I am so F-ing excited for my TEDx talk on Friday.

On my walks through London, New York, Chicago, and Wisconsin in the past few weeks, it’s all that keeps playing in my head. Like a spoken-word soundtrack to my life. I bet you could ask me a decade from now to recite this talk and I’d still be able to… word for word. I’ll probably be saying it in my sleep when I’m 83 years old.

I’ve known I was in the running for TEDx since about February of this year, was confirmed in April, and was announced in July. So, when I tell you this mental soundtrack has been mixed in my mind ALL year so far, I’m not lying.

What’s odd is something about earlier this year, and all that I was dealing with personally and professionally (all conveniently smashed into this weekly dumping of feels), made me lean into writing — very anecdotally — about the importance of humor through hard times.

I wrote this talk from a place of personal, authentic experience. Not headlines.

Ironically, I feel like this message is landing at exactly the right time in this year, even though it’s been brewing all of 2025.

Everyone, no matter who you are or what you believe in, is carrying some heavy shit.

It seems we've all mastered the art of saying "Never better!" when someone asks how we're doing, even when we're absolutely not. It's become our default survival mechanism — this tiny, socially acceptable lie that somehow keeps us moving forward.

The alternative being “Aww thanks for asking! My life feels like a shit storm and most days I’m tricking myself into staying afloat as to not be a detriment to society… how are you??”

Here's what I've learned through my own collection of less-than-ideal moments: sometimes those little lies we tell ourselves and others aren't actually lies at all. Sometimes they're acts of rebellion against our circumstances. Sometimes "Never better!" is less about denying reality and more about refusing to let that reality define us.

Never Better is also (sneakily, to my readers) the title of a series I’ve been working on. Coming soon.

I think we’re all trying to find something salvageable in the wreckage. Not because we have to, but because we can. Sometimes, that choice makes all the difference between drowning in our circumstances and learning to swim through them.

This is where comedy and laughter and humor become crucial. If we can’t all have some sort of curiosity and sense of humor through difficult things, then we have nothing left.

The question isn't whether hard times will come — they will. The question is: what do you do with your brain when they arrive?

The Hustle

People often ask how I got into comedy.

Honestly, there’s not one simple answer to that question, but rather a series of moments that made it clear THIS was the route to take. A super fun and easy and totally stress-free route with billions of dollars very quickly in the bank, of course.

I was pre-med in college with a double major in psych — honor roll student, on track to be a doctor — that whole responsible path thing. I sneakily took theater as my minor just to get on stage (I was the TA for public speaking in high school, loved being in front of people, and was basically a respectable class clown who aced every test).

I kept my theater classes hidden from my friends. It was like having a secret identity, except instead of fighting crime, I was just trying to make people laugh in dark classrooms by turning Hamlet into the Guilty Conscience rap by Dr. Dre + Eminem.

Then two professors changed everything. My solo performance art professor — literally a professional clown who could crush a pratfall - told me I needed to be doing solo comedy as a career. My Shakespeare professor said my writing was some of the most eloquent she'd ever heard, but so funny that I needed to write as often as possible.

So I found Second City Chicago over a summer break after year two of school, and eventually left college to pursue comedy around other people who were just as delusional as I was about making this a living.

I remember finding comedy just… refreshing. Where school had felt so serious and astrophysicists were trying to get us to memorize theoretical equations of space time to measure the distance to planets we can’t even see with a telescope, Second City just felt like adult play time.

Humor, when everything else feels serious.

Comedy isn't just about making people laugh when they're already happy. The real magic happens when you can find humor in the middle of genuine difficulty. When you can make someone smile on what might be their worst day.

I realized young that developing a sense of humor isn't just a nice personality trait — it’s a survival skill. It's the difference between being crushed by life's weight and finding a way to carry it with some grace. Not because the weight gets lighter, but rather you become more agile.

Comedy taught me that you can hold two truths at once: this situation sucks AND there's something absurd about it that I can work with. That "and" is where the good stuff lives.

Which brings me to the practice of actually living this way...

The Chill

The thing about finding humor in hard shit is that it's not automatic. It's a practice, like meditation or going to the gym or making a decent sandwich (here’s to YOU, Subway “sandwich artists” — please practice more, thank you!)

Sometimes it's as simple as narrating your disaster like you're David Attenborough documenting wildlife. "Here we observe the human in her natural habitat, watching her business checking account balance drop below zero while simultaneously having to make payroll. Notice how she laughs maniacally instead of crying — a fascinating survival mechanism."

Other times it's about zooming out far enough to see the cosmic joke.

Like spending an hour stuck in traffic getting increasingly furious about being late, only to realize you're getting worked up about sitting in a climate-controlled box while moving faster than humans traveled for most of history. The absurdity doesn't fix the traffic, but it does fix your relationship to being stuck in it.

This is also why I listen to classical music when driving in LA. It makes the frustration in most drivers seem like a hilarious slo-mo scene in an action movie’s carnage moment.

The practice isn't about pretending everything's fine, it's about training your brain to look for the angle that gives you some agency back. Instead of "Why is this happening to me?" it becomes "Okay, this is happening. What's the weird, funny, or useful way to look at this?"

This, my friends, is why we need comedy.

Your brain is going to tell you a story about your circumstances anyway. You might as well have some input on the narrative.

The hard times will keep coming. But if you can find even one ridiculous thing about your situation — even if it's just how dramatically you're handling it — you've created a little space between you and the chaos.

Sometimes, that space is all you need to remember that you're not just surviving your story, you're writing it.

Never better? Maybe not. But never boring either.

Upcoming Shows

THIS WEEKEND!!!

September 26th — TedX Chicago — if you’re coming, I’m opening session 2 after the Global stage pitch session. Do not be late :)

Saturday September 27th — Certified Bangers is BACK in River North! — get tix fast we are almost at capacity

Oct 7 - 24th — LOS ANGELES — more info after TEDx

Nov 7th — SAVE THE DATE — New Orleans tickets are about to go live!

Love you all and cheers to the hustle + chill. We laugh in the face of life’s BS.

xx NPH