NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer speaks with comedian and former journalist Charlie Berens. His comedy blends political satire with a distinctly Wisconsin sense of humor.
Transcript
SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
For most of this week, I’ve spent my time here in Milwaukee talking with residents and elected officials and many other people about many things – tariffs, the midterms, the Milwaukee Brewers in the World Series and also data centers. They are so controversial in this key swing state that they’ve become a key issue in the Wisconsin governor’s race.
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CHARLIE BERENS: (As character) Wisconsin lawmakers put forward a bill to regulate AI data centers. And this – is this it? What in the – got bigger bills at the bar. Guys, there’s more regulation on the cheese curd.
PFEIFFER: Many Wisconsin residents are angry about data centers, but comedian and former journalist Charlie Berens has turned them into comic material that doubles as political commentary, and he’s with us now. Hi, Charlie.
BERENS: Hello. How are you?
PFEIFFER: I’m good. And, Charlie, you are Wisconsin through and through – born there, raised there, high school, college. You still live there, I think right here in Milwaukee?
BERENS: Oh, yeah.
PFEIFFER: And I’m assuming that you are – you love the place or at least quite fond of it to stick around, but making fun of the Midwest has also become your career. So what makes it so easy to laugh at?
BERENS: Well, you know, it’s just one of those things where you grow up sort of living in it, and then I went around the country doing news, and I was still doing the same thing I did in Wisconsin, just out there. And then people started pointing at me saying, that’s a weird thing to say. And, you know, then kind of when I started doing stand-up, I just sort of amplified all those things. And I was like, oh, well, a lot of people think that’s a weird thing to say. But I think it’s called a bubbler.
PFEIFFER: I was going to say, the regionalisms, the different terms that are specific to Wisconsin and the Midwest.
BERENS: Yeah, there’s a lot of regionalisms or, like, the accent or whatever. ‘Cause, you know, in news, I mean, you’re trying to get your voice to sound very neutral. And for a while, I was trying to do that, and then I just gave up on it altogether.
PFEIFFER: Because you were in the news business – you were, I think, the editor of your high school newspaper. You did journalism after you got out of college.
BERENS: Yeah, yeah, I did all sorts of local news. I did kind of broadcast. I did some radio stuff, some YouTube stuff all around the country. Some red carpet reporting – which I was terrible at, by the way, mostly ’cause I did no research. But yeah.
PFEIFFER: Did you find that people were trying to erase your Wisconsin accent, but eventually it became one of your comedy superpowers?
BERENS: Yeah. You know, they were really trying to tone it down, you know? I was told I couldn’t do voiceovers for a while because of it. But, you know, then I started doing stand-up. And instead of taking all the things people said I was doing wrong and trying to change them, I just took all the things people said I was doing wrong and just doubled down on them. And that was the basis for my first “Manitowoc Minute” episode. So…
PFEIFFER: Yes. Explain what that is, by the way.
BERENS: Oh, “Manitowoc Minute” – it is a Midwest news show where, you know, it just takes the local headlines and kind of embraces that very Midwest news character. Like, instead of a suit coat, he’s got a duck camo jacket that I got from my great-uncle Hiney (ph). I actually stole it from my dad, who stole it from my great-uncle Hiney, and he was mad ’cause I said I didn’t have it. And then he saw it on that first video. So he got over it.
PFEIFFER: Right, so you love the deer hunting jokes, ice fishing, cheese curds, the casseroles and flannel – all the folksy expressions that are so typical to the Midwest and Wisconsin.
BERENS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Don’t forget the beer.
PFEIFFER: I want to play part of some satire you posted online recently about data center construction. This one is called “How AI Data Centers Were Invented.”
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BERENS: (As character) We want to become…
CHARLIE BERENS AND UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIAN: (As characters) Trillionaires. Yes.
BERENS: (As character) That means we need to steal the people’s data so AI can take their jobs.
UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIAN: (As character) Perfect. We’re going to need a massive, loud, power-sucking building. Bigger – but we do not want this close to us.
BERENS: (As character) No, that would be terrible.
UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIAN: (As character) Well, where are we going to put them?
BERENS: (As character) We’re going to put them in small towns.
UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIAN: (As character) The people will never go for that.
BERENS: (As character) But the politicians will. They’ll just tell the people they’re creating jobs.
UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIAN: (As character) But AI’s eliminating jobs.
BERENS: (As character) Not construction jobs.
UNIDENTIFIED COMEDIAN: (As character) Eventually, AI’s going to eliminate those too.
BERENS: (As character) By that time, they’ll have already built the thing that kills the jobs. It’s too late.
PFEIFFER: Charlie, that obviously gets laughs. It’s also a little sad. And it’s basically activism disguised as stand-up comedy. What’s your end goal?
BERENS: Oh, my end goal is just for people to have transparency and accountability and protections and be in control and to build a planet that is for people and not just for, you know, machines. And that starts with – it starts now. Like, if we’re not seeing a future that we want to live in now, well, that’s not going to get better when power and money gets consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. So that’s why, you know, I’m pushing on this thing ’cause I feel like it only gets worse if you don’t do anything.
PFEIFFER: By wading into the data center controversy, you’re combining politics with comedy, and that means inevitably, you’re going to have some people in your audience who have different political views than you do. How do you make people laugh with you rather than risk have them feeling that you’re laughing at them or they’re being laughed at when you’re touching on third-rail topics in your stand-up?
BERENS: First of all, if it’s more funny than it is political, it’ll probably work as a joke. And if it is political in nature but it’s very bipartisan, it’s also going to work. And I’ve said it before, but this data center issue is the most bipartisan issue since Beer. So it’s a very good example for how to do it ’cause I had people from the left and the right coming at me, saying, hey, can you help us with this? I had not seen this kind of support for anything else that I had been doing. I mean, this is a very underserved market, especially at the time, of people feeling like their voices were ignored. They were steamrolled over. And – but yeah, generally when it comes to political jokes, no one wants to be told what to think, or no one wants, like, someone who is an expert in comedy or just OK in comedy to tell them how to think about politics. So I try to make it funnier than it is political.
PFEIFFER: What do you think is the funniest thing about Wisconsin?
BERENS: Oh, the funniest thing – I mean, if you get yourself into a Midwest goodbye, oh, my gosh, it is just one of those things that – it, like…
PFEIFFER: It never ends.
BERENS: Oh, yeah, no, no. I mean, and this comes from my family, but I’ve been places an hour. When we were kids, we did – I remember there was this one Midwest goodbye. It lasted, like, 2 1/2 hours, and my dad trying to get us and all the kids out of there. We finally leave. We get 25 minutes home, and we realize that we forgot my brother. So then we had to go back. I mean, that was a long event right there. But there’s so many funny things about Wisconsin, and they don’t even try to be funny.
PFEIFFER: You got material for years to come.
BERENS: Oh, yeah.
PFEIFFER: That is Wisconsin comedian Charlie Berens. Charlie, thank you.
BERENS: Thank you. I really appreciate you.
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