Code Switch

By NPR

Society & Culture

What's Code Switch about?

Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get...stuck? Code Switch can help. We're all journalists of color, and this isn't just the work we do. It's the lives we lead. Sometimes, we'll make you laugh. Other times, you'll get uncomfortable. But we'll always be unflinchingly honest and empathetic. Come mix it up with us.

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LAST EPISODE

An Immune System

07.08.2020

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 this episode, we look at how a law meant to protect Black ...

Code Switch episodes:

07.08.2020 An Immune System 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 this episode, we look at how a law meant to protect Black ...
07.01.2020 We Aren't Who We Think We Are 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 important historical ...
06.27.2020 They Don't Say Our Names Enough 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 Black butch woman who didn't pull ...
06.24.2020 Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Talks 'The Undocumented Americans' 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 the media focuses its attention on Dreamers. "I wanted to learn about them ...
06.19.2020 DACA Decision: Check-In with Miriam Gonzalez When the Supreme Court ruled that DACA could remain in place, recipient and case plaintiff Miriam Gonzalez was relieved. We talked to her right after she heard the news.
06.17.2020 Why Now, White People? White people are speaking up against racism and showing up to #BlackLivesMatter protests in numbers we haven't seen before. So we asked some of them: What's different this time?
06.12.2020 Bonus Episode: 'Not Just Another Protest' 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 how protests have ...
06.10.2020 Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator' 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 these mysterious outsiders be a force ...
05.31.2020 A Decade Of Watching Black People Die 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 have begun to echo each other.
05.27.2020 Songs Giving Us (Much Needed) Life 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.
05.20.2020 COVID Diaries: Jessica And Sean Apply For A Loan On March 1, two Los Angeles capoeira teachers signed an expensive lease on their new gym. Two weeks later, they had to close their doors due to the pandemic.
05.13.2020 Ask Code Switch: The Coronavirus Edition We answered our listeners' burning questions about all things race and COVID-19.
05.06.2020 What Does 'Hood Feminism' Mean For A Pandemic? The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated issues that disproportionately affect women—especially women of color. We talked to author Mikki Kendall about race, feminism and COVID-19.
04.29.2020 When Poets Decide Who Counts To close out National Poetry Month, we asked poets of color the question we've been asking in each episode this month: What does it mean to be counted in 2020?
04.24.2020 Puerto Rico, Island Of Racial Harmony? An overwhelming majority of people in Puerto Rico check "white" on the U.S. census, revealing a lot about Puerto Rico's relationship with race, colonialism and the United States.
04.22.2020 The News Beyond The COVID Numbers This week, we're shifting focus from census numbers to the numbers that everyone is obsessed with right now: coronavirus data, and how it breaks down by race.
04.15.2020 Black Like Who? Black identity is central to the question of reparations — and the difficulty of defining blackness becomes even more salient when there's money at stake.
04.11.2020 Why The Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Communities Hardest 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 of coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S. In this bonus ...
04.08.2020 A Treacherous Choice And A Treaty Right The Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation told his people to stay strong during this pandemic, and to remember how much they've endured over their long history.
04.01.2020 Mother, Should I Trust The Census Bureau? Right now, the U.S. Census Bureau is trying to count every person living in the country, but some people are very afraid of how that information will be used by the government.
03.25.2020 Code Switch: Race. In Your Face. 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 conversations.
03.25.2020 Sex, Friendship And Aging: 'It's Not All Downhill From Here' We talk to the best-selling author Terry McMillan about her latest novel, It's Not All Downhill From Here, and the topics the book tackles: aging, friendship and sex.
03.18.2020 The All-Women Mariachi Group That's Lifting Our Spirits Flor de Toloache is making history by playing a style of music that has traditionally been dominated by men.
03.11.2020 The Limits Of Empathy 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 career of a white writer who ...
03.04.2020 When Fear Of The Coronavirus Turns Into Racism And Xenophobia The global response to COVID-19 — the disease caused by the novel coronavirus — has made clear that the fear of contracting disease has an ugly cousin: xenophobia.
02.26.2020 Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop 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 there, but didn't learn about Claude Neal ...
02.19.2020 Blexodus: The Black Exodus From The GOP 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 friendship between Richard ...
02.12.2020 Pt. 2: Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back 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 some people who lived through ...
02.05.2020 Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back 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 more than fifty years later.
01.29.2020 Books For Your Mind, Belly And Soul 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 and/or about people of color.
01.23.2020 Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC 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 flashpoint in your friendships, they heard about ...
01.22.2020 Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends? 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.
01.15.2020 Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever? 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.
01.08.2020 Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House' 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 still be "common as dirt."
01.01.2020 Beautiful Lies 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 society's ideas of who matters and why. Once you start ...
12.25.2019 The Birth Of A 'New Negro' 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 doing so, he was able to completely reimagine what ...
12.18.2019 Slow Burn The shootings of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur in the late 1990s are widely thought to be connected, but have never been officially solved. On the latest season of the Slow Burn podcast, Joel Anderson has been examining the ...
12.11.2019 The Reverse Freedom Rides 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 happened the very next summer, when ...
12.04.2019 Death Of A Blood Sport 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 defy the ban. They say cockfighting has been ...
11.27.2019 Sometimes Explain, Always Complain 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, or let people go along ...
11.20.2019 Sex, Lies And Audio Tape 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," producer James Kim explores all the ...
11.13.2019 Status Update 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 Court gets ready to decide the ...
11.06.2019 Is This What It Means To Be White? 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 spoke to two reporters — ...
10.30.2019 Fear In An Age Of Real-Life Horror 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 how do you navigate fake-horror in the ...
10.23.2019 A Strange And Bitter Crop 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 there, but didn't learn about Claude Neal ...
10.16.2019 President Trump's (Anti-)Social Media 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 universe and found that he does not go after all ...
10.09.2019 That's The Anthem, Get Your [Dang] Hands Up! On this episode, we look closer at hit songs that have taken on broader resonances: from a wistful ode to Puerto to an enduring bop about pushy, unfortunate men — i.e., scrubs.
10.02.2019 Political Prisoners? 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 actually vote.
09.25.2019 The Original Blexit 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.
09.18.2019 The Black Table In The Big Tent 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 what can they teach us about the ...

