Theme music This is Sound School with the backstory to great audio storytelling. From PRX and Transom. I’m Rob Rosenthal. If you ever need a good laugh, dive into the archive of Sound School. Sometimes the things I say are hilarious. Don’t get me wrong, I think the old episodes are good. But now, in 2025, they’re practically antiques. A missive from a by-gone era. For example. An episode from 2011. When Sound School was called HowSound. At the end of the show to promote the next episode I said this: Clip – Rob - On the next HowSound, more about podcasting… Ha! More about podcasting?!!! Imagine that? I would NEVER say that now. I mean, think about it. 2011. That’s what, nearly 15 years ago, right? Podcasting at that time was B.S. Before Serial. Not a lot of people knew what podcasts were. The great tsunami of commercial interest in podcasting had not swamped everything. It really was another era. And, at that time – again, around 2009, 2010, 2011 or so – people working in audio storytelling had mostly been working for public radio. Reporters and producers and the like were trying to get their heads around what podcasting meant for them. Going back to that moment where I was promoting the next show, here’s who said I was going to interview. Clip - I talk to Roman Mars about “99% invisible,” his podcast about design and architecture. In 2011, my listeners might have said Roman Mars? Who’s that? Or, 99% Invisible. Never heard of it. Of course, a few years later Roman practically became a household name and 99% Invisible skyrocketed to the top of the charts. When histories of podcasting are written, I’ve no doubt Roman and 99% Invisible will be included. But when I talked to him, he was still figuring everything out. And he did so by producing two versions of each 99% Invisible episode. One for the podcast. Plus, a shorter version for broadcast on a local public radio station in the Bay area. And he was doing this all by himself. See what I mean? Old episodes of Sound School are the audio equivalent of time travel. And that’s what we’re going to do today… set the Way-Back Machine for 2011 and an episode featuring Hillary Frank and her, at the time, brand new podcast “The Longest Shortest Time.” A show about parenting. I picked this episode to revisit partly because it made me chuckle. Coz - wait until you hear some of the questions I pose to Hillary about the difference between narrating for broadcast and narrating for a podcast. But also because The Longest Shortest Time is back. Hillary started the show in 2010. It became wildly popular. And, the stories ranged far and wide: Episodes with titles like “36 Questions to Ask Your Partner Before Having Kids” “Car Births,” “Sperm Shopping By Color,” “My Dad Was My First Oprah,” “Baby Making While Queer,” and “My Newborn, The A-Hole.” (Laughs) Cracks me up every time I see that. Over the years, the show earned many awards and tips of the hat. Hillary and the team eventually produced over 200 episodes. But, by 2019, Hillary decided it was time. Time to wrap up the show. As she put it, her “creative biological clock was ticking.” She didn’t see herself as the kind of producer who works on a single show for their entire career. She stopped making “The Longest Shortest Time” and moved on to other projects. Like the fictional podcast series with teen actors called “Here Lies Me.” She’s also been working on an original audiobook due out later this year called “Wedlocked.” Fast forward to 2025 and apparently, the alarm started ringing on Hillary’s creative biological clock. The podcast is back and new episodes are dropping as we speak. I’ll let you know what she has in store for the next iteration of the show, but first, I want to go back to the moment when Hillary was a podcast toddler. And podcasting itself was a toddler. I featured an entire episode of The Longest Shortest Time on that old episode of Sound School. And, you’ll definitely hear that it was early days for Hillary. For starters, the production values were a little bumpy. But, back then I said I was inspired by Hillary’s entry into podcasting because it was kinda punk rock. DIY. A sort of “I just decided to do it” story. In fact, that’s how she got into public radio a decade before that. It was totally punk rock. Which is where we’ll pick up the archive episode of Sound School. With the anecdote about how Hillary got into audio storytelling in the first place. In 1999, Hillary was in grad school for drawing. She wanted to write and illustrate young adult novels. But, radio called to her. “This American Life” in particular. Hillary told me she was dying to get a story on T.A.L. even though she didn’t have any experience. HILLARY (TAL story) - … I had been pitching them for a long time. It was kinda back when the show had just gotten started. I kept getting rejection after rejection. I had emailed them and told them I was a writer and I wanted to know how to find out what themes they were working on so I would know what to pitch. And, the only thing that made me a writer was that I wrote things down. I was not published. At all. And, they, it was like a small enough show that at the time they took me for my word and put me on this list and I started getting these lists. And I saw that one of the themes they were working on was “apocalypse.” And, I had this friend… he was my roommate at the time and he was obsessed with the end of the world. But, in a really secular way. Like he would go jogging every day but not really for the exercise, more so that when the world ended, he’d be able to runaway from wild dogs. So, I interviewed him on my parent’s answering machine that had like a micro-cassette in it. And then I cut the tape, basically, by feeding it into a shiny red boom box that had a regular size cassette in it. And then I would read my script into that boom box. And you would hear all the clicks and it sounded very home made. Clip – Sound from the story she made. (fades under) Hillary - I put this thing together, Fed-Exed it to This American Life and said that it was for their apocalypse show. Clip – Fades up, plays for a bit, then fades under And, the next day I got a phone call from Ira Glass on my answering machine asking me how I figured out how to do that, how to do something that sounded like their show. And, we had a phone conversation where he invited me to pitch stuff to them. And, they commissioned the next idea I had and had me do it in the same style with the answering machine and boom box. Clip – fades up then fades under and out. And that’s how Hillary Frank’s radio career began. She continued producing for This American Life… she eventually interned there… then she freelanced for All Things Considered… Morning Edition…. Day to Day…. Marketplace… Studio 360….. She was an editor at Weekend America….. I mean that’s an inspiring “U just decided to do