Backroom Talks Presents: The Algorithm & The Ancestors

Artificial intelligence may be the newest storyteller in the room, but it doesn’t spin its tales alone.Every algorithm is trained on a past — sometimes borrowed, sometimes stolen — and those histories shape the futures it can imagine.

In the inaugural event of Backroom Talks, Abantu Audio welcomes Dr. Toniesha Taylor, Director of the Center for Africana Futures at Texas Southern University, for a soul-deep, mind-expanding evening titled “The Algorithm & The Ancestors.” In this timely lecture, Dr. Taylor explores what it means to place AI in conversation with Black memory, oral tradition, and cultural imagination.

What would it mean to train machines on our joy, our genius, and our visions for tomorrow?

What futures could we build if the code carried our names?

• A powerful live lecture weaving together Afrofuturism, digital ethics and Black Studies
• A book giveaway and reading list selected by Dr. Taylor & Abantu Audio
• Exclusive access to a curated audiobook platform and community
• The cozy, ambient space of Sunday Press for social dialogue and connection
• Specialty cocktails and mocktails for the occasion
• Enjoy post-lecture mingling, and shop Kindred Stories titles

Backroom Talks is a new cultural lecture series launching in Houston that blends academic brilliance with intimate, community-rooted conversations (think TedTalks + Drinks). Hosted in cozy bar and lounge spaces, these gatherings bring scholars, authors, and changemakers out of the ivory tower and into the heart of the city—for evenings that feel like a salon, a story circle, and a family reunion all in one.

Each talk is designed to make learning social, accessible, and deeply human—where ideas flow alongside cocktails, questions rise from the crowd, and culture is celebrated not as curriculum, but as lived experience. From AI and the Black radical tradition to food justice, Chicano history, entrepreneurship, digital storytelling, mental health and beyond, Backroom Talks centers voices that challenge, inspire, and connect us.

This isn’t a lecture. It’s a conversation with community.Pull up a chair—we saved you a seat.

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Host or Publisher The Abantu Audio Team