Today’s edition of Out to Lunch sits at the intersection of two big ideas: immersion and reach.  One guest is building virtual worlds for the world’s largest energy companies and the U.S. Air Force — right here in Baton Rouge. The other is shaping how millions of people around the globe experience the NFL — from a home office in Baton Rouge. 

Both guests grew up in Louisiana, both left, both came back or stayed — and both are doing work that most people wouldn’t expect to find anchored in the Capital Region. The through-line is this: the future doesn’t always happen in Silicon Valley or New York. Sometimes it’s being built from a studio off Perkins Road and a home office in Baton Rouge. Today we’re talking about what it looks like when Louisiana shows up on the cutting edge.

Cody Louviere grew up in Lake Charles dreaming about video games and ended up building simulations for the U.S. Air Force and ExxonMobil. He’s the founder of King Crow Studios, a Baton Rouge company that uses virtual reality, augmented reality and AI to train people on equipment worth tens of millions of dollars — without anyone ever touching the real thing. 

Cody came to Baton Rouge when his ex-wife enrolled at LSU, and the city kept him. More than 50 simulations later, King Crow is quietly doing some of the most sophisticated technical work happening anywhere in the South.

Danielle Brown is a Baton Rouge High graduate who interned at Google as a college student and never really left — except that she did come back, during the pandemic, and helped rewrite Google’s remote work policies so she could stay. 

Today Danielle leads global marketing for NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV, overseeing a 15-person team, co-marketing partnerships with the NFL itself, and subscriber strategy for one of the most-watched sports products in the world. Eighteen million people watched a recent international NFL game on the platform she helps run. She is doing that work from Baton Rouge, Louisiana — and she seems to think that’s exactly right.

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find photos from this show by Ian Ledo and Miranda Albarez at itsbatonrouge.com.