Stateless

Cansu opens a bit on European nostalgia by telling a finance bro she misses socialism, mostly because she showed up to the date for a free meal. The joke sets the tone for how she treats every place she has lived, putting a Kurdish upbringing in Denmark next to polite Scandinavian distance and American dating habits.

Her best stretches trace the friction between those worlds without turning sentimental. She recalls telling her mother she was not hungry as a child and still resenting her three decades later for respecting the boundary and letting her miss dinner. In another story, volunteering at a European refugee camp ends with a Syrian man assuming the 27-year-old student is a 40-year-old teacher.

Filmed at New York Comedy Club in September 2025 and released in May 2026, this 45-minute debut special arrived alongside a 15-track album on Pinch Records. By then, Cansu Karabiyik had already earned a PhD in neuroscience, picked up a BBC New Comedy Award nomination on the London circuit, and moved to Brooklyn after bringing earlier material like Diversity Hire to the New York Comedy Festival.