understandably frustrated and distraught, on top of all the other intense emotions that go along with being a new parent.

As she slowly recovered, Frank and her family moved to a new town when her daughter was just four months old, compounding the typical isolation of modern childrearing.

“It felt like everyone was having an easier time than I was,” said Frank, but as she reached out to other new mothers she also started to realize that everyone had their own struggles. “Hearing about those different struggles made me feel better.”

As someone who had worked in radio for 16 years and is comfortable with a microphone in her hand, she started recording some of the mother’s stories.

“I would call up other moms during my daughter’s naptime and we would try to coordinate so both kids were napping,” she laughed.

Slowly a podcast was born, with Frank releasing episodes of The Longest Shortest Time whenever she got enough material edited together.

“I would not recommend that schedule, but it was all I could do,” said Frank. The show would go live at 3am, targeted at parents awake in the world’s off hours.

Eventually, she decided to try to turn the podcast from a time-consuming hobby into a career, a decision that was validated when her Kickstarter campaign went $10,000 over her goal. Eventually, WNYC, home to shows like Radiolab and Snap Judgment, came calling and The Longest Shortest Time joined them for a time before moving to its current home, the Earwolf podcast network alongside Comedy Bang! Bang!

Over the last five years, the show has evolved.

“The show is changing as I’m changing,” said Frank. While she started the show to tell her own story into the echo chamber of the internet, other parents soon reached out eager to tell their own parenting stories. As her community has grown, though, so has her daughter. “After a few years, I realized that I wasn’t stuck in this mindset of very early parenthood anymore.

“Last year I opened the show up to any story about parent-child relationships. That can be parents talking about their young kids, or grown kids talking about their parents and that is growing as my interests change. I think in this new iteration of the show that will broaden.”

As the show expands its scope the audience has grown, too, and now includes many non-parents and people who never intend to become parents. To reflect the show’s evolution, Frank decided to change the tagline from “a 3am bedside companion” to “the parenting show for everyone” to make it more inclusive.

It’s easy to see why the audience for the show has grown. The Longest Shortest Time makes for fascinating listening, because Frank has a knack for finding deeply interesting stories, a skill she honed in the trenches at This American Life. Her story divining deftness – combined with an ardent fanbase of parents and non-parents who are eager to offer up their life stories as subject material – gives Frank a lot of engrossing and educational stories to highlight on her show.

Take for instance the episode covering The Accidental Gay Parents, which tells the absorbing tale of a gay man who gets a phone call one day saying that his niece and nephew will be entering the foster care system unless he comes and gets them right then. He and his trans male partner decide to put their carefree life on hold and within one weekend became parents to two toddlers.

Whether the show is covering bi-racial parenting, accidental pregnancy, being a pregnant butch, or parents trying to rediscover their sexuality despite the addition of a small human to their household, the show covers topics with humor, frankness, grace and actually useful advice.

As Frank explained: “I’m trying to facilitate people telling their stories so we all feel less alone.” That’s something anyone with or without children can appreciate.

Where To Start: The Accidental Gay Parents; Mama Don’t Understand; Mom It’s Time We Had The Talk