When it comes to Ophira Eisenberg, I could fangirl on and on. She’s smart, a hilarious comedian, writer, dedicated feminist, and, rather unfairly, damn good-looking. I know her best as the comic who always kills when she participates in “Persisticon”, a Brooklyn-based feminist fundraising event regularly hosted by several of my friends. Some know her best as the host of the weekly NPR and WNYC trivia game show Ask Me Another. Others may recognize her as the author of her first memoir Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy.  Or you think you don’t know her, but you do. You’ve seen Ophira on Comedy Central, E!, Oxygen, VH-1, the New York Times,  and in all kinds of magazine articles where comedians are inevitably asked who makes them laugh.

Her latest project is Parenting is No Joke, a brand-new podcast where she talks to fellow comedians about their work and what it’s like to have a kid thrown in the mix. I got a chance to ask Ophira a little about herself, the podcast, and the ‘growing’ part of growing older.

Dixie: Ophira, you are clearly a magnificent moonflower of delight and awesome in every way. Still, my journalistic integrity behooves me to let you tell your side of the story. What are the awesome-est things about you? For example, what would you like mentioned in your eulogy?

Ophira: I’m blushing, so I guess the first line of my eulogy should be “she never learned to take a compliment.” My major strength is that I’m wildly flexible –not in the foot to the nose way, but in the nose to the grindstone way. I work in all formats! I am one of the few comics who does storytelling shows with the Moth, yet I can also be found slinging jokes to late night crowds at The Comedy Cellar. I perform standup to drunk tourists, I host trivia shows for public radio folks, I wrote a book about sleeping around! And now I have a new podcast called Parenting is a Joke, where I tell my own stories and talk to other standup comics about what it’s like to mix this ridiculous career with being a parent. I’m just saying – give me a room, an audience, and a microphone, or just one of those things, and I’ll figure out how make it a fun show!

Dixie: Do you think any of these qualities will be passed along to your son? Your new podcast, Parenting Is No Joke, talk to comedians about their experiences in raising kids. Are there reoccurring traits your guests mention as being qualities they’d like to see in their offspring? I’d imagine “good sense of humor” comes up a lot.

Ophira: My son definitely has a performer in him around the house, but he still gets shy in front of crowds so he doesn’t crave the larger spotlight – and to that I say GOOD! Every standup I’ve talked to has a pretty funny kid who has an advanced grasp of joke structure and gags, but I am yet to find that standup parent who hopes their child follows in their footsteps. Nothing underlines the word instability like working a freelance entertainment job and trying to provide for a kid. Most comics want their kid to do something they love, but they pray that comes with a steady salary and great benefits.

Dixie: What was the genesis of Parenting is No Joke?  Did you do it as a self-serving way to get tips from other comedians? (No judgement.)

Ophira: I spent most of my life talking on and off stage about the fact that I would NEVER have a child. I talked loudly about the fact that I hated kids – and trust me I did! But then for various reasons and decisions, I changed my mind. And now I realize you have to have kids to know what it is to hate kids! A joke, of course, but also true.

Part of the reason I felt strongly about not bring a kid into my life was because I knew how hard it would be with a comic’s lifestyle. The hours alone! I’m not yet aware of an elementary school that starts at 4pm and if there is a standup show out there that starts at 2pm, I’m going to say right now, that’s not a good show. So when I got pregnant. I felt very alone, and pretty scared. Weirdly, I looked around and saw that so many standups – women and men were suddenly having, acquiring, or putting together a family for the first time and wondered – why is this happening now? It really did seem like an explosion. So, I called up my friend Julie Smith Clem who had just become a parent herself and I said to her – we have to bring these comics together and talk to them and see if we can do a show with them, because this material is going to be fresh, interesting and different. We had a lot of pitches and iterations of this project before iHeart bought it, and I’m thrilled it happened! And Julie is now the producer of the show.

Dixie: Given the time and traveling a female comedian needs to invest in her career, I’d expect that a lot of them end up postponing having a kid until their late 30s or 40s. How does raising a child relatively later affect the whole parenting thing?

