Snake Oil!

Few comics arrive at a debut record with a doctorate in neuroscience, and fewer still spent graduate school administering cocaine to lab rats. Zalay uses that background not to lecture the room, but to examine everyday embarrassments with clinical detachment, dropping punchlines with a calm, methodical delivery.

Released in October 2015 by Comedy Dynamics, Snake Oil! captured Zalay making the move from the Boston circuit to Los Angeles, shortly after being selected as one of Comedy Central’s Comics to Watch. The 51-minute audio recording charted inside the iTunes comedy top twenty for several weeks.

The hour sets academic concepts directly against petty personal mischief. Routines about sexual dimorphism and historical hysteria sit right alongside jokes about fraternal swindles, bad photographs, and time-travel paradoxes.