Baratunde Thurston Talks to Nicholas Thompson About Humor and the Conversation About Race

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Episode: Baratunde Thurston Talks to Nicholas Thompson About Humor and the Conversation About Race
Date: June 13, 2016
Host: Nick Thompson (Website Editor, The New Yorker)
Guest: Baratunde Thurston (Comedian, writer, digital media strategist; author of How to Be Black)

Main Theme:
A candid and engaging conversation between Nick Thompson and Baratunde Thurston centering on the role of humor in navigating and enriching national conversations around race. They discuss Thurston's unique career trajectory, the complexities of using comedy to address serious topics like race and politics, and the evolving landscape of media and cross-cultural dialogue.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Baratunde Thurston’s Career and The Daily Show Experience

• Background:
  Thurston’s multifaceted career—comedian, writer, commentator, podcast host, digital strategist—includes stints at The Onion and The Daily Show.
• Role at The Daily Show:
  Thurston explains his task was to “expand the digital footprint” and bring "Internet sauce" to the show after Trevor Noah took over as host.
  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “My job was to help relaunch the show, add more Internet sauce to it... We had a new young, dynamic, connected host who invited me to join him on this journey.” (03:00)
• Reason for Leaving:
  Thurston felt his role as supervising producer consumed too much of his creative bandwidth, pulling him away from on-air and writing opportunities.
  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “The supervising producer job sucked all the time. It also totally took me away from my own voice and my ability to express myself, like on camera, on stage, on Microsoft. And that became an increasingly frustrating.” (03:29)

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2. Comedy and the Trump Era

• Efficacy of Humor Against Trump:
  Thompson asks if humor—like “Black Donald Trump” or John Oliver’s segments—actually changes public perception of Trump.

  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “Trump is a very special boss, like, video game villain. And most of the shots you fire at him make him stronger... I don’t think humor alone is gonna be enough. It’s a part of it.” (04:54)
  • Discussion highlights Trump’s ability to absorb and thrive on attention, even negative comedic attention.

• Key Segment—African Dictators Comparison:
  Thurston recounts a formative moment early in Trevor Noah’s tenure, where Noah contextualized Trump as an “African dictator”—a segment only possible with Noah’s unique background.

  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “Trump is basically an African dictator.” (06:20)
  • Quote (Nick Thompson):
    “It was an incredible segment. It was something that only really Trevor Noah could do.” (06:48)

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3. Trevor Noah’s Interviewing Style and Depth

• Public Critique:
  Thompson raises the critique that Noah is funny and charismatic but doesn’t “go for the jugular” in interviews.

• Baratunde’s Perspective:
  Thurston defends Noah, noting that finding the right balance as a late-night host takes time, and that audiences often underestimate the difficulty of these roles.

  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “I think, you know, like a Roman Coliseum. The public wants blood. I don’t think people really understand how a show works. And it’s a comedy show.” (07:31)
  • Notes that Jon Stewart’s tougher style only emerged in the later years of his tenure.

• Notable Example:
  Discussion of Trevor Noah’s interview with Lindsey Graham and whether Noah pressed hard enough on Graham’s comments about Trump and the Republican Party.

  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “I probably would have wanted to ask that question more and more. I’m also a different person... I don't think it's like a huge miss or huge failure.” (09:18)

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4. Baratunde’s Approach to Tough Conversations About Race

• Pushing and Pulling:
  Thurston describes his philosophy for difficult discussions:

  • Pushing: Insisting on truth, making the other uncomfortable if necessary.
  • Pulling: Drawing out others’ perspectives, seeking to learn from their experiences.
  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “The pushing is from a perspective of, like, I know something, I need you to acknowledge it... The pulling is, you’ve got something too, and I don’t have it. What is your experience? What is your perspective?” (10:42)

• Limitations of Typical Media Interviews:
  He notes that time constraints and formats (e.g., five-minute segments) restrict genuine dialogue.

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5. Purpose and Structure of “Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race” Podcast

• A Broader Table:
  Thurston describes his podcast, co-hosted with Tanner Colby and Raquel Cepeda, as intentionally cross-cultural—multiple backgrounds and perspectives, not just binary or within a single group.
  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “So many of the race conversations we allegedly have are just within groups... when you do have a cross cultural thing, it's usually pretty binary. It's usually a single gender. And so we try to design.” (11:39)
  • The podcast brings together guests of diverse backgrounds, aiming to “afford to dip our toe into the rivers of complexity.” (12:22)

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6. Limits and Power of Humor in Conversations About Race

