Forget podcasts: We need more talk radio.
Not the fun kind like MyTalk107 and not the fascist-friendly sort like Twin Cities News Talk with. I'm talking about small-town Minnesota dudes discussing the real issues—like abstinence-based dating, all-meat diets, and teen beauty pageants.
While the lamestream media isn’t willing to dive into important stuff like this, host Glenn Sheen is tackling the tough subjects. As the voice of 87.9 FM KWHO, Sheen has spent the past year interviewing thinkers, disrupters, and culture-defining experts who aren’t afraid of the truth.
Just one thing: 87.9 KWHO radio isn’t real. And neither is Glenn Sheen.
KWHO an improvised podcast disguised as a radio frequency. The man behind Sheen, MJ Matheson, is a real guy who started the fake radio show last summer, and since then he's been pumping out some of the most entertaining and weirdly endearing podcasts in all of Minnesota. (We were kidding earlier! We love podcasts! MORE PODS!)
Director/producer Matt Osterman first pitched the idea of a completely satiric podcast, but Matheson wasn’t a fan of the medium. They arrived at the idea of a fake Minnesota radio station with episodes you can watch on YouTube.
“That way we’re able to kind of sum up the zeitgeist about what people think of the Midwest,” Matheson says. “And we can play with the structure that it’s a real show run by the FCC on a station that no one listens to.”
Once they had a concept, the show took on a mind of its own.
“It’s one guest per episode, and they get to come in and be the character of their choosing,” he explains. “Maybe they’ll be an expert on something promoting a show or an event of a book. I, as Glenn, will kind of get things started with a few standard questions and then we just riff.”
Notable guests have included comedian Joey Hamburger in the role of manosphere influencer Pootuartitty (pronounced "pituitary"), improv actor Katy Kessler as an accomplished ASMR doctor, and Alexa Kocinski as a trust fund baby turned self-help author. That last one has more than 400,000 Instagram views. But maybe not for the right reasons.
“The best reactions are the ones we get online from people who think it’s all real,” Matheson laughs. “In all of the clips, if you read the caption is says #improv #satire. But a lot of people would rather listen to a clip, then write a paragraph in the comments, instead of going in looking at the caption. It’s a lot of, ‘This expert doesn’t know what they’re talking about!’ Well yeah. That’s the point.”
To add another level of confusion to this mindfuck of meta media, Matheson and Osterman have actually started bringing on real people to be guests of the show, but playing slightly fictionalized versions of themselves. “Real” guests have included onetime Racket contributor Bryan Clapper, a real estate agent who talked with Sheen about which Minnesota suburbs he could live in, and DJ/musician Sophia Eris.
As the series has progressed, Matheson’s character has slowly spiraled into madness.
“In the show, Glenn is divorced,” Matheson explains. “In one of our first episodes, someone said something like, ‘You don’t need relationship advice because you’re married.’ And I just like, looked at my wedding ring sadly. That was a choice in the moment. The ring was like a Lord of the Rings ring I got on Temu.”
Since then, more details have emerged about Glenn’s sad-sack life. His wife left him, he sleeps on an air mattress, and he lives in the basement of an ex-felon’s ferret-infested house.
“Glenn and I are very different people,” our host insists for a third time in a very short period. “People think it’s my actual podcast, and I have to let them know that’s not who I am.”
When he’s not catfishing the internet, Matheson is an active part of the Twin Cities standup community. He hosts a monthly speakeasy-themed show at Volstead’s Emporium (not that different from a regular standup show, but with a piano player and much fancier outfits for the comics) and is headlining at Comedy Corner Underground June 26–27.
Meanwhile, Matheson and Osterman are gearing up to record more episodes of KWHO this summer, with new characters along and IRL people joining Glenn in the studio.
“DJ Jake Rudh just agreed to be a guest,” he says excitedly. “I have so many actual nerdy music questions I want to ask him, but I’ll have to find a way to do it through Glenn’s lens. I love that we’re managing to get some actual, real people in the mix. It legitimizes the reality of our fakeness.”
