The Longest Shortest Time

Darlene's childhood dream was to join the military. She didn't imagine she'd also be raising three children solo. Tune in to hear what it’s like to be pregnant, breastfeed, and raise kids on your own in the Army. And to get shot in the back. Twice. ⭐️ This episode originally ran on March 7, 2016 and is a favorite from the archives. We hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back next week with a brand new e...

When Jean Hannah Edelstein went to college, she realized she had great breasts. Like, the kind that could win a wet T-shirt contest. But they also made her a target for harassment. Later, when she started nursing, her feelings toward her breasts got even more complicated. Then, when her son was four, she learned she would have to say goodbye to them. Today, Jean walks us through the life cycle of...

When you get pregnant, your body changes (duh). One of the most common changes happens in your boobs (double duh). But sometimes your boobs change in ways that you don’t at all expect. Today we hear from two women whose boobs caught them off-guard, back when they became moms. First, there’s Emily, whose nipples seemed to, uh, multiply. Then there’s Tara, whose boob betrayed her at age 26, when she...

Shafia Zaloom is a sex educator and advisor to Big Mouth, Nextflix’s fantastic series about puberty. Join us as she walks us through her innovative approach to teaching young people about healthy relationships, which includes games, music, and complicated scenarios based on real-life situations. … Recommendations from the archive • #237 You Know What: An LST Spinoff (Shafia is in this pilot!) • #2...

Strange but real lessons of American sex ed. Historian Lisa Andersen walks us through the decades. ⭐️ This episode originally ran on August 23, 2017 and is a favorite from the archives. We hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. 📚 The book Lisa talks about developing in this episode is now available. She co-wrote it with Lauren Bialystok and it’s called Touchy Subje...

Does more sex make you “wider”? Is it bad to swallow sperm? How do you clean a sex toy? In the pilot episode of our spinoff show, YOU KNOW WHAT, college students answer anonymous questions from teens and young adults — with help from sex educator Shafia Zaloom. This episode is a pilot for a concept we very much want to keep making. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to get funding for a sex ed show...

If pregnant people need to eat for two, why do so many of us puke morning, noon, and night? Our friends from Vox's Unexplainable investigate.  Guests: Julia Longoria, host, Unexplainable; Marlena Fejzo, Ph. D., ⁠geneticist⁠, and Research Director at the ⁠HER Foundation⁠.  For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Contact Unexplainable: ⁠⁠⁠unexplainable@vox.com⁠⁠⁠ … Join LST+ for c...

In this episode, Elise Hu gets personal. Tune in for her dad’s refugee story involving sharks, the unique challenges of parenting a tall girl, what she ate in childbirth, and a 3rd grade disappointment that shaped her career in journalism. … Recommendations from the archive #19 The Mortality of Motherhood #183 Postpartum House Arrest … Check out Elise’s work! • Raising Us: a parenting podcast from...

NPR’s Kelly McEvers compares and contrasts childbirth vs being a war correspondent. ⭐️ This episode originally ran on July 25, 2013, with an update on June 13, 2016, and is a favorite from the archives. We hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. … Join LST+ for community and access to You Know What, another show in the Longest Shortest universe! Follow us on Instagra...

Eight years after It’s a Real Mother, our series on discrimination against working moms, Brigid Schulte returns to share how we’ve conquered the motherhood penalty! Just kidding, it’s still alive and well. But there are some bright spots. We’ll talk about the highs, the lows, and simple things we can do to improve working conditions for moms — and everyone! … It’s a Real Mother Check out the full...

Why do stock images of working moms look frazzled, while stock images of working dads just look like... guys at work? Author Brigid Schulte gets to the heart of why discrimination against working moms is so deeply embedded in our culture—and what we can do to change it. ⭐️ This episode originally ran on November 8, 2017 as a part of our critically acclaimed series about working moms, It’s a Real...

Eight years ago, Matt Katz came on the show after nervously revealing to his 5-year-old daughter that the man she thought was his biological father was not, in fact, his biological father. But Matt would later learn that the truth about his biological father was much more complicated than he even realized. As he followed the twists and turns of this story, Matt became a bio dad detective — chasing...

