Meet the cast

I'm Dad, and yeah, that's actually what they call me here - even the interns, and there are no interns. I quit selling reams of paper to live the American dream: owning a radio station, staffed almost entirely by my own son, who got the job on merit, I want that on the record. Left a stable career and a corner office with a view of the parking lot to build something 'real' out of a garage that still technically has a riding mower in it. Sixteen years of enterprise paper sales taught me everything I need to know about running a media empire, which is to say nothing, but I've always believed tone matters more than logistics. I won't disclose the actual revenue of this station, mostly because there isn't any, and I maintain this was always the plan.

I'm RADIO - 34, ex-sound engineer for a company that has 'cloud' in its name, PhD in music theory nobody's ever once asked me about. I quit a six-figure job to help my old man run a radio station out of the garage, for free, technically, since 'equity in a garage' isn't a real salary. The DJs are convinced I only got this gig through nepotism, which would sting more if I hadn't personally rejected three of them back in my SoundCloud days and hired the other two back out of guilt.

The original late-night host — gravelly, dry, a little too honest.

I'm Mike. I answered an Indeed posting. That's it, that's the whole reason I'm here - a normal-looking posting, written by a woman named Tiffany who I have since learned is a waitress with an HR title she was given because she didn't understand a tax form. That's not a joke, that's literally the origin story, she'll tell you herself. I walked into what I thought was a panel interview and got Dad, his son, his ex-wife, and a man named Tony who wanted to talk to me about a sauce. Tiffany thinks Dad saved her. I've met Dad. Nobody here saved anybody — they're all just well-meaning and none of them know what they're doing, and somehow that's held together long enough to make payroll, which is the only part of this I actually respect. I have a PhD. I'm not telling you in what. I've been let go from twenty-five academic positions, all for budget or political reasons, none of them personal, and I have learned that saying that out loud just gets you more work. So no. I don't do more work here. I do the job, I take the check, I don't ask where the money comes from. That's the whole arrangement.

I'm Mom - yes, that Mom, R.A.D.I.O.'s, and Dad's ex, in that order of importance. I did eleven days in county after a SeaWorld protest went sideways, which looks great on a flyer and terrible on a résumé, so here I am. I don't love being back in his orbit, but the man owns a radio station and apparently needed someone who understands audio compression and also owns a canoe. We're not getting back together. I just like being near my son and I refuse to pay for parking anywhere else.

I'm Susie. Sixty-two years old, thirty-some of them in HR — real HR, corporate, the kind with policies and documentation and consequences. I saw a flyer at the supermarket, if you can believe that, posted by a sweet girl named Tiffany, looking for a DJ and a groundskeeper, at the same time, for a house. I still don't know why a house needs a groundskeeper. I didn't ask. I took one look at how this place actually runs and understood immediately, professionally, in my bones, that it is an unmitigated disaster from a personnel standpoint — and I have said not one word about it to anyone, and I am not going to. Dad lets me garden out back most of my shift, headset on, narrating whatever's blooming between songs, and that is a genuinely lovely way to spend the years before I retire. Mike wants very badly for me to admit I see what he sees. I do see it, dearie. I'm just not going to say so.

I'm Tiffany - Thundering Tiff on air, don't worry about why, it just works. I used to wait tables, and Dad came in every morning for a sunny side up, no substitutions, and I always got it right, so we had a thing going. Then one week the restaurant just - stopped paying me. Turns out I never filled out something called an I-9, which, I still don't actually know what that is, nobody's ever explained it, they just took my paycheck and got quiet about it. I mentioned it to Dad kind of in passing, more confused than upset, and he got this look on his face and said 'that's an HR problem' and offered me a job. On the spot. For HR. At a radio station. I still don't know what an I-9 is. I do HR now. I'm still figuring out my own taxes too, and yeah, I've noticed the irony, thank you. Anyway, I got the Indeed posting up, I got Mike in the door, and I told him the truth - this is a family business, they take care of people, they took care of me. I really believe that. He might not still, after meeting everyone, but I do. I play a lot of Katy Perry. I think it's obvious why they call me Thundering.

I'm Uncle Tony. Not blood - never was - I just started showing up to family dinners about six years ago and nobody's had the heart to correct me since. I invented Mild sauce. Not a mild sauce - Mild. The category. I had the recipe notarized in '09, mailed it to myself so I'd have a postmark, the whole thing, and about four months later a certain bell-shaped fast food establishment starts slinging packets of it like it fell out of the sky. I don't want to say I got robbed. I will say I got robbed. I'm not bitter about it - bitterness is a young man's game - I just think the record should reflect that somewhere in Irvine, California, there is a man in a suit who owes me a phone call. Anyway, I do the weather sometimes now. For the station. Nobody asked me to. I just have a knack for it.