Through different mediums, storyteller Baratunde Thurston has explored how people relate to their communities, nature and most recently technology.
He’s a writer, speaker, and currently, the host of “Life with Machines,” a podcast about ways humans could live and live well with AI. Thurston also produced and hosted PBS’s “America Outdoors” and created the podcast “How to Citizen.”
Ahead of a talk at the Music Hall in Portsmouth Saturday, he spoke with NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa about what it means to be civically engaged in this current moment.
NHPR is a media partner for this event.
Transcript
So you've explored our relationship with ourselves and our community through your podcast “How to Citizen” and also our relationship with nature through the PBS series “America Outdoors.” How have those experiences informed the way you now look at our relationship with technology?
There is something essential, beautiful and grounding about our relationship with nature. It is the truest sense of home that we have, and we have a deep attachment to it. As I travel this country, I found that people are really shaped by place and have a sense of familial relationship with it.
So the relationship with each other and people and how we do the self-governing thing — which is going swimmingly, by the way — is bolstered when we remember our connection to land and to Earth. When we feel displaced from where we're from, when we feel like it's under threat, then we individually and sort of from a sense of belonging, feel displaced and under threat. But if we feel held, if we feel safe, if we feel nurtured by the land and the place around us, then we can also extend that same kind of feeling to our fellow humans.
Technology is yet another layer of ungroundedness. So it feels to me that in order to have a good relationship with technology, we really need to have a good relationship with each other, and we really need to have a good relationship with the Earth. The good news is it's possible that we can kind of be in alignment across all of these. I found that in my travels, I found that in my conversations. But the tricky and challenging news is we sometimes mistake connectivity in the digital sense for true connection in the human and life affirming sense.
In an episode you put together about AI and ICE, you spoke about how sometimes seeing is no longer believing. As that becomes more common, how is that shaping our shared reality, or maybe lack thereof?
I'm trying to be very conscious about word choice and word order. I'm not saying AI is destroying our shared reality, like that's the clicky headline, but it's not accurate. There are people who are benefiting from us not having a shared reality, not trusting our own eyes is a very deep form of division, where one group experiences truth A, another group experiences truth B, they both aren't true, but they feel very real. And so, we end up fighting while we're being robbed by those who have an incentive to turn us against each other, to take our money, to take our dignity, and in some cases, as we've seen in the
beautiful state of Minnesota, to take our lives.
And that's not a new story, right? This is a new version of an old hit that has been played constantly through history. And in particular, this month, in Black History Month, it’s really helpful for this nation to remember that we've been in that hot seat as Black people. We have warned and written and sung and protested and marched to try to get everybody to see that none of us is free until all of us are free. And yet here we are again. So it's not an “I told you so.” But it is a “let's remember together and maybe not always take the hard road, America.” We have other choices available.
So in your podcast “How to Citizen,” you have reworked the word citizen as a verb. So I'll do that here. Is what you're talking about in our past question, is that what it means to “citizen” in this new reality?
Yes. To “citizen” is to understand your power. It is to presume that you have a role to show up and participate. It is to commit to the collective outcome, not just individual. And it is to invest in relationships with yourself, with others and the planet.
I cannot think of a more present, potent demonstration of this citizen as a verb mentality than the people of Minnesota. They're not issuing a bunch of talking points. They're moving together. They're looking out for each other. They are waving flags and signs of “love thy neighbor.” It's very basic in the best sense. It's a demonstration of care, concern and love for our neighbors, regardless of whether they have their paperwork in order. They are enacting citizen as a verb, in contrast to those who would weaponize citizen as a noun and use it to violate people's basic human rights.
So here in New Hampshire, we're a little politically unique. We're often referred to as a purple state. Are we in a particular position to have productive conversations with people in our communities?
Live free or die! Yes, New Hampshire, you're in a beautiful position to not just have productive conversations — I want to challenge the premise compassionately and say that a lot of the limitations that we have for infusing healthy and new life into our practice of democracy is because we see it as a conversation. And so then, it's about shared time and data and statistics and argument points. And words matter. That's what I do for a living. So I'm definitely not knocking words. But democracy is something we do, not just something we have. If we think that the doing comes down to words only and conversation only, then we're missing the full range of the expression and experience of democracy.
So yes, New Hampshire is in a beautiful position because of the diverse ideological landscape, but not because of talking alone, but because of your ability to practice, to behave together, to actively live together and to recognize each other's humanity. Then that story of living together, that becomes a model for the rest of us.
I'm really excited to be visiting [New Hampshire] because it's our awkward birthday year, America. We're 250 years old! So then we get, again, this beautiful invitation and this burden of asking ourselves, what are we celebrating? What are we committing to now? Not being British? Still a worthy cause, if you ask me, but not enough of a reason to stay united. And I've got some ideas about that. I'm really excited to come and share those in person, because there's a beautiful history of democracy here, with Indigenous democracy. There's beautiful examples of people “citizening,” as a verb, all across this country with the earth, with each other, and yes, even with these AI tools.