Matt Katz is known for his fearless reporting on New Jersey governor Chris Christie. But when it comes to telling his 5-year-old daughter the truth about his dad... well, that freaks him out. In today’s show, he does exactly that. ⭐️ This episode originally aired on June 14, 2017. Since then, Matt has discovered even more secrets about his family history. Secrets that turn this original story com...

Join us for a deep (and delightfully nerdy) dive into the misunderstood world of vaginas, where we’ll learn about orgasm-chasing royalty, clitoral wingspans, vagina lollipops, wandering wombs — and the research on female anatomy we still desperately need. Science writer Rachel Gross is our fearless guide. … Recommendations from the archive #27 Rewriting Your Birth Story … Writing by Rachel • Vagin...

A game of got-yer-nose turns racial and a 6-year-old raps to her white mom about not getting her Blackness. Two stories of biracial kids schooling their mamas. ⭐️ This episode originally ran on Fri, 05 Jun 2015 and is a favorite from the archives. We hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. … Join LST+ for community and access to You Know What, another show in the Lon...

Brian Crano and David Joseph Craig knew starting a family would be hard — but they didn’t expect the twists and scares that inspired them to write a movie. In this episode, they share the true, messy tale behind I Don’t Understand You, their horror-romcom starring Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells. … Recommendations from the archive #95 The True History of a Child Chef & His Mom … Sponsors (using our...

Judah is 12. He makes a mean beef Wellington. Hear how he became a child chef, and how his mom had him when she was just a kid herself. ⭐️ This episode originally ran on September 7, 2016 and is a favorite from the archives. Find fun pictures of Judah and Kara at our website. We hope you enjoy, and we’ll be back next week with a brand new episode. … Join LST+ for community and access to You Know...

Amanda Hess writes about the internet for a living. So she didn’t expect to form an emotional bond with a fertility app during her pregnancy. But when Amanda’s pregnancy got complicated, her relationship with the app got complicated, too. … Recommendations from the archive We recently re-aired some favorite episodes from our ongoing Sex + Parenthood series. Check them out in your podcast feed (the...

Did your high school health teacher ever try to teach you the risks of sex by making you carry around an egg and pretend it was a baby? These days, the pretending isn’t as much of a stretch. Lots of schools are opting to use robotic babies that cry throughout the day and night just like a real infant. In this episode, we follow two teenage girls over the course of 48 hours with the “babies,” and t...

Most of us, at some point, will be touched by an affair—whether in our own relationships, or because one of our parents cheated, or because we are a trusted confidant. It’s a scary thing to think about, especially when kids are in the mix. Couples therapist Esther Perel joins us with advice on how to navigate affairs and how to keep them from happening in the first place. ⭐️ This episode original...

For most of his life, comedian W. Kamau Bell assumed his single mom, Janet, never had sex after she made him. But in his 40s, Kamau started to get the feeling he was wrong about that. At 43, he bravely asks for the real story — and Janet, at 79, even more bravely, delivers. ⭐️ This episode originally aired on July 12, 2016 and is a favorite from the LST archives. It’s also part of our ongoing Sex...

When Sara Reardon’s friends discovered she had answers for all their (and their moms’) weird vagina questions, they called her “The Vagina Whisperer.” Sara embraced the nickname and, like a true superhero, put on her cape (ahem, vulva costume) and went on a mission to save leaky, dry, painful, and aging vaginas around the world with her pelvic floor physical therapy practice and fun, educational v...

Anna North spent years reporting on reproductive health — so she was surprised when her doctor suggested a birth control method she’d never heard of. In this episode, Anna shares why she chose to end her potential for having kids while giving birth to one… and who else might want to consider this little-known procedure. … Recommended from the archive #71 A Childless Man Gets a C-Section … Articles...

Xyla Foxlin started flying as a teenager. By her twenties, she was piloting her own plane and building another from scratch. But when a private health crisis went public, she wound up in a battle with the FAA that could ground her for good. … Recommendations from the archive • #51 Real Teens, Fake Babies … Suicide and Crisis Lifeline • If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal ideatio...

This week, we’re bringing you something special: an episode from Add to Cart, a show we love hosted by Kulap Vilaysack and SuChin Pak. You might remember Kulap when she was a guest on our show back in 2018, where she bravely unpacked her childhood trauma and shared how it led to her documentary film. Add to Cart is a witty, subversive take on consumerism. Each week, Kulap and SuChin have candid (a...