Using Humor to Communicate: Naveed Mahbub at TEDxDhaka

thank you Shan can everybody hear me well that was not a joke I just said can you hear me well that's it am I too loud we speak loud anyways uh Shuman uh thank you very much for the introduction and you said pretty much everything about myself you forgot to mention that 2 years ago I had a colonoscopy and that is a that was a that is a tough act to follow you know I mean I was supposed to being the guy speaking right before the first break and he kind of switched it around and

after this great speech though it was on video I think it's going to be very hard to follow but I have to say when I see that video when she talked about the fact you can't tell the Atlantic how to behave and I have to say you can't tell Schuman how to behave you know but but uh but the thing is that I also do have a girl inside me and that is a comedian and I think that's what has been inside me and I'm serious I am serious oh I'm supposed to stand here I'm

sorry um so I'm serious I I I realized that I'm an engineer I was trained to be an engineer because in this country you know uh we were kind of programmed to be engineers and I say this all the time that you have to live by the Dell philosophy deel you have to be a doctor engineer lawyer else you're a loser so I became an engineer and then one thing that happens when you become an engineer engineer in this country you got a very good-look wife you know I mean I could have my parents all

the way up to here but I'll still get a goodl looking wife and I did she's 10 years younger than I am woohoo but the thing is that was uh back in 2008 um went for the HUD and uh came back from HJ we used to live in San Diego California you know delivering the American dream nice house have a little kid good job everything and then come back from the HUD and I tell my wife um I've had a revelation and she says oh my God you know he was trying to picture me with

the beard and everything I say I've had a revelation I'm going to quit my job at Qualcomm and become a full-time standup comedian and she said oh my God are you going through midlife crisis I said no that is my revolation and in fact uh being in America I was really getting a lot of mileage as a comedian I think I was uh respected quite a bit by the a lot of American people for being a very different kind of a person and that uh is something that America does it really uh values and respects

diversity and they saw okay this guy you know we have a lot of comedians but look at this guy he's kind of different like he's a Bangladeshi immigrant he's an engineer he's a Muslim comedian so I had a huge following they followed me everywhere they were FBI agents and I said dude I'm not one of them okay I'm not a terrorist I love America I love all things American made in China for America I will do Jihad some of you have heard this joke a thousand times oh naid come on I've heard that joke before

true I've said this joke a hundred times if not a thousand times All Over America in you know in in the middle of America West Coast East Coast hillbilly town he what all that stuff everybody laughed but one time I was doing this show in in Michigan you know Midwest and I remember that it was a comedy club uh it was called the an arbor showcase good crowd people were laughing and then there was this gentleman sitting right in the middle tough guy short hair pretty scary he was not laughing and he had this look

on me I'll see you at the parking lot and I was nervous you know after the show I got up sure enough this guy comes to me he says can I have a word with you sir I said wow I never knew I got kned by the queen and he said um I'm from the United States Army I said oh my God and they said I want to tell you two things sir I said yes first of all you are damn funny on that stage I said oh cool the second thing I want to tell

you something sir from your seven minutes of Comedy I learned more about Muslims and Islam than I did in my 2 years Tour of Duty in Iraq I said that's powerful and then I said to I told him that U um my mission is accomplished and he said sir I still want to ask you one question is what it is you can you really have four wives four wives you kidding me four wives means four mothers-in-law now that's going to lead a young Muslim men to go and blow himself up that's what I call the

muslim version of Four Weddings and a funeral he laughed shook my hands and then he said uh can I buy you a drink I said I don't drink but you can buy me a hamburger and he did we talked and then I realized that uh my mission is not only accomplished but it has been going on for quite a while because after 911 really what was happening is that a lot of us Muslim comedians in the United States there is a majani is's from Iran there's Ahmed Amed Egyptian guy they actually had a tour called

the axis of Evil and there was U AAR Usman he actually came to Daka if you remember there some of you may have seen him uh he's an indian-american lawyer and he looks I mean he looks like a you know he's got beard and he's where a turban and he's got this tour called Allah made me funny and of course there's this brilliant comedian his name was uh naid Mah I'm just kidding but anyway so so it was not just Muslim comedians it was comedians all across the board you know we were going on stages

and we were cracking fun on about everything that was going on we made fun of the fact that you know it's really a handful of aberration that kept a billion Muslims hostage we were carrying all these messages we were talking talking about being strip searched when going through the airport you know that the fact that you know somebody was saying this cusser prayers at the airport and get get guess what next next he he next thing he knows he gets pulled out the of the plane this time I was uh traveling in the US I

was on a South Southwest Airlines flight and this very good-looking blonde woman sits next to me and then you know and I usually say a prayer before take off it's just a routine you know and he said did you just say your prayers she I said yeah I also say my prayers you know I you know and and then she said oh you know is this plain going to go down I said no she said but but but she was flying for the first time she was kind of scared and everything it was kind of

