Podcasts by Code Switch
What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between. This podcast makes all of us part of the conversation — because we're all part of the story. Code Switch was named Apple Podcasts' first-ever Show of the Year in 2020.
Want to level up your Code Switch game? Try Code Switch Plus. Your subscription supports the show and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/codeswitch
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Watching 'Renaissance' and what we hear in Beyoncé's silence from 2023-12-11T19:35:47
We're bringing you an extra treat this week from our play cousins over at It's Been A Minute: In the credits for 'Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé' the Queen Bee makes it clear who is in cha...
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The world can be painful. But love is possible, too from 2023-12-06T08:00
Kai Cheng Thom is no stranger to misanthropy. There have been stretches of her life where she's felt burdened by anger, isolation, and resentment toward other people. And not without reason. Her id...
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The world is not your oyster from 2023-11-29T08:00
Traveling is supposed to open your mind and expand your horizons — but what if it doesn't? In her new book Airplane Mode, author Shahnaz Habib suggests that sometimes, traveling does more ...
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Can you travel the world — ethically? from 2023-11-29T08:00
Traveling is supposed to open your mind and expand your horizons — but what if it doesn't? In her new book Airplane Mode, author Shahnaz Habib suggests that sometimes, traveling does more ...
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A Tale of Two Tribal Nations from 2023-11-22T08:00
The word "reservation" implies "reserved" – as in, this land is reserved for Native Americans. But most reservation land actually isn't owned by tribes. That's true for the Leech Lake Band of Ojibw...
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Who Has The "Right To A Story?" from 2023-11-15T08:00
On this week's Code Switch, we hear from two Palestinian American poets who talk about what it's like to be Palestinian American in the U.S. Fady Joudah and Tariq Luthun say the way their ...
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How does a computer discriminate? from 2023-11-08T08:00
OK, not exactly a computer — more like, the wild array of technologies that inform what we consume on our computers and phones. Because on this episode, we're looking at how AI and race bi...
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Bonus episode: All The Only Ones: The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle from 2023-11-03T07:00
We're bringing you something special from our play cousins over at Embedded: the first episode of a three part series about the often neglected history of trans youth in America. We meet Z...
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All The Only Ones: The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle from 2023-11-03T07:00
We're bringing you something special from our play cousins over at Embedded: the first episode of a three part series about the often neglected history of trans youth in America. We meet Z...
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Looking For My People In The Black Punk Scene from 2023-11-01T07:00
More than a decade since B.A. Parker last dabbled in the Black punk scene, she heads to a punk a show, and remembers a question from James Spooner: "What is more liberating than a mosh pit full of ...
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Giving up on identity with Ada Limón from 2023-10-25T07:00
Ada Limón is many things: the U.S. Poet Laureate, a recently named MacArthur "Genius," a Latina, a summer person becoming a fall person. But underneath all those outer identities, she's still in se...
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The agony and ecstasy of parenting with Hari Kondabolu from 2023-10-18T07:00
Being a new parent is exhausting at the best of times. There are diapers to change, bottles to fill, screaming sobs to quiet down. But beyond all the routine chores that come with parenting, there ...
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What does it mean to be good? from 2023-10-11T07:00
In her memoir Rivermouth, author Alejandra Oliva recounts her experiences working as a translator and interpreter for people seeking asylum in the U.S. But as she navigates the world of im...
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Student activists are fighting big coal, and winning from 2023-10-04T07:00
South Baltimore has some of the most polluted air in the country. Local teenagers are fighting polluters back, and slowly building toward climate justice.
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Probation and parole — the under-researched arms of mass incarceration from 2023-09-27T04:30
In the past decade, the problem of mass incarceration has gotten increased attention and thought. But in his new book, Mass Supervision, Vincent Schiraldi argues that in those conversation...
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'I Can Die For This Country, But I Can't Learn' from 2023-09-20T04:10
In June, the Supreme Court banned affirmative action at colleges and universities across the country, with one glaring exception: military academies. On this episode, we're asking — why?
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Remembering and unremembering, from Kigali to Nashville from 2023-09-13T10:36:36
For centuries, the idea of the "American Dream" has been a powerful narrative for many immigrant communities. But for just as long, many African Americans have known that the American Dream was nev...
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Fall football — or the fall of football? from 2023-09-06T04:10:43
This week, the NFL is gearing up for the start of its 104th season. But as this new chapter begins, we're looking at some of the league's old problems with race and diversity — ones that have impli...
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Bad Bunny, Reggaeton, and Resistance from 2023-08-30T04:30:31
Bad Bunny, the genre- and gender norm-defying Puerto Rican rapper, is one of the biggest music stars on the planet. He has also provided a global megaphone for Puerto Rican discontent. In this epis...
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What Makes A Good Race Joke? from 2023-08-23T13:00:59
When a comedian of color makes a joke, is it always about race, even if it's not about race? Code Switch talks to comedians Aparna Nancherla, Brian Bahe and Maz Jobrani about how ...
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Family, fortune, and the fight for Osage headrights from 2023-08-16T04:30:18
When Richard J. Lonsinger's birth mother passed away in 2010, he wasn't included in the distribution of her estate. Feeling hurt and excluded, he asked a judge to re-open her estate, to give him a ...
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How Hip-Hop Fights The Power — And Also Serves It from 2023-08-09T04:10:09
For hip-hop's not-official-but-kind-of-official 50th birthday, we dig into its many contradictions. From the legend of the South Bronx block party where hip-hop was born to the multi-billion-dollar...
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Rolling the dice on race in Dungeons&Dragons from 2023-08-02T04:15:53
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular tabletop role-playing games of all time. But it has also helped cement some ideas about how we create and define race in fantasy — and in the tangible ...
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Code Switch's beach reads — no beach required from 2023-07-26T04:15:47
There are race books, and there are beach reads, and never the twain shall meet. You know that old truism, right? Well, this is Code Switch (the show about race and identity and romance and dra...
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This Conspiracy Soup Contains Bugs — And Racism from 2023-07-19T04:15:56
Gene Demby and NPR's Huo Jingnan dive into a conspiracy theory about how "global elites" are forcing people to eat bugs. And no huge surprise — the theory's popularity is largely about its loudest ...
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Is "home" still home after 30 years away? from 2023-07-12T04:10:35
Brian de los Santos always thought of Mexico as his "home" — despite not having been able to return to his country of birth for three decades. But when he finally got a chance to visit, his concept...
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What Happens After A Racist Massacre In Your Neighborhood? from 2023-07-05T04:10:39
This week, we're sharing the first episode of "Buffalo Extreme," a three-part series from our play cousins at NPR's Embedded. The series follows a Black cheer squad, their moms and their c...
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Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part Two from 2023-06-28T04:15:16
In the second of two episodes, Code Switch co-host B.A. Parker is figuring out what kind of descendant she wants to be. Parker and her mom decide to go back to the plantation where their a...
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Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part One from 2023-06-21T04:15:43
Code Switch co-host B.A. Parker digs into what it means to maintain the legacy of her ancestors. In part one of two episodes, Parker goes to a symposium for descendants of slavery and meet...
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Going to a white church in a Black body from 2023-06-14T04:10:23
How do you participate in a faith practice that has a rough track record with racism? That's what our play-cousin J.C. Howard gets into...
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Spilling the "T" with comedian D'Lo from 2023-06-07T04:15:55
On this week's Code Switch, producer Kumari Devarajan finds her demographic clone in actor and comedian D'Lo. Kumari found that when you share so much in common with a stranger who is putt...
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Exclusion, resilience and the Chinese American experience on 'Mott Street' from 2023-05-31T04:10:55
Ava Chin's family has been in the U.S. for generations — but Ava was disheartened to learn that so much of what they had experienced was totally absent from American history books. So she embarked ...
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Across the ocean: a Japanese American story of war and homecoming from 2023-05-24T04:10:49
One of the most pivotal moments in Japanese American history was when the U.S. government uprooted more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry and forced them into incarceration camps. But there...
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The implications of the case against ICWA from 2023-05-17T04:10:36
The Supreme Court is about to decide on a case arguing that the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) discriminates against white foster parents. Journalist Rebecca Nagle explains how this decision could...
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Naomi Jackson talks 'losing and finding my mind' from 2023-05-10T04:15:48
"Three springs ago, I lost the better part of my mind," Naomi Jackson wrote in an essay for Harper's Magazine. On this episode, Jackson reads from that essay about her experience with mental illne...
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K-Pop's Surprising B(l)ackstory from 2023-05-03T04:10:07
K-pop disrupted pop culture in South Korea in the early 1990s, and later found fans around the world. Vivian Yoon was one of those fans, growing up thousands of miles away in Koreatown, Los Angeles...
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The Fallout of a Callout from 2023-04-26T04:10:15
In 2017, comedian Hari Kondabolu called out Hollywood's portrayals of South Asians with his documentary The Problem With Apu. The film was also a criticism of comedian Hank Azaria, who is ...
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Self-Care Laid Bare from 2023-04-19T04:10:52
"You can't meditate yourself out of a 40-hour work week with no childcare and no paid sick days," says Dr. Pooja Lakshmin. But when you're overworked and overwhelmed, what actually can you...
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W2s and WTFs from 2023-04-12T04:10:24
You finally get through the confusing, stressful work of doing your taxes only to hear back from the IRS: you're being audited. And it turns out that your race plays a big role in whether ...
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Women in hip-hop push back against the male gaze from 2023-04-05T04:15:43
The male gaze objectifies, consumes and shames people for not fitting into a mold. This week, we're looking at how that affects women in hip-hop. Our play cousins at Louder Than A Riot bring us the...
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The Tricky Obligations of Utang Na Loob from 2023-03-29T04:15:32
Utang na loob is the Filipino concept of an eternal debt to others, be it family or friends, who do a favor for you. In this episode from 2022, we break down this "debt of the inner soul" — and dis...
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The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott from 2023-03-22T04:10:23
We've all heard about Rosa Parks and her crucial role in the Montgomery bus boycott. But Parks was just one of the many women who organized for years to make that boycott a reality. In this episode...
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Whose Nightmares Are We Telling? How Horror Has Evolved for People of Color from 2023-03-15T04:10:10
Host B.A. Parker talks to Jasmin Savoy Brown, of the recently-released Scream 6, about playing a queer Black girl who lives. And film critics Richard Newby and Mallory Yu discuss how horror movies ...
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The Women Who Influence How America Eats from 2023-03-08T05:10:52
For decades, the ingredients, dishes and chefs that are popularized have been filtered through the narrow lens of a food and publishing world dominated by mostly white, mostly male decision-makers....
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Coming Soon: Code Switch presents 'School Colors' from 2022-05-02T00:10:24
Coming soon to the Code Switch feed: School Colors, a limited-run series about how race, class and power shape American cities and schools. Hosts Mark Winston Griffith an...
