Chris Hardwick is old enough to remember a time when being called a nerd was — believe it or not, kids — a bad thing.
Growing up in Memphis, Tenn., the 43-year-old stand-up comic, TV host and founder and chief executive of the multimedia company Nerdist Industries ticked off almost every nerd box possible. He was a member of the chess club, the Dungeons & Dragons club and the computer club. He was obsessed with comic books, sci-fi and Monty Python. And for all of it, he said on a recent afternoon at the Nerdist offices in Burbank, "I was mercilessly tortured.