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Ben Gleib

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Ben Gleib
Gleib in 2019
Born
Ben Nathan Gleiberman

(1978-06-18) June 18, 1978 (age 46)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Standup comedy, acting, television personality, game show host
Political partyDemocratic[1]

Ben Nathan Gleiberman[2] (born June 18, 1978), known professionally as Ben Gleib, is an American actor, comedian, satirist, and writer.

Early life and education

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Gleib was born to a Jewish family of Nate and Ziva Gleiberman in Los Angeles, California, on June 18, 1978.[3] He has a younger brother named Ron Gleiberman.[4]

Gleib attended the University of California, San Diego,[5] where he studied communications and theater. His honors thesis work included producing a four-year campus TV talk show, The Gleib Show, the finale of which included Gleib's delivery to UC San Diego's Price Center Plaza by marines in a military tank, followed by an interview with Carmen Electra.[6]

Career

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In 2006, Gleib sold a television pilot, The Gleib Show, to Fox. The pilot was produced by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, Broadway Video, and NBC/Universal.[7] It was based on a TV show that Gleib directed, wrote, and starred in for three seasons on the National Lampoon College Network from 2003 to 2005 that aired to college campuses across the country; it was consistently the network's number one show. It was co-written and produced by Scot Richardson. The series was based on a show of the same title that Gleib had performed for four years while he attended college at the University of California, San Diego.

In 2007, Gleib starred in the NBC series The Real Wedding Crashers, a primetime comedy. The show also aired on Bravo and the Style Network.[8]

Gleib was billed as one of "the six comedians who could be comedy's next big things" and part of "a bumper crop of brilliant new-alt comics" by Esquire.[9] He was also named one of the "funniest comedians working today" by TBS.[10] In 2008, Gleib was featured on the NBC competition show Last Comic Standing, and the following year he performed stand-up on NBC's Last Call with Carson Daly. He is known for covering a wide range of topics in his act as well as his improvisational skills, often making up large sections of his performance based on interactions with the crowd.

Gleib was a regular guest on the E! late night talk show Chelsea Lately for seven years until the show ended in 2014.[11] He has been a frequent guest on KPCC (Southern California's NPR affiliate) on the Patt Morrison Program, bringing his comedic spin to political issues. He also reported for KPCC live from the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Gleib appears in a supporting role in the feature film Bar Starz (2008), which had a limited theatrical release. The film also featured Charlie Murphy, Daniel Franceze, Derek Waters, Jon Bernthal, and Nikki Griffin. Gleib is also the voice of Marshall the Sloth in Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), one of the stars of Kevin Smith's Jay & Silent Bob's Super Groovy Cartoon Movie! (2013), and the voice of Dali in The Book of Life (2014). His voices have also appeared in Phineas and Ferb and the YouTube series The Melvin Bros.[12]

In addition, Gleib has performed on The Late Late Show on CBS, at both the Vancouver Comedy Festival and Laughing Matters Festival in the Netherlands, hosted several podcasts for Current TV, and wrote for the "Radio Music Awards" for ABC in 2002.

Since November 2011, Gleib has hosted the podcast Last Week on Earth with Ben Gleib,[13] distributed through Kevin Smith's SModcast Podcast Network.[14]

Beginning in August 2014, Gleib hosted four seasons of the television game show Idiotest on the Game Show Network.

Gleib was guest co-anchor for a week for ABC News digital, from ABC News world headquarters in New York, and provided election night coverage for them in 2016. He has been a frequent on-air contributor on CNN, The Young Turks, and NPR, winning a Golden Mic Award for his work on Southern California NPR's Patt Morrison's Comedy Congress.[15] In 2017, he was one of the hosts of the social impact news show ASPIREist on CNN's Headline News.[16]

Gleib at Morty's Comedy Joint in Indianapolis, Indiana in 2013
Gleib in 2017

His hour-long stand-up special Ben Gleib: Neurotic Gangster debuted on Showtime in 2016 and has been available on Amazon Prime.[10]

In October 2021, Charlie Kirk invited Gleib on his show for a debate billed as "A Long-Form Debate with a Deranged Pro-Abortion Activist". Gleib showed him a photograph of a fetus and asked him if it was a human being, to which Kirk replied, "without a doubt", before Gleib revealed that it was actually that of a dolphin.[17][18][19][20]

On December 2, 2022, Gleib, who is of Jewish heritage, made an appearance on The Young Turks to criticize Kanye West for an interview he had done with InfoWars, wherein West praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazis and denied the Holocaust.[21][22]

2020 United States presidential campaign

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On May 13, 2019, Gleib announced his candidacy for President of the United States on Twitter.[23] Shortly thereafter, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks interviewed Gleib.[24] He was also interviewed by Larry King on Politicking with Larry King,[25] and by Hannah Jewell of The Washington Post.[26]

On August 21, 2019, at the annual AFL-CIO convention at Prairie Meadows Hotel in Altoona, Gleib was the final speaker out of all 2020 Democratic candidates who spoke.[27] However, Gleib struggled to finance his campaign, raising less than $70,000 through all of 2019.[28] Accordingly, on December 30, 2019, Gleib ended his campaign.[29]

Nowhere Comedy Club

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic that left many comedians out of work, Gleib started the Nowhere Comedy Club with fellow comedian Steve Hofstetter.[30] Unlike other virtual venues, Nowhere encouraged audiences to keep their video and audio active during Zoom sessions so that performers could see and hear the audience's laughter.[31]

Within a few months, Nowhere had sold over 10,000 tickets to livestreamed comedy events.[32] Comedians including Jackie Fabulous, Sean Patton, Jay Jurden, Josh Johnson, Nikki Glaser, and Christian Finnegan all performed at Nowhere during the first year of operation.[33] Gleib has indicated his intention to continue exploring virtual opportunities for Nowhere even as lockdowns and other COVID-19 restrictions are lifted in the United States and other countries.

