Since publishing “How to Be Black,” his best-selling 2012 satirical memoir about black identity in America, Baratunde Thurston has built himself into a one-man multimedia company. In recent years, his thoughts on race and technology have powered email newsletters (“Recommentunde,” with tips about what to read and stream), podcasts (“Spit,” about the surprising implications of DNA testing), TV shows (“The Daily Show With Trevor Noah”) and a regular magazine column (“One More Thing,” in Fast Company).
Recently, Mr. Thurston, 42, spent a week managing his life across his many mediums.
Monday
7:30 a.m. I try to meditate for 20 minutes twice a day, with the first session right after I get up. But that can wait until I’m actually alert.
8 a.m. Fully awake now, I meditate and then use a foam roller to smooth out knots in my upper back, quads, around my ankle: tension brought about by the stress of life, stress of racism and stress of an ankle sprain I got on one of those stupid electric scooters. (Which definitely should not go faster than 16 miles per hour, especially not after midnight.) This is not a land designed for my survival.
10:15 a.m. For breakfast I reheat leftovers from a Saturday brunch — a quarter of a vegan waffle, some vegan schnitzel — all in one pan, both in the name of inclusivity and my reluctance to wash dishes. I make a big old cup of red tea with maple syrup and almond milk and head to a room in the back of my house that’s my home studio in the making — a little echoey right now, but less as I’ve invested in it.
I use a to-do list manager on my phone to write down the top five things I’m trying to get done. Three concern a podcast I’m developing. I also need to edit a friend’s speech and give my neighbor a heads-up that I’m having techs over to upgrade my internet.
1 p.m. Weekly call with Kara Baker, my manager. We spend most of the hour talking through the points of this proposed podcast deal, and then turn to other stuff that’s up in the air. In October I’m moderating a conversation at the Brooklyn Museum with JR, the French photographer. This weekend in L.A. I’m moderating a fake Democratic primary debate with a bunch of comedians. And this week I’ve got a gig speaking to a Canadian elementary teachers’ union in Toronto about anti-black racism.
3 p.m. I check in with my fiancée, Elizabeth, who also works from home — she’s with Harmony Labs, a media-focused nonprofit — but in a different part of the house. I also realize I haven’t had any lunch, so I go to a Mexican joint. I listen to podcasts while I’m walking and then read while I eat — a CBC news podcast called Front Burner, an Atlantic article about how black farmers got taken advantage of in America. The Atlantic article riles me up, which is good — it gives me some afternoon energy.
4:45 p.m. Sending comments back to my friend about her speech. She replies that she gave the speech last week. Oops.
6 p.m. I’m late for my second meditation. It’s a nice break from the screen time and all the other audio/visual stimulus.
9:30 p.m. I wind down and pack for my trip to Canada. It’s a really short trip — so just a backpack. Mostly I make sure I have my passport and have content loaded on the iPad.
Tuesday
7:30 a.m. Wake up, smile at the rising sun. Bob Marley moment complete, I dive into a 20-minute meditation.
8:15 a.m. I do my productivity checklist and then email, email, email. Then I make breakfast — that’s a generous way to put it. Actually I put two kinds of cereal in a bowl and eat it standing in the kitchen.
9:44 a.m. I call an Uber to take me to Burbank airport. The driver, like so many others in L.A., works in entertainment — he’s a comedian — and we actually laugh a lot and have a great conversation about all the black shows on TV these days.
11:50 a.m. Air travel is a big part of work — a plane is essentially my WeWork. So when they announce a layover in Denver of four and a half hours, I don’t mind. I find a nice table near an outlet, plug in the iPad, bust out the Bluetooth keyboard and jam on work.
12:30 a.m. Land in Toronto and head to the hotel. I’ll steam my clothes in the morning.
Wednesday
7:20 a.m. Back when I was 21, I was proud of five hours of sleep. As a 41-year-old, I know that’s foolish. I do my 20-minute meditation. It’s critical when I’m sleep deprived and doing a lot of germy travel.
