A LAUGHING MATTER? KU AEROSPACE GRAD LAUNCHES SUCCESSFUL STANDUP COMEDY CAREER IN HIS NATIVE MONGOLIA by Joel Mathis
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former KU aerospace engineering student has become one of his nation’s leading innovators in an unexpected field: comedy. Ider-Od Bat-Erdene attended KU from 2006 to 2011. He returned to his home country of Mongolia to work on Boeing jets for an airline there before shifting his career into entrepreneurship — and, eventually, into telling jokes before audiences. “Mongolia’s first comedy club was called UB Comedy Club. UB stands for an abbreviation for our city’s name, Ulaanbaatar. It was just one person in that tiny comedy club in the basement,” Bat-Erdene said on a return visit to KU in September 2019. “I would finish work and go down there and do comedy for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then there would be like five to 10 people regularly,” he said. “I would do it three times a week, and then the audience got into larger number — like 20 to 30 people — and then we got four other comedians along the way. And then it became like this full-scale comedy band kind of group.” Standup comedy is still a relatively new art form in Mongolia, Bat-Erdene said. “It’s just standard American format,” he said. “It’s basically like direct import of culture to Mongolia. But it works.” He stumbled onto comedy during his time at KU: Friends encouraged him to participate in a talent show at an international student retreat held in the Colorado mountains.
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“I was the only guy from my country, and all the other countries had prepared dance, singing, like all other forms of talent. And I did not have any of them,” Bat-Erdene said. “And then my friend from Kazakhstan, she gave me this idea: ‘You have some pretty cool anecdotes. Just say something funny.’” It worked. “People really liked it and they laughed hard,” he said. “And these two American students came up to me after my performance and asked me if I knew anything about standup comedy. ‘You should surf the Internet and then watch some videos.’ That’s how I kind of discovered this.” But he didn’t jump directly into comedy. First he had to finish his aerospace engineering degree — a challenging task. “Everything we learned — from day one to the fifth year — it made perfect sense in the end,” he said. “Until then, I was kind of in like complete uncertainty.” He did well enough to get the job as a maintenance engineer on Boeing airliners following graduation. After that, he moved into entrepreneurship, helping co-found CallPro LLC, a Mongolia-based company that focuses on telecom technology and digital advertising. It is in comedy, though, that he has started to make a name. He recently appeared on a television show, “The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan,” and his Instagram account has more than 344,000 followers. Videos online show him performing — in his native language — to laughing, appreciative crowds.
