Jesse Popp

He is the kind of writer other standups stand in the back of the room to watch. He spent his early career in the mid-2000s New York alternative scene, where he ran a long-standing weekly bar show, before moving out to Los Angeles. He operates mostly outside the machinery of self-promotion, releasing albums quietly and avoiding the aggressive, clip-heavy internet grind.

He hides the architecture of a joke completely. A premise will start as a mundane story about trying to buy a lighter, then veer into a strange, detached corner of logic. He argues that the only reason to care about a faked moon landing is if Neil Armstrong slept with your girlfriend and you needed to pick apart the footage out of spite. The downside to this ultra-casual approach is that crowds wanting big theatrical punchlines can mistake his patience for a lack of material.

A Michigan native, he spent years as a staff writer for Conan. It makes sense for a comic who specializes in hiding bizarre logic inside ordinary conversation.