Code Switch

By NPR

Society & Culture

What's Code Switch about?

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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LAST EPISODE

The Original Rainbow Coalition

01.25.2023

In this episode we turn to late 1960s Chicago, when three unlikely groups came together to form a coalition based on interracial solidarity. It's hard to imagine this kind of collaboration today, but we dove into how a group of ...

Code Switch episodes:

01.25.2023 The Original Rainbow Coalition In this episode we turn to late 1960s Chicago, when three unlikely groups came together to form a coalition based on interracial solidarity. It's hard to imagine this kind of collaboration today, but we dove into how a group of ...
01.18.2023 Bad Bunny, Reggaeton, and Resistance 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 episode, we take a look at how ...
01.11.2023 Meet Lori Lizarraga—Our Newest Co-host Our newest co-host Lori Lizarraga tells the story about why she goes by "Lori" when her real name is Laura.
01.04.2023 Revisiting 'How The Other Half Eats' How do race and class affect the way we eat? What does it mean to "eat like a white person?" And if food inequality isn't about "food deserts," what is it really about? We're getting into all those questions and ...
12.28.2022 How cumbia has shaped music across Latin America Whether you're from Ushuaia or East Los Angeles, you've likely heard cumbia blaring from a stereo. From our play friends at NPR's Alt.Latino, Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras talk about their common love of the musical backbone of Latin America.
12.21.2022 Unlocking family history in 'Before Me' It wasn't until Lisa Phu had her own child that she started unlocking her mother's history. In her new 5-part series called Before Me, Lisa asks her mother, Lan, the questions she should have asked years ago. Lisa tells us ...
12.14.2022 What We Watched in 2022 There are a lot of TV shows to watch out there - so the Code Switch team isn't trying to bring you a list of the "best." Instead, we're chatting about the shows we watched this year that we loved, ...
12.07.2022 Why some Republicans want to narrow who counts as Black Republican officials in Louisiana want to change how Black people are counted in voting maps. If their plan is successful, it could shrink the power of Black voters across the country — and further gut the Voting Rights Act.
11.30.2022 Notes from America: 'Blackness (Un)interrupted' So many of our perceptions of race have to do with color. How does that change if you've lived in both Black and white skin? Our Executive Producer Veralyn Williams, explores this question in conversation with her sister, Lovis. Lovis ...
11.23.2022 A lost bird, a found treasure Bear Carrillo grew up with only a few details about his birth parents: they were Native university students. Decades later, a DNA test reveals a more complicated truth.
11.16.2022 Live from Chicago: What makes a city home? This episode is excerpted from the Code Switch Live show at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, featuring special guests José Olivarez, Sultan Salahuddin, Diallo Riddle and Adriana Cardona-Maguidad to talk all about Chicago. Musical guest KAINA provides music!
11.09.2022 Throughline: How Korean culture went global From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. But how did this come to be?
11.02.2022 Code Switch fam! Say hello to It's Been a Minute's new host, Brittany Luse! Code Switch's B.A. Parker introduces us to our play cousin It's Been A Minute's new voice, Brittany Luse!
10.26.2022 Fear In An Age Of Real Life Horror, Revisited It's Halloween, and people are leaning into all things scary. But sometimes the festivities hit a little too close to home, brushing up against our country's very dark past.
10.19.2022 Skeletons in the closet, revisited More than 10,000 Native human remains are currently sitting in a storage facility in a Maryland suburb. This week, how one small tribe is fighting to get them back to Florida.
10.12.2022 Black reality in a world of fantasy Why build a fantasy world that still has racism? B.A. Parker moderates a discussion on Black science fiction and fantasy with authors Tochi Onyebuchi and Leslye Penelope at the National Book Festival.
10.05.2022 Omar Apollo on making music, being queer and Latinx NPR's Alt.Latino gets a reboot, and for its first episode, they speak with R&B darling Omar Apollo. Apollo shares what it's been like being a role model for queer Latinx kids and the pressure of having to watch what he ...
09.28.2022 Gaming out race in Dungeons & Dragons Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular tabletop roleplaying 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 world. We take ...
09.21.2022 In 1962, segregationists set up "Reverse Freedom Rides" Recently, Republican governors have been sending migrants from the southern border to cities they deem more liberal under false pretenses. The political stunt echoes what segregationists 1962 called Reverse Freedom Rides. This episode originally aired in December 2019.
09.14.2022 Can therapy solve racism? Nearly 20% of Americans turned to therapy in 2020. That had us wondering: What exactly can therapy accomplish? Today, we're sharing the stories of two Latinx people who tried to use therapy to understand and combat anti-Blackness in their own ...
09.07.2022 How the Pell Grant helped POCs go to college The cost of college has been on everyone's minds, especially with student debt cancellation. Pell Grants are one way many low income students have managed to pay for college. And they exist in large part because of one Black woman ...
08.31.2022 What does it mean to "inherit whiteness?" In Baynard Woods' new memoir, Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness, Woods reflects on how growing up white in South Carolina impacted his life. He argues that it is crucial for white people in the U.S. to reckon with their personal ...
08.24.2022 What makes a good race joke? When a comedian of color makes a joke, is it always about race, even if it's not about race? In part two of our comedians episodes, Code Switch talks to comedians Aparna Nancherla, Brian Bahe and Maz Jobrani about how ...
