If you watch TV, Netflix, Amazon or Hulu, you’ve probably seen them. If you listen to podcasts, you’ve likely heard them. That movie The Heat with Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy? They were in it. Blink and you might have missed this: They played waitresses in the new Ghostbusters. They are among the elite holding together the fabric of female comedy, fortifying a niche that was dominated by the late Joan Rivers. “They” are comedians Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo, and they don’t just pop up in small roles here and there. Their characters “Ronna and Beverly,” of the eponymous podcast, are the Jewish aunts who have you laughing so hard you’re spitting out your kasha varnishkes.

Whether you’re a Jew, a Gentile or “Other,” Jamie and Jessica are an astounding improvisational duo as R&B who have quite the backstory. The widowed Ronna Glickman, and several-times-divorced Beverly Ginsberg (who was briefly married to Allen Ginsberg, no, “not the one you’re thinking”) co-authored You’ll Do a Little Better Next Time: A Guide to Marriage and Remarriage for Jewish Singles. They point out that although “Jewish” is in the title, the book is for everybody: “Jewish, non-Jewish, gay, straight, there’s a spectrum!” (Before you go hunt down the book, remember, Ronna & Beverly are fictional characters, which many listeners have forgotten along the way.) Hailing from Massachusetts, these 50-somethings have thick accents rivaling the dialect of NYPD’s (Boston bred) Bill Bratton. With bizarre personal sagas told each episode and celebrity interviews that usually take an outrageous turn midpoint, authoritative Ronna often reins in zany Beverly, who might end up cross-examining or flirting with the guest (male or female) in the hot seat.

Ronna and Beverly, who make one another nuts, but are best friends and travel companions, each have their fair share of mishagaas. Beverly’s adult twins Lainie and Rochelle, and her unusually close niece Shira (a mother of 4, including triplets) are a handful each. Ronna’s only son Jordan (a filmmaker at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts), has a private life that mom is in the dark (or in denial) about despite Beverly’s needling and insinuating. Be forewarned: The podcast is not necessarily for the oversensitive, politically correct sort (the Holocaust is not off limits for Denbo, who attended Jewish day school as a child), but it has its loyal fan base - who know not to take everything seriously - cracking up each episode.

These words don’t do justice to the utter hilarity, especially for those who appreciate religious culture and know how important it is “to lahhf” (to quote Beverly). We learn from these ladies that laughing, even in the toughest times, is cathartic and necessary for getting through life.

I ask fellow R&B fan, Jessica Zirkel-Rubin (a graphic designer), what she loves most about the ladies. We met when we both attended a live show in Brooklyn with celebrities among the fans in the audience (In attendance were: Jill Kargman of Odd Mom Out, The Good Wife Julianna Margulies, and at a later show that same weekend, Jenji Kohan, the creator of Weeds and Orange is the New Black. Denbo played a Jewish inmate named “Ginsberg” in Season 3 of the Netflix series).

“Ronna and Beverly (and Jessica and Jamie) are extremely smart, incredibly quick, and completely unfiltered, so they consistently deliver the essential ingredients of comedy gold,” says Zirkel-Rubin.

“They are so skilled at enabling their guests and listeners to suspend disbelief and follow the ongoing, amazingly coherent narrative of their characters that I sometimes wonder if there is a Homeland-style command center somewhere at Earwolf [the podcast’s parent company and headquarters] with a flowchart of their nested story lines and imaginary associates (Ronna’s son Jordan, Beverly’s boyfriend, contractor Ray Notoli..) but I suspect the episodes are improvised and both comedians have incredible memories, which is even more impressive. They ask the questions and make comments that I, a Jewish mother in her 40s, would love (but would be too embarrassed) to ask, and they GET ANSWERS!”

Like me, Zirkel-Rubin enjoys the laugh-out-loud ludicrous anecdotes told by Beverly, even if she personally considers herself more of “a Ronna.” (The hashtags #ImARonna and #ImABeverly are trending on social media and the Earwolf website currently sells T-shirts.)

Having grown up in a Modern Orthodox Jewish home myself, I delight in the glaring(and hilariously so!) inconsistencies in the tales of Beverly’s daughter Lainie who lives in Israel. Sporadic little factual glitches (particularly pertaining to Jewish customs) actually add spice to the already-savory dish of humor that constitutes a single episode. I may be laughing much harder and for inappropriately far longer than the average listener who never attended a yeshiva day school. All the Jewish references (and there are so many) excite me, but also make me wistful that I never wrote comedy routines about my upbringing and religious schooling. I now realize there was so much potential material!

In one episode, Beverly recounts how her daughter Lainie has gotten in major hot water for fondling someone’s breast in an Israeli mikvah. (In real life, women submerge one at a time and privately at these all-female ritual bath houses. A female attendant oversees things and helps with saying the blessing, but is not in the water herself). Due to this mikvah debacle, Lainie returns home to Beverly to lie low for a while, unsure whether or not she’ll be allowed to return to her strict religious community in the holy land.

