Six suitors. One “star.” Multiple elimination rounds of phone dates that build up to two choices: who the star picks to go on an all-expenses-paid vacation, and whether the selected suitor will reciprocate and go on that trip with them — or take a cash prize instead.
That’s the deliciously fun premise behind Hang Up, a reality dating podcast by Zakiya Gibbons, Caitlin Pierce, and Ben Montoya. Pierce is the one who developed the show, and based on both the premise and the format, you can probably tell it was designed by someone with a keen appreciation for reality television in all its forms. When I caught up with Pierce a few weeks ago, the second season’s climatic episode — “Decision Day” — was just rolling out to feeds.
“Obviously, it’s my favorite day,” she said. Pierce came up with the idea for Hang Up around the end of 2020: a tough time, obviously. “I was really craving something fun to listen to, but I also have a pretty strong taste for stuff that’s highly edited,” she explained.
Few podcasts out there seemed to fit the bill. She ended up thinking a lot about how narrative stakes, in podcasting at least, were often automatically equated with heavy material, and she eventually started to observe her own tastes with reality television, whose hooks often revolve around the generation of stakes that, ultimately, don’t actually matter much at all. Love Is Blind was a clear reference point.
“There was a season one episode that stuck with me.