Baratunde Thurston

On August 27, 2015, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah announced that Thurston had been named supervising producer, overseeing original digital content.

Thurston was born in Washington, D.C. He grew up on the intersection of 14th and Newton Streets in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington. His father was killed when he was young and his mother worked in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. He has an older sister. In junior high, his mother and he moved to a suburban black neighborhood in Maryland. Thurston was educated at the Sidwell Friends School and Harvard University where he graduated with a degree in Philosophy.

Thurston was the Director of Digital at The Onion, until May 2012, and co-founded the black political blog JackAndJillPolitics.com. The name of the blog builds on the name of the African American children’s social organization, Jack and Jill of America.

Thurston began hosting the Popular Science’s Future Of television show on the Science Channel in August 2009.

As part of Laughing Liberally, Thurston emceed the YearlyKos convention in 2006 and also appeared in 2007.

Baratunde Rafiq Thurston (/ˌ b æ r ə ˈ t uː n d eɪ / ; born September 11, 1977) is an American writer, comedian, and commentator. Thurston co-founded the black political blog Jack and Jill Politics, whose coverage of the 2008 Democratic National Convention was archived in the Library Of Congress, and was director of digital for The Onion. In 2012, his book How to be Black became a New York Times bestseller.