The JV Club with Janet Varney

It’s December, so cast your mind back into the aughts for the glorious era of Brad Pitt & his unbuttoned white shirt on the December cover of Vanity Fair magazine... as your gateway into this entertaining chat with Liza Treyger (the other half of the great That’s Messed Up pod). From the tough love of the high school theater teacher to a fabulous M.A.S.H. future, inspiration runs high!

Join JV and this week’s guest, Adrien Behn (Strangers Abroad pod) for a spirited convo covering glorious travel - both Adrien’s and the historic & competitive 1889 journeys of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland around the world! Plus! Musicals, tacos, and a Gouda awakening!

This one goes out to all you Mr. Darcy lovers out there! But all, of course, are welcome to this delightful chat with comedian Jessica Sele (whose Weird Vibes album you should totally check out now).

It’s a classic JV Club train of thought that leaves the station at about 60 miles per hour, thanks to the bright light that is the mind and heart of one Kristen Bell (The Good Place), otherwise known as one of the world’s preeminent dog petting scientists. KB and JV cheerily talk failure, murder, and the incredible power of a good Sondheim refrain.

Settle in this week for gem of a human being, comedian, actor and writer Leah Rudick (check out her special Spiraling!), who brings stories of growing up in Cincinnati, where— and we can’t be any more clear on this— there is a perfectly average insect population. Plus! beheadings, tone deafness, and beaaaautiful beaded gowns.

This one goes out to all the really tall gals with big, beautiful feet! Get ready for a lively chat with comedy legend Judy Gold this week on The JV Club, where parents muddle their way through their kids’ sexuality, coffee ice cream reigns supreme (with augmentation!), and we can’t get enough of Barbara Eden in a certain iconic tv costume.

Grab your ballpark hot dog and gather up all your unnecessarily detailed historical baseball stats for this delightful chat with Sarah D. Bunting (Best Evidence), in which we head to New Jersey, jam to Top 40, dig into Mom’s meatloaf, and heaps more. In fact, JV and SDB gabbed so much, they didn’t even talk about this book Sarah co-wrote to guide you through every episode of “Beverly Hills, 90210!"

From a shared mutual love of the “Miss Chevious” detective novels to the perennial -- if scary -- appeal of an old diving suit, JV and this week’s Boy of Summer Jordan Morris (Jordan Jesse, Go!) cover a lot of ground. (This episode was published in 2018)

This week we bring you the delightful Olivia Flood-Wylie (check out her comedy special Half & Half here!) and tales of Amsterdam, Los Angeles, the mean girls high school experience, and maybe the most some of us have ever talked or heard about the Tinkerbell movies!

It’s almost time to start assembling your facial tissue Christmas tree! Not sure what that means or where to begin? You’re in luck! This week’s amazing guest, Vicki Peterson of the LEGENDARY band The Bangles, is a seasoned expert.

Get ready to balance your high school budget with this week’s guest, Treasurer extraordinaire Kara Klenk, who also now happens to co-host the Law & Order: SVU podcast That’s Messed Up. This is the kind of rad project you could only hope for from someone whose entire family gets on board for a good crime docu-binge!

We’re elated to welcome the dynamic actor Alisha Wainwright, who tells of her Jamaican & Haitian roots, her teen years in the Sunshine State, wrapping our heads around dark matter, and her new podcast, the very cool When Science Finds a Way!

Quick! Get yourself to the best bathroom graffiti you can find and celebrate it with Caitlin Cook, who takes us from the streets of mid-city LA and some classically catty high school girls (not Caitlin!) to an off-Broadway theatre for her amazing one-woman musical. Plus! A healthy M.A.S.H. scoop of lion love!

Celebrate living in the moment– which in this case includes “moments” devoted to excessive cheek blush, dead teeth, and the raw sexual power of Night Court and Three’s Company– from one of the creators and stars of NBC’s Best Friends Forever, Jessica St. Clair. This episode also requires audience participation, via several non-rhetorical questions for the listener!

Heads-up! This is a very special episode of The JV Club! In which we welcome Max Fun’s own Tom Lum (Let’s Learn Everything!), who may or may not have listened to The JV Club as a teen himself and is now a guest on it talking about his teen years. Which may or may not move JV to tears. We bet you can guess on that one. So dig into your Eggs Benedict and let’s go!