Episode Details

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.

TOPICS:

— 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

0:00

Intro — who is Victor Varnado?

1:35

Growing up in Gary, Indiana and the Jackson 5

4:40

Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and the art of performance

6:15

The histology class that changed how he sees the world

9:30

Moving to Minneapolis, bombing at HBO Aspen, and going solo

11:30

UCB, the Hammer Cats, and 20 years of NYC comedy

13:50

Battle Ish: 7 years of rap battle comedy at UCB

16:10

All those unfilmed shows — and why Victor actually recorded everything

18:30

Supreme Robot: his IP incubator explained

21:10

AI is like electricity — and why that's scary and exciting

24:40

Opening for Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall

26:40

Opening for Gilbert Gottfried at Caroline's

27:05

The joke he's working on about marriage

29:20

Norm MacDonald, Sam Kinison, and what comedy is really about

31:55

The Worldwide Tic-Tac-Toe Championship — yes, really

36:10

HighScoreGameArcade.com and the 100M player goal

37:55

The National Science Foundation grant and disability gaming tech

40:10

The $500K he never got — and what happened to the tech

41:40

Neuralink and the medical future he actually wants

42:15

Outro

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