Baratunde Thurston On Comedy, Race, And Uncomfortable Conversations
Happy To Be Here
Greta Johnsen
4.6 • 924 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2016
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Our guest is Baratunde Thurston, who runs digital for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. He's also got a podcast called About Race and is the author of How to Be Black. He joins us to talk about the role of comedy in uncomfortable conversations about race and politics, the presidential campaign, and what it's like to work on The Daily Show. Then, a nerd confession FULL of 90's memorabilia.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still |
| 0:06.1 | watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you, |
| 0:12.7 | soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making, |
| 0:18.0 | Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago. |
| 0:25.7 | Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure. |
| 0:28.3 | Listen wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:35.1 | From WBEZ Chicago, this is Nerdette. |
| 0:36.0 | I'm Greta Johnson. |
| 0:40.9 | I'm Trisha Bobita and later on the show, a super fly, super fresh nerd confession. |
| 0:52.3 | It is all that and a bag of chips. There's a lot of 90s nostalgia involved is what we're saying about this nerd confession from one of you, dear listeners, that is straight out of the 90s. |
| 0:55.7 | But first, our special guest this week is Baratunday Thurston. |
| 0:59.4 | He's one of those people who seems to just be doing all of the things. |
| 1:01.2 | He's a comedian and an author. |
| 1:02.9 | His book is called How to Be Black. |
| 1:07.5 | Baratunday is also a supervising producer of digital things at The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. |
| 1:11.1 | When we talked with Baratunday on Skype from his office in New York, |
| 1:16.4 | he told us that working with Trevor was almost lucky happenstance. It all started when he hosted a screener of a documentary about Trevor called You Laugh, but It's True. This documentary was really |
| 1:21.5 | my intro to Trevor's work. I had not even heard of him before seeing it. My girlfriend was like, |
| 1:26.9 | I think you'll dig this comedian. |
| 1:28.2 | He's into being funny and black and global. |
| 1:32.1 | And that kind of reminds me of you. |
| 1:33.7 | So we screened it and did a Q&A. |
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