Interview: Ophira Eisenberg, Host of 'Ask Me Another' and 'Parenting Is a Joke,' Will Perform Saturday at Bay Street Theater

Stand-up comedian Ophira Eisenberg, the host of NPR’s trivia and puzzle show “Ask Me Another” for nine years and now the host of the “Parenting Is a Joke” podcast, will make her Bay Street Theater debut this Saturday night.

Eisenberg is Canadian born and lives in Brooklyn, where she hosted “Ask Me Another” at The Bell House. Her first time performing on the South Fork was less than a year ago at Guild Hall, where she hosted “Big Night: The Moth in East Hampton.”

“It was amazing how many people I knew in that audience from some walk of life, because all of New York goes out there,” Eisenberg said during a recent interview.

The Moth is a New York City-based nonprofit dedicated to the art of storytelling, with a radio program, a podcast, and live events nationally and abroad. Eisenberg has long been involved with The Moth as a host and storyteller as well as a contributor to Moth books.

When she moved to New York, primarily to do stand-up, her friends encouraged her to go to a Moth StorySLAM, an open mic show organized by theme. And in keeping with The Moth’s modus operandi, the stories must be true tales, taken from real life experiences.

“Anyone who has a 5-minute story around that theme can put their name in the hat with the opportunity to be picked,” she explained.

She said her first live show was incredible — everybody was excited, anticipating what would come next. She got picked to tell a story and kept going back to The Moth, becoming friends with the writers, artists and performers in the scene. “It was such a community,” she said.

Eventually, Jenifer Hixson, one of the Moth producers, was looking for someone good on stage with comedy chops, and invited Eisenberg to host, a role that has taken her all over the country.

Those who miss hearing Eisenberg host “Ask Me Another” should know it wasn’t her wish to end the show in 2021. The popular radio program with an accompanying podcast was a COVID casualty and an NPR budgetary decision.

“The only other entertainment show NPR has ever done is ‘Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!’ and obviously that’s been around now as a fixture for a million years. And we were, similarly, a show that made its money through live performances,” Eisenberg said.

NPR was hesitant about starting up a live show again amid a pandemic. “Because, as a news organization, you know, God forbid someone gets sick at a live show that NPR has produced,” she said.

The show carried on for a time with episodes recorded remotely before concluding in September 2021.

“They cut back a lot, and so unfortunately, one of those shows was ours, even though they loved having it around, because it offered some buoyancy, some light to the general news cycle, which is often bleak,” Eisenberg said.

Also during the pandemic, she became a citizen of the United States. She initiated the process in 2020 because she didn’t want to be worried about travel restrictions in a chaotic time.

“I put it off for so long, and then I decided I should put in my application,” she said. “... I hit submit. The next day, Homeland Security shut down everything.”

After hearing nothing back for a year, things suddenly moved quickly as Homeland Security worked through a backlog.

“May I say that the person who did my test was a fan of the show, but all of a sudden I was in the hot seat,” she said with a laugh.

However, even if the person giving the test weren’t a fan, she is confident she would have passed anyway.

“I felt like the biggest geek, because I had flashcards that I had made in my hand in the waiting room while I was waiting for my number to be called,” she recalled. “Nobody else did. Nobody. I was like, ‘Am I doing this wrong?’”

When it came time for the test, delivered verbally, the only question she struggled with was the year her son was born. Other than that temporary lapse, “It was actually painfully easy.”

Aside from biographical information, applicants are asked 10 questions, randomly selected from a list of 100, and must correctly answer six.

One of the questions Eisenberg had to answer was, what ocean is on the west side of the country?

At that point, she thought, “All right. I think I’m going to be okay.”

She got 10 out of 10.

Eisenberg’s podcast, “Parenting Is a Joke,” is now in its third season. She said that in her creative pursuits, she was looking for something that speaks to her.

“There’s loads of books and loads of podcasts and loads of all kinds of information coming at you all the time, as a new parent, with offers of expertise,” she said.

She looked for comedy geared at new moms, and what she found is what she calls the “wine in the sippy cup” brand of humor.

“I didn’t really relate to that,” she said. “I wanted something a little elevated, and there just wasn’t a lot out there.”

She wanted to come at parenting from a different angle, she said, not just “Life is impossible with the screaming children. Like, when is it wine o’clock?”

She also wanted to explore parenting as someone who works weird hours, leaving around bedtime and working late into the night, and to explore how the stand-up comic persona contrasts with the mom persona.

“Not only do stand-up comics have to deal with jobs with these unorthodox or nontraditional hours, there’s all kinds of work like that,” she said.

Eisenberg decided she would be the one to do the kind of podcast she was looking for. She would interview comics, who she knew would talk about parenting in a really funny way.

“The way people are talking about their kids is kind of new and fresh, because there’s so many stand-ups who have become parents recently,” she said. “I don’t know what happened.”

She suggested improvements in fertility science may be a factor.

On whether to expect her stand-up to be different from the style “Ask Me Another” listeners know her for, Eisenberg said she is not a blue comedian and certainly not gratuitous.

“But I do have stuff that I think is talking about the human experience in a very relatable way that would not make it on to the 11 a.m. slot on your Saturday NPR station.”

She said her stand-up is memoir-esque and totally relatable, with a ton of one-liners.

“I do a lot of self-deprecating stuff, but the general feeling of my show is fun. We’re having a good time. We’re laughing at the ridiculousness of this wild world that we are all trying to engage in. And I like to leave my audiences … with a little hope and happiness.”

Ophira Eisenberg will perform at Bay Street Theater on the Long Wharf in Sag Harbor on Saturday, June 21, at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $99 to $139.