Victor Varnado is many things: standup comedian, founder of Supreme Robot, King Super Nuts, and the man behind the Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship. He's also the guy who built disability gaming tech worth $500K — and never saw a dime.
Lou sits down with Victor for one of the more wide-ranging conversations we've had on this show: Richard Pryor's evolution as a performer, what a histology class taught Victor about how history gets told, the UCB rap battle comedy scene, why AI is "like discovering electricity," and how you turn tic-tac-toe into a global competitive sport.
Oh, and the story of the National Science Foundation grant Victor received to build voice-control and audio-description software for disabled gamers — software that could help people who are paralyzed, blind, or deaf play video games without extra hardware — that got sold to a tech company for shares against their IPO... and then the IPO never happened.
— Gary, Indiana, The Jackson 5, and tall-tale fathers
— Richard Pryor vs. George Carlin (and why Pryor won)
— The histology class that changed how Victor sees the world
— Bombing at the HBO Aspen Comedy Festival callback
— 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB (Battle Ish)
— Supreme Robot: how Victor builds and tests IP before finding investors
— AI and what stays valuable when everything changes (people's attention)
— Opening for Scott Thompson (Kids in the Hall) and Gilbert Gottfried
— Norm MacDonald on Sam Kinison and what comedy is actually about
— Tic-tac-toe as a strategy game (and how to make it competitive)
— The disability gaming tech that a company bought and buried
— Neuralink and the medical future Victor actually wants
Play the game: highscoregamearcade.com
Intro — who is Victor Varnado?
Growing up in Gary, Indiana and the Jackson 5
Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and the art of performance
The histology class that changed how he sees the world
Moving to Minneapolis, bombing at HBO Aspen, and going solo
UCB, the Hammer Cats, and 20 years of NYC comedy
Battle Ish: 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB
All those unfilmed shows — and why Victor actually recorded everything
Supreme Robot: his IP incubator explained
AI is like electricity — and why that's scary and exciting
Opening for Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall
Opening for Gilbert Gottfried at Caroline's
The joke he's working on about marriage
Norm MacDonald, Sam Kinison, and what comedy is really about
The Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship — yes, really
HighScoreGameArcade.com and the 100M player goal
The National Science Foundation grant and disability gaming tech
The $500K he never got — and what happened to the tech
Neuralink and the medical future he actually wants
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