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The LA Uprising, a generation later from 2022-04-27T00:10:42
Some call it a riot. Some call it an uprising. Many Korean Americans simply call it "Sai-i-gu" (literally, 4-2-9.) But no matter what you call it, it's clear to many that April 29, 1992 made a fund...
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Race, queerness, and superpowers in 'Everything, Everywhere, All at Once' from 2022-04-20T00:10:29
How can anything be more important than what's happening right now? That's the question a woman named Evelyn Wang is pondering right before she is thrust into a surreal, sci-fi multiverse,...
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A makeup company gets a facelift from 2022-04-13T00:10:26
In the 70s and 80s, Fashion Fair was an iconic cosmetics company designed to create makeup for Black women of all shades. This is the story of that company's meteoric rise, its slow decline, and th...
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A New Movement on Standing Rock from 2022-04-06T00:10:40
What do you do when all your options for school kind of suck? That was the question some folks on the Standing Rock Reservation found themselves asking a couple of years ago. Young people were bein...
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The dance that made its way from Harlem to Sweden from 2022-03-30T00:15:04
Lindy Hop is a dance that was born in Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s — created and performed by African Americans in segregated clubs and dance halls. But today, one of the world's most vibrant Lind...
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Why the N-word is so toxic from 2022-03-23T00:10:49
It is probably the most radioactive word in the English language. At the same time, the N-word is kind of everywhere: books, movies, music, comedy (not to mention the mouths of people who use it fr...
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What's In A Dad? from 2022-03-08T19:34:03
Gene Demby and comedian Hari Kondabolu are both new fathers, and they're both learning to raise kids who will have very different identities and upbringings than their own. It's left both of them r...
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Mabel Fairbanks: The Ice Breaker from 2022-03-02T00:10:24
Figure skating has always been about flair and drama. But what happens on the ice is nothing compared to what goes on behind the scenes. This week, with the help of our friends at the Blind Landing...
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The rise and fall of 'America's Dad' from 2022-02-23T02:20:39
At the height of his career, Bill Cosby was one of the most famous men in the United States. He was the biggest and highest paid star in the country, and with his image plastered on billboards, adv...
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Can therapy solve racism? from 2022-02-15T19:14:17
In 2020, nearly 20% of Americans turned to therapy. Many of those people were looking for a space to process some of the big, painful events they were living through, including the pandemic, a cont...
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Humor, poetry and romance on Code Switch Live from 2022-02-09T00:30:29
Live from your computer screens, it's Code Switch! Guest hosts Ayesha Rascoe and Denice Frohman joined us to talk poetry and humor with special guests Paul Tran and Hari Kondabolu. Then, Ayesha and...
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Bonus Episode: Consider the Lobstermen from 2022-02-07T07:16:48
In Canada, tensions between indigenous fishermen and commercial fishermen have been simmering for decades. On today's bonus episode, from our friends at NPR's Planet Money team, we travel to Nova S...
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The 'double-edged sword' of being a Black first from 2022-02-02T00:10:25
It's Black History Month, which is likely to bring boundless stories of Black Excellence and Black Firsts. So today on the show, we're talking about Constance Baker Motley — a trailblazing civil ri...
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Bonus: Getting real (like, really real) with Gabrielle Union from 2022-01-30T00:10:27
We hear the phrase "unapologetically Black" thrown around a lot. But what does it actually mean? In this bonus episode from our newest play cousins at NPR's The Limits podcast, actress, bu...
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Playing Pretendian from 2022-01-26T08:00:05
People lie about being Native American all the time – on college applications, on job applications, in casual conversation. But how do "Pretendians" hurt real Indigenous people and communities? And...
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Bonus: Remembering the iconic, complicated André Leon Talley from 2022-01-23T00:10:19
Since he died this week, André Leon Talley has been described over and over again as "larger than life." But on this episode, brought to us by our friends at NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast, three...
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A whiteness that's only skin deep from 2022-01-19T12:59:39
We use words related to color to describe different racial categories all the time — Black, white, brown. But how much of race and identity actually has to do with the color of your skin? ...
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They came, they saw, they reckoned? from 2022-01-12T00:30:31
It's now been more than a year since the so-called "racial reckoning" that marked the summer of 2020. The country, some said confidently, was having the biggest racial reckoning since the civil rig...
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Nikole Hannah-Jones on the power of collective memory from 2022-01-05T00:30:30
What stories do we learn about the history of the United States? Who dreamed up those stories? And what happens when we challenge them? This week on the pod, our play cousins at NPR's Throughline p...
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Ask Code Switch: What Does Race Have To Do With Beauty? from 2021-12-29T00:10
This time of year, folks are being inundated with messages about how to become more beautiful. But beauty is an ever-changing goalpost that has everything do with race, class and power.
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What We Watched in 2021 from 2021-12-22T00:30
Y'all, 2021 brought us a lot of TV. Some of it was even good! So this week, we're talking about the shows that had something interesting to say about race, from We Are Lady Parts to Reservation Dog...
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Bonus Episode: The blessing and curse of the '90s Latin Pop Explosion from 2021-12-20T10:31:14
Our play cousins at NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast reexamine the so-called "Latin explosion" of the late '90s: What it was supposed to be for audiences across the U.S., and what it actually <...
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What Is 'Latin Music' Anyway? from 2021-12-15T00:10:03
The term 'Latin Music' can encompass everything from Celia Cruz to Bad Bunny to Selena Gomez to Los Tigres del Norte. It's rock, pop, hip hop, salsa, bachata, reggaeton, and so much more. So...what...
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A Glimpse At 'How The Other Half Eats' from 2021-12-08T00:10:50
How do race and class affect the way we eat? What makes dollar store junk food different from organic junk food? And when did Whole Foods become such a polarizing grocery store? We're getting into ...
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Imagining A World Without Prisons Or Police from 2021-12-01T00:30
When Derecka Purnell was growing up, the police were a regular presence in her life. Years later, the lawyer, activist, and author of the new book, Becoming Abolitionists, realized that he...
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Ask Code Switch: Thought For Food from 2021-11-24T00:10:33
It's Thanksgiving week, so we're bringing you a second helping of one of our favorite episodes, where we answer your questions about race and food. We're getting into the perceived whiteness of veg...
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'The Characters Are The Light' from 2021-11-17T07:52:12
You already know we love books here on Code Switch — and given that we're smack dab in the middle of Native American Heritage month, we thought we'd introduce you to some of our favorite recent boo...
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'Being Fly Is An Act Of Community' from 2021-11-10T00:10:38
When 'Soul Train' first aired in 1971, there had never been a show like it. Fifty years later, that's still true. So this week, we're passing the mic to our friends at NPR's It's Been a Minute<...
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Love And Blood Quantum from 2021-11-03T00:30:27
If you're Native American, there's a good chance that you've thought a lot about blood quantum — a highly controversial measurement of the amount of "Indian blood" you have. It can affect your iden...
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Ask Code Switch: Parents Just Don't Understand from 2021-10-27T08:17:50
Or do they? This week, we're answering some of your toughest questions about race and your parents. How do you create boundaries with immigrant parents? What dynamics might interracial couples brin...
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Painting By Numbers from 2021-10-20T00:10
The 2020 census data is finally here! At first glance, it paints a surprising portrait of a changing United States: The number of people who identify as white and no other race is smaller; the shar...
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Skeletons In The Closet from 2021-10-13T09:25
In a small suburb of Washington, D.C., a non-descript beige building houses thousands of Native human remains. The remains are currently in the possession of the Smithsonian Institution. But for th...
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The Once And Future 'Karen' from 2021-10-06T00:10:43
If you've been paying attention to the news over the past couple years, you know what a so-called 'Karen' is: a white woman who uses her race and gender to wield power over someone more vulnerable....
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The Rise Of The BBL from 2021-09-29T10:23:47
Black women have always faced immense pressure to make their bodies look a certain way. But if done the "wrong way," achieving that idealized figure can lead to just as much scrutiny and critique. ...
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The Dramatic Life Of The American Teenager from 2021-09-24T12:00:18
Kacen Callender started out as a kid in St. Thomas writing fan fiction. Today, they are the author of multiple middle grade and young adult novels full of empathy, learning, and a healthy dose of h...
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Who You Calling 'Hispanic'? from 2021-09-22T00:30
But seriously, who? Because while it is Hispanic Heritage Month, the notion of a multiracial, multinational, pan-ethnic identity called "Hispanic" is a relatively recent — and somewhat haphazard in...
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The Making And Remaking Of Afghanistan from 2021-09-15T00:10:43
For two decades, many Americans have seen Afghanistan depicted primarily through the lens of war. But that's not the full story — not even close. Afghanistan has a long, rich, complex history and c...
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The Lost Summer from 2021-09-08T00:10:57
Twenty years ago, during the dog days of summer , a fledgling journalist named Shereen Marisol Meraji — maybe you've heard of her? — headed to Durban, South Africa. Her mission: to report on a meet...
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The Folk Devil Made Me Do It from 2021-09-01T06:14
What moral panics reveal about the ongoing freakout over critical race theory in schools.
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'Seeing Ghosts' Across Generations from 2021-08-25T00:14:48
Kat Chow was 13 when her mother died, and with that loss came profound and lasting questions about identity, family and history. In her memoir, Seeing Ghosts, the author and former Code Sw...
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Who Runs The World? Kids. from 2021-08-18T00:30
OK, they're not all kids. But they're all students, they're all amazing, and frankly, we're concerned that they might be coming for our jobs. That's right — the Student Podcast Challenge i...
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Care To Explain Yourself? from 2021-08-11T00:15:28
It's hot out, places are shutting down again, and things might just be feeling a little bit slow. So in the spirit of spicing things up, we wanted to give you all a question to fight about: How muc...
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Violence That Doesn't Go Viral from 2021-08-04T00:30:05
We talk a lot on this show about people who have been killed by police officers. But there is so much police violence that falls short of being fatal, but forever alters the lives of the people on ...
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To Love And Not Forgive from 2021-07-28T00:10:34
For much of her childhood, Ashley Ford's father was incarcerated, and her mother struggled to raise her while grappling with her own upended life plans. In her new memoir, Somebody's Daughter, ...
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Words To Set You Free from 2021-07-21T06:00:01
Some of the best books can make you feel free — free from your daily grind, free to imagine a new reality, free to explore different facets of your identity. This month, the Code Switch team is hig...
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What Does It Mean To Be Latino? The 'Light-Skinned Privilege' Edition from 2021-07-14T00:56:48
Maria Garcia and Maria Hinojosa are both Mexican American, both mestiza, and both relatively light-skinned. But Maria Hinojosa strongly identifies as a woman of color, whereas Maria Garcia has stop...