• Humor as Spotlight, Not a Panacea:
  Thurston argues humor is powerful for focusing attention and relieving pain, but isn’t sufficient by itself to resolve deep social problems like racism.
  • Quote (Baratunde):
    “Humor is not like a panacea. It doesn't... cure all... Humor is largely focuses attention and relieves pain. The jokes are not gonna resolve America's great diseases, not alone. It can ease the pain. It can show you where to apply therapy. But humor alone is not up to the task. I don't think anything alone is.” (12:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|-------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:00 | Baratunde | “My job was to help relaunch the show, add more Internet sauce to it...” | | 03:29 | Baratunde | “The supervising producer job sucked all the time... took me away from my own voice…” | | 04:54 | Baratunde | “Trump is a very special boss, like, video game villain... it makes him stronger...” | | 06:20 | Baratunde | “Trump is basically an African dictator.” | | 07:31 | Baratunde | “The public wants blood. I don’t think people really understand how a show works...” | | 09:18 | Baratunde | “I probably would have wanted to ask that question more and more. I’m also a different person.” | | 10:42 | Baratunde | “The pushing is... I need you to acknowledge it... The pulling is, you’ve got something too, and I don’t have it.” | | 11:39 | Baratunde | “So many of the race conversations we allegedly have are just within groups...” | | 12:34 | Baratunde | “Humor is not like a panacea. It doesn't... cure all... Humor is largely focuses attention and relieves pain.” |

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 02:28 – 03:50: Thurston describes his Daily Show role and what prompted his departure.
• 04:22 – 05:28: Discussion of “Black Donald Trump” segment and broader impact of satire on Trump.
• 06:20 – 07:03: Comparison of Trump to African dictators; unique strength of Trevor Noah’s background.
• 07:03 – 08:13: Debate over Trevor Noah’s interview style and public expectations.
• 09:40 – 10:42: Thurston discusses philosophy for approaching difficult conversations, especially about race.
• 11:39 – 12:22: Explanation of the cross-cultural aims of Thurston’s race-focused podcast.
• 12:34 – 13:28: Thurston reflects on humor’s strengths and limitations in social discourse.

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Conclusion

This episode offers an insightful, nuanced exploration of the intersection between humor, media, and the ongoing conversation about race in America. Baratunde Thurston brings both personal experience and sharp analysis, emphasizing that while humor can be a powerful spotlight and a balm for collective pain, it is not a standalone solution for complex social issues. The conversation is candid, critical, and ultimately hopeful about the power of genuine dialogue and creative engagement.

Transcript

[Katie Drummond]

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[Narrator/Host]

Baratunda Thurston has a career that I don't know of anything quite like it. On the one hand, he's a comedian, a writer, a commentator, host of a podcast, and the author of a book called how to Be Black. So he's definitely a personality. And on the other hand, he's also a digital media executive or who's been in charge of building audience for media outlets like the Onion and more recently the Daily show with Trevor Noah. He's in the business of talking about metrics and analytics and the thing we call content creation. He recently sat down with the New Yorker's website editor Nick Thompson to talk a little shop.

[Nick Thompson]

The last time I saw you was about nine months ago and was a dinner hosted by the head of Medium. Yes and there was nice symmetry because it was. It was right before you started at the Daily Show.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Right.

[Nick Thompson]

And now you've just quit the Daily show and you've written about it on Medium.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Boom. Oh, wow.

[Nick Thompson]

Amazing.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Yes.

[Nick Thompson]

So why, Baratini, Thurston, did you leave.

[Baratunde Thurston]

The Daily Show Time, really? There was a. I was there for nine months. I was brought in to expand the digital footprint.

[Nick Thompson]

You were head of digital there?

[Baratunde Thurston]

Yeah, I didn't have that title, though. I had a TV title, which is supervising producer, and I had a department which I call the expansion team. So, yeah, my job was to help relaunch the show, add more Internet sauce to it from the previous era, which didn't have very much sauce. And we had a new young, dynamic, connected host who invited me to join him on this journey. So I did pretty much most of what I came to do. And I think what the network that it wanted and got increasingly clear about versus what I came to do, they started to differ a little bit. Part of what my job there was supposed to be was supervising producer and contributor.

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah.

[Baratunde Thurston]

And the contributor means on air, means writing pieces for me to perform. And the supervising producer y job sucked all the time. It also totally took me away from my own voice and my ability to express myself, like on camera, on stage, on Microsoft. And that became an increasingly frustrating.

[Nick Thompson]

But you're still writing stuff. I mean, like, for example, Black Donald Trump came out not so long ago. And I assume you played a role in creating that character.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Very minor role. I mean, creating that character. I played no role. I think that was Roy Wood Jr. A bunch of writers. I played a role in the video and helping do really smart things to make that seen and heard by people. We put it on genius.com and annotated all the lyrics to prove every line came from something verbatim that Donald Trump has said or tweeted.

