Episode #381
Ben Rosenfeld was born in the city formerly known as Leningrad, but came to Connecticut as a toddler with his parents as the Soviet Union began to break apart. His comedy reflects his upbringing as a Russian Jewish immigrant in America. A graduate of Rutgers University, Ben entered a Ph.D. program in neuroeconomics at CalTech before realizing that his career path was meant for comedy instead. His TV credits include Laughs on FOX, as well as The Nick Cannon Show, and he has released multiple comedy albums since 2012: “Neuro Comedy,” “The Russian Optimist,” “The United States of Russia” and “Don’t Shake Your Miracle.” Ben also has published an illustrated coffee table book, “Russian Optimism: Dark Nursery Rhymes To Cheer You Right Up.” That optimism seemed needed more in 2022 than even in 2016, ever since Russia invaded the Ukraine. Ben has tried to find jokes in that, too, producing daily TikTok videos to his more than 270,000 followers. He joined me over Zoom to talk about his comedy career, his Russian heritage, and how he has had to adapt to audiences as the geopolitics have changed.
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Last Things First…it might seem like a simple question to ask how your family is doing, but you were born in St. Petersburg, Russia, although at the time it was Leningrad. USSR.
Yes, I was born in St. Petersburg, Russia — not to be confused of St. Petersburg, Florida. Which Americans often do. It’s like the only thing they have in common is St. Petersburg, Florida — part of the greater Tampa area, one of the strip club capitals of the world — and St. Petersburg, Russia provides the strippers.
And since it’s Spring Break, you can rest assured plenty of college kids might get confused and end up in the wrong St. Petersburg.
Yes, well, not anymore, because I don’t think they’re letting anyone in or out of Russia.
Right, but do you have family still in Russia?
My dad’s wife’s grown daughter and grandson are in Russia. Most of my immediate family because we’re Jews, and Russia let all the Jews escape by the late 80s, and somehow a country collapsed after all their smart people left. I have grandparents in Germany. My mom’s brother moved to Israel at first. Some relatives went to Canada. As soon as Russia let people leave, a lot of people left from my family.
So how old were you when your parents took you, and showed up in Connecticut?
I was three years old.
OK.
Apparently like I had started speaking Russian, but then we got here and then I just stopped speaking for six months completely. And then I started speaking English. So That probably did something to the brain programming.
I guess forget about Rosetta Stone. Just shock your toddler…
You know how you were developing language skills the first three years? Forget that. Let’s do a new language from scratch. (makes electrocuting noise)
Although as you readily admit on your TikTok and elsewhere, and in your comedy special that you filmed in 2019, your own toddler is speaking Russian.
Yeah. We’ve purposefully trained her, or just I always try to talk to her in Russian as much as possible. My wife does not speak Russian, but she’s very encouraging of our kids being bilingual. We take her to Russian camp a couple of times a week, like a couple hours of classes a week. And then anytime I leave her with my dad and his wife or my mom, they like only speak Russian to her. So yeah, we’re trying to preserve her being bilingual although right now, Russian is the new R-word that you can’t say.
Right, exactly. Which is which is part of the reason why we’re speaking today. You know, so many of your jokes in that special that you filmed in 2019, and first released on Amazon Prime, and now in the last few months you put for free up on YouTube. Like so many of the jokes are dependent upon us laughing at the idea of Russia and Vladimir Putin and cartoonish evil. But the jokes hit different now.
Yeah, the jokes hit different. I mean, also since the war started, I’ve written a whole new three to five minutes on the subject because I remember, I think it was like two days into the war. The first couple of days, I had like one little acknowledgement. After I’d mention I was born in Russia, I’d say I was performing at the club next door when I decided to invade this one. Just to kind of, you know, tongue in cheek, acknowledge that I’m aware of what is happening. But then there were a couple of times where I only had like a five-minute set, and I just skipped that part. And I was just doing my, ‘I have a child that speaks Russian,’ jokes like that. And I could just feel them being like, you’re kind of forgetting to mention something? Are you not aware? So after that, I added a bunch of Russia-Ukraine war jokes because, you know, nice, easy topic to thread the needle on,
Right? I mean, you know, I’ve been reflecting. One of my most lighthearted reflections of the past month is going that I’ve now had on my podcast, Ukraine’s second-most famous comedian in Yakov Smirnoff. And at the time, I guess he was Ukraine’s most famous comedian, but now a far distant second.
