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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
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
27:3605/12/2018
Dog Show!
On this episode, we're hanging out with pups. First, is Kat's anxious dog Samson really just a little beagle bigot? Then, the author Bronwen Dickey and the political scientist Michael Tesler explain how the pitbull transformed from America's most beloved sidekick to a doggo non grata.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
39:1528/11/2018
Live From The Apollo...It's Code Switch!
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
01:02:5221/11/2018
The House On The Corner
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 help — was far more complicated.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
35:4814/11/2018
Politics Podcast Pop Up
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 what it all means.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
28:4207/11/2018
Is Ron Brown High School Working?
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 freshman class. This week, we're going back to see whether the school's unique approach to education is bearing fruit.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
38:0831/10/2018
The Cost To Cast A Ballot
This week: why people don't vote, why people can't vote, and two state races that might have national implications for 2020.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
35:5324/10/2018
What So Proudly We Hail
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 their own messy histories to find out what those songs tell us about American ideals.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
23:2617/10/2018
Our Homeland Is Each Other
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
28:5110/10/2018
Deja Vu All Over Again
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 have — and haven't — learned in the years since the Anita Hill hearings about identity politics, sexual harassment and power.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
24:3403/10/2018
#CriticsSoWhite
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
32:3126/09/2018
Puerto Rico's Other Storm
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 upending life for everyday Puerto Ricans trying to pick up the pieces.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
30:4219/09/2018
Ask Code Switch: School Daze
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 today's Ask Code Switch, we're talking about fitting in, standing out, and standing up for what you believe in.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
42:3512/09/2018
Update: Looking For Marriage In All The Wrong Places
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
33:0806/09/2018
Stuck Off The Realness
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 WNYC's The Realness podcast chronicle Prodigy's struggle with the disease, share the story of how the disease was discovered, and explain how black revolutionaries pressed their communities (and the President of the United States) to do something about it.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
32:2505/09/2018
So What If He Said It?
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 matter?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
20:5029/08/2018
Live From Birmingham...It's Code Switch!
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 shares how she learned to love her hometown. And Gigi Douban of WBHM takes on some tough listener questions about race in the Magic City.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
43:2222/08/2018
Behind The Lies My Teacher Told Me
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 Loewen about the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
18:1415/08/2018
Talk American
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
26:2308/08/2018
Word Watch, The Sequel: 2Watch 2Wordiest
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 "Asian." Come play with us!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
29:5001/08/2018
Word Watch: A Code Switch Game Show
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."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
26:3325/07/2018
Rap On Trial
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 tagging in our friends at Hidden Brain to tell this story.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
51:2218/07/2018
Word Up
Since 1992, the study known as "The 30 Million Word Gap" has, with unusual power, shaped the way educators, parents and policymakers think about educating poor children. NPR education correspondent Anya Kamenetz joins us to talk about what it gets right, and what it misses.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
22:3911/07/2018
Code Switch's Summer Vacation
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
35:4004/07/2018
Immigration Nation
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
33:1427/06/2018
Looking For Marriage In All The Wrong Places
Online matchmaking sites are making it easier than ever for couples seeking an arranged marriage to meet. Well...not all couples.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
32:1620/06/2018
Twenty-First Century Blackface
We have one story of how blackface was alive and well on network television in Colombia until 2015.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
31:1413/06/2018
What We Inherit
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
26:3806/06/2018
A Thousand Ways To Kneel And Kiss The Ground
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 — from Floyd Patterson to Rose Robinson to Colin Kaepernick – have had to walk in order to compete and live by their principles.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
24:2930/05/2018
Of Bloodlines and Conquistadors
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 conquistador pageant, known as La Entrada, which celebrates the arrival of the Spanish.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
33:1323/05/2018
What's Black And Gray And Inked All Over?
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." (Yes, they were called Prison-Style tattoos for a reason.) Freddy Negrