Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston is an Emmy-nominated host with a varied career that includes working for The Onion, where he served as the Director of Digital until May 2012, producing for The Daily Show, and advising the Obama White House. He is also an accomplished writer with his book "How to Be Black" hitting the New York Times bestseller list in 2012. He hosts two podcasts: "How To Citizen" and "Life With Machines."

His ancestry includes a great-grandfather who taught himself to read, a grandmother who was the first black employee at the U.S. Supreme Court building, a computer-programming mother who took over radio stations in the name of the black liberation struggle, and an older sister who teaches yoga at her donation-based studio in Lansing, Michigan. Raised in Washington, D.C., under Mayor Marion Barry, Thurston has a long history of questioning authority and forging his own path.

His voice has been heard through various platforms, including the pages of Fast Company and the New York Times, the screens of HBO, Comedy Central, CNN, MSNBC, BBC, and the sound waves of NPR and podcasts such as Pivot, WTF, and Hello, Monday. In August 2009, he began hosting Popular Science's "Future Of" television show on the Science Channel, and from July 2022, he started hosting and executive producing a travelogue series on PBS called "America Outdoors." He has also hosted shows and stories on NatGeo and Discovery’s Science Channel and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for hosting the Spotify/Mic series "Clarify."

Thurston has also made significant contributions to the media landscape. In 2006, he co-founded Jack & Jill Politics, a black political blog that provided insightful coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention, which was subsequently archived by the Library of Congress. He also served as a supervising producer for the digital expansion of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which started in 2015. Baratunde serves on the boards of Civics Unplugged and the Brooklyn Public Library.