But then I’m trying to imagine Yakov as the president of Ukraine, and also just remembering like his path. When he immigrated from the former Soviet Union and all of the jokes, I guess because it was the Cold War and it was truly a Cold War at the time, all of his…Russia finds you, all of those jokes. It was so easy for us to laugh about that in the 1980s. As you were growing up as an immigrant, was comedy something that you took to immediately or was it something that you had to meander around different career paths to find?
I mean, I took to comedy immediately as how I can deal with the world, but it took me a couple years out of college till I realized comedy. But also in college, me and my roommate were running a parody website. We went to Rutgers. We created a website Slutgers, that kind of made fun of the school, and it was like CollegeHumor but only for our college. I clearly already had been doing it but didn’t realize I was doing it, where it was just more of a hobby. And then my first job out of college was management consulting. So I did like three years of like, actual corporate work, but then two years into that, I started comedy and I got into a PhD program at Cal Tech. Like I was already doing comedy, but then I was able to quit like a good-paying job to go to grad school. But then like within three months, like yeah, I don’t want to be in grad school. I want to focus on comedy.
So did you focus first on comedy in California?
I was already doing it in New York for a year. Then moved to Pasadena for like, three months, then moved back to New York because, like, I like New York or especially if I’m not in school here.
OK. So even though you were in Southern California, which is a known hotbed for comedy, when you when you decided CalTech wasn’t your future, that comedy was your future, you didn’t dip your toes into those clubs.
Yeah, I mean, when I was there I was performing where I could around L.A., but fewer shows, harder to get stage time. Whereas New York, all my family is in the tri-state area. There was at least like some path in New York, whereas L.A. just felt even more difficult. Everything’s difficult, but it felt even more difficult. In childhood, like, I had all the internet jokes memorized, like, you know, especially being like a Russian immigrant in my elementary school. Until Ukraine happened, Soviet Jews of the 80s were the last white refugees were like, it wasn’t like you take a direct flight from St. Petersburg to New York. We had to first go to Vienna, Austria, then Italy. Then wait, and you ask for asylum, and then either Canada, America, or Israel takes you. So the local Jewish Family Services of Connecticut set us up. They put me in a private Jewish school, which I hated, for elementary school. Like I said, in the 80s early 90s Boris and Natasha was popular. My birthname is Boris in Russian. And that had to be changed for survival sooner than later.
Even though Boris Yeltsin, famous politician and accidental comedian.
Yes. Accidental comedian, great album title for someone.
When you talk about the idea that for Soviet Jews, it’s not as easy as for other refugees, at least of the time period. I don’t know what it’s what it’s like for refugees in 2022. So I can’t speak to that experience. But was America your parents’ first choice or what have your parents said about the move from former Leningrad to Connecticut?
As far as I’m aware, that’s where they wanted to go as first choice. I know they had friends who had moved to America like 10 years before, already set up and established, and we stayed in their basement the first month or two…and that’s how we ended up in Connecticut because that’s where they were living. So it’s like, once you know a person or two versus the other places you don’t, then you kind of want to go there. But I think also in the 80s, American marketing was still working pretty well with ‘America is amazing.’ So that helped lure them. Also my dad in Russia, one of his jobs was a tour guide for foreigners. Like in the 80s, it wasn’t easy to even get into Russia, so he met a bunch of Americans and from the different tourists, I think America is where he wanted to be.
Now that you mentioned it, my high school history teacher would lead, I don’t know if it was every year or every other year, he would lead a summer field trip to Moscow. But yeah, you have to have handlers or as they call them fixers now. So yeah, it doesn’t surprise me that your dad might be one of those kinds of people. Was tapping into your own immigrant story, was that baked into your stand-up from the get-go? Or had you tried different forms of stand-up before you were like, OK, part of my voice essentially, is the fact that I’m Russian born?