Older episodes

Code Switch

What's Code Switch about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Code Switch episodes:

An Immune System

We Aren't Who We Think We Are

They Don't Say Our Names Enough

Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Talks 'The Undocumented Americans'

DACA Decision: Check-In with Miriam Gonzalez

Why Now, White People?

Bonus Episode: 'Not Just Another Protest'

Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator'

A Decade Of Watching Black People Die

Songs Giving Us (Much Needed) Life

COVID Diaries: Jessica And Sean Apply For A Loan

Ask Code Switch: The Coronavirus Edition

What Does 'Hood Feminism' Mean For A Pandemic?

When Poets Decide Who Counts

Puerto Rico, Island Of Racial Harmony?

The News Beyond The COVID Numbers

Black Like Who?

Why The Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Communities Hardest

A Treacherous Choice And A Treaty Right

Mother, Should I Trust The Census Bureau?

Code Switch: Race. In Your Face.

Sex, Friendship And Aging: 'It's Not All Downhill From Here'

The All-Women Mariachi Group That's Lifting Our Spirits

The Limits Of Empathy

When Fear Of The Coronavirus Turns Into Racism And Xenophobia

Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop

Blexodus: The Black Exodus From The GOP

Pt. 2: Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back

Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back

Books For Your Mind, Belly And Soul

Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC

Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends?

Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever?

Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House'

Beautiful Lies

The Birth Of A 'New Negro'

Slow Burn

The Reverse Freedom Rides

Death Of A Blood Sport

Sometimes Explain, Always Complain

Sex, Lies And Audio Tape

Status Update

Is This What It Means To Be White?

Fear In An Age Of Real-Life Horror

A Strange And Bitter Crop

President Trump's (Anti-)Social Media

That's The Anthem, Get Your [Dang] Hands Up!

Political Prisoners?

The Original Blexit

The Black Table In The Big Tent

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