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The year was 2008.

I was in the middle of preparation for our first revue as a conservatory group at Second City. Our team finished class one day. The director called me into his office.

“Tash, I want to give you something.”

He pulled out a book. The Book of Dave by Will Self.

“This… is the most challenging book you’ll ever read. When you finish it, I’ll buy you a flight to Paris with whoever you want just to fuck off for a few days. Because if you can finish this book you deserve to go to Paris.”

I mean, I’d never been to Paris at that point. Challenge accepted.

…cut to 5 years later. I’ve been living in LA for 2 years. STILL have not finished this damn book.

Paris noooo you were so close!

It took me almost eight years to finish the book. It’s one of the wildest concepts I’ve ever come across.

Long story short (without ruining anything), the novel centers around Dave, a cab driver in England who’s having a shitty time in life. He writes a memoir, buries it, and 400 years in the future it’s discovered and they think it’s the bible and it shapes their entire life.

The book jumps between present day with Dave, and the future he’s accidentally created. In the future, they speak Arpee, which is phonetic cockney, as Dave had a terrible education and wrote how he spoke. In the future, they refer to their entire landscape and ecosystem from the POV of being inside of a cab… the horizon is the dashboard, the moon is the foglamp.

I haven’t used a glossary in the back of any book as much as I did trying to get through the first few chapters of this one.

I loved and simultaneously hated this book. I love satire. I love great writing. And I love a challenge. I thought the concept of the crazy man accidentally shaping future society during a mid-life crisis was hysterical.

Eight years to finish a book that took a cab driver's meltdown and turned it into a religion. Hysterical concept. Incredible writing. Genuinely unhinged read. But even through all the brilliant satire was this: mock it all you want, but something out there is bigger than all of us.

Mock the religion. But people created religion, not God.

I'm a comedian. I swear sometimes. I talk about edgy things. I've read every irreverent thing humanity has thrown at God. But I’m a huge fan of God.

It's maybe the most surprising thing about me. Or maybe it's the thing that explains everything else.

The Hustle

I had an interesting upbringing in faith. My grandparents were ministers, and as a kid I went to an all black church for years in North Carolina, where my grandpa Curt and his siblings were all pastors.

And I’ll tell ya, nothing will make you love the Lord more than a black pastor. Especially my grandpa Curt.

But through the years, grams and gramps turned their ministry less toward religion and more toward community. They would hold cookouts and grill premium steaks on their land for the less fortunate and struggling families, even when they barely had the money for bills. They would ride their motorcycles to the jails and get to know the inmates and spread love to them. They fed so many stray dogs that the entire state of North Carolina’s canine population knew their van and would come running when they drove up.

I saw God in their genuine actions. Not in a facade they created to appear to be Godly.

I’ve had my own journey with faith my whole life.

It doesn't look like church every Sunday or a perfect moral compass or never questioning anything. It doesn’t look like judgement. It doesn’t look like rejecting science or things we know to be true in this world.

It looks like a quiet knowing that things are working out even when the evidence suggests otherwise. It looks like taking big swings because I genuinely believe I'm supposed to because somehow I’ve always been looked after from above. It looks like losing my dad and somehow — somehow — finding peace in the middle of it. And knowing he’s in a better place.

I've made every major career decision from a place of trust rather than fear. Moving to Chicago. Moving to LA. Moving back to Chicago. Starting a production company. Starting a media company. Filming a special. Writing a newsletter every Tuesday even when I have no idea what I'm going to say until 9am and start writing. (Truth)

None of those felt logical on paper. All of them felt right in my gut. All of them felt like the right choices after a lot of prayer and personal time.

I think that's what faith actually is — not blind certainty, but a deep orientation toward something bigger than your own fear. A willingness to move before you can see the whole staircase.

Comedy taught me a version of this too. You walk out on stage without knowing exactly how it's going to go. You trust your material, your instincts, your ability to read the room and adjust. You commit fully to the bit even when you're not sure it's going to land.

That's faith. Every single show.

The Book of Dave stuck with me not because it shook my belief but because it clarified something. Dave's problem wasn't that he wrote his thoughts down. His problem was that other people decided his words were gospel without him ever intending them to be.

God never asked anyone to do that either. That part was always us.

I just talk directly to the source. Skip the middlemen. Works better for me.

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The Chill

I don't talk about my faith much publicly.

Partly because it's personal. Partly because I'm a comedian and the second you mention God in certain rooms you can feel people's walls go up. Partly because I've watched too many people weaponize faith as a performance and I refuse to be that.

But it's there. And I hope even when I’m talking about edgy or difficult things on stage, people can feel something different in who I am. It’s there — on every stage, every hard season I've somehow made it through, and every piece of art I create from those hard seasons.

I think about my grandpa Curt and grandma Mo riding their motorcycles to the jail just to sit with people nobody else was sitting with. No sermon. No agenda. Just showing up to learn and understand, and to make someone ostracized from society feel seen.

That's the version of faith I want to carry. The kind that doesn't announce itself, but rather it just acts.

The comedy world can be cynical about a lot of things. I mean, it’s what we do best.

We're professional observers of the absurd, and life and humans give us a lot of material. But underneath all of it — the edgy bits, the dark jokes, the occasional F-bomb — I genuinely love people. I want rooms full of strangers to feel better when they leave than when they arrived. Feel like someone “got it” and has seen some shit just like they have.

I think that's God's work too. Even if nobody in the room knows that's what it is.

I'm not here to convert anyone. That's not my lane. But if you've ever wondered why there's something warm underneath all the weird — that's where it comes from.

Grandpa Curt and GrandMo’s van pulling up. Dogs running from every direction.

That's the energy I'm going for.

Be the magnet. Affect people. Leave ‘em better than you found ‘em.

…and maybe toss a chaotic autobiographical memoir into the woods and see what happens…

Upcoming Shows

Thursday August 20th — The Most Expensive Comedy Show — a custom, culture-centric private show in the heart of Chicago. For cool people. Tickets go up after today and food/drinks included. TICKETS

Friday August 21st — Chicago Laugh Factory 7 + 9:15pm

Saturday August 22nd — Pabst Theater Milwaukee with Natalie Cuomo

Thursday September 24th — First time headlining in Eau Claire Wisconsin!

Love you all and cheers to the hustle + chill. We change the future.

xx NPH