[Nick Thompson]

Why don't we pause and listen to a little clip of Black Donald Trump?

[Baratunde Thurston]

Some people say I'm very, very, very intelligent. Mexico is not a friend. Build the wall. I love the Mexicans. Nobody has more respect for a man. I declaim sadly no longer a team. Truth. Yeah, that was an amazing piece of art.

[Nick Thompson]

Let me ask you a question about Trump and humor. Is it possible for humor to really get counter Trump or to change the way the public perceives Trump? I mean, Black Trump was hilarious, right? You know, the John Oliver make Donald Trump again was hilarious. And a billion people or whatever it is, watch that. But it didn't really have an effect on Trump.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Did It Trump is a very special boss, like, video game villain. And most of the shots you fire at him make him stronger. And those missiles get enveloped into his own ugly, and he spits them back out, and fire comes out of his face, and it rallies his own people even further. So attacks that make him look like a victim serve him. Attacks that make him look like a pervert serve him. Attacks that make him look stupid tend to serve him. And I don't think humor alone is gonna be enough. It's a part of it.

[Nick Thompson]

So do you think the Daily show actually made Trump stronger?

[Baratunde Thurston]

Not alone. I think he feeds off of attention, and there is a way to create attention for him that rewards the type of perverse behavior he exhibits. I think there are a couple of key moments where the show did something really different. I think the first was right after Trevor got there. And I remember the meeting where it came up. It's one of my most beautiful memories as I walked in my first day, and I wasn't the only black person in a writer's room. I was like the fifth person in the room. And Trevor was having a conversation with his fellow African writers, Joseph and David, and he says, we know this guy. We've heard these things before. This is IDI Amin. This is Museveni. This is Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa. Trump is basically an African dictator.

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah.

[Baratunde Thurston]

And so they found all this great footage to show the insane things that people this country laughs at and say, prove that a nation can't handle democracy. Have said. And then they play what Donald Trump has said. I have a very good brain. I'm very, very intelligent. That felt categorically different from some of the other. Like, oh, isn't his hair crazy? It's like making fun of George W. Bush for talking funny. Like, there's levels of light humor that you could apply to someone like that. And then there's a deeper gut punch.

[Nick Thompson]

Well, the African dictators thing was particularly good. I mean, it was an incredible segment. It was something that only really Trevor Noah could do. You can't imagine.

[Baratunde Thurston]

It was the new Daily Show.

[Nick Thompson]

It was the New Daily Show. It was a guy from South Africa who actually make this joke, who has the credibility. And it's funny, not weird.

[Baratunde Thurston]

I was like, yo, this dude has depth.

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Okay. I will happily work with. And even for someone like this.

[Nick Thompson]

Let me go to a critique of Trevor Noah. Cause you said you're drawn to him because of his depth.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Yeah.

[Nick Thompson]

Right. And the critique of Trevor Noah is that he doesn't have the depth you want. He's very funny. He's very charismatic. No one would deny him that. But there's a sense that when he's doing interviews, he's not pushing people as far as he could or he's not going in. He doesn't go for the jugular, is what it'll say in, like, every review of Trevor Noah. How do you respond to that?

[Baratunde Thurston]

I think, you know, like a Roman Coliseum. The public wants blood.

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah.

[Baratunde Thurston]

I don't think people really understand how a show works. And it's a comedy show. And it's something Jon Stewart always said. And I always got annoyed by it. Cause I'm like, no, it's not just a comedy show. This is a new show. You're teaching the truth to the youth. And those things are also true. But John, going for the jugular, quote, unquote, probably started happening in year 10.

[Nick Thompson]

Right.

[Baratunde Thurston]

My perspective is it's hard to get people to come on your show if you're, quote, unquote, going for the jugular. And it takes some time to find that balance.

[Nick Thompson]

So there was a moment in Trevor Noah's interview with Lindsey Graham that I thought was a pretty good example of this. Noah's interviewing Graham and Graham is saying that Donald Trump's not really a Republican. And Trevor Noah comes back with a pretty hard question.

[Baratunde Thurston]

If you say, if you say Donald Trump is not a Republican, why does it seem like the Republican base fits him like a glove? What's going on? Do the voters not know that this. Or have you maybe given them the impression that maybe this is a party that supports xenophobia, 37, bigotry, and all of those things you listed? Is that possible? It's possible that Some do.

[Narrator/Host]

Absolutely.

