Martin Luther King Jr. Cultural Dinner – An Evening with Baratunde Thurston
Saturday, February 15 , 5:00 pm – 8:30 pm CST
Saturday, February 15, 2025
5 p.m. Doors Open, Cash Bar
6 p.m. Dinner Brown Ballroom, Bone Student Center
Registration Deadline: Jan. 31 or until sold out
Baratunde Thurston is an Emmy-nominated, multi-platform storyteller, and producer operating at the intersection of race, tech, democracy, and climate. He is the host of the PBS television series America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, creator and host of How To Citizen with Baratunde, which Apple named one of its favorite podcasts of 2020, and a founding partner of the new media startup Puck. Most recently, Thurston was featured in the Hulu original docuseries, Black Twitter: A People’s History.
In 2024, Thurston launched the video podcast Life with Machines, exploring the human side of the A.I. revolution—the good, the bad, and the weird. To help produce the show, he and his team built their own A.I. model named Blair to move from observers to practitioners of the technology. Through fun and enlightening conversations with entrepreneurs, artists, policymakers, technologists, business leaders, creators, educators, and scientists, Thurston seeks to demystify A.I. and answer the question, “How can these machines help us become more human?
His comedic memoir, How To Be Black, is a New York Times best-seller. In 2019, he delivered what MSNBC’s Brian Williams called “one of the greatest TED talks of all time.” Thurston is unique in his ability to integrate and synthesize themes of race, culture, politics, and technology to explain where our nation is and where we can take it. Thurston serves on the boards of BUILD.org and the Brooklyn Public Library and lives in Los Angeles, California.
Reservations are required. Seats are $20 for students and $35 for non-students. Student meal plan holders may use a meal swipe to make a reservation in exchange for one meal.
This event is presented by Illinois State University’s Office of the President, University Housing Services, Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Association of Residence Halls, the Association of Black Employees, and the Black Student Union.
