“Hi, thanks for calling Cat Therapy,” says show cohost Christie Leist as she picks up a call on the WTBU phone line. “Are you calling in with a love question? Can we talk about it on the air?” Leist nods to cohost Ian Fitzgerald at the control desk, and he puts the call through to live radio.

“I have this woman in my life, and I’m really digging her,” the anonymous caller tells anyone who is still awake at 12:45 a.m. and listening to WTBU’s love advice show Cat Therapy. “I have a really good friend and he really likes her too. She’s clearly not into him, but she might be into me. I don’t want to step on his toes but… I really like this girl. Should I just be upfront with her?”

The answer is unanimous among the six DJs: Yes! And more important, you should tell your friend before making any moves.

The next caller is advised that sending his crush naked photos taken while drunk might not be a good idea. For the next hour and a half, Cat Therapy talks long-distance relationships, Tinder, and what’s to lose from turning around and chatting up the girl sitting behind you in class (nothing). And when they’re not playing Dr. Phil, the show’s hosts fill the time with music by Beyoncé, Janet Jackson, and during another show, an interview with American Idol star Sanjaya.

Cat Therapy is one of WTBU’s more than 60 weekly shows. It airs Thursday mornings from midnight to 2 a.m. and is staffed by a panel of hosts-cum-therapists (all BU students), who get through the graveyard shift with help from coffee, pizza, and naps the next day. To protect privacy, callers don’t identify themselves, and unlike other WTBU offerings, shows are not archived on the station’s website.

“Our blanket mission is to help students with their love problems, or lack of love problems,” says Leist (COM’17), who doesn’t consider herself an expert on love and dating, but says she tries to run the show with honesty and an open mind. “I have some life experience, but I’m not Oprah,” adds Fitzgerald (COM’17). “We all make stupid love decisions by ourselves, so it’s good to have an unbiased opinion weigh in.”

The hosts say listeners are dealing with a dating world much different than the ones their parents faced. “The general relationship scene on campus is not very relationship-driven,” Leist says. With traditional dating “out the window,” Tinder and other offbeat ways of meeting people naturally bring about weird issues, like how to first approach someone, she says, or how to confront someone about defining a relationship without seeming too clingy.

Later that night, a caller explains that she has been accepted to grad school and is looking for a gentle way to break up with her boyfriend, who seems to have missed a few hints.  “Lately, honestly, I love him, but he’s getting on my nerves,” she says. “It’s like talking to a wall.”

“Text him and say you need to talk,” advises Olivia Costanzo (COM’17), one of the six DJs packed into WTBU’s recording studio on the third floor of the College of Communication. “You just need to free yourself.” The hosts banters back and forth a bit, and Fitzgerald retorts, “Give him a copy of Hillary Clinton’s autobiography and say, ‘Please get used to powerful women in this world.’”