Pappas was born in Brooklyn, New York to Chris Pappas, an American criminal lawyer and Army officer, and Anna Pappas née Mamalakis, a Greek lawyer originally from Rethymo, Crete. He was raised in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope with his two older brothers, Peter and Nikos. The former is a lawyer who worked for the Clinton and Obama administrations. Through his mother, he is the great nephew of Emmanouil Tsouderos, a former Prime Minister of Greece. He is of Greek ethnicity. Pappas attended college at the American University in Washington, D.C. where he studied American Studies and History.
Career
Pappas began his comedy career in 2000. After two years, he stopped performing, in large part, due to the effects of being shot outside of a New York nightclub at the time. He returned to stand-up at the end of 2004. Pappas began pursuing comedy full-time in 2008. Pappas has been featured doing stand up on AXS TV, TruTV's How To Be a Grown Up, VH1's Best Week Ever, Fox Business, and Good Morning America. He was the first comedian to ever do stand-up comedy on TheTonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon; it was a test show and did not air. Alongside his stand-up comedy, Pappas had previously partnered up with lifelong friend and director Jesse Scaturro to create the production company Ditch Films in the mid 2000s. The comedyproduction team produced live and filmed comedy. With Ditch Film, Pappas created his popular internet characters Maurica and Mr. Panos, which premiered online in 2010 and 2009, respectively. Beginning in June 2013, Pappas co-hosted the MSG Network showThe Bracket with Chris Distefano. Later in 2013, he began co-anchoring the live primetime news showFusion Live alongside journalists, Marianna Antonio and Pedro Andrade. Focusing on current events, pop culture and satire, the show was one of the first for the then-new Fusion network. The show was canceled in December 2014. Beginning in Spring 2015, Pappas hosted the AOL Original Series, 2 Point Lead, a sports comedy show. Pappas first special, part of Comedy Central's The Half Hour series, aired in June 2014. In 2016, he released his comedy album Let Me Be Yannis, which was recorded live in Madison, Wisconsin. The album was awarded Album of the Year for 2016 by SiriusXM Comedy. Since February 2018, Pappas has co-hosted the weekly podcast History Hyenas via the Riotcast network with frequent collaborator Chris Distefano. In 2019, Yannis released his first hour-long special Blowing the Light on YouTube. It was produced by comedian Andrew Schulz.
Personal life
Earlier in his career, Pappas worked in the social work field; his work included participating in 9/11 disaster relief for two and a half years and working with the mentally ill and people dealing with homelessness for three years with Lutheran Social Services. Pappas has lived in Park Slope on-and-off for much of his life. He moved to Miami in 2013 for the show Fusion Live. More recently, he lived in Bay Ridge.