Favorite R&B celebrity interviews of mine - and of Jessica Zirkel-Rubin’s -include those with actor Arden Myrin and comedian Jeff Garlin. I particularly liked Garlin’s, as well as a separate interview with Marc Maron, for the way Ronna and Beverly handled both men. Subtly, but firmly and through the guise of humor, they put these male egos (Garlin: cocky, Maron: overblown) in check. I wanted to applaud Jamie and Jessica, the strong, empowering women behind their old school alter egos. With Garlin, there was superb rebuffing of risqué, over-the-top teasing (Garlin’s sexual overtures towards Ronna were rejected, while Beverly psychoanalyzed him, then did a 180, working on enticing him to her more free-spirited corner. Essentially, she wanted to win him away in the team war, from “a Ronna” to “a Beverly.”)

In a post Serial society where many folks are still relatively new to the plethora of podcasts, The “Ronna and Beverly” show is a pioneer. The podcast launched in May of 2011 and many who follow female comedians are among the earliest fans. One notable original R&B devotee is Manhattan off-Broadway director Aliza Shane who also happens to be my younger sister. I heard Aliza quote Ronna and Beverly and reference them for years. It all sounded interesting in theory, but I had no plans to take on a podcast until one day I was bored and decided to listen. That’s how you get hooked on something, when you least expect it. After the initial episode, I went on a mad marathon binge. It reached the point where my husband threatened to hide my iPhone. Later on, I would discover old R&B YouTube videos and Vimeos. I did a little research and found out about Jessica and Jamie. They had a pilot at Showtime in 2009 which they co-wrote with Jenji Kohan and which was directed by Paul Feig. In 2012 the duo had a short chat show series in the UK on Sky Atlantic, which Feig produced.

Knowing more about them personally (i.e. the fact that Jamie is married to John Ross Bowie of Big Bang Theory) helps with getting regular inside jokes made on R&B. Prior to podcasting, Chaffin and Denbo as Ronna & Bev were performing live shows and had an impressive early following (most notably, they performed and continue to perform where they first found their comedic footing - at the Upright Citizens Brigade in LA). Henry Winkler and Matthew Perry (who was a guest twice) were among earlier live show interviewees.

Zirkel-Rubin was introduced to Ronna and Beverly, though not directly, through Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer of Broad City. In early 2014, fascinated by the Comedy Central show, she went looking for a podcast interview with Abbi and Ilana to learn more about them.

“I found their R&B episode on iTunes,” she relates, “Little did I know I’d soon witness four genius Jewesses in one conversation! I listened in the car on the way to work and assumed Ronna and Beverly were actual 50-something Jewish moms with thechutzpah to ask their guests ANYTHING. It was riveting and ironically ‘real.’ I ended up listening to the whole episode in my parked car and arriving at work considerably late. Strategically, I appealed to my boss’s Boston Jewish background to excuse my lateness, and it turns out that he was a childhood friend of Jessica Chaffin’s! Thus, the curtain was raised on R&B’s true identities, which only served to further delight and intrigue me.”

Most amusing to those who actually hail from the Boston area (like Denbo and Chaffin themselves), are all the local references on the podcast. Ronna and Beverly state that they are recording out of Ronna’s MA home, while in fact, Earwolf’s studio is in LA. Sometimes this gets confusing for guests who temporarily forget they are playing along, pretending to be in Ronna’s “shades of Vanilla” MA home rather than a California studio.

“One of the things that I love about Ronna and Beverly is that I actually grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts (where Beverly attends Zumba at the YMCA),” says Meredith King, an R&B fan who works in real estate in the Greater Boston Area, “I’m a sucker for the local references and beam when they throw those into the mix, although Lynn is the butt of many of their jokes. I also really enjoy the cultural aspect of it. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about Judaism from them. I love when they talk about going to temple (with Julian Edelman of The New England Patriots), or the Purim Festival or anything happening at the JCC. Though the stories are creations of their imaginations, it’s a great little peek into a world I don’t know that much about as an Irish Catholic. Also, I think their different perspectives when speaking to guests about their lives are fascinating. It’s like they are both on the same train, but looking out opposite sides of the car, seeing completely different things. Because of this dynamic, they ask their guests such a wide array of questions and they get unique, funny and personal answers. They also live in a world of assumptions about people, including their guests. These assumptions are quite often wrong and it’s fun to see their worlds and points of view get reset based on what their guests say. It’s a good reminder that what we often assume, based on our own experience, may not necessarily be true.”

Kirsten Tillett, who works in corporate development in NYC, is another R&B fan. Like Meredith King, she too is originally from Massachusetts.

“I lost my accent when I moved out of state for college, so hearing Ronna and Beverly speak makes me feel right at home,” she shares, “I love how no holds barred their interviews are. I feel like they get their guests to take it to the next level, which is refreshing compared to typical, PR-managed celebrity interviews. But my favorite part is the crazy, hilarious universe and the characters they’ve created [in Ronna and Beverly’s personal lives].”

While King appreciates the levity, she reminds me of a more serious moment at the live show I attended which was recorded for the podcast:

“It was right after the Pulse nightclub tragedy in Orlando. That night, Ronna asked for a moment of silence for the victims. Beverly declined and said she wanted to SCREAM and she did! I loved this because she was totally right. It’s not elegant, but sometimes you have to show your anger, your frustration, the way you truly feel inside, say ‘the hell with it’ and just scream! I couldn’t have been more proud to be a fan of these women than at that very moment.”

You can look out for new episodes of Ronna & Beverly (biweekly) on Fridays. They are available through the Podcast app or at http://www.earwolf.com.