It definitely took a little bit. Probably like, definitely, I’d say maybe within a year, definitely within two I had it. Okay, people are responding one, when I do voice of disappointed immigrant parents, plus, it’s also true. And just like, it wasn’t a day one choice, but like, I think my first jokes were, you know, I was 22, so it was all like, dating and the typical bad open-mic jokes. I think the first one I ever wrote is, ‘You’re confused looking it me, you’re thinking he does stand-up? He should be a model.’ So I never lacked for confidence, at least. But it took a little while, til I started leading into the Russian stuff, but one, I had a bunch of stories and two people can relate, and three, it’s like, you know, when you’re on the road, you want to start with how are we the same? Me and the audience. In New York City, because there’s so many comedians all the time, it’s like how are you different? You want to lead with that. So that was kind of how that started. And then sooner or later, I’ll like say a sentence or two in Russian for some of the jokes. Which one, it just sounds funny, but two, it establishes more credibility, because like sometimes people will come up to me and be like, are you really Russian? But like they think I’m doing a character to just talk about something else. The way to prove that is what when they ask are you really Russian? I just respond, ‘We’re all going to die.’ And then then they’re like your story checks out.
There’s something quintessentially dark comedy about being Russian or ex-Soviet.
I even released a illustrated humor book called ‘Russian Optimism: Dark Nursery Rhymes To Cheer You Right Up.’ Which is like these are real Russian joke jokes. And I translated them and made a nice illustration, but kids die in each one. Hilarious. They’re little Grimms’ Tales type poems, where you won’t play in the neighbor’s yard because she poisons her cherry trees and all the kids are dead now.
I was just about to mention not only did you did you publish that book, “Russian Optimism: Dark Nursery Rhymes to Cheer You Right Up,” but you also put it in the titles of two of your standup albums. 2016’s “The Russian Optimist” and 2018’s “The United States of Russia.” So you really started to lean in to the Russian aspect of your personality.
Yeah, plus, I mean with all the election hacking reports. Might as well try to take advantage of this. But I mean, it also comes from a natural place and that even now in America whenever I speak with my parents, I always speak in Russian. It’s not like some immigrants, they come here and they never speak their native tongue again to fully assimilate where I’m like, pretty assimilated, but I’ll be talking to a friend. And my dad calls me to like I’ll (speaks in Russian) and they think I’m planning a war but I’m just like, yeah, talking in Russian.
You’ve got a nice following on TikTok, like 270,000 followers as of right now. Did you join TikTok before the pandemic started, or after the pandemic?
So I think I did like five posts right before the pandemic when my last special was coming out, and like the first one got a lot of views, like 20,000. But then the next four videos got like 100, so then I forgot about it. Then the pandemic hit. Then my friend Chris James who’s also a comedian. I think he’s in L.A. now but he was living in New York, and has a British accent, he was like, ‘Ben, you got to get on the TikTok. Get on the TikTok.’ He kept pestering me and pestering me in a good way. He was trying to help. So I was like, fine I’m gonna post a video a day for 30 days. And every time I post, I’m going to text you just posted, to be as annoying as you are at me. And then like, within a week, like, I started getting like 100,000 views plus per little clips, so I’m like, alright, I guess I’m doing this forever now.
So how has your TikTok strategy changed over the past two years?
So when I started posting daily in May 2020, I’d post two videos a day because I had four comedy albums where I’m like, I’ll just find short jokes, and just do a couple, 10-20 seconds at a time. And if something new, I can also test out. But I’m like, I have this huge backlog of jokes. Let me just do two videos a day. No big deal. Because if I just filmed me with a white wall behind me and just talking into the camera…What’s crazy to me is, that does way better. Anytime I post an actual stand-up clip with an actual audience and actual laughter, no one wants to see it. And then when it’s just me and a wall? My theory is either they feel I’m talking to them, or they think I’m not an actual comedian, but I’m just a person talking. But a random person talking funny, it’s more impressive than an actual comedian talking, but like the username has BigBenComedy in it. Whatever it is, they seem to only like me talking into the camera. So strategy wise, the change when I started I was doing two videos a day, because 1) There’s a lot of views and 2) I had a lot of backlog. Now I’m out of all my old albums that I’m usually three days ahead on best case, for new jokes. So I post one video a day. But it’s also like within the last six-12 months, everyone’s saying all their TikTok views have gone down on average, like five times. So when the pandemic started, it was like any average video would get 10 to 30,000 views and then the bigger ones would be 100-200,000 views within the week. And then you’d get a million here and there. Whereas like, now an average video gets 3-5,000 views. Now it’s like decent if it’s at 50,000. And like anything over 100,000 views is like OK, this is a good hit for today.
Then in 2022, since, Russia’s “special military operation”…
Don’t call it a war!