Ophira: You’re so right about that! I’m glad that I partied and slept around in my 20s and 30s because I don’t feel like I’m missing out on that. But what is required of me with my career and travel is still a work in progress. My son is now of the age where he still very much needs me, and he is very cognizant of me leaving. Also we just came out of almost 2 years of me not leaving at night or otherwise because of the pandemic, so this is all new again. But I do feel lucky that I’ve done my time staying at a La Quinta near the Daytona airport and I’m not going to do it again. I mean never say never but…as you get older and your career progresses, you do get a little smarter and more specific about what you say yes to. I look at my calendar, offers, and aspirations and really try to focus on what is the most worthwhile to me and my time. I built my career on saying yes to everything, but at a certain point you need to stop doing that to make space to grow and get to the next level.

Dixie: I’m a 60-year-old woman with no children, in fact, I studiously avoided parenting at all cost. Still, I recently listened to your podcast’s interview with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s Rachel Bloom and I loved it! The Jessi Klein episode too. Clearly, your podcast is for parents and the parent-adjacent, but can you see it also being for the child-free among us?

Ophira: YES! The goal is that the conversations, the hang if you will, is accessible to everyone. We’re catching celebrities and comics talking about what they are passionate about –their career, and their family. These stories are universal, relatable, vulnerable, and funny. I did my fair share of talking about relationships, dating, growing up, finding my place and this is just another iteration of all of that, maybe even a culmination. Also, I think the kid-free listeners should get extra satisfaction from these conversations because you can add on the smug satisfaction of feeling like, at least I’m not these stressed and overworked fools! Maybe I’ll listen to another episode after I take a long luxurious nap…

Dixie: As I am one of those relatively child- and stress-free layabouts, I have a blog called Dametown in which I sporadically write about, you know, stuff.  I especially like to celebrate “dames” of yesteryear and today, like you.  Basically, I focus on badass real-life women or women who portrayed badass women in old classic films. Do you have any favorite badass dames of yore?

Ophira: The first badass woman I saw in a popular film as a child was Carrie Fischer as Princess Leia in Star Wars. She seriously kicked butt in that movie and I think smiled once, briefly, at the end. I wanted to be her. After that was a Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark. When we meet her, she’s just won a drinking contest, then her old love shows up out of nowhere and she punches him in the face. I modeled my whole life after that character. Also, Sigorney Weaver as Ripley in Alien! I read an online joke about how it’s a movie where no one listens to the woman, so she survives, with her cat. Brilliant!

Dixie: Who strikes you as a good example of modern-day damery?

Ophira: I recently had the honor of hosting a benefit for WINGS WorldQuest – this is an organization that offers grants and support to  trailblazing women in science and exploration. Being in a room full of women who were studying large carnivores, working on various angles of climate change science, exploring deep sea caves, organizing with communities to save the Sumatran rainforest and thus Orangutangs (just to name a few)– was one of the most powerful evenings of my year. And it was joyous and fun! These women are not only adventuring out in the world, they are actually changing the world and I’m sure have to deal with a lot of sexism and skepticism every single day as they pursue their passion in their chosen science. Those brilliant women are the dames of now.

Dixie: Are you a classic movie aficionada at all? If you are, which stars or roles strike you as good role models for today’s would-be dames?

Ophira: I, like everyone, can never get enough of Mae West and she is infinitely quotable. One of my favorites is of course “You only live once and if you do it right once is enough.”

I also think of Katherine Hepburn in Woman of the Year. She plays Tess, a war correspondent who travels, speaks a dozen languages, and her banter with Spencer Tracy is never apologetic or demur. That’s the woman I’m always looking to emulate and be – someone who is not seeking approval and never defaults to the man.

Dixie: Winning drinking contests, punching guys, saving apes, Mae West-ing it up – all things I aspire to! And Ophira, raising a good son is a great contribution to the world, as is making people laugh. You, buttercup, are pretty damn dame-y and I can’t wait to see and hear more of you. Mmmmwah!