Josie's Lonely Hearts Club: A Semi-improvised Audio Drama You'll Love

Have you ever seen a Russian nesting doll? Remove one and there is another underneath. That's how the new audio-drama podcast Josie’s Lonely Hearts Club unfolds for listeners. It's a captivating drama with layers upon layers -- all of which will fascinate and enthrall.

Here's the premise. Josie’s Lonely Hearts Club is a semi-improvised audio drama set in the studio of New Mexico’s third-best romantic advice call-in show.

On-air, listeners eavesdrop as Josie (Rachel Music of How Do They
Bone?) squares off against top improvisers and her engineer Frank
(Maximilian Clark of Superhuman Public Radio). In reality, Josie, the romance advice DJ, is melancholy Joanne Holtzinger. Each episode has off-air vignettes that chart Joanne's journey to nationally syndicated sensation Josie Heller, and then back again when the mics are off.

I listened to the first episode and was fascinated and wildly entertained. The episode begins with Josie discussing first impressions on dates with her listeners, and then encouraging callers to discuss that topic. Josie's voice is faintly Southern - Western and has a breathless quality to it.

For those who know radio, Josie's voice and demeanor reminds me of Delilah, who is a well-known American radio personality. Her show -- on the air since 1996 -- perfected the format for call-in romantic advice radio shows and has an estimated eight million listeners.

Then the call-ins to the radio station begin. These calls are improvised by professionals, and Josie (Rachel Music) has to respond. The callers include a bouncer for the nu metal band Korn, who doesn't know how to talk to women and a man who recounts a tender slow dance with a woman, who abruptly walks out, leaving a shoe behind a la Cinderella. 

Then, on a commercial break, we meet "Joanne," who is the real person behind Josie. We discover that unlike Josie, who dispenses advice on life and romance, Joanne needs support and guidance about her seemingly despairing life.

The calls are fascinating, funny, odd, weird, yet strangely touching. 
"What results is an often hilarious and surprisingly human show
exploring the risks we idiots take every time we fall in or out of love."

The character Josie Heller was born in 2021 while Rachel Music drove from New York to LA with all of her possessions, her boyfriend, and her dog -- hopefully no in that order. 

"The week-long road trip was full of colorful characters and long stints of AM radio on old Route 66. The germ of a great idea took root...and like most great ideas, the first iteration was crap, and it sat on her desktop."

Around this time, Rachel Music was picked to help write and voice season two of Superhuman Public Radio by its showrunner, Maximilian Clark, and the two clicked like Lois and Clark or Cagney And Lacey.

A few months later, when Rachel co-founded Good Story Guild, a
puzzle emerged: a show as nimble to produce as an unscripted podcast, but with arcs that deepen an audience’s connection to a flawed, vulnerable character. Together, puzzlers Maximilian and Rachel developed an ingenious hybrid– half-improv Olympics,
half writers room.

An ongoing experiment in creativity, Josie’s Lonely Hearts Club is designed to surprise:a living, breathing show with a narrative spine.

Rachel Music (co-creator, Josie) is a full-time artist and road-tested in New York's cabaret and cirque scene. She hosted and produced burlesque and circus revues as airborne, opera-singing Mistress
of Ceremonies Kittyhawk Boone before stepping into a production role. Her work spans theater, music and new media, including GUNS, A CABARET, the award-winning short WENDY/GIGI, and the TikTok series EAVESDROPPERS. Now in Los Angeles, Rachel is the co-founder of the Good Story Guild and executive director of the company's audio drama and podcast slate.

According to Rachel, she has lent her voice to children’s toys, rodeo commercials, and a lot of alien-on-human erotica.

Maximilian Clark (co-creator/showrunner, Frank) has written and/or directed festival winning films, web series, and audio dramas that provide insightful commentary on the human experience interspersed with slapstick and fart jokes. He’s largely responsible for the Starz digital series Llama Cop, and the audio drama Superhuman Public Radio on the Fable & Folly network. He’s been invited to the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal three times, and has been temporarily banned from the Podcast Movement festival in Denver for six months.

When he’s not being a creative menace in the world of fiction, he spends his time going undercover at Qanon rallies, producing content with Walter Masterson that exposes far right extremism through comedy and trolling. You can hear about their experiences on their politics podcast We Are Not Journalis.

Good Story Guild apparently birthed Jose's Lonely Hearts Club and when I googled the company this is what came up: "It is a time of crisis in the realm of storytelling: the barriers to entry are getting smaller, new technology continues to disrupt business models and power has consolidated into the hands of a few empires. Storytelling needs a new wave of heroes to usher in the next era. Instead, they got us - a guild of industry veterans, rogues and outsiders alike, brought together through a little serendipity and a passion for great story hooks. GSG is on a journey to bring back a little risk and danger to our beloved art form. Will you join us?"

I really have no idea what all that meant, but their manifesto is weird, intriguing, and I think we need a new true-crime podcast to investigate these people.  

That said, this show is a rule breaker, a genre mash up of epic proportions, a half-scripted, half-improv Jekyll Hyde creation, and 30 minutes of all-out fun, genius, humanity exposed, and as outrageous as detective Benoit Blanc in Knives Out and Glass Onion.

Check out Josie’s Lonely Hearts Club. Even if you don't love it (which you will), you can get some romantic advice or insights on alien on human erotica.