it” story! Well, guess what, Hillary’s done it again. Here’s what happened. Ya know, it’s tough making a go of it as a freelancer. You’re always on the hustle for another story. The pay isn’t stellar. That takes its toll after a while. So, eventually, Hillary stepped away from radio. She edited an audio tour and produced some other non-broadcast content. Then her daughter Sasha was born. Hillary – It was the first time I hadn’t worked in a while. And, I was starting to feel like all I was, was a mother. And we had recently moved out to the suburbs in New Jersey and it was feeling, like, a little stereotypical to me. Like, my husband would go off to work and I would be at home with the baby, ya know, being the domestic one. And, that was fine. That’s how I wanted it. But, I also felt like I wanted to define myself a little more broadly than as just a mother. And so as she connected and chatted with other mothers, Hillary was struck by something all producers have been struck by at one time or the other. Hillary – The conversations I’m having right now could be good radio. There was one discussion in particular that re-kindled her spark for radio storytelling. Hillary – So, my daughter Sasha, I take her to this little music class…. Her teacher told me this story about how her son, when he was a newborn, hated lullabies. And, I found that so interesting because, you know, she’s a music teacher. And, of course, she used to try and lull him to sleep with lullabies and she kind of romanticized what that would be like…. So, he would cry and cry and cry. And she’d be like “I know the thing that’s going to work is singing him lullabies.” It had the opposite effect like it would just make him scream even worse. It turned out later she discovered it was because music is so stimulating to him that it would just wake him up more, even a lullaby… And, as we were having this conversation, I started feeling that spark I think you’re talking about. I was like “Oh! I can make radio out of this! And I don't need anyone to buy it. I don't need to pitch it to a show. I can go home and I can make this on my computer and put it out there and develop an audience.” So I set up a time to interview her and I put it together and did it. Then I was like “I guess I’m podcasting.” And, podcasting she is. Hillary now hosts and produces “The Longest, shortest time,” a podcast about parenting. She subtitles it: “the truth about early motherhood.” Hillary says she’s had almost ten thousand listeners to the podcast and all she did to promote it was write to a hundred friends. Let’s take a listen to one of the “Longest shortest time” podcasts. It’s called “Don’t Make Me Be Your Miracle.” Afterward, Hillary talks about one of the big differences she’s discovered between producing for radio and producing for a podcast: voicing. In fact, listen closely to her voice. Clip – The episode: “Don’t’ Make Me Be Your Miracle.” That’s Hillary Frank, producer and host of “The Longest Shortest Time.” The podcast got its name from two particular feelings you get parenting a young child. Some days when you are completely exasperated, you think “Will. This. Last. For. Ever?!!?” And other days it’s “Hh my god. Just yesterday she was learning to walk.” --- it’s the longest shortest time. Get it? Hillary produced radio for about twelve years before diving into podcasting. She’s noticed a few differences between the two. For podcasts, the length doesn’t have to be exact. Deadlines are somewhat flexible. And she’s changed how she writes. She doesn’t. There’s no script. Hillary – I go into my bedroom with the tape recorder after I’ve produced the piece and I have a few bullet points that I want to hit… and so I just kinda make it up as I go along. I just start telling a story or talking about whatever I want to talk about as I go. I try it out all kinds of different ways. Then I go back into my office and I try it out and I cut it together. Inevitably there will be something I missed or didn’t say right and I’ll need to go back and re-record a few things. I do that process two or three times until it’s just how I want it to sound and I put it together. Rob – I’m really interested in that idea that you don’t script yourself. For a broadcast piece you would script yourself but for these you don’t. Hillary – Yeah, but you know what it’s made me wonder? If I go back to doing more traditional radio work might I do it a little bit more like this. I feel like my read is so much better than any of the reads I’ve done on radio stories. Rob – Why do you suppose that is? Hillary - Because I feel looser. I feel like I don’t have to stick to the script so I sound more like I’m talking because I am basically just talking. Rob - Do you think that there are other things about podcasting that would influence your production of a broadcast piece? Hillary – Yeah. You know what? Doing these pieces, too, I really feel like I’m speaking to a specific audience. And when I’ve done radio stories, I kinda hate to say it, but I don’t picture the audience. I just go in and I’m like talking about whatever I’m talking about and I and I read my lines and I’m done. And, now I really think I’m talking to people. It’s kind of thrilling. I’m talking to people who want to hear what I have to say about this. I think if I were to go back into a studio to record for a regular radio story, I might picture an audience more clearly. I don’t know if that would change my writing necessarily but I think it might change my read. That’s producer Hillary Frank from an archive episode of Sound School produced back in 2011. I should say, the production values on The Longest Shortest Time improved greatly. So did the storytelling. It’s an interesting assignment to listen to the show over time to hear how Hillary improved as she was finding her way. And, you can definitely hear those improvements in the current iteration of the show. Hillary says she’ll now focus the program on reproductive health. Stories about sex ed, consent, periods, menopause and, as she wrote with an exclamation point “teens! Because I love teens and I have a teenager now.” Speaking of which, I highly recommend the first episode since the show has returned, “The Staircase.” It’s about her 15-year-old daughter Sasha and unwanted male attention. Theme music That episode with Roman Mars I mentioned? You can find it in the Sound School Archive. There are hundreds of episodes to explore. Find them at Transom dot org. They’re also in your Sound School feed. Start digging! This is Sound School. The backstory to great audio storytelling from PRX and Transom. I’m raising my mug of tea in thanks to Genevieve Sponsler, Jay Allison, Jennifer Jarrett, and WCAI. And thanks to you, as well, for listening! I’m Rob Rosenthal in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the radio center of the universe. ##