References

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  1. ^ "The End of My Campaign". YouTube.
  2. ^ Eby, Margaret (September 23, 2014). "The 'Idiotest' Funnyman Around: An Interview with Ben Gleib". The Forward.
  3. ^ "Ben Gleib Biography". TV Guide. Retrieved June 16, 2022.
  4. ^ Ben Gleib [@bengleib] (June 13, 2016). "My younger brother Ron, and his two amazing children. Parker is 3 and Oliver is a newborn" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  5. ^ "Ben Gleib". presidentialhopefuls.org. February 7, 2020.
  6. ^ Bell, Diane (September 10, 2014). "Tank caper was just start for Ben Gleib". San Diego Union-Tribune.
  7. ^ Nave, Howie (March 21, 2013). "Comedians to debut at Harveys Improv". Tahoe Daily Tribune.
  8. ^ "The Real Wedding Crashers". NBC. Archived from the original on June 22, 2009.
  9. ^ "Will the Next Dane Cook Please Stand Up?". Esquire. July 2, 2007. Retrieved October 25, 2014.
  10. ^ a b Brustein, Darrah (September 23, 2018). "Comedians Reveal Their Top Tips On Being Memorable Communicators". Forbes.
  11. ^ Cruz, Alia (October 19, 2015). "Comedian, Actor and Cartoon Sloth Ben Gleib". Submerge.
  12. ^ Springer, Alex (July 8, 2015). "Ben Gleib: Idiotests and Mind Games". SLUG Magazine.
  13. ^ "Last Week on Earth with Ben Gleib". Last Week on Earth with Ben Gleib. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  14. ^ "Last Week on Earth with Ben Gleib". SModcast Podcast Network. Archived from the original on October 29, 2014. Retrieved October 25, 2014.
  15. ^ "Comedy Congress: Live from the 2012 Democratic National Convention, Day 3". Southern California Public Radio. September 5, 2012. Archived from the original on October 27, 2018. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
  16. ^ "About". ASPIREist.
  17. ^ Felton, James (October 12, 2021). "Anti-Abortion Activist Charlie Kirk Declares Dolphin Fetus Is "Without A Doubt" A Human Being". IFL Science. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  18. ^ "Comedian Tricks Charlie Kirk Into Declaring A Dolphin Fetus Is 'Without A Doubt' Human". god.dailydot.com. October 12, 2021. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  19. ^ Smith, Precious (October 12, 2021). "Anti-Abortionist Activist Charlie Kirk Insists Dolphin Fetus is a Human Being". Nature World News. Retrieved November 11, 2021.
  20. ^ Gleib, Ben [@bengleib] (October 12, 2021). "Charlie Kirk SCHOOLED on Abortion in 15 Seconds" (Tweet). Retrieved November 11, 2021 – via Twitter.
  21. ^ The Young Turks (December 2, 2022). PLEASE WATCH THIS CLIP - Jewish Anchor's EMOTIONAL RESPONSE To Ye (video). YouTube. Retrieved December 4, 2022.
  22. ^ Gleib, Ben [@bengleib] (December 2, 2022). "Please watch this video. I'm Jewish & I just got very emotional and angry at Kanye West while anchoring the news @TheYoungTurks" (Tweet). Retrieved December 9, 2022 – via Twitter.
  23. ^ Gleib, Ben [@bengleib] (May 13, 2019). "It's time for the announcement. We must do all we can to ensure trump doesn't permanently damage our democracy. Cautious politicians are not the answer. I am announcing my candidacy for President of the United States. Go to http://GLEIB2020.com & share this post. #GLEIB2020" (Tweet). Retrieved July 1, 2019 – via Twitter.
  24. ^ "2020 Candidate Introduces NEW Progressive Policy". YouTube. May 22, 2019.
  25. ^ "Comic Turned Presidential Candidate Ben Gleib Arrested At US Capitol". YouTube. December 6, 2019.
  26. ^ "Meet the comedian running for president". YouTube. July 3, 2019.
  27. ^ "Full speech: Ben Gleib at Iowa AFL-CIO convention". YouTube. August 22, 2019.
  28. ^ "Financial summary". Federal Election Commission. Retrieved June 16, 2022.
  29. ^ Gleib, Ben [@bengleib] (December 30, 2019). "THE END OF MY CAMPAIGN We don't have a clear path forward anymore, so it's time to say goodbye. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all who supported me. I have more to say than a standard concession speech. So I hope you watch this video #Gleib2020" (Tweet). Retrieved January 11, 2020 – via Twitter.
  30. ^ Zinoman, Jason (March 31, 2021). "Is Livestreamed Stand-Up Here to Stay?". The New York Times.
  31. ^ Magnotta, Andrew (April 16, 2021). "Inside Stand-Up Comedy's Pandemic Survival And Its Multifaceted Comeback". WAXQ.
  32. ^ Chacon, Pablo (June 29, 2020). "Comedian Ben Gleib on launching the first fully digital comedy club 'Nowhere Comedy Club'". KTLA.
  33. ^ Marfo, Amma (July 17, 2020). "How Nowhere Comedy Club is Bringing Community and Laughter Everywhere". The Interrobang.
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