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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Status Update

11.13.2019

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 ...

Code Switch episodes:

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 ...
09.11.2019 A Tale Of Two School Districts 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. Bradley, a 1974 Supreme Court case that limited ...
09.04.2019 Searching For Punks 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.
08.28.2019 '20 And Odd. Negroes' 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 later, some African Americans are still ...
08.21.2019 All That Glisters Is Not Gold 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 Venice ...
08.14.2019 Dora's Lasting Magic 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-immigrant rhetoric — and why Dora's character still matters.
08.07.2019 After The Cameras Leave 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 anything, in Ferguson?
07.31.2019 Puerto Ricans Stand Up 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 uprising unlike anything the island had ever ...
07.24.2019 Chicago's Red Summer 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, where black soldiers returning home ...
07.17.2019 Oh So Now It's Racist? 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.
07.10.2019 The Return Of Race Science 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 author Angela Saini, who says that ...
07.03.2019 America's Concentration Camps? 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.
06.26.2019 Some Of The People Knew Magic 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 After Stonewall," features works from from queer artists of ...
06.19.2019 Code Switch Book Club: Summer 2019 Our listeners suggestions include American history, compelling fiction, a few memoirs—and Jane Austen, re-imagined with brown people.
06.12.2019 E Ola Ka 'Olelo Hawai'i 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 Language Shall Live!!!)
06.05.2019 The Original 'Welfare Queen' 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 used one outlier's story to turn the ...
05.29.2019 Salt Fat Acid Race 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 often perceived as being at odds with each other.
05.22.2019 Dispatches From The Schoolyard 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 mic over to ...
05.15.2019 Anger: The Black Woman's 'Superpower' 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 successful, powerful ones.
05.08.2019 We Don't Say That 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 change that. (Note: This story ...
05.01.2019 You Say Chicano, I Say... 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.
04.24.2019 Poets, The Life Boats April is National Poetry Month, so on this episode, we're passing the mic to a handful of talented poets — the people who narrate our lives and help us better understand our own experiences.
04.17.2019 Can the Go-Go Go On? 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 building in the area brought the ...
04.10.2019 Love & Walkouts 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 unrest — which became known as East ...
04.05.2019 Why Is It So Hard To Talk About Israel? 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 with Israel — and were met with fierce condemnation, including charges that ...
03.27.2019 Ask Code Switch: You Are What You Eat 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.
03.20.2019 "On Strike! Blow It Up!" 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 higher education in the United States.
03.13.2019 Respect Yourself 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.
03.06.2019 When Disaster Strikes 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 than people of color and Americans with less wealth.
02.27.2019 On The Shoulders Of Giants 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 protest injustice has long been a tradition in American history. In this ...
02.21.2019 Getting A Foot In the Door 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 that runs mostly ...
02.13.2019 From Blackface To Blackfishing 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 Instagram models trying to pass as black.
02.07.2019 We're Going To Start A Dialogue...Again. 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 on race, who have different views of ...
01.30.2019 Pretty Hurts 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.
01.24.2019 Intrigue At The Census Bureau 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 Department has any say, the fight will go on...all the way ...
01.16.2019 Perfect Son 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 after a health crisis, ...
01.09.2019 The Return 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 House threatened to take it away, Javier went ...
01.02.2019 America's Other Anthems 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 transformation of the children's choir staple, "This Little Light of ...
12.26.2018 Race Underneath The Skin 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.
12.19.2018 Code Switch Goes To College 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 and identity, using Shereen and Gene as ...
12.12.2018 Code Switch Book Club We checked in with authors, poets and great literary minds to see what books they think everyone should read this holiday season.
12.05.2018 The Story Of Mine Mill 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.

Older episodes

Code Switch

What's Code Switch about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Code Switch episodes:

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

A Tale Of Two School Districts

Searching For Punks

'20 And Odd. Negroes'

All That Glisters Is Not Gold

Dora's Lasting Magic

After The Cameras Leave

Puerto Ricans Stand Up

Chicago's Red Summer

Oh So Now It's Racist?

The Return Of Race Science

America's Concentration Camps?

Some Of The People Knew Magic

Code Switch Book Club: Summer 2019

E Ola Ka 'Olelo Hawai'i

The Original 'Welfare Queen'

Salt Fat Acid Race

Dispatches From The Schoolyard

Anger: The Black Woman's 'Superpower'

We Don't Say That

You Say Chicano, I Say...

Poets, The Life Boats

Can the Go-Go Go On?

Love & Walkouts

Why Is It So Hard To Talk About Israel?

Ask Code Switch: You Are What You Eat

"On Strike! Blow It Up!"

Respect Yourself

When Disaster Strikes

On The Shoulders Of Giants

Getting A Foot In the Door

From Blackface To Blackfishing

We're Going To Start A Dialogue...Again.

Pretty Hurts

Intrigue At The Census Bureau

Perfect Son

The Return

America's Other Anthems

Race Underneath The Skin

Code Switch Goes To College

Code Switch Book Club

The Story Of Mine Mill

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