8 a.m. In the ballroom for sound check. My liaison, who is super pregnant, tells me about how she’s getting 18 months of maternity leave while her cousins back in Florida get like four weeks. I cry a little inside as I check the mic and flip through all my slides.
8:30 a.m. I go back to my room, order an omelet and do a self-guided workout on the floor while I wait: a set of stretches, planks, squats, things you don’t need equipment for. My pre-talk ritual includes some stretches, some vocal warm-ups, and some level of immersion in the community I’m about to talk to — this time, that means internet research on racism in Canada.
I also decide to draw a bath, like a Victorian.
11:20 a.m. Head downstairs to speak to 800 elementary schoolteachers. My talk, a version of my TED Talk, involves taking headlines of white people calling the cops on black people; I make them into a language game that highlights the structural racism involved with the choice to invoke armed law enforcement to the scene of a non-crime. I throw in a few Canadian examples. The audience is really engaged — diagraming sentences in front of teachers hits a magic spot, I guess — and I get a standing ovation.
There was a point when I thought that once I gave a TED Talk, I couldn’t perform it anymore. But that’s not the case at all. It’s more like a greatest hit from a band. People want to hear it live.
1:10 p.m. My flight home means more reading, emailing and content-consuming. Part of my job is just to be a sponge for stuff that’s happening in the world, especially at the intersection of technology and race and society. I watch the Aziz Ansari special; it’s part appreciation and part study — I’m interested in how to package ideas in a way that people will hear them. I also watch “Oprah Winfrey Presents: When They See Us Now,” Oprah’s interview with Ava DuVernay and the men once known as the Central Park Five. That one’s mandatory. The author of “How to Be Black” can’t not watch “When They See Us Now” — it would be blackness malpractice.
8:45 p.m. I get home, bring in the garbage bins from the street and hug my woman.
Thursday
7:30 a.m. I wake up, do my meditation, go for a one-mile walk, make myself a bowl of cereal with some blueberries and a cup of tea and head to the home office for a series of calls.
9 a.m. Talk with my producer at iHeartMedia, where I do a podcast with 23andMe called “Spit,” telling stories related to DNA. We’re plotting the episode we’re recording next week, about Parkinson’s. We’ll have four guests, so it’s a lot of wrangling.
10 a.m. I have a video call with my therapist in New York. I’m not going to get into the details, but it was good to be able to check in with someone about all the things that are happening inside of me.
1 p.m. I had a meeting with Elizabeth about some household stuff, and then jump back into professional emailing mode.
1:50 p.m. Elizabeth and I walk to have a late lunch at a nearby cafe. She is definitely a mind I tap for my work. She’s really good at business, and we’re counselors to each other out of love and out of respect and out of reality. I basically run a small business, and the decisions that I make affect both of us.
3:45 p.m. Back into work mode. To prepare to fake-moderate these fake debates on Saturday, I finally start watching the CNN Democratic debates. I also get going on a nerdy project where I’m looking through my Netflix viewing history and using a spreadsheet to identify common threads in the shows I like. As I start to pitch TV shows, I feel like this will help me make that jump from consumption to creation, and help me better articulate what I’m about, too.
Friday
6 a.m. I wake up and never quite fall back asleep. My mind’s racing. I do my meditation, walk around the block. Then I get back and start prepping for calls.
9:30 a.m. Call with a client and my events team at Creative Artists Agency. I’m emceeing an event for this organization in New York in September, so we run through logistics and program and run of show.
10 a.m. I have a big call this afternoon about the podcast contract, so I prepare for that by organizing all my notes and sending a list of my thoughts to my lawyer. I also do some work for my Patreon members. Some tiers get personalized, signed books from me.
2 p.m. On the phone to discuss this podcast deal. It goes well — rather than email the legal document back and forth among lawyers, we just got direct. It was a nice reminder that human communication bests editing a document with tracked changes.
3 p.m. I’m trying a new thing with Patreon — a conference call where followers can ask me anything. But nobody dials in, either because I didn’t give people enough notice or perhaps because no one cared. I’m still figuring out what people want from me.
Interviews are conducted by email, text and phone, then condensed and edited.
