Martin was born in New York City, the son of Constantine Martin, a Greek Orthodox priest (his mother Lillian, a nutritionist, ran the Sand Castle diner in Beachwood, New Jersey). He graduated from Yale and had a year left to get his law degree from NYU when he dropped out to pursue comedy. “It’s weird to make a decision where everyone in your life disapproves, pretty vocally and directly,” he now says. “They said, 'You've got one year left. Just do it.' I had a full scholarship so I didn’t have to pay for it. I ignored them. They asked, 'Why don’t you just get the degree so you can have it?' And I said, 'You don’t understand. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and now I know. I have the answer and it’s dumb to waste any more time.”

Recently Martin was interviewed by Guy Raz on NPR’s All Things Considered.

RAZ: You started doing standup a little more than a decade ago. And some people will know this. At the time, you were at NYU Law School. This is after you had graduated from Yale. Did people, particularly your parents, think you were insane for doing that?

MARTIN: Everybody was disappointed. Pretty much everybody I knew was surprised and disappointed. It was a strange feeling in life to have kind of across-the-board disappointment, disenchantment.

RAZ: Your dad was a Greek Orthodox priest. Your mom ran the family's diner. It almost sounds like the next line should be, and they walked into a bar.

MARTIN: Yeah.

RAZ: Was home a place where you could be funny? I mean - or did your parents sort of kind of demand achievement and discipline and things like that?

MARTIN: In my family, I think what they do, I learned later when I took Intro Psych, I figured it out: Operant Conditioning. You know Operant Conditioning where you - I guess you reward the behavior you like and you just withhold praise from what you don't like. So you don't really punish anybody or yell at them or anything.

It's just that when they do something you like, you give them a lot of praise, and say that's so great, and they tell all their friends, he's doing this. For example, I was a White House intern the summer before I dropped out of law school. Everybody knew about it. I'd come home and go to church and everybody would say, oh, my God. Demetri, you're working at the White House. And I guess my parents, my mom had told everybody, he's working at the White House, you know? The next summer, I started doing standup comedy, and when I'd come home, nobody knows. What, you're doing what? This is the kind of a shameful move from the White House to open mics.

RAZ: Most people got to know you from the "The Daily Show" as the youth correspondent. And I want to play a clip of you giving young people some financial advice.

(Soundbite of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart")

MARTIN: Young people, listen up. Protect your credit. Number one, don't put your credit card near a magnet…It can erase it. So, like, if you are going to buy magnets, use cash…Two, if you're locked out of your apartment, don't use your credit card to break in, it'll damage the card. Instead, use the card to buy a new apartment…

RAZ: Did you ever think that you would make it? I mean, I guess that's sort of a strange question, because what are you going to say, yeah, I thought I was going to make it. But I mean, were you pretty confident that you could actually give up all this stuff, you know, law school and this person that your parents may be wanted you to be, and actually make it in the entertainment industry?

MARTIN: When I started, I dropped out of law school when I was 24, and I started doing standup that summer. And I tried to switch from this idea of big achievements or being a lawyer or senator or something like that.

RAZ: A senator?

MARTIN: Well, I didn't - I don't know if I ever wanted to be a senator, but I was student council president and president of some other things when I was a kid. So I had, like, a really good track record. I hadn't lost any elections from, like, sixth grade. so my family said, he's going to be a senator. Like, look at this streak he has going here. It's like, not very realistic when you're president of, like, the Greek Orthodox Youth Association at church or something like, he's going to be a senator. He's two-time GOYA president, come on. Here we go. But what I was going to say was, I just figured I'm going to go boldly in the direction of my dreams, say it as Thoreau would say, and just see where it takes me. And my only rule being if when I wake in the morning I'm looking forward to the things that I have to do that day, then I'm on the right track.