08.17.2022 What's so funny about race? What makes a great joke about race? In the first of two episodes, Code Switch talks to comedians Ziwe, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes and Joel Kim Booster about their favorite race joke they tell: What's its origin story? Why is it so ...
08.10.2022 Into the glittering neon universe of 'P-Valley' with Katori Hall The Starz hit show P-Valley takes audiences to a strip club in a fictional town in the Mississippi Delta. Part soap opera, part Southern Gothic, the show focuses on the interior lives of the Black women who work at the ...
08.03.2022 Lost In Translation Today on the show, we're bringing you the stories of two families grappling with how best to communicate across linguistic differences. In the first story, a young man sorts through how to talk to his parents about gender in Chinese, ...
07.27.2022 Meet B.A. Parker — our new co-host! Fam: We finally have a new co-host of the Code Switch podcast! And we're just a tiny bit excited. So today on the show, we're introducing you to B.A. Parker. Gene chats with Parker about who she is, what drew ...
07.20.2022 Who belongs in the Cherokee Nation? In 1866, the Cherokee Nation promised citizenship for Black "freedmen" and their descendants. But more than a century later, the descendants of the freedman are calling foul on that promise being fulfilled. This episode, from our friends at The Experiment ...
07.15.2022 School Colors Episode 9: "Water Under The Bridge" We catch up with parents who became activated on both sides of the debate over the diversity plan. And, since the diversity plan never came to fruition, we ask...what now?
07.13.2022 Code Switch's playlist for a summer road trip This week, we're talking about the podcasts that podcasters listen to. These are the shows that members of the Code Switch team cannot tear our ears away from. We think they'd be great for a long car ride, plane ride, ...
07.08.2022 School Colors Bonus: "Ms. Mitchell's Pandemic Diary" We look at the pandemic through the eyes of one elementary school principal and how Covid-19 rocked education in the district – especially on the Southside.
07.06.2022 'Wherever you go, there you are' Many immigrants have described the feeling of being different people in different places. Maybe in one country, you're a little goofy, a little wild. In another, you're more serious — more of a planner. In this episode, which originally aired ...
07.01.2022 School Colors Episode 8: "The Only Way Out" In this episode: why gifted education gets so much attention, even though it affects relatively few students. How do we define "giftedness," and whose needs are we overlooking?
06.29.2022 No Man's Land Tens of thousands of children were adopted from other countries by parents in the U.S., only to discover as adults a quirk in federal law that meant they had never been guaranteed American citizenship. Much like the Dreamers, these adoptees ...
06.24.2022 School Colors Episode 7: "The Sleeping Giant" In some ways, this entire season was prompted by the parents who organized against diversity planning in District 28. In this episode, we let the opposition speak for themselves.
06.19.2022 On Food, Mattress Sales, and Juneteenth It's the second year that Juneteenth has been a federal holiday — which means it's getting the full summer holiday treatment: sales on appliances, branded merchandise, and for some, a day off of work. But on this episode, we're talking ...
06.17.2022 School Colors Episode 6: "Below Liberty" There needs to be some change in District 28, but what kind of change? We went to the Southside and asked parents and school leaders directly: what do the schools need?
06.15.2022 The impact of COVID-19, a million deaths in A new book by Linda Villarosa looks at how racial bias in healthcare has costs for all Americans. Spoiler: Poverty counts — but not as much as you'd think.
06.08.2022 Spilling the T Code Switch's Kumari Devarajan found an unlikely demographic doppelganger in D'Lo, a comedian and playwright whose one-person show about growing up as a queer child of immigrants in the U.S. is reopening on a bigger theater stage. But when you ...
06.03.2022 School Colors Episode 5: "The Melting Pot" Once known for its Black/white racial binary, Queens, N.Y., has become one of the most diverse places in the world. How has immigration to the community affected its racial map?
06.01.2022 Rethinking 'safety' in the wake of Uvalde In the wake of violence and tragedies, people are often left in search of ways to feel safe again. That almost inevitably to conversations about the role of police. On today's episode, we're talking to the author and sociologist Alex ...
05.27.2022 School Colors Episode 4: "The Mason-Dixon Line" The conversation about District 28 hinges on the dynamic between the Northside and the Southside. But why were they wedged into the same school district in the first place?
05.25.2022 How We Decide Who Is 'Worthy of Welcome' The author of Refuge reflects on her time interviewing Syrian refugees in the U.S., Canada and Germany.
05.20.2022 School Colors Episode 3: "The Battle of Forest Hills" In the early 1970s, the famously liberal neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens became a hotbed of reaction and backlash in a fight over public housing.
05.18.2022 The Utang Clan Utang na loob is the Filipino concept of an eternal debt to others, be it family or friends, who do a favor for you. It goes back to pre-colonial times in the Philippines, and can pass from one generation to ...
05.11.2022 School Colors Episode 2: "Tales From The Southside" Once home to two revolutionary experiments in integrated housing, the Southside of District 28 was once seen as a beacon of interracial cooperation.
05.04.2022 School Colors Episode 1: "There Is No Plan" In 2019, a school district in Queens N.Y., one of the most diverse places on the planet, is selected to go through the process of creating something unexpected: a diversity plan. Why would the school district need such a plan ...
05.02.2022 Coming Soon: Code Switch presents 'School Colors' 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 and Max Freedman take us to Queens, N.Y. – often touted as the ...
04.27.2022 The LA Uprising, a generation later 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 fundamental mark on the ...
04.20.2022 Race, queerness, and superpowers in 'Everything, Everywhere, All at Once' 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, in the movie "Everything Everywhere All At Once." On ...

