The Smartest Man in the World, Greg Proops's long-running podcast, serves as perhaps his most consistent creative outlet, a solo comedy monologue format he has sustained across hundreds of episodes.

Proops was born on October 3, 1959, in Phoenix, and grew up to attend San Carlos High School before going on to the College of San Mateo and then San Francisco State University. Those years in the Bay Area appear to have laid the groundwork for a career that eventually spanned several performance disciplines. He works as an actor in film and on television, as a voice actor, and as an improviser — a range of roles that reflects the versatility he has built up over the course of his professional life. His American citizenship and use of English are the obvious constants running through work that has reached audiences on multiple platforms.

The podcast ties together several threads of his career, giving him a venue to perform outside the constraints of a scripted project or an ensemble cast. As a voice actor, film actor, television actor, and improviser, Proops has moved between formats throughout his career, and the Library of Congress has catalogued him under the authorized label Proops, Greg — a small but concrete marker of his documented presence in American cultural life.