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Égalité, Fraternité, And 'Libertie' from 2021-07-07T00:30:22
This month on Code Switch, we're talking about books — new and old — that have deepened our understandings of what it means to be free. First up, a conversation with author Kaitlyn Greenidge about ...
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A Good ACT To Follow from 2021-06-30T00:30:09
Forty years ago this month, the CDC reported on patients with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. for the very first time. In the years since, LGBTQIA+ Americans have been fighting for treatment and recognition o...
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'Where We Come From': By Any Other Name from 2021-06-27T00:30:22
Anyone with a name that isn't super common in the United States will tell you that the simple act of introducing yourself can lead to a whole interrogation: Where are you from? What does your name ...
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Ballers, Shot Callers from 2021-06-23T00:30:28
The Supreme Court just ruled on a case that could change the future of college sports, potentially paving the way for NCAA athletes to be paid. But is paying student athletes a good thing? And how ...
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A Taste Of Freedom from 2021-06-16T00:30:43
Juneteenth commemorates the day that enslaved Texans found out — more than two years after Emancipation Day — that they were free. It's also a day known for celebratory meals and red drinks. But as...
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The Racial Reckoning That Wasn't from 2021-06-09T01:16
In the wake of several high-profile police killings last summer, support for Black Lives Matter skyrocketed among white Americans. Their new concerns about racism pushed books about race to the top...
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Where Are You Really From? from 2021-06-02T01:10:58
If you're a person of color living in the United States, chances are you've been asked more than you care to remember where you're from — no, where you're really from. In her new series "W...
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Tulsa, 100 Years Later from 2021-05-26T06:10
In the spring of 1921, Black residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood neighborhood were attacked by a mob of angry white people. More than 300 people were killed, and thousands were left homeless. ...
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The Sum Of Our Parts from 2021-05-19T00:10
People of color have a diverse set of interests, experiences, backgrounds and cultures. And the way we experience race and racism can be really different. So why do we continue to use big umbrella ...
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The Kid Mero Talks 'What It Means To Be Latino' from 2021-05-12T00:04:07
We've said it multiple times on the show: Latinos are the second largest demographic in the United States. But...what does that actually mean? Are Latinos a race? Ethnicity? Culture? We try (and fa...
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Show Me The Money from 2021-05-05T02:10:52
Two friends living in Vermont decided to try a radical experiment: They asked White people in their community to give money directly to their Black neighbors — a DIY, hyper-local "reparations" prog...
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Live From Philly*: A Code Switch Jawn from 2021-04-28T00:01:07
OK, so we weren't really in Philly (it's still a pandemic, after all.) But we did talk all things race and Philadelphia with special guests Erika Alexander and Denice Frohman. On the docke...
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A Utopia For Black Capitalism from 2021-04-21T00:01:39
Floyd McKissick, one of the major leaders of the civil rights movement, had an audacious, lifelong dream. He wanted to build a city — from scratch — that would create economic opportunities for Bl...
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Do The Golden Arches Bend Toward Justice? from 2021-04-14T01:46
Calls for racial justice are met with a lot of different proposals, but one of the loudest and most enduring is to invest in Black businesses. But can "buying Black" actually do anything to mitigat...
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Spit A Verse, Drop Some Knowledge from 2021-04-07T00:08:46
We've spent the past year trying to analyze, dissect and intellectualize all the ways that our world has changed. But sometimes the best way to understand our circumstances isn't through data and r...
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Why Are We Here? from 2021-03-31T00:06:21
Filipinos make up a small fraction of the nurses in the United States, but almost a third of the nurses who have died of COVID-19 in the U.S. have been of Filipino descent. So what exactly is going...
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Screams And Silence from 2021-03-24T01:59
Asian American organizers and influencers have been trying to sound the alarm over a dramatic spike in reports of anti-Asian racism over the last year, and have been frustrated by the lack of media...
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Lonnie Bunch And The 'Museum Of No' from 2021-03-17T00:03:15
The Blacksonian — er, the National Museum of African American History and Culture — was years and years in the making. It's closed down because of the coronavirus, but we got a virtual tou...
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Saving A Language You're Learning To Speak from 2021-03-10T00:06:14
Every two weeks, a language dies with its last speaker. That was almost the fate of the Hawaiian language — until a group of young people decided to create a strong community of Hawaiian s...
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David (Pronounced dah-VEED) Versus Goliath from 2021-03-03T00:08:14
Summer, 2004. The Olympics in Athens. The event? Men's basketball: U.S. versus Puerto Rico. And the whole world knows that Puerto Rico doesn't stand a chance. After all, the bigger, richer, imperia...
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'Payback's A B****' from 2021-02-26T00:02
We're ending Black history month where we started it...talking about reparations. On this episode, we're joined by Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow, who have spent the past two years exploring how r...
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A Shot In The Dark from 2021-02-24T00:18
As the rollout of coronavirus vaccines unfolds, one big challenge for public health officials has been the skepticism many Black people have toward the vaccine. One notorious medical study — the Tu...
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Becoming 'Black Moses' from 2021-02-17T00:08:35
Marcus Garvey was an immigrant, a firebrand, a businessman. He was viewed with deep suspicion by the civil rights establishment. He would also become one of the most famous and powerful Black visio...
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Black Kiss-tory from 2021-02-10T09:59:08
Too often, Black history is portrayed as a story of struggle and suffering, completely devoid of joy. So we called up some romance novelists whose work focuses on Black history. They told us that n...
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Who's 'Black Enough' For Reparations? from 2021-02-03T00:05
Black History Month is here, which means we're diving into big, sticky questions about what exactly it means to be Black. So this week on the show: Who is 'Black enough' for reparations? Because yo...
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Talking Black-ish With Star Yara Shahidi And Creator Kenya Barris from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Black-ish creator (Kenya) and the show's 17-year-old star (Yara) talk about what's next for them on TV and in real life. Kenya explains why he's never felt pressure to explain cultural jok...
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How One Inmate Changed The Prison System From The Inside from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In this Podcast Extra, NPR correspondent Joe Shapiro recalls the life and legacy of Martin Sostre, someone he first reported on as a student in the 1970s. Sostre died a free man in 2015. But he spe...
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Changing Colors In Comics from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gene and guest host Glen Weldon (our play cousin from Pop Culture Happy Hour) explore how comics are used as spaces for mapping race and identity. Gene visits Amalgam Comics and Coffeehouse in Phil...
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Sanctuary Churches: Who Controls The Story? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Code Switch's Adrian Florido has been covering the new sanctuary movement for us. For this episode, he spoke to key players to understand why hundreds of churches are ready to start a public fight ...
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The 80-Year Mystery Around 'Fred Douglas' Park from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In Nashville, there was a time when the idea of a "Negro park" ruffled feathers. For more than 80 years, there's been confusion about whether a park originally created during segregation and named ...
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The Horror, The Horror: "Get Out" And The Place of Race in Scary Movies from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's one of the oldest clichés of horror movies: the black guy dies first. But that's not the case in the new film "Get Out," written and directed by Jordan Peele (best known for the Comedy Central...
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Ten Thousand Writers... and Two Intrepid Podcast Hosts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gene welcomes Code Switch reporter Kat Chow as guest host and they camp out at one of the biggest conferences for writers on the planet, held by the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. There...
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Oscars So Black...At Least, In Documentaries from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
A filmmaker of color is almost certain to win this year's Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. In fact, for the first time, African-American documentarians made up most of the nominees. We talk with...
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Encore Plus: Who Is A Good Immigrant, Anyway? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shereen and Gene are joined by Code Switch's own Adrian Florido to revisit a conversation about how advocates are challenging the narrative of the "good" or "bad" immigrant. Adrian previously repor...
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So, What Are You Afraid of Now? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Code Switch listeners join Shereen and Gene in talking about their concerns and frustrations during the first hundred days of President Trump's administration. Our guest is MacArthur "genius grant"...
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Obama's Legacy: Did He Remix Race? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We conclude our three part series of conversations on President Obama's racial legacy. It's likely that Barack Obama will be known not only as the first black president, but also as the first presi...
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Obama's Legacy: Callouts and Fallouts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shereen and Gene continue our conversation on President Barack Obama's racial legacy. Where did the president fall short — or fail — people of color? We hear opinions about Obama's actions as they ...
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Obama's Legacy: Diss-ent or Diss-respect? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the first of three conversations about President Barack Obama's racial legacy,Code Switch asks how much race or racism drove the way the first black president was treated and how he governed. Di...
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A Muslim and A Mexican Walk Into A Bar.... from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gene and Shereen digest the surprising results of the presidential election with help from a comedian and a columnist. Negin Farsad hosts the podcast "Fake The Nation." Gustavo Arrellano is editor ...
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The Code Switch Guide To Handling Casual Racism from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Awkward comments. Rude questions. Casual racism. What do you do when it happens in your presence? The mental calculus is hard enough. It gets even harder when the comment is coming from your friend...
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Warning! This Episode May Trigger Debate from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's time for some real talk on trigger warnings. Gene and Shereen dig into it with two college professors. What really happens in the classroom when hard topics come up, especially about race? Are...
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Why Do We Still Care About Tupac? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Tupac Shakur died 20 years ago this week. Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji debate his legacy with the writer Kevin Powell, who covered the rapper for three years until Tupac's death. How shoul...
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Code Switch Extra: Singer Juan Gabriel's Sexuality Was 'Open Secret' from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Many Mexican and Mexican Americans loved Juan Gabriel's music, but ridiculed his sexuality. Can his death open a new conversation about gay identity in the community? Code Switch's Adrian Florido e...
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What's So Funny About The Indian Accent? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
From Apu to Ashton Kutcher, mimicking the Indian accent is still widely seen as fair game. Even lots of ABCD's — American-born confused desis — do it. But is it out of love, or mockery? Code Switch...
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Code Switch Extra: "Southside" and Black Love at the Movies from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Code Switch's Karen Grigsby Bates and NPR movie critic Bob Mondello discuss "Southside With You," a fictionalized version of Barack and Michelle Obama's first date, and other black love stories in ...
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Nate Parker's Past, His Present, And The Future Of "The Birth of A Nation" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Actor Nate Parker is the center of a lot attention these days because of his upcoming movie The Birth of A Nation. Parker wrote, directed and stars as Nat Turner, leader of an historic 1831 slave r...
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Struggling School, Or Sanctuary? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When a school shuts down, students often lose more than a place of learning; they lose friends, mentors and a community. This is an experience that disproportionately affects black students. Sheree...
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Say My Name, Say My Name (Correctly, Please) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When you have a name like Aparna Nancherla or Maz Jobrani, you get used to people butchering it. These two comedians, who both come from immigrant families, talk to Code Switch editor Tasneem Raja ...