[Baratunde Thurston]

35% of my party believes that Obama's a Muslim born in Kenya. He's locked that crowd down. Now 65% of us just think he's a bad president. Oh, there was a joke there.

[Nick Thompson]

But that was an amazing question by Trevor Noah, like, pivoting right there with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham pivoting right there, asking him a really tough follow up. But we didn't go any further than that. Lindsey Graham made a joke. And then we sort of shifted to another clip of Ted Cruz. Would you have wanted him to go further there?

[Baratunde Thurston]

Probably, yeah. Like, I probably would have wanted to ask that question more and more. I'm also a different person.

[Nick Thompson]

Yeah.

[Baratunde Thurston]

And I don't think it's like a huge miss or huge failure. I'm like, oh, Trevor Noah just ruined the Daily show by not Sticking it. Because I think he also, for him, he like, articulated and represented a lot of those viewers who also had that same thing. Just to be able to say that out loud to someone.

[Nick Thompson]

What is your philosophy when you get in, when you're on the other side of the table, or when you're in a podcast or, you know, you're having a conversation about race? And it's, you know, it's the hardest thing for this country to talk. And one of the great things about listening to you, whether it's one of your talks or one of your podcasts, is that you're, you know, you're very funny, you're very open, you're terrific at it. If you're with somebody like Lindsey Graham and it's you, Baratunde.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Yeah.

[Nick Thompson]

How far do you take it and when do you stop?

[Baratunde Thurston]

I think you stop when he swings at you. I feel like Lindsey Graham would swing at you. If you grew up in a bar, you probably witnessed a number of bar brawls and taken some notes. I like the conversation where both sides feel uncomfortable. One of the projects that I put on hold when I joined the Daily show was my own podcast called Our National Conversation about Conversations About Race.

[Nick Thompson]

And it's hosted by three people.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Yeah. Tanner, Colby, Raquel Cepeda, and myself. But so what I like about any conversation, especially a race one, is the pushing, but also the pulling and the.

[Nick Thompson]

Asking, what does the pushing and the pulling mean?

[Baratunde Thurston]

So the pushing is from a perspective of, like, I know something, I need you to acknowledge it. I'm gonna push you into this little uncomfortable corner for you because you need to be confronted with some truth that I think I have. The pulling is, you've got something too, and I don't have it. What is your experience? What is your perspective? What happened or didn't happen to you that I can learn from as well.

[Nick Thompson]

That makes lots of sense. It sounds a little different, though, from pushing Lindsey Graham to the point at which he takes a swing at you.

[Baratunde Thurston]

I know. And I wouldn't want to make Lindsey Graham punch at me. I would want a forum where there's more time to actually keep going. And I think the structure that says this is a five minute interview also leads to moments where you leave questions unanswered because you gotta go to commercial break.

[Nick Thompson]

So tell me what the point of the podcast is. What are you trying to do with the podcast?

[Baratunde Thurston]

So many of the race conversations we allegedly have are just within groups. You got all the black people over here talking to other black people about what's going on there. You have Latino people over here talking about other Latino people, white people, talking about what everybody doesn't understand about them. Or when you do have a cross cultural thing, it's usually pretty binary. It's usually a single gender. And so we try to design.

[Nick Thompson]

You've got a black man, a Latina woman and a white guy, right?

[Baratunde Thurston]

Yeah. And we've brought in guests who are East Asian, South Asian, gay and straight, and immigrants, you know, people who aren't even actually born in this country. And I think that perspective, everything's getting more complicated. And we wanted to create a show that acknowledged we can, like, afford to dip our toe into the rivers of complexity.

[Nick Thompson]

So how is your understanding? You've gone through all sorts of series of jobs, you've done all kinds of things. How is your understanding of this central issue, how comedy and humor helps people talk about race? How has it evolved and changed?

[Baratunde Thurston]

Hmm. It's not easy. Humor is not like a panacea. It doesn't. It's not a cure all. And I think some, apparently not some people even, you know, abuse it. Humor is a great spotlight. Humor alongside engineering, alongside other forms of art, alongside actual community building, super powerful. But I think humor is largely focuses attention and relieves pain. The jokes are not gonna resolve America's great diseases, not alone. It can ease the pain. It can show you where to apply therapy. But humor alone is not up to the task. I don't think anything alone is.

[Katie Drummond]

That was Baratunda Thurston talking to Nick Thompson. I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial director.

[Baratunde Thurston]

I'm Michael Colory, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.

[Katie Drummond]

And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired. And our show Uncanny Valley is all about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech.

[Baratunde Thurston]

Right. So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you.

[Katie Drummond]

Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.

[Nick Thompson]

From prx.