The JV Club with Janet Varney

JV sits down with her first Boy of Summer! It’s comedian, writer, actor and Emmy Award-winning producer Dwayne Kennedy (United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell), who talks about his own experience growing up in the Chicago area, a love of illustrations and comics, and a bit about what it’s like to be a veteran writer for shows that have long had the same kinds of unflinching conversations the nation is having with itself right now about race in America. You can get Dwayne’s new comedy LP “Who The Hell is Dwayne Kennedy” HERE! 

In order to both address issues very much in our country’s focus this week, as well as to honor Breonna Taylor’s birthday (last Friday June 5th- she would have been 27), JV gets the opportunity to talk with the wonderful Colin Miller (Undisclosed podcast), a lawyer and professor who is working with Breonna’s family’s legal team to address the No-Knock Warrant aspect of the case. It’s a super impassioned, informative and hopefully ultimately useful conversation- thanks for listening! 

Amid everything happening this week, Janet decided not to post a new show as regularly scheduled.

It’s a special three-hander! Six-hander? Triple header? Whether any of that accurately describes this week’s episode in slang, JV welcomes both Kaitlin Huwe and Stephanie Erb ( the duo behind the Therapy With Pami podcast) for a chat about growing up in one place vs. moving all over, and all the things that come with both. Top hats! Frizzles! Bread, bread, bread!

Dig into a delicious bowl of pasta for this L.A.-to-Chicago convo this week with super cool “Divergent” series author Veronica Roth (and her latest- Chosen Ones), as she and JV talk music: Emo! Christian metal!; teen brains: Depression! Anxiety!; and oodles more.

Palate expanders! Herbst appliances! Malocclusions! All this and more (including things that aren’t orthodontist related!) in this week’s episode with the awesome Lauren Lapkus (Netflix’s The Wrong Missy) whose high school in Evanston surely missed the boat when it left Lauren out of the school plays. Vengeance!

Across-the-Pond alert! JV has the pleasure of conversing with the delightful Sinéad Burke (As Me with Sinéad) for a chat spanning ye olde Atlantic ocean, with topics including activism and the fashion world, the glory of a gyoza, and the imagination-activating wonders of the Hammer Museum.

This week’s winner of “person JV would most like to hug if hugging were a thing” is this week’s podcast guest, the wonderful Amy Dallen ("The DC Daily" on the DC Universe service), whose teenage self navigated her high school years at a “boarding school for nerds.” Celebrate the joy of comic books and anime and a hat-tip to one of Christmas’ weirdest candies!

JV does some mild geeking out on one of her podcast heroes, Amber Hunt (from the show "Accused"), which mostly manifests itself in JV’s meandering non-questions in an in-the-moment attempt to make herself sound smart. But because Amber is gracious and awesome, turns out, this conversation is dope! 

This week JV e-visits with acclaimed novelist and poet Rebecca Dinerstein Knight (“Hex”) for a chat about envy, love, eyebrows, mac and cheese, and the myth of living large in the West Village. Be well and be kind to yourselves, wonderfuls!