From a collaboration between two of the most creative, influential podcast producers, WNYC Studios and Night Vale Presents, with music to be simultaneously released on legendary indie music label Merge Records (hey, that’s us!), comes an all-new adventure from the groundbreaking scripted podcast The Orbiting Human Circus. Premiering November 6, The Orbiting Human Circus in Naughty Till New Years is told as a sweeping, cinematic narrative audio experience, featuring rich, expressive sound design and original songs and scoring. The show—part drama, part comedy-musical, part concept album—features a full cast starring Julian Koster (Neutral Milk Hotel, The Music Tapes, Elephant 6), John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Susannah Flood (For the People), Tim Robbins, Drew Callander (Story Pirates), David Barlow, and many more.

Addictive, warm, funny, and often moving, Season Two, The Orbiting Human Circus in Naughty Till New Years, asks the question:

Does the janitor at the Eiffel Tower really exist? He hopes so. He sleeps in a janitor’s closet near the top of the tower, living and working by night. He imagines a vast audience with him at all times following his every move—a game from childhood he has revived in his loneliness. Only two people have ever seen him: the tower’s 90-year-old night watchman and the janitor’s harried boss, who is strangely in awe of the shy young man and seems unable to fire him even though nothing at the Eiffel Tower actually ever gets cleaned. Add to this the fact that the janitor might not have ever left the tower, has no idea how he came to be there, and can only recall a single childhood memory and one can see why he hides beneath the covers all day. But when a series of surprising, life-altering events shakes his fragile world, will the janitor be forced to pull himself out of his ghostly tower exile and confront who and what he really is? And why does he seem to be running out of time?

Season One, The Orbiting Human Circus (of the Air), was called “joyous, off-the-wall surrealism” by The Financial Times and “as delightfully strange as you’d expect” by Wired. It was also lauded by The New York Times, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, Mashable, and more.

With songs to be released simultaneously by Merge Records, The Orbiting Human Circus is fiction podcasting approached by a creator with a unique perspective on audio’s creative expressiveness and impact. Julian Koster began his artistic life making narrative musical concept albums in the indie music world. As a teenager, he was invited to craft surreal narrative audio adventures for his local public radio station, and later in life, he perfected his craft in The Music Tapes, in the Elephant 6 Collective, and as part of Neutral Milk Hotel, creators of the iconic record In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

“I’ve seen firsthand the ever-expanding potential of musical concept albums—along with the place they hold in fans’ lives,” says Koster. “To me The Orbiting Human Circus is like a 10-hour concept album, only with no more barriers. The audience is so adventurous and wants so much to go someplace fun, someplace new.”

Season Two, The Orbiting Human Circus in Naughty Till New Years, will be released biweekly beginning November 6, available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever listeners can access podcasts.