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.

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Can you travel the world — ...

11.29.2023

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 to enforce our ideas about the world than ...

Code Switch episodes:

11.29.2023 Can you travel the world — ethically? 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 to enforce our ideas about the world than ...
11.22.2023 A Tale of Two Tribal Nations 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 Ojibwe in northern Minnesota, where the tribe owns ...
11.15.2023 Who Has The "Right To A Story?" 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 stories are told — or aren't ...
11.08.2023 How does a computer discriminate? 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 bias intersect. Safiya Noble, a professor ...
11.03.2023 All The Only Ones: The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle 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 Zen, a Mexican-American, New Orleans native, who is ...
11.01.2023 Looking For My People In The Black Punk Scene 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 smiling Black ...
10.25.2023 Giving up on identity with Ada Limón 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 search for the "original animal at [her] core."
10.18.2023 The agony and ecstasy of parenting with Hari Kondabolu 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 are the larger social questions ...
10.11.2023 What does it mean to be good? 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 immigration advocacy, she starts to grapple with the question of ...
10.04.2023 Student activists are fighting big coal, and winning South Baltimore has some of the most polluted air in the country. Local teenagers are fighting polluters back, and slowly building toward climate justice.
09.27.2023 Probation and parole — the under-researched arms of mass incarceration 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 conversations, people often neglect to think about probation and parole — two ...
09.20.2023 'I Can Die For This Country, But I Can't Learn' 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?
09.13.2023 Remembering and unremembering, from Kigali to Nashville 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 never meant to include them. So what happens ...
09.06.2023 Fall football — or the fall of football? 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 implications for the ...
08.30.2023 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 ...
08.23.2023 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? Code Switch talks to comedians Aparna Nancherla, Brian Bahe and Maz Jobrani about how and why race makes an appearance in ...
08.16.2023 Family, fortune, and the fight for Osage headrights 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 part of one particular asset: ...
08.09.2023 How Hip-Hop Fights The Power — And Also Serves It 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 global industry and tool for U.S. diplomacy it has become, America's relationship with ...
08.02.2023 Rolling the dice on race in Dungeons & Dragons 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 world. This week ...
07.26.2023 Code Switch's beach reads — no beach required 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 drama from NPR), and we ...
07.19.2023 This Conspiracy Soup Contains Bugs — And Racism 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 proponents' racist fear-mongering.
07.12.2023 Is "home" still home after 30 years away? 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 conception of what ...
07.05.2023 What Happens After A Racist Massacre In Your Neighborhood? 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 coaches in the year after the racist massacre at ...
06.28.2023 Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part Two 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 ancestors were enslaved, because despite ...
06.21.2023 Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part One 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 meets people who, like her, are caretakers ...
06.14.2023 Going to a white church in a Black body 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 on this week's episode of Code Switch. He talks to us about Black Christians who, like ...
06.07.2023 Spilling the "T" with comedian D'Lo 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 putting their business on front street for the ...
05.31.2023 Exclusion, resilience and the Chinese American experience on 'Mott Street' 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 on a journey to learn ...
05.24.2023 Across the ocean: a Japanese American story of war and homecoming 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 is another, less-known story about the tens of thousands ...
05.17.2023 The implications of the case against ICWA 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 reverse centuries of U.S. law protecting the rights of ...
05.10.2023 Naomi Jackson talks 'losing and finding my mind' "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 illness, including how she has had to ...
05.03.2023 K-Pop's Surprising B(l)ackstory 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. This week, we're sharing an ...
04.26.2023 The Fallout of a Callout 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 white, for voicing the Indian character on The Simpsons. ...
04.19.2023 Self-Care Laid Bare "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 do? On this episode, host B.A. Parker asks: ...
04.12.2023 W2s and WTFs 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 you get that letter, how ...
04.05.2023 Women in hip-hop push back against the male gaze 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 voices of artists who ...
03.29.2023 The Tricky Obligations of Utang Na Loob 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 ...
03.22.2023 The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott 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, the women behind ...
03.15.2023 Whose Nightmares Are We Telling? How Horror Has Evolved for People of Color 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 can actually help us empathize with each ...
03.08.2023 The Women Who Influence How America Eats 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. But with more food authors of color taking center stage, ...
03.01.2023 This Racism Is Killing Me Inside This week, we revisit an episode from 2018 that looks into how discrimination not only degrades your health, but can cost you your life. We hear the story of Shalon Irving, who died after giving birth to her daughter. Black ...
02.22.2023 Black History's Family Tree Brett Woodson Bailey grew up knowing he was the descendant of "the father of Black history," Carter G. Woodson. He also grew up with the support and guidance of his "cousin" Craig Woodson, who is white. In this week's Code ...
02.15.2023 The Merengue War From the dance floors of weddings and bar mitzvahs to the Billboard Hot 100, chances are, you've enjoyed some merengue music – think about the 1998 Puerto Rican hit 'Suavemente,' which topped charts across the globe. But did you know ...
02.08.2023 Reckoning With The NFL's Rooney Rule The large majority of NFL players are people of color. The coaches on the sidelines? Not so much. In this episode, we're looking at the NFL's famous diversity plan and what it might tells us about why so many corporate ...
02.01.2023 Celebrating Lunar New Year In A Time Of Grief In this week's episode, we dive into the traditions and stories that shape Lunar New Year, and why violence and tragedy in the U.S. on the eve of the holiday cuts deep for celebrants. We also visit Monterey Park, California, ...
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 From the world of local TV news, meet Code Switch's newest co-host, Lori Lizarraga! Before she was born, her mother had the nickname "Lori" ready for her, even though her legal name is Laura. The story behind why starts more ...
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.

Older episodes

Code Switch

What's Code Switch about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Code Switch episodes:

Can you travel the world — ethically?

A Tale of Two Tribal Nations

Who Has The "Right To A Story?"

How does a computer discriminate?

All The Only Ones: The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle

Looking For My People In The Black Punk Scene

Giving up on identity with Ada Limón

The agony and ecstasy of parenting with Hari Kondabolu

What does it mean to be good?

Student activists are fighting big coal, and winning

Probation and parole — the under-researched arms of mass incarceration

'I Can Die For This Country, But I Can't Learn'

Remembering and unremembering, from Kigali to Nashville

Fall football — or the fall of football?

Bad Bunny, Reggaeton, and Resistance

What Makes A Good Race Joke?

Family, fortune, and the fight for Osage headrights

How Hip-Hop Fights The Power — And Also Serves It

Rolling the dice on race in Dungeons & Dragons

Code Switch's beach reads — no beach required

This Conspiracy Soup Contains Bugs — And Racism

Is "home" still home after 30 years away?

What Happens After A Racist Massacre In Your Neighborhood?

Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part Two

Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part One

Going to a white church in a Black body

Spilling the "T" with comedian D'Lo

Exclusion, resilience and the Chinese American experience on 'Mott Street'

Across the ocean: a Japanese American story of war and homecoming

The implications of the case against ICWA

Naomi Jackson talks 'losing and finding my mind'

K-Pop's Surprising B(l)ackstory

The Fallout of a Callout

Self-Care Laid Bare

W2s and WTFs

Women in hip-hop push back against the male gaze

The Tricky Obligations of Utang Na Loob

The Women Behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Whose Nightmares Are We Telling? How Horror Has Evolved for People of Color

The Women Who Influence How America Eats

This Racism Is Killing Me Inside

Black History's Family Tree

The Merengue War

Reckoning With The NFL's Rooney Rule

Celebrating Lunar New Year In A Time Of Grief

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

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