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What Does "Objectivity" Mean To Journalists Of Color? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
News stories of conflict involving people of color raise questions about the role of diversity in newsrooms. With the current election cycle drenched with racially charged rhetoric, how do journali...
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A Letter From Young Asian Americans, To Their Parents, About Black Lives Matter from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The day after the police shooting of Philando Castile, hundreds of young Asian Americans connected online to write an open letter to their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, asking them to su...
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Black and Blue from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the aftermath of deadly police shootings of black men and the deaths of five policemen at the hands of a black gunman, Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene Demby explore perspectives on policing whil...
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Code Switch Extra: No Words from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's hard to figure out what to say after the horrific violence of the last week, which began with two new viral videos of police shooting black men and ended with a deadly attack by a black gunman...
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"You're A Grand Old Flag" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why do some people of color embrace the American flag while others refuse to wave it? Gene Demby and Adrian Florido unpack the complicated patriotism and evolving use of the flag with immigrant rig...
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"I'm Not Black, I'm O.J.!" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
For a long time, O.J. Simpson seemed to be running away from his race. "I'm not black, I'm O.J.!" he'd tell his friends. The he was charged with murder, and his defense team needed that jury to see...
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I Don't Know If I Like This, But I Want It To Win from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gene and Kat talk about "rep sweats," worrying over how people of color are portrayed on TV and in the movies. Kat remembers growing up watching TV with her sisters and yelling "Asian!" every time ...
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How LGBTQ People of Color Are Dealing With Orlando from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The tragedy in Orlando this week shook many people in communities that already feel vulnerable...LGBTQ Americans, Latinos, Muslims and people living at the intersection of those identities.
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Code Switch Extra: Re-Remembering Muhammad Ali from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Sure, Ali was the greatest, a humanitarian, an inspiration. He was also a complicated, messy figure. Gene and the team dig in, and wonder what people mean when they say Ali "transcended race."
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Made For You And Me from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Black people don't hike? Latinos don't like camping? Asians are afraid of the sun? Adrian and Shereen dig into the stereotypes — and truths — about people of color and their relationship to the gre...
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Can We Talk About Whiteness? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Gene and Shereen dig into why it's so hard to talk about white identity in America — and why it's really important that we figure out how.
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The Code Switch Podcast Is Coming! from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Here's a preview of our new podcast, exploring how race and culture collide with everything else in our lives.
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Pretty Hurts from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Some may think of beauty as frivolous and fun, but on this episode, we're examining a few of the ugly ways that its been used to project power.
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Code Switch's Summer Vacation from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
We're going on a trip, and we're taking you with us! From the peak of Mount Denali to the beaches of Queens, we're talking camp, suntans and our favorite summer jams.
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Tough Questions For The World's Toughest Job from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Mother's Day is coming up, so we're taking on your most difficult questions around parenting. We'll talk about choosing a school, raising bilingual children, modeling gender identity, and what to d...
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Amara La Negra: Too Black To Be Latina? Too Latina To Be Black? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
People are constantly telling Amara La Negra that she doesn't fit anywhere. Sometimes, she's "too black to be Latina." Other times, she's "too Latina to be black." But Amara says afro-Latinas aren'...
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A House Divided By Immigration Status from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
All four of the Gonzalez kids grew up under one roof, in Los Angeles, Calif. But when the oldest was in middle school, she realized that she and her siblings might have drastically different lives....
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Feelings, Finances And Fetishes: Love Is A Racial Battlefield from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
To get y'all in the mood for Valentine's Day, we're exploring some of our juiciest listener love questions. Should your race and gender affect how much you pay into a relationship? What's the diffe...
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It's Not Just About The Blood from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
If you're Native American, who or what gets to define your identity? We dive into an old system intended to measure the amount of "Indian blood" a person has. We hear from two families about how th...
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The 'R-Word' In The Age Of Trump from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When Donald Trump allegedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador and some African countries as "shitholes," we called his comments r-...rr-...really really vulgar. Why were we so afraid to call them racist?
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A Racial Impostor Epidemic from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Our episode about multi-racial people and their search for identity struck a nerve. Now we're asking, "What other stories do you want to hear?"
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Before We Give 2017 The Middle Finger, Part 2 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
This week, Gene Demby talks with ESPN's Jemele Hill. The SportsCenter anchor discusses becoming a lightning rod in the culture wars and the flimsy partition between politics and sports. And we'll l...
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Disrespect To Miss-Respect from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
It's Alabama, 1963. A black woman stands before a judge, but she refuses to acknowledge him until he addresses her by an honorific given to white women: "Miss." On this week's episode, we revisit t...
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To Fail Or Not To Fail: The Fierce Debate Over High Standards from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
With 40 percent of its students at risk of failing, one radical new high school in Washington, D.C. wrestles with whether to lower its own high expectations.
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'They Can't Just Be Average,' Lifting Students Up Without Lowering The Bar from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In a radical new high school in Washington, D.C., the push for academic success sometimes clashes with providing young men the love and support they need to thrive.
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A Year Of Love And Struggle In A New High School from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Too many young, black men struggle in America's education system. Washington D.C. is trying to do something about it with a new, boys-only high school. NPR's Cory Turner and Education Week's Kavith...
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Befuddled By Babies, Love And Ice Pops? Ask Code Switch from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
When social interactions become racially charged, sometimes even the most woke among us are prone to faux pas. So this week, we're taking on our listeners' most burning questions about race. We'll ...
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A Weed Boom, But For Whom? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The history of cannabis in the U.S. ? and its criminalization ? is deeply interwoven with race. As the legal cannabis market gains traction, people of color who were targeted by the drug war could ...
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An Advertising Revolution: "Black People Are Not Dark-Skinned White People" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
How do you get black people to buy cigarettes made for cowboys and antebellum-style beer? Turns out, you don't. On this episode: Tom Burrell, who transformed the ad industry with a simple motto, "B...
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'I'm Not A Racist, I'm Argentine!' from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
On this week's episode, a viral video gives us the opportunity to talk about racism towards and within the Latino community. When a Latino flipped over a street vendor's cart in Los Angeles, many w...
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The Unfinished Battle In the Capital Of The Confederacy from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
As calls to remove Confederate memorials grow louder, we head to Richmond, Va., where the veneration of Confederate leaders has been a source of local pride — and revulsion — for more than a century.
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Charlottesville from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
After a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville spiraled into deadly violence, residents of the Virginia town do some soul-searching. Plus: a scholar on the politics of white resentment, and a G...
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Who's Your Great-Great-Great-Great Granddaddy? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Spit into a tube and get in touch with your ancestors! Or not. On this episode we interview the founder of a project that uses DNA tests to talk about race in America. And Kim TallBear, a Native Am...
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The U.S. Census and Our Sense of Us from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The Census is so much more than cold, hard data. It's about what we call ourselves, the ways we see ourselves and how we're represented. On this episode we ask the former head of the Census bureau ...
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What's Good? Talking Hip-Hop and Race With Stretch & Bobbito from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shereen and Gene mix it up with the pioneering hip-hop radio hosts Stretch and Bobbito. These impresarios ran a legendary show in New York City during most of the 1990s. Now they're hosting an inte...
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The Supreme Court Decides In Favor Of A Racial Slur...Now What? from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided in favor of Simon Tam, front man of the band The Slants. The group has been fighting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for nearly a decade, for the right ...
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It's Our Anniversary from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shereen and Gene celebrate our first year on the podcast. We take a look back to some memorable stories with updates from the team and some of our guests.
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What To Make Of Philando Castile's Death, One Year Later from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
In the aftermath of the acquittal of the officer who shot and killed Philando Castile, Gene and Shereen speak to a reporter who has followed the case since the beginning. We also speak to a friend ...
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Encore: 'You're A Grand Old Flag' from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Why do some people of color embrace the American flag while others refuse to wave it? In this episode from the Code Switch archives, Gene Demby and Adrian Florido unpack the complicated patriotism ...
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A Prescription For "Racial Imposter Syndrome" from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393
Shereen and Gene look at "racial imposter syndrome." It's what one listener described as feeling fake, or inauthentic, in her identity. We invited listeners to write in, and hundreds of bi-racial a...
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Stepping Out Of The Shadow Of 'Killer King' from 2021-01-27T00:08:30
For decades, residents of Compton and Watts in South Los Angeles had to rely on one particularly troubled hospital for their medical care. A new state-of-the-art hospital replaced it, but faced man...
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The Last Four Years from 2021-01-19T22:19:59
The Trump administration is coming to a close, but which elements of the Trump era are here to stay? We spoke to NPR's White House reporter, Ayesha Rascoe, about where we were when Donald Trump too...
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From The Fringe To The Capitol from 2021-01-13T01:18
Like all of you, we are still trying to make sense of Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Because even after the past four years, there are still new iterations of WTF. So on this episode, we're talking po...
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Finding 'A Perfect Match' from 2021-01-06T00:12:22
Two close friends both suffered from the same aggressive form of cancer. After years of treatment, one lived and the other died. And while many variables factored into what happened, the woman who ...
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The Fire Still Burning from 2020-12-30T00:18:47
If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that history informs every aspect of our present. So today we're bringing you an episode of NPR's history podcast, Throughline. It gets into some of the most ur...
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From Generation To Generation from 2020-12-28T07:55:04
This month on Code Switch, we're thinking a lot about family and history. So we wanted to bring you this special episode from our friends at NPR's It's Been A Minute podcast, where produce...
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Family Stories, Family Lies from 2020-12-23T00:18:26
December is a month when a lot of people are thinking about family and tradition. Reliving memories. Retelling old stories. Each year, those stories get passed down — sometimes with new details, or...
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Black And Up In Arms from 2020-12-16T01:08
Guns. They're as American as apple pie. They represent independence and self-reliance. But ... not so much if you're Black. On this episode, we're getting into the complicated history of Black gun ...
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The Books That Got Away from 2020-12-13T17:14:57
Listen, a lot has happened this year, and it's no shock that some things may have slipped under the radar. So our resident book expert, Karen Grigsby Bates, took a virtual trip around the country t...
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Stepping Back Inside Carmen Maria Machado's 'Dream House' from 2020-12-09T00:12:44
It's no secret that Code Switch is a team full of book nerds. So this week, we're revisiting one of our favorite book conversations, with author Carmen Maria Machado. Her genre-defying memoir, ...
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Words Of Advice from 2020-12-01T12:41:15
Let's face it — we could all use some help right now. So today on the pod, we're looking at a few of our favorite questions about race and identity from our "Ask Code Switch" series. We're getting ...
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Thank You, Next from 2020-11-25T00:04:06
It's Thanksgiving week, and like basically everything else about 2020, this holiday is on track to be...let's call it "different." But while the world has changed in innumerable ways this year, one...
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The White Elephants In The Room from 2020-11-18T19:29:04
One of the biggest storylines from the 2020 presidential race has ... well, race at the center of it. If you paid attention to the stories about exit polling, you heard a lot of talk about...
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Claim Us If You're Famous from 2020-11-10T23:01
Kamala Harris is the vice president-elect, which marks an impressive list of firsts: woman in the White House; Black woman in the White House, Asian American in the White House; etc. Her Indian her...
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We ... Don't Know Anything Yet from 2020-11-04T13:17:15
Election Day has come and gone, but we're still awhile away from knowing what the outcome will be. But while there's a lot we don't about the results, we do know that this election will te...
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An Historic Vote, Among Many from 2020-10-31T00:18
For a lot of reasons, the 2020 election feels historic. But in one important way, it's like so many elections throughout American history: Black and brown voters are being disproportionately preven...
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The Latinx Vote Comes Of Age from 2020-10-28T00:18:57
For the first time in election history, Latinos are projected to be the second-largest voting demographic in the country. The reason? Gen Z Latinx voters, many of whom are casting a ballot for the ...
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Is Trump Really That Racist? from 2020-10-21T01:37
We know his rhetoric has been described as boundary breaking when it comes to race. But U.S. presidents have been enacting racist policies forever. So as President Trump wraps up his first (and may...
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Let's Talk About Kamala Harris from 2020-10-14T00:20
The VP candidate's biography and heritage allow people to project all kinds of ideas onto her, and to see what they want to see. But Kamala Harris's identity is a very important lens into not just ...
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Hip-Hop, Mass Incarceration, And A Conspiracy Theory For The Ages from 2020-10-09T06:00:33
Why are hip-hop and mass incarceration so entangled in the U.S.? That's the question that our play cousins at NPR Music, Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael, set out to answer on Listen
A Treaty Right For Cherokee Representation from 2020-10-07T00:34:17
On this week's episode of Code Switch, we talk about the relevance of a 200 year old treaty — one that most Americans don't know that much about, but should. It's a treaty that led to the Trail of ...
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A New Look For The Fashion Industry? from 2020-10-03T06:06
Fall is the time for glossy fashion magazines, full of dazzling looks and the seasons hottest looks. But this year, we noticed something unusual: The covers of a bunch of major magazines fashion ma...
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Is It Time To Say R.I.P. To 'POC'? from 2020-09-30T00:22
Suffice it to say, we use the term "POC" a lot on Code Switch. But critiques of the initialism — and the popularization of the term "BIPOC" — caused us to ask: Should we retire POC? Or is there use...
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Battle Of The Books from 2020-09-23T03:00:53
The Code Switch team has been mired in a months-long debate that we're attempting to settle once and for all: What kind of books are best to read during this pandemic? Books that connect you to our...
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The Protests Heard 'Round The World from 2020-09-16T13:24
How did a police killing in Minneapolis lead people thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to pull down the statue of a slave trader who's been dead for nearly three centuries? On this episod...
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The Kids Are All Right from 2020-09-09T09:18:14
Adults often find it really hard to talk about race. But kids? Maybe not so much. NPR received more than 2,000 entries in this year's Student Podcast Challenge, and we heard from young people all o...
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Balls And Strikes from 2020-09-02T14:28:53
Matilda Crawford. Sallie Bell. Carrie Jones. Dora Jones. Orphelia Turner. Sarah A. Collier. In 1881, these six Black women brought the city of Atlanta to a complete standstill by going on strike. T...
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The United States' Pre-Existing Conditions from 2020-08-26T00:06:57
How was the the richest and most powerful country in the world laid low by a virus only nanometers in size? Ed Yong, a science reporter for The Atlantic, says it's the inequities that have...
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Keep Your Friends Closer from 2020-08-19T00:06:33
As part of our Ask Code Switch series, we're tackling your toughest questions about race and friendship. We help our listeners understand how race and and its evil play cousin, racism, affect how w...
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Kamala, Joe, And The Fissures In The Base from 2020-08-12T12:22:52
Black voters are the Democrats' most reliable and influential voting bloc. But this election has underscored the tensions between those Black voters, along generational and ideological lines — whic...
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Bonus Episode: Katrina, 15 Years Later from 2020-08-08T11:35:48
It's hurricane season, so this week, we're bringing you a bonus episode, from the Atlantic's Floodlines podcast. On this episode, "Through the Looking Glass," host Vann R. Newkirk II looks...
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The Long, Bloody Strike For Ethnic Studies from 2020-08-05T00:00:06
The largest public university system in the country, the Cal State system, just announced a new graduation requirement: students must take an ethnic studies or social justice course. But ethnic stu...
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One Korean American's Reckoning from 2020-07-29T00:04:23
At a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, a young Korean American man named Edmond Hong decided to grab a megaphone. Addressing other Asian Americans in the crowd, he described the need to st...
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Un-HolyLand? An Arab Muslim Reckoning With Racism from 2020-07-21T23:18:16
After his daughter's racist and anti-LGBTQ social media posts became public, an Arab-Muslim entrepreneur is fighting to keep his once-burgeoning business alive in the middle of a national — and per...
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Remembering The 'Divine Diahann Carroll' from 2020-07-17T12:44:23
On what would have been Diahann Carroll's 85th birthday, we're celebrating the legacy of the actress, model and singer. Reporter Sonari Glinton went to her estate sale and took a tour of some of th...
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What's In A 'Karen'? from 2020-07-15T13:03
"Karen" has become cultural shorthand for a white woman who wields her race as a cudgel. And look, we all love to hate a good Karen. But where did this archetype come from? What will the next itera...
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An Immune System from 2020-07-08T00:06
While it's technically possible to win a civil lawsuit against police officers for wrongdoing, there's a reason it almost never happens: a legal technicality called qualified immunity. On ...
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We Aren't Who We Think We Are from 2020-07-01T14:24:51
Every family has a myth about who they are and where they came from. And there are a lot of reasons people tell these stories. Sometimes it's to make your family seem like they were part of an impo...
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They Don't Say Our Names Enough from 2020-06-27T00:00:12
This year, Pride Month intersects with a surge of protests against racism and police brutality. So this week, courtesy of The Nod podcast, we're looking back at the life of Storme DeLarverie — a Bl...
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Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Talks 'The Undocumented Americans' from 2020-06-24T00:08:11
In her new book, The Undocumented Americans, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes about delivery men, housekeepers, and day laborers — the undocumented immigrants who are often ignored while...
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DACA Decision: Check-In with Miriam Gonzalez from 2020-06-19T14:54
When the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that DACA could remain in place, recipient Miriam Gonzalez was relieved. As a plaintiff in the case, she's been fighting to keep the program alive since 201...
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Why Now, White People? from 2020-06-16T23:55
The video is horrific, and the brutality is stark. But that was the case in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 and Minnesota in 2016. This time, though, white people are out in the streets in big numbers, and ...
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Bonus Episode: 'Not Just Another Protest' from 2020-06-12T08:53:53
Suffice it to say, the past few weeks have been a lot to unpack. So today, we're bringing you a special bonus episode from our friends at It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders. The podcast explores h...
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Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator' from 2020-06-10T00:11
Whenever a protest boils up, it's a safe bet that public officials will quickly blame any violence or disruption on "outside agitators." But what, exactly, does it mean to be an agitator? And can t...
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A Decade Of Watching Black People Die from 2020-05-31T11:15
The last few weeks have been filled with devastating news — stories about the police killing black people. At this point, these calamities feel familiar — so familiar, in fact, that their details h...
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Songs Giving Us (Much Needed) Life from 2020-05-26T22:45:53
Talking about race can get real heavy, real fast. Listening to music is one way people have been lightening the mood and sorting through their feelings. So this week, we're sharing some of the song...
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COVID Diaries: Jessica And Sean Apply For A Loan from 2020-05-20T12:17:25
On March 1, two Los Angeles-based capoeira instructors realized a dream almost 15 years in the making — they opened up their very own gym. Two weeks later, California's stay-at-home order went into...
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Ask Code Switch: The Coronavirus Edition from 2020-05-13T00:02:23
We take on some of your questions about race, the coronavirus and social distancing. The questions are tricky, and as usual on Code Switch, the reality is even trickier.
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What Does 'Hood Feminism' Mean For A Pandemic? from 2020-05-06T15:45:04
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated issues that disproportionately affect women. So on this episode, we're talking to Mikki Kendall — author of the new book, Hood Feminism — about wha...
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When Poets Decide Who Counts from 2020-04-29T00:23:57
All month long, we've been answering versions of one giant question: Who counts in 2020? Well, April is poetry month, so we decided to end our series by asking some of our favorite poets who th...
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Puerto Rico, Island Of Racial Harmony? from 2020-04-24T00:02:02
Many Puerto Ricans grow up being taught that they're a mixture of three races: black, white and indigenous. But on the U.S. census, a majority of Puerto Ricans choose "white" as their only race. On...
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The News Beyond The COVID Numbers from 2020-04-22T00:02
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, numbers have been flying at us about the spread of the illness—and then the next minute those same numbers are refuted. This week, we're talking to Alexis Madri...
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Black Like Who? from 2020-04-15T12:59:38
It's one of the thorniest questions in any theoretical plan for reparations for black people: Who should get them? On this episode, we dig into some ideas about which black people should and should...
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Why The Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Communities Hardest from 2020-04-11T07:00:35
Many have referred to COVID-19 as a "great equalizer." But the virus has actually exacerbated all sorts of disparities. When it comes to race, black Americans account for a disproportionate number ...
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A Treacherous Choice And A Treaty Right from 2020-04-08T00:18
The Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation told his people to stay strong during this pandemic, and to remember how much they've endured over a long history that includes the Trail of Tears. This episo...
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Mother, Should I Trust The Census Bureau? from 2020-04-01T01:09:49
Right now, the U.S. Census Bureau is trying to count every single person living in the country. It's a complex undertaking with enormous stakes. But some people are very afraid of how that informat...
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Code Switch: Race. In Your Face. from 2020-03-25T10:22:31
Code Switch is a weekly podcast that explores how race intersects with every aspect of our lives. Hosts Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene Demby bring honesty, empathy and nuance to challenging conver...
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Sex, Friendship And Aging: 'It's Not All Downhill From Here' from 2020-03-25T00:04
This week, senior correspondent Karen Grigsby Bates talks with the best-selling author Terry McMillan, famous for her novels Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back. ...
