You’re known for weaving personal stories and cultural observations into your stand up. How do you decide which stories are best suited for a performance?

Some things are pretty obvious from the get go. An experience happens and it’s just automatically funny and then other things you just find on stage. Some things take you by surprise by how much they resonate with people, but it’s mostly just trial and error. The fact that I have a lot of that type of material is more just due to my odd life of always ending up in other places.

You’ve lived in the US, Ireland, and China. How have those cultural differences influenced your comedic style?

In the early part of my career, it was almost a criticism of my comedy that I basically only talked about being an American in Ireland. But I had a lot of things to say because I had a unique experience of being transplanted at 14 to another country. The good thing about it is that people responded really well and it gave me a lot of confidence and then over time you evolve, you get a broader amount of things that you wanna talk about. Looking back in hindsight, Irish people were just very open to basic observations about Ireland because they weren’t used to hearing an outsider talk about it.

Vancouver has quite a large population of Irish people. Are you implementing those aspects for your two shows tonight?

I’m aware, that’s why I’m here. They thought they could get away from me. Probably tonight, you never know. The last time it happened was San Francisco where 30% of the crowd was Irish. It used to be more like that these days. You get a bit more of a mix. But tonight, just knowing Vancouver, I would think that probably in the early show especially, I might do a couple of special bits but I don’t want to alienate like the Canadians. It’s their country.

What’s a moment in your career that has really stuck with you?

I’ve had many, but the two biggest ones were learning the Irish language and learning Mandarin. Both of those experiences were like deep immersion where I learned and I met a lot of people and made a lot of connections. Being able to understand both the Irish speaking culture and just Chinese culture in general, not just the language, those two things were more than just career events. They were personal moments of evolution for myself.

Has there been a special interaction with a fan that really stuck with you?

It’s probably X rated! No, I’m just kidding. Well, actually I have one that’s quite sad. There was this one time this very young, maybe 11 or 12 years old girl was bedridden in the hospital. She really got into watching my DVD’s so she requested a “make a wish” to meet me before she died, which is the only time anyone’s ever done one with me. I went down to meet her. Her name was Caitlin O’Keefe and that was tough. It felt good to give her a little happy memory at the end. The thing that actually stands out to me was not just her, but her mom. When it was just me and her mom in the room, she actually broke down in my arms and it made me realize that my stuff can hit people in a way that makes it feel more personal to them. I was very happy to make Caitlin laugh and the fact that she wanted to meet me, means that she thought my stuff was funny, which is great, but I was happy to go there and be there for her at the time. I was also happy to know that because of her watching my stuff and her parents watching her enjoy it, her mom felt that connection with me and that comfort let it out when it was the two of us. That was probably the most profound fan experience that I ever had. I actually dedicated a DVD to her because it was a lot. I went to her funeral too actually. I’ll never forget it.

When you’re coming up with new material for your shows, do you ever get mental blockages? And if you do, how do you get out of those?

There’s certain times where nothing’s coming. In terms of creativity, everything’s so niched up. You could pick a side and then lean hard into that point of view and get all those people thinking that you’re championing what they believe. It’s quite restrictive then because you have to have an opinion that only suits that point of view. So I actually find that kind of stifling. I find it also a little disappointing. Particularly in America, lot of American comics have gone pretty right [wing]. There’s a lot of money in that. It’s very disappointing to me how much people are pandering to that side because it’s male dominated and men love that comedy and that’s fine. I can understand why some of them were a little bit peeved by too much of the finger pointing about points of view in the past. In the States it’s like worrying how many of my peers are pandering to points of view that I just can’t get with at all. So I find that a little disappointing because I’m not going to totally dive into the other side just to pander to them. It’s very frustrating even if you don’t even agree with it. It’s a very difficult time for me personally because I just can’t go over there. A lot of my people have gone over there. I ain’t going over there, man. I found myself on a podcast the other day and they were all on the right wing and I was like “holy shit, man. I’m behind enemy lines here.” I didn’t play along. I just kept it neutral and got out of a jam. But it’s just weird that it’s become like that. It used to never be like that and it’s tough to see.

How do you think social media and the way it pushes out new talent, has affected your career?

Lately, it’s been very positive because I’ve had a few viral moments and some clips did way better than what I was expecting. So like the fact that this won’t just be Irish people tonight is testimony to that. A lot of the ticket sales over the last year have come from people watching the clips and that’s awesome, I can’t complain about that. Some of those clips were from back in the day and a lot of gen X love that stuff and think “oh my God, I remember that.” I deliberately don’t let the cat out of the bag as much about my political views because I know a lot of those, particularly American gen Xers would get annoyed if they find out that I hate Trump. I had a video that just suddenly started going viral where I basically complained about how I don’t like Trump. But I also can’t believe that at that time it was a Trump Biden choice and I just couldn’t believe that that was the choice. 350 million people were stuck with that choice. So it’s just a joke about that. It’s not even a joke really. It was kind of like a rant. It’s funny, a lot of people in the comments were like, “I’ve seen your videos lately and I liked your stuff, but now I’ll never come see you because you said you hate Trump.” Just because I hate a politician, it’s pretty wild but that’s just the way it is. I can’t complain because the videos have done well. I just need the Gen Zs to appreciate that I’m out there on the front lines with them.

You have a documentary out called “In The Name of the Father.” Would you steer back into that kind of work?

Both the Irish language show and my documentary about learning Chinese were both language learning things. The fact that I was good at language learning just came out of the fact that I learned the Irish language. If I were to do that type of work again, it would be another language. I had wanted to do Arabic, but I could never get it off the ground particularly. Then there was a lot of Islamophobia and it felt like it was a good time to just go and show Arabic people just living their lives there, which was kind of like what the China project was. It was just like trying to just show the normality of life and the humor of a place.

You and your wife Hannah Berner have a podcast together! How did that come about?

Well, it was really just because my wife got so busy. Things have gone really well for her since we met. I’m not like a gold digger, but I really got lucky with Hannah because she’s absolutely blown up in the interim. So, her other podcast “Giggly Squad” has exploded. She had her own podcast called “Burning In Hell” where she interviewed guests, but she was finding it harder and harder to organize guests and organize guests and find the time to do the actual interviews. So she was like, “well, I live with another comedian. I might as well just actually do the podcast with him” and she came up with the idea to have people phone in, which gives us something to talk about. It hasn’t led to too many arguments and they’re always edited out anyway. Even though we’re married and we’re doing a podcast together, I don’t like to use our personal life too much. I like to keep it separate. We’re just being funny and obviously we tell stories about our lives, but I don’t like to make it too voyeuristic. I don’t want people to listen because they think they’re gonna get a real insight into our life. I want them to listen because they like our dynamic.

Do you have any exciting new projects coming up that you’d love to share?

Right now the whole working in North America thing is so new to me and it wasn’t like a life plan. It was just because the pandemic happened and I went back to New York and then I met Hannah and that was actually an unexpected life change. So for me, it’s just very exciting to be gigging around North America, selling some tickets. I’ll record another show. I’ll flood the market with more clips and see where that takes me. It’s exciting. But I also want to point out that Hannah is doing so well that I don’t need to work. I want to point out that I do this out of love, I’m not complaining.