Ted Audio Collective. how to be a better human. I'm your host Chris Duffy and today on the show we're talking

about comedy and immigration. Now those are two topics that you probably don't think go together

but our guest today, Maeve Higgins is a comedian and an author who moved from Ireland to the US

and she's made a career out of using humor to get people to see borders and migration differently.

In general, one of the things that I love most about comedy

is how a good joke can take something out in the world

that you've noticed but maybe never fully articulated to yourself. And then a comedian comes along and their punchline makes you laugh but it also

crystallizes the way you see that thing and you can never see it the same way again afterwards.

In Mave's comedy she tells her own experience of leaving home and she uses

jokes to complicate the narratives that we sometimes hear about immigration, particularly the idea that there are some

immigrants who are quote unquote good and others who are quote unquote bad.

Now I'm I'm really kind of analyzing Maves joke a lot here and as E.B. White once said

explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog.

You understand it better, but the frog dies in the process.

And so in the interest of not killing any more frogs, I am going to stop talking and just

let you hear from May for self. Here's a clip from her talk at Ted Women.

I won the Alexander Hamilton Immigrant Achievement Award for contributions to Manhattan and New York State.

Thank you.

So Alexander Hamilton himself was an immigrant and all he had to do was set up a banking system, helped to win the

war of independence and generally found the United States to be considered a good

and welcome immigrant. That's a lot to live up to you know. I can't even remember my online banking password.

I just remember it. I think it's actually Hamilton.

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