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The All-Women Mariachi Group That's Lifting Our Spirits from 2020-03-18T00:03
With all this pandemic anxiety swirling, we thought you might need some music to take your mind off things. So this week, we've got an episode fromListen
The Limits Of Empathy from 2020-03-11T00:18:19
In matters of race and justice, empathy is often held up as a goal unto itself. But what comes after understanding? In this episode, we're teaming up with Radio Diaries to look at the care...
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When Fear Of The Coronavirus Turns Into Racism And Xenophobia from 2020-03-04T00:37:28
As international health agencies warn that COVID-19 could become a pandemic, fears over the new coronavirus' spread have activated old, racist suspicions toward Asians and Asian Americans. It's par...
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Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop from 2020-02-26T00:00:49
Eighty-five years ago, a crowd of several thousand white people gathered in Jackson County, Florida, to participate in the lynching of a man named Claude Neal. The poet L. Lamar Wilson grew up ther...
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Blexodus: The Black Exodus From The GOP from 2020-02-19T00:01
How did the party of the Ku Klux Klan became the party of choice for black voters? And how did the party of Abraham Lincoln become 90 percent white? It's a messy story, exemplified by the doomed fr...
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Pt. 2: Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back from 2020-02-12T00:01:49
This is Part II of the story about the 1968 teachers' strike that happened in New York city after Black and Puerto Rican parents demanded more say over their kids' education. We'll tell you why som...
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Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back from 2020-02-05T00:11:06
In 1968, a vicious battle went down between white teachers and black and Puerto Rican parents in a Brooklyn school district. Many say the conflict brought up issues that have yet to be resolved mor...
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Books For Your Mind, Belly And Soul from 2020-01-29T00:00:25
Books help teach us about the world, our communities and ourselves. So this week, the Code Switch team is chatting it up with the authors of some of our favorite recent (and not-so-recent) books by...
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Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC from 2020-01-23T00:01:48
A text message gone wrong. A bachelorette party exclusion. A racist comment during the 2016 debates. When our friends at WNYC's Death, Sex and Money asked about the moments when race became a flash...
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Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends? from 2020-01-22T00:43:15
We help our listeners understand how race and its evil play cousin, racism, affect our friendships. And we're doing it with help from WNYC's Death, Sex & Money podcast. Be a good friend and listen.
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Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever? from 2020-01-15T00:02
In light of all the news coming out of Iran, we're talking with Jason Rezaian — an Iranian-American author and journalist who has experienced Iran's contradictions up close.
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Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House' from 2020-01-08T00:02:53
When Carmen Maria Machado started searching for stories about intimate partner violence in queer relationships, there wasn't much out there. But in her new memoir, she says that type of abuse can s...
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Beautiful Lies from 2020-01-01T00:18:56
So many people's New Year's resolutions are centered around getting in shape, updating their skincare routine, and generally being more attractive. But beauty ideals have a funny way of reinforcing...
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The Birth Of A 'New Negro' from 2019-12-25T00:03
Can travel change your identity? It certainly did for one man. Alain Locke, nicknamed the 'Dean of the Harlem Renaissance,' traveled back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Berlin, Germany. In ...
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The Reverse Freedom Rides from 2019-12-11T11:52
Many people have heard of the Freedom Rides of 1961, when black and white civil rights activists rode buses together to the South to protest segregation. But most people have never heard of what ha...
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Death Of A Blood Sport from 2019-12-04T00:03:39
Later this month, a Congressional ban will make cockfighting illegal in U.S. territories. Animal rights activists argue that the sport is cruel and inhumane. But in Puerto Rico, many people plan to...
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Sometimes Explain, Always Complain from 2019-11-27T00:01:05
It's Thanksgiving week, so we wanted to give y'all a question to fight about: How much context should you have to give when talking about race and culture? Is it better to explain every reference, ...
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Sex, Lies And Audio Tape from 2019-11-20T00:02:06
Sometimes, in order to understand yourself, you fumble through a tough conversation with your mom. Other times, you roll up to a sex club with your best friend. In his new fiction podcast "Moonface...
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Status Update from 2019-11-13T00:46:05
Nearly 9 million people in the U.S. are part of a "mixed-status" family: some may be U.S. citizens; some may have green cards; others may face the constant specter of deportation. As the Supreme Co...
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Is This What It Means To Be White? from 2019-11-06T00:18:23
In 1965, a white minister and civil rights organizer, James Reeb, was killed by a group of white men in Selma, Ala. Reeb's death drew national outrage, but no one was ever held accountable. We spok...
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Fear In An Age Of Real-Life Horror from 2019-10-30T00:02:36
It's Halloween, and people are leaning into all things scary. But sometimes those celebrations of the macabre hit a little too close to home, brushing up against our country's very dark past. So ho...
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A Strange And Bitter Crop from 2019-10-22T20:26
Eighty-five years ago, a crowd of several thousand white people gathered in Jackson County, Florida, to participate in the lynching of a man named Claude Neal. The poet L. Lamar Wilson grew up ther...
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President Trump's (Anti-)Social Media from 2019-10-16T00:18:09
The President's Twitter feed has become the White House's primary mechanism for communicating with the world. Ayesha Rascoe of NPR Politics took a deep dive into Trump's combative social media univ...
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That's The Anthem, Get Your [Dang] Hands Up! from 2019-10-09T00:18:26
On this episode, we look closer at hit songs that have taken on broader resonances: from a wistful ode to Puerto Rico to a disco classic about outlasting and thriving to an enduring bop about pushy...
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Political Prisoners? from 2019-10-02T00:18
In "Prison City," Wisconsin, white elected officials are representing voting districts made up mostly of prisoners. Those prisoners are disproportionately black and brown. Oh, and they can't actual...
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The Original Blexit from 2019-09-25T00:01
How is it that the party of Lincoln became anathema to black voters? It's a messy story, exemplified in the doomed friendship between Richard Nixon and his fellow Republican, Jackie Robinson.
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The Black Table In The Big Tent from 2019-09-18T00:01
Black Republicans are basically unicorns — they might just be the biggest outliers in American two-party politics. So who are these folks who've found a home in the GOP's lily-white big tent? And w...
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A Tale Of Two School Districts from 2019-09-11T00:18
In many parts of the U.S., public school districts are just minutes apart, but have vastly different racial demographics — and receive vastly different funding. That's in part due to Milliken v. Br...
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Searching For Punks from 2019-09-04T00:00
Once upon a time, Kai Wright saw a movie called "Punks." A romantic comedy about black gay men, it was like nothing he'd ever seen before. But then it disappeared.
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'20 And Odd. Negroes' from 2019-08-28T19:48
In August of 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia with dozens of enslaved Africans — the first black people in the colonies that would be come the United States. Four hundred years ...
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All That Glisters Is Not Gold from 2019-08-21T00:01
It's a widely accepted truth: reading Shakespeare is good for you. But what should we do with all of the bigoted themes in his work? We talk to a group of high schoolers who put on the Merchant Of ...
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Dora's Lasting Magic from 2019-08-14T00:01
Nickelodeon's Dora The Explorer helped usher in a wave of multicultural children's programming in the U.S. Our friends at Latino USA tell the story of how the show pushed back against anti-immigran...
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After The Cameras Leave from 2019-08-07T00:00
Five years ago, the death of an unarmed black teenager brought the town of Ferguson, Mo. to the center of a national conversation about policing in black communities. Since then, what's changed, if...
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Puerto Ricans Stand Up from 2019-07-31T02:53
It took less than two weeks for Puerto Ricans to topple their governor following the publication of unsavory private text messages. We tell the story of how small protests evolved into a political ...
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Chicago's Red Summer from 2019-07-24T00:01
Almost exactly 100 years ago, race riots broke out all across the United States. The Red Summer, as it came to be known, occurred in more than two dozen cities across the nation, including Chicago,...
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Oh So Now It's Racist? from 2019-07-17T00:01
This week, an argument about what to call President Trump's rhetoric. NPR editors Mark Memmott and Keith Woods offer different ideas for how news organizations should try to stay credible.
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The Return Of Race Science from 2019-07-10T00:01
In the 19th century it was mainstream science to believe in a racial hierarchy. But after WWII, the scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. We speak to auth...
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America's Concentration Camps? from 2019-07-03T00:01
There's a debate over what to call the facilities holding migrant asylum seekers at the southern border. We revisit an earlier controversy to help make sense of it.
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Some Of The People Knew Magic from 2019-06-26T01:31
Fifty years after the Stonewall Uprising, queer and trans folks are uncovering hidden parts of LGBTQ+ history. A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, "Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years A...
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Code Switch Book Club: Summer 2019 from 2019-06-19T00:01
Our listeners suggestions include American history, compelling fiction, a few memoirs—and Jane Austen, re-imagined with brown people.
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E Ola Ka 'Olelo Hawai'i from 2019-06-12T00:01
Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker. That was the fate of Hawaiian, until a group of second-language learners put up a fight and declared, "E Ola Ka 'Olelo Hawai'i" (The Hawaiian ...
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The Original 'Welfare Queen' from 2019-06-05T00:01
It's a pernicious stereotype, but it was coined in reference to a real woman named Linda Taylor. But her misdeeds were far more numerous and darker than welfare fraud. This week: how politicians us...
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Salt Fat Acid Race from 2019-05-29T00:48
Samin Nosrat is an award-winning chef, cookbook author, and star of the Netflix series Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She's also an Iranian American woman trying to represent two cultures that are...
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Dispatches From The Schoolyard from 2019-05-22T00:18
In middle school and high school, we're figuring out how to fit in and realizing that there are things about ourselves that we can't change — whether or not we want to. This week, we're turning the...
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Anger: The Black Woman's 'Superpower' from 2019-05-15T00:24
A Sapphire isn't only a jewel—it's also cultural shorthand for an angry black woman. In this episode, we look at where Sapphire was born, and how the stereotype continues to haunt black women, even...
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We Don't Say That from 2019-05-08T00:01
France is the place where for decades you weren't supposed to talk about someone's blackness, unless you said it in English. Today, we're going to meet the people who took a very French approach to...
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You Say Chicano, I Say... from 2019-05-01T00:01
When members of the nation's oldest Mexican-American student organization voted to change its name, it revealed generational tensions around the past, present, and future of the Chicano movement.
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Can the Go-Go Go On? from 2019-04-17T00:01
For more than two decades, a cellphone store in Washington, D.C. has blasted go-go music right outside of its front door. But a recent noise complaint from a resident of a new, upscale apartment bu...
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Love&Walkouts from 2019-04-10T00:01
In 1968, thousands of students participated in a series of protests for equity in education that sparked the Chicano Movement. But for two of the students at one struggling high school, that civil ...
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Why Is It So Hard To Talk About Israel? from 2019-04-05T00:47
Support for Israel has long been the rare bipartisan position among lawmakers in Washington. But recently, several younger, brown members of Congress have vocally questioned the U.S.'s relationship...