…Slash takeover slash invasion slash war in Ukraine, you’ve been posting daily jokes about it! Was that something that you had to think about for a little bit before you started doing or was that instantaneous? Like no, this is what I have to do.
It wasn’t instantaneous. In the same three days, Russia started to invade, my grandma passed away. Which, she was old, but I was distracting myself from dealing with grandma feelings by doomscrolling Twitter, Russia invasion news. In the first five days I didn’t post anything.I was trying to read different sources in both languages and understand what different viewpoints are. So most people would say it’s instantaneous because day five, I had like eight minutes of joke ideas that I started trying. Some worked, some didn’t. And then so within the week, I definitely wouldn’t say it was instantaneous because there was like, those first five days, I didn’t the jokes. I was mulling it over. But I didn’t know what to say or not say. But also I’m still figuring it out. Because hopefully, the war ends, because it’s not good for anyone, especially regular people, but the longer it drags on, the more jokes I’ll probably have about it.
You mentioned your grandmother died that same week the war started. Was she Russian?
She was born in Russia. Here’s the thing that is confusing to Americans. For Americans, anyone born in Russia is Russian. For Russians, if you’re Jewish, that’s a different nationality. They don’t consider Jews Russian, although they’re born in Russia, speak Russian and like, it’s gotten slightly better over the years. During Soviet times, literally in your passport, there was a line that said nationality, and it was like Russian, Tartar, Jewish so like, regardless of how little I believe in God or go to any services even before any of this, like, even on my regular TikToks with some sort of Russian joke, right? Be like I’m Russian, blah, blah, blah, maybe like you’re not Russian, you’re Jew. So like, it’s still a thing. More complicated question than you would think.
Was your grandmother in America when she died or was she still back in Russia?
Yeah, she was in Connecticut. My dad’s parents came over like three or four years after we did in the mid-90s. Early 90s. She was living in Connecticut. She was a Russian Jew like us.
But one of the other obvious things is one of Vladimir Putin’s rationalizations for this entire operation is the idea that he’s de-Nazifying the Ukraine. You know, I’ve heard it from from an ex-girlfriend, from other people, from other immigrants that I’ve interviewed on the podcast. As you just said, the Jewish people who lived in the areas of the former Soviet Union have never felt like part of the Soviet Union or Russia. So how does he get away with even using that as a rationalization?
Sure, I mean, anti-semitism is popular in both Russia and Ukraine. They have that in common. The funny version is like you said Putin, saying Ukraine is full of Nazis. That’s why the reason they’re going in. Everyone else was like the president of Ukraine is a Jew. All I hear is eventually both sides are going to blame us Jews for high gas prices. The less funny version is, yeah. There is a Nazi segment in Ukraine that the Western media has been reporting about for many years, and part of that report is there is an actual like sanctioned army battalion. It’s like basically if the KKK was the 99th infantry. That is a thing that is happening in Ukraine Do I think that’s the reason he’s actually going in? No. But, you know, it’s like any PR spin like, there’s a grain of truth inside of a lot of bullshit. I mean, one version I’ve heard is like, yeah, they’re a minority of the Army, but they’re actually calling most of the shots in the Army even before this started. Look, it’s a horrible situation. War is always bad for civilians, regular people, but then politicians and war-making machine companies. It’s good for their bottom line.
How has this affected your own psyche in terms what it means to be Russian-American?
It’s evolving but…I feel the choice is either comedically speaking like I could either just stop mentioning I’m Russian completely because I have other material and other jokes. If you know I’m not born here, I think people can sometimes notice some of my words sound slightly weird. Like, th- sounds are not my friend. Thankfully, there’s the thesaurus but if I don’t say anything, I can kind of pass, so that’s one way. But let me lean into it and it feels like audiences are interested to hear my perspective instead of punchline form because I am born there and like you know, Russian heritage culturally so.
An audiences, even just in the last month, have reacted differently, once they find out that you’re Russian. Talk about what that’s like.