cool every time there was a turbulent she kept hugging me was kind of cool and I said pilot go through the roughest weather you can but anyways uh Jokes Aside basically what is the core message here is that the core message is that any message that you have you can deliver to your target audience in a whole number of ways you know you can have for example right now there's a video going around you know some guy in some obscure part of the United States made a video and now this whole uh upheaval is happening

all over the world these are expressions of an individual's act but the thing is that what's happened you know you know four diplomats innocent diplomats and Marines die in the process right now that that is still you know a way to give a message but is that the right way to give the message the whole thing is that there is always a message and there's always a target audience it can be a very simple thing like okay a guy likes a girl and he can just send her an SMS saying I love you or he

can send her an email or you know like um you know tie a message to the leg of a pigeon and say oh go tell her or you can just go say Hey you know baby I love you or sometimes they throw acid on her face well that's not funny but that that's what they happen or sometimes they harass her but again this is again a message intended for an audience a whole slew of methods of delivering that message and the outcome of how the message is received depends on how it is delivered if you're

aggressive chances are the message will not be perceived or received the way it is intended to be right and so as comedians when we had our the the girl cell you know start flourishing we realize that we really are are emotional people I'm not an engineer I am an emotional people and my mentor who taught me comedy said Navi there's no such thing as victimless comedy you are always a victim of a situation and that's when you are really able to deliver the message very effectively in the form of humor once you have gotten out

of that whole situation and that's really what we comedians do we are really giving out messages we're doing it in a very subliminal fashion that is the difference of here and that's really what I want to talk about is that there's a message and there's an audience but I am delivering it through humor and the beauty of that is that we can do it in a subliminal fashion I can tell you a joke you know I had these jokes about the Muslim you know four wives and everything the message was really you know I'm the

average guy next door love thy neighbors you know Jewish Muslim Hindu Christian doesn't matter we're all children of Abraham that was the message but it is delivered through humor not directly but in a subliminal fashion they said oh you know that comedian was so funny what happens we come back from a show or we go see a comedian and they said that joke was so funny we keep rewinding and replaying it in our minds and you you you going driving and you you start laughing somebody said look that crazy person laughing at himself but anyways

the whole idea is that you're reliving that moment you're re reliving the jokes and what happens at some point you say but you know what what he said I think is true and so we have can we have all these kind of messages I mean there there's the whole slew of issues in this world you know the speaker right before me talked about um uh women who are uh who are harassed you know the the she talked about gender equality there's corruption there is uh climate change there is war going on you know there are

so many issues that are going on and we can uh we can Enlighten our audience through humor and the thing is that we can do it indirectly in a subliminal fashion make him laugh deliver the message go home let it sink in and then one time they will realize you know what maybe he is correct and this is a mechanism a lot of people are now using and I have myself have uh been involved in such a a few such processes for example uh recently there was an HIV awareness drive going on for University students

now safe sex or you know safe needle usage is a topic which is very much of a taboo in our country in our society now how do you deliver this kind of a message uh among 18 to 22 year audience members who are there you know hormones are raging at the same time some of their parents are there their their professors are there and openly you want to talk about this so it was una IDs and it was a jci chapter they said you know it's a very sensitive topic how do we approach our audience

nid can you help us I said yeah what are your core messages these are the five core messages I said fine we're going to say it's a comedy show and we had a comedy show and subliminally those five messages were delivered and they said what this was one of the most successful HIV awareness campaigns we had and what happens when you laugh is that you losen up it is what I call the non-alcoholic way of getting high because your circulation is going you would disarm your audience you know your mom could be sitting next to

you but guess what you are both sharing the same humor you kind of forget the differences and that barrier goes down and you can send out subliminally that sensitive message which is where the effectiveness comes in there was a I in in California I used to go around with a doctor and he used to treat patients cancer patients and he said naid before I you know go and give my talk I want you to do 10 minutes of comedy and talk about these healing processes and they they're going to laugh but at the same time

they will hear those messages and it really helps in their healing process for me it was it was a phenomenal experience and there are there are so many other examples simx a cim company they used to have safety training classes and they you know we we're spending thousands and thousands and you know guys come to the class they're bored they fall asleep they go back to work they learn nothing and they're still having accidents n can you help us I said what are your core messages these are the four messages fine let's have a comedy

show we have a comedy show four messages are delivered they said this is one of the most successful uh training campaigns we've had so the thing is that once again is if there's a message there is an audience and humor can not always can sometimes be a very effective way to deliver that message in a supplim fashion in an entertaining fashion because that that's one time when your audience is very receptive you deliver the message go away let it do its own work and uh I think that really is the core of my message over

here what I do for a living run right now and U I want to conclude this with this that uh um I have a comedian friend he was here a few days ago rather couple months ago uh his name is David ryit a very very funny comedian and uh he said one thing that uh humor is how we deliver the messages so that we have a better better world and he said make laugh not more thank you very much