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Ask Code Switch: You Are What You Eat from 2019-03-27T00:01:20
This week, we tackle reader questions on vegetarianism, the specter of grocery store Columbuses, and the quiet opprobrium directed at "smelly ethnic foods" in the workplace.
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"On Strike! Blow It Up!" from 2019-03-20T00:01
Fifty years ago a multi-racial coalition of students at a commuter college in San Francisco went on strike. And while their bloody, bitter standoff has been largely forgotten, it forever changed hi...
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Respect Yourself from 2019-03-13T00:01:23
What does "civility" look like and who gets to define it? What about "respectable" behavior? This week, we're looking at how behavior gets policed in public.
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When Disaster Strikes from 2019-03-06T00:01
A deadly tornado ripped through Lee County Alabama this past Sunday. An NPR investigation found that white Americans and those with safety nets often receive more federal dollars after a disaster t...
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On The Shoulders Of Giants from 2019-02-27T11:54
When Colin Kaepernick stopped standing for the national anthem at NFL games it sparked a nationwide conversation about patriotism and police brutality. Black athletes using their platform to protes...
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Getting A Foot In the Door from 2019-02-21T00:01:11
Anali, a young woman from Los Angeles, wants to break into the film industry. A local program taught her the skills of the trade and the language, but will any of that that matter in an industry th...
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From Blackface To Blackfishing from 2019-02-13T03:12
Okay, news cycle: you win. We're talking about blackface. This week, we delve into the hidden history of "blackening up" in popular culture — from a certain iconic cartoon mouse's minstrel past to ...
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We're Going To Start A Dialogue...Again. from 2019-02-07T00:01
Another week of racial controversies, another week of calls to "start a dialogue on race." What does that even mean? We talk to two veterans of one high-profile attempt at a national conversation o...
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Intrigue At The Census Bureau from 2019-01-24T00:48
Another day, another drama: Last week, a federal judge ruled against the Trump administration's decision to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 census. But if the Justice Departmen...
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Perfect Son from 2019-01-16T00:01:27
Jason Kim and his father were once very close, but drifted apart after the family came to the United States from Korea. They drifted even further after Jason came out to his parents as gay. But aft...
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The Return from 2019-01-09T00:02:23
Meet one of the people caught up in the Trump Administration's hard-line stance on immigration: Javier Zamora. He was living in the US legally under Temporary Protected Status but when the White Ho...
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America's Other Anthems from 2019-01-02T00:01:21
This week, we're uncovering the stories behind three American Anthems. First, we hear from two musical greats about their respective versions of "Fight the Power." Next, we learned about the transf...
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Race Underneath The Skin from 2018-12-26T00:01
Spit into a tube and get in touch with your ancestors! Or not. This week we're revisiting a conversation about DNA, and what it tells us about who we are.
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Code Switch Goes To College from 2018-12-19T00:04:04
A professor at the University of Texas San Antonio designed a college course based around episodes of the Code Switch podcast! In it, her students learned how to have tough conversations about race...
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Code Switch Book Club from 2018-12-12T00:01
We checked in with authors, poets and great literary minds to see what books they think everyone should read this holiday season.
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The Story Of Mine Mill from 2018-12-05T00:01
Reporter Julia Simon tells us about a radical miners' union in Birmingham, Alabama. It laid the foundation for civil rights organizers in the South, and holds lessons for the future of labor.
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Live From The Apollo...It's Code Switch! from 2018-11-21T00:01:23
Gene and Shereen talk to poet Denice Frohman, percussionist Bobby Sanabria, chef Marcus Samuelsson and comedian Ashley Nicole Black at Harlem's World Famous Apollo Theater in New York City.
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The House On The Corner from 2018-11-14T00:01
The news item about the shooting was bare: one man shot another 17 times in a dispute over drugs. The actual story — of a family that feared for its safety but who couldn't rely on the police for h...
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Politics Podcast Pop Up from 2018-11-07T05:02
We know where your mind's going to be this week: midterm election results!!! So, we're handing the reins over to our play cousins from NPR's Politics Podcast. They'll tell you what happened and wha...
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Is Ron Brown High School Working? from 2018-10-31T00:01
Ron Brown High School was built on a novel notion: a school for boys of color, based on a model of restorative justice. We visited the school last year for several episodes to follow its first-ever...
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The Cost To Cast A Ballot from 2018-10-24T00:01
This week: why people don't vote, why people can't vote, and two state races that might have national implications for 2020.
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What So Proudly We Hail from 2018-10-17T00:01:03
So "The Star-Spangled Banner" is kind of a mess: notoriously tough to sing and with some weird stanzas about slavery. This week, we're looking at two of the country's other anthems with th...
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Our Homeland Is Each Other from 2018-10-10T01:16
This week, we're handing the mic over to transracial adoptees. They told us what they think is missing from mainstream narratives about adoption, and how being an adoptee is an identity unto itself.
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Deja Vu All Over Again from 2018-10-03T00:01
Decades before Christine Blasey-Ford testified before lawmakers, the country had another reckoning with sexual misconduct set against the backdrop of a Supreme Court nomination. This week: what we ...
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#CriticsSoWhite from 2018-09-26T00:01:14
The reckoning that is reshaping Hollywood is finally making its way to the critic's perch. Bilal Qureshi joins us to talk about exciting movies coming this fall, and who gets to judge.
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Puerto Rico's Other Storm from 2018-09-19T00:10
Long before Hurricane Maria devastated the territory, the threat of financial disaster loomed over Puerto Rico. Now, an old, bitter struggle over who gets to chart the islands' economic future is u...
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Ask Code Switch: School Daze from 2018-09-12T08:55
For better or worse, classrooms have always been a site where our country's racial issues get worked out — whether its integration, busing, learning about this country's sordid racial history. On t...
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Update: Looking For Marriage In All The Wrong Places from 2018-09-06T17:45
In a unanimous decision, India's Supreme Court struck down a long-standing ban on gay sex. In light of this, we're revisiting an episode about same-sex love and dating apps for South Asians.
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Stuck Off The Realness from 2018-09-05T00:01:21
Prodigy made up half of the hugely influential hip-hop duo Mobb Deep, but spent his life in excruciating pain due to a debilitating disease called sickle cell anemia. On this episode, the hosts of ...
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So What If He Said It? from 2018-08-29T00:01:19
In recent weeks, rumors of a recording of President Trump using the N-Word have resurfaced. But critics have been describing Trump as racist for years. So, if this tape were to exist, would it even...
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Live From Birmingham...It's Code Switch! from 2018-08-22T00:01
Shereen and Gene head to Alabama to talk about race in the American South. Mayor Randall Woodfin of Birmingham talks about growing up in the shadow of his city's history. The poet Ashley M. Jones s...
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Behind The Lies My Teacher Told Me from 2018-08-15T00:01:25
It's a battle that's endured throughout so much of American history: what gets written into our textbooks. Today we tag in NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz, and hear from author James Loew...
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Talk American from 2018-08-08T00:06
What is the "Standard American Accent"? Where is it from? And what does it mean if you don't have it? Code Switch goes on a trip to the Midwest to find out.
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Word Watch, The Sequel: 2Watch 2Wordiest from 2018-08-01T00:06:16
We're back this week with the grand finale of the Word Watch Game Show! First, we'll uncover the messy history of the term "white trash." Then we'll get into a ditty that signals ... anything "Asia...
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Word Watch: A Code Switch Game Show from 2018-07-25T00:06
English is full of words and phrases with hidden racial backstories. Can you guess their histories? On part one of this two-part episode, we're unpacking the meaning behind "guru" and "boy."
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Rap On Trial from 2018-07-18T00:01:20
Olutosin Oduwole was a college student and aspiring hip hop star when he was charged with "attempting to make a terrorist threat." Did public perceptions of rap music play a role? This week we're t...
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Immigration Nation from 2018-06-27T02:54
Anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise, and the prospect of mass deportation is in the news. But as much as this seems like a unique moment in history, in many ways, it's history repeating itself.
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Looking For Marriage In All The Wrong Places from 2018-06-20T00:01
Online matchmaking sites are making it easier than ever for couples seeking an arranged marriage to meet. Well...not all couples.
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Twenty-First Century Blackface from 2018-06-13T00:01:23
We have one story of how blackface was alive and well on network television in Colombia until 2015.
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What We Inherit from 2018-06-06T00:01:06
On this episode, the story of one family's struggle to end a toxic cycle of inter-generational trauma from forced assimilation. Getting back to their Native Alaskan cultural traditions is key.
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A Thousand Ways To Kneel And Kiss The Ground from 2018-05-30T00:02
Last week, the NFL announced a new policy to penalize players who kneel during the national anthem. The announcement drew fresh attention to the century-old tightrope that outspoken black athletes ...
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Of Bloodlines and Conquistadors from 2018-05-23T00:01
Hispanos have lived side by side the Pueblo people for centuries—mixing cultures, identities and even bloodlines. But recently, tensions have risen among the two populations over Santa Fe's annual ...
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What's Black And Gray And Inked All Over? from 2018-05-16T00:01:25
Black-and-gray tattoos have become increasingly popular over the last four decades. But many people don't realize that the style has its roots in Chicano art, Catholic imagery and "prison ingenuity...
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Code Switch Census Watch 2020 from 2018-05-02T00:06:23
We've said it before: The U.S. Census is way more than cold, hard data. It informs what we call ourselves and how we're represented. On this episode, we explore the controversial citizenship questi...
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It's Bigger Than The Ban from 2018-04-25T00:01
Muslims make up a little over one percent of the U.S. population, but they seem to take up an outsized space in the American imagination. On this episode we explore why that is.
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Members of Whose Tribe? from 2018-04-18T00:01
Today, Americans tend to think of Jewish people as white folks, but it wasn't always that way. On this episode, we dig into the complex role Jewish identity has played in America's racial story — e...
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Location! Location! Location! from 2018-04-11T00:01
It's the force that animates so much of what we cover on Code Switch. And on the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, we take a look at some ways residential segregation is still shaping the w...
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The Road To The Promised Land, 50 Years Later from 2018-04-04T00:01
Fifty years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tenn. This week, we have two stories about the aftermath of his death. The first takes us to Memphis to remember King's f...
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The Madness Of March from 2018-03-21T00:01
The NCAA men's basketball tournament is going on right now and will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The coaches and commissioners who benefit are overwhelmingly white. The play...
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Who Is 'Us,' Anyway? from 2018-03-14T00:01:12
"Shouldn't you help out your own community first?" That's the question we're exploring this week via our play-cousins at Latino USA. A black celebrity is criticized for helping a Latino immigrant. ...
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Searching For A Home After Hate from 2018-03-07T00:01
In February 2017, Srinivas Kutchibhotla fell victim to an alleged hate crime. In the aftermath, his widow, Sunayana Dumala, had her life and her immigration status thrown into question. Now, she's ...
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Throw Some Respeck On My Name from 2018-02-21T00:18:21
It's Alabama, 1963. A black woman stands before a judge, but she refuses to acknowledge him until he addresses her by an honorific given to white women: "Miss." On this week's episode, we revisit t...
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The State Of Our Union Is...Uh, How Much Time You Got? from 2018-01-31T03:01
On the occasion of President Trump's first State of the Union speech, we're looking at where things stand on civil rights at the Justice Department, the state of play for the country's white nation...
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This Racism Is Killing Me Inside from 2018-01-10T00:01
On this weeks episode we hear the story of Shalon Irving, who passed away after giving birth to her daughter. Black women in the United States are 243 percent more likely than white women to die of...
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Before We Give 2017 The Middle Finger, Part 1 from 2017-12-27T00:01:11
In this episode: lessons learned post-Charlottesville, the Latinas who said "me, too" before it went viral, race-and-rep wins in pop-culture and some of this year's real-life losses. You'll yell, y...
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Black Atheists, White Santas, And A FeastFor The Deceased from 2017-12-20T00:18
We're answering your holiday race questions: Why do we still think of Santa as white? Are POCs responsible for calling-out the racism at holiday parties? How do you tell your black family you're a ...
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With Dope, There's High Hope from 2017-12-13T00:18:05
As of January 1, it will be legal to sell recreational cannabis in California. But as the legal weed market gains traction, people of color who were targeted by the drug war are being left out of t...
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17,000 Islands, 700 Languages, And A Superhero from 2017-12-06T00:01:20
Indonesia is one of the most ethnically diverse countries on Earth. And while that pluralism is embraced in the country's founding documents, its ethnic Chinese minority has been persecuted for gen...
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A Code Switch Thanksgiving Feast from 2017-11-22T00:01:15
It's a Thanksgiving mashup episode! We speak to Lin-Manuel Miranda about Puerto Rico, a parenting expert about tense family gatherings, and a Native professor about the truth behind the holiday. An...
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Live From Chicago...It's Code Switch! from 2017-11-15T04:32
Hosts Shereen and Gene take on Chi-City with help from Chicago-natives Eve Ewing and Natalie Y. Moore, plus Code Switch's play cousin, Hari Kondabolu. Ewing opens the show with a poem from her new ...
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Reflections On A Year At Ron Brown High from 2017-11-08T04:23
We spent the past three episodes looking at the first year of a high school for black boys in Washington, D.C. Now, we're taking a look back on our reporting. What does it mean for a school like Ro...
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The Passing Of A "Failing" School from 2017-10-11T00:18
When a school shuts down, students lose more than a place of learning; they lose friends, mentors and a community. This is an experience that disproportionately affects black students in the U.S. S...
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Puerto Rico, My Heart's Devotion from 2017-10-04T00:01
The haphazard response to Hurricane Maria has underscored the tricky, in-between space that Puerto Ricans occupy. They're U.S. citizens — although nearly half of the country doesn't know that. But ...
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It's Getting (Dangerously) Hot in Herre from 2017-09-13T00:01
On this week's episode we talk about why certain communities are more vulnerable to catastrophic weather events like hurricanes and heat waves. Saying "mother nature doesn't discriminate," ignores ...
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What's So Wrong With African Americans Wearing African Clothes? from 2017-07-19T00:01:01
Leila Day and Hana Baba are hosts of a new podcast called The Stoop. It features conversations black people have amongst themselves — but rarely in public. The pair swing by to talk with Shereen an...
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A Police Video From Charlotte from 2017-07-12T00:01
This encore presentation goes deep on a case involving a white police officer and an unarmed black man in Charlotte, NC. Videos in police-involved shootings can add detail to these cases, but as ou...
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'Give It Up For DJ Blackface!' from 2017-05-31T23:43
This week, we follow the strange trend of white dance-music DJs who pass themselves off as black artists. Gene talks to legendary House music DJ Ron Trent. The European producer Guy Tavares chimes ...
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We're Still Talking About "My Family's Slave" from 2017-05-24T00:01:02
This week, we join the global conversation on The Atlantic's essay "My Family's Slave," in which Alex Tizon writes about Eudocia Tomas Pulido, who was his family's katulong, or domestic se...
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Japanese Americans Exiled In Utah from 2017-05-20T00:01
The story of over 100,000 Japanese Americans enduring life in internment camps during WW II is well known, but a few thousand avoided the camps, entirely by, essentially, self-exiling. Code Switch ...
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Master of None's Alan Yang Unpacks Season 2 from 2017-05-17T00:03
Gene and guest co-host Lenika Cruz, who covers culture at The Atlantic, welcome Alan Yang. He and comedian Aziz Ansari created an Emmy-winning comedy series that stepped comfortably out of the usua...
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The Blessing (And Curse?) Of Miss Saigon from 2017-05-10T00:01
Miss Saigon has returned to Broadway. When the hit musical was first performed was controversial for its stereotypes and story and casting choices. Shereen is joined by teammate Kat Chow to explore...
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The LA Unrest (Or Riots) 25 Years Later from 2017-04-29T00:01
We hear from a Latino city councilman who was there when it all went down, a Korean-American who worked at her family's gas station in Compton and a prominent black pastor who gave a memorable serm...
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John Leguizamo, Still In Search Of John Leguizamo from 2017-04-26T00:03
This week, Gene welcomes NPR's Audie Cornish to talk about multi-talented writer, producer and comedian John Leguizamo. As a performer, he's mined his Latino identity through his own family and old...
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Mailbag! Listener Questions and Comments That Got Us Thinking from 2017-04-19T00:01:28
Shereen and Gene tackle listeners' reactions to recent episodes. One wants to know the difference between Persian and Iranian. (It's complicated.) Another wants more details about the risks to chur...
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The Beef Over Native American Hunting Rights from 2017-04-12T00:01:25
Shereen and Gene welcome reporter Nate Hegyi, who spent a day in Montana with a Nez Perce hunting party, a tribe that faces strong opposition from some who see these rights as unfair and out of syn...
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Podcast Extra En Español: Jeanette Vizguerra from 2017-04-01T00:01
Jeanette Vizguerra speaks with Adrian Florido about her experience living in the church where she's taken sanctuary as she fights her deportation case. Jeanette Vizguerra habla con Adrián Flori...
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A Bittersweet Persian New Year from 2017-03-22T00:01
It's springtime, and the celebration of rebirth and the New Year in Iranian-American communities is tempered by the recent rise in Islamaphobic incidents and ongoing uncertainties around the travel...
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Not-So-Simple Questions From Code Switch Listeners from 2017-03-15T00:01:15
Gene and Shereen tackle some Code Switch listeners' questions about race and identity with a voice coach, a professor of children's literature, and two former interns who are now reporters: What's ...
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Safety-Pin Solidarity: With Allies, Who Benefits? from 2017-03-08T00:02
Does wearing safety pins and giving speeches at awards shows make you an ally? On this episode we explore the conundrums of ally-ship with activist and blogger ShiShi Rose, who helped organize the ...
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In Search Of Puerto Rican Identity In Small-Town America from 2017-03-01T00:02
Puerto Ricans are migrants not immigrants, Spanish and English, domestic yet foreign — as we like to say on Code Switch, it's complicated. A hundred years ago this week, Puerto Ricans became U.S. c...
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Encore: Everyone Is Talking To Barry Jenkins, But Our Interview Is (Still) the Best! from 2016-12-28T00:04
We revisit Gene's conversation with filmmaker Barry Jenkins to close out 2016. Jenkins' latest movie is Moonlight. There's buzz for awards nominations, including the Oscars.
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A Chitlins Christmas: Bah Humbug! from 2016-12-21T04:09
You know it when you see it or, maybe by the smell. It's the holiday dish no one really likes but someone always makes "because it's tradition." Not all food traditions are equally appetiz...
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Hold Up! Time For An Explanatory Comma from 2016-12-14T08:16
Gene and Shereen ask how much cultural context to give when talking about race and culture. So, how much context should you have to provide? Comedian Hari Kondabolu, co-host of the podcast Politica...
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Audie and the Not-So-Magic School Bus from 2016-12-07T00:01
NPR's Audie Cornish was bused to an affluent suburban school outside Boston in a voluntary integration program. She reflects on her experiences with Gene Demby and talks about stories she recently ...
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Encore: Asian American Letter on Behalf of Black Lives from 2016-11-30T00:01:14
We present an encore episode from Summer 2016: Shereen Marisol Meraji and Kat Chow talk with Christina Xu about her project to open up a difficult race conversation between younger and older genera...
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Want Some Gravy With Those Grievances? from 2016-11-23T00:01
For families of color, the recent Presidential campaign season and election results may affect the tone of conversations at Thanksgiving and throughout this holiday season. Shereen and Gene are joi...
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Another Black President Says Goodbye To Washington from 2016-11-16T02:37
Actor Christopher Jackson steps down this week from his role as George Washington in the award-winning Broadway show Hamilton. Gene gets an exit interview.
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Apocalypse Or Racial Kumbaya? America After Nov. 8 from 2016-11-02T00:01:25
In just a few days, the election will be over. But the racism, anger and fear that have surfaced will still be with us. Gene and Shereen talk with Carol Anderson, historian and author of "White Rag...
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Everyone Is Talking To Barry Jenkins But Our Interview Is The Best from 2016-10-26T10:30
Just kidding. But seriously, "Moonlight," Jenkins' new film, is the movie of the moment. Gene talks with him about what it took to get the movie made, what it was like to film in the Miami projects...
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Encore: "I'm Not Black I'm O.J." from 2016-10-12T00:00
From the Code Switch archives: Gene talks with Ezra Edelman, director of the ESPN documentary "OJ: Made in America." For a long time, O.J. Simpson seemed to be running away from his race. "I'm not ...
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Who Is A Good Immigrant, Anyway? from 2016-10-05T00:08
You might call "Dreamers" the most sympathetic characters in the immigration reform drama. But what happens when advocates try to champion an illegal immigrant who's a felon? Adrian and Shereen exp...
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The Dangers Of Life As An American 'Nobody' from 2016-09-07T21:13
Marc Lamont Hill untangles the decades of dysfunction that have led to recent racial flash-points in his latest book, Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Fli...
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The Code Switch Podcast Is Coming! from 2016-05-09T11:00
Here's a preview of our new podcast, exploring how race and culture collide with everything else in our lives.
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The Code Switch Podcast Is Coming! from 2016-05-09T11:00
Here's a preview of our new podcast, exploring how race and culture collide with everything else in our lives.
Listen