So one way I used to get into my Russian material would just be a simple ‘You can’t tell right away but actually, I’m an immigrant. I was born in the worst part of Russia, Russia.’ But since the invasion, modify that joke to ‘I was born in the most evil part of Russia, Russia.’ So that way, I softened the go Ukraine! It’s like, let me get my viewpoint out. Because there was one show early on. I just mentioned Russia, and I heard ‘Ukraine!!!!’ Let me get to my jokes. This isn’t a pro-Kremlin seminar. But at the same time, I’m trying to make both viewpoints acknowledged and a little funny. But like, I have a joke where a friend of mine says, Ben, you were born in Russia that makes you complicit in this invasion, in this war, and I was like, Dude, I’ve lived in America since I was a little kid. I’m only complicit in Iraq. There’s like, to me there’s like a little bit too much of like. Look invading bad, war bad, but pretending America doesn’t do the same thing all over the world all the time. It’s like this very convenient cognitive dissonance. Let’s at least acknowledge whatever images you’re seeing that are very upsetting. Those are the same images that every American special military operation don’t call it a war has had in the last 30 years.
True enough. How does this affect how you raise your daughter in terms of like, what she grows up knowing and thinking about her Russian heritage, and how that impacts how you think about your own heritage?
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s important to separate the politics of a country from the people right? I show her cartoons in Russian and we take her to a Russian language class. Always try to speak to her in Russian too. Like, I think it just makes kids smarter to be bilingual. And also, knowing multiple cultures. I mean, look she’s getting to Jewish preschool so she’s getting like Jewish culture, Russian culture and American culture. Which I think is just helpful to not have a, I only know America, and that’s it. So that you understand there’s different parts of the world that think and act differently. We’re not teaching her KGB war chants or something. It’s also, my dad’s cousin, who’s his age was telling me. She was like, in a Facebook group that was like Russian Parents of New Jersey, and she’s like, as soon as the war started, they renamed it to Russian Speaking Parents of New Jersey, to separate it from government decisions,
Almost like it’s a hobby now. You just speak it.
Yeah. And it depends how long the conflict goes. Hopefully it ends soon. But if it drags on for years and years, like Afghanistan or Iraq, then at some point you kind of gotta tell her about what’s going on. Whereas now, in her Russian class they’re literally making bracelets for Ukraine. Like I see the yellow and blue colors. I don’t think — I’m not sure they’ve explained it much, other than, we’re making bracelets today. You know what it is? Remember the first few days of the invasion, I was with my daughter at the playground. It was almost like a survivor’s guilt where like, if she, my family hadn’t moved, this child was in Russia or Ukraine, you know, we wouldn’t be on the playground right now because bombs are exploding. It took a couple days of reading and stuff, before I could turn on the comedy brain. And here’s the one I’m proud of. It’s very…I like the jokes that acknowledge the situation without overly taking one side or the other. I no longer tell my daughter you’re grounded. Now I say you’re sanctioned. And she goes, Daddy, what sanctions mean? I say that means you can only play with your Chinese friends.
As someone with the last name McCarthy, I have an -ism. So I’m you know, I’m definitely a little sensitive when it comes to talking about Russia and the Soviets even though no relation — no relation to fighting Joe McCarthy — but I do appreciate you sitting down with me to talk about this stuff, and how it impacts you and your life in your and your daughter. What message do you want to make sure gets out there other than come see you at a show?
Other than BigBenComedy.com? Yes. That’s the main message. War is bad. Government could be bad, but the people the regular day people can still be good. Like I’ve been seeing reports where like people in New York City are not going to Russian food restaurants in protest, or to like Russian-owned establishments. They immigrated. They didn’t want to be there either! And like some of them might be Ukrainian and it’s just called the Russian whatever because before all this, you know, it was less of this country, that country. A bunch of those parts of like, no, don’t be like in Texas, where they killed the guy in a turban after 9/11 and he was a Sikh and not even Muslim, but like separate the people from the politicians.
And if you could get a message back to any Russians who might be listening to this?
They can’t get Facebook, but they can get Sean’s podcasts?
Well, it’s not listed under politics. I think it may slip through.
This is the report I got secondhand. In Russian cities, life is normal so far, where it’s like okay, Gucci anymore. Now you have Smoochie, where it’s the same factory in China, but they’re not putting on the label and just giving you like the same thing.
So, just like Canal Street?
Yeah, basically all of Russia is turned into Canal Street is my secondhand understanding. What would I tell the people? This thing sucks for everyone but the politicians, so hopefully it ends soon.
Yeah, hopefully it ends soon. Well, this podcast is ending right now. So thank you for joining me and good luck out there.
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Sean.
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