Older episodes

Code Switch

What's Code Switch about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Code Switch episodes:

The Original Rainbow Coalition

Bad Bunny, Reggaeton, and Resistance

Meet Lori Lizarraga—Our Newest Co-host

Revisiting 'How The Other Half Eats'

How cumbia has shaped music across Latin America

Unlocking family history in 'Before Me'

What We Watched in 2022

Why some Republicans want to narrow who counts as Black

Notes from America: 'Blackness (Un)interrupted'

A lost bird, a found treasure

Live from Chicago: What makes a city home?

Throughline: How Korean culture went global

Code Switch fam! Say hello to It's Been a Minute's new host, Brittany Luse!

Fear In An Age Of Real Life Horror, Revisited

Skeletons in the closet, revisited

Black reality in a world of fantasy

Omar Apollo on making music, being queer and Latinx

Gaming out race in Dungeons & Dragons

In 1962, segregationists set up "Reverse Freedom Rides"

Can therapy solve racism?

How the Pell Grant helped POCs go to college

What does it mean to "inherit whiteness?"

What makes a good race joke?

What's so funny about race?

Into the glittering neon universe of 'P-Valley' with Katori Hall

Lost In Translation

Meet B.A. Parker — our new co-host!

Who belongs in the Cherokee Nation?

School Colors Episode 9: "Water Under The Bridge"

Code Switch's playlist for a summer road trip

School Colors Bonus: "Ms. Mitchell's Pandemic Diary"

'Wherever you go, there you are'

School Colors Episode 8: "The Only Way Out"

No Man's Land

School Colors Episode 7: "The Sleeping Giant"

On Food, Mattress Sales, and Juneteenth

School Colors Episode 6: "Below Liberty"

The impact of COVID-19, a million deaths in

Spilling the T

School Colors Episode 5: "The Melting Pot"

Rethinking 'safety' in the wake of Uvalde

School Colors Episode 4: "The Mason-Dixon Line"

How We Decide Who Is 'Worthy of Welcome'

School Colors Episode 3: "The Battle of Forest Hills"

The Utang Clan

School Colors Episode 2: "Tales From The Southside"

School Colors Episode 1: "There Is No Plan"

Coming Soon: Code Switch presents 'School Colors'

The LA Uprising, a generation later

Race, queerness, and superpowers in 'Everything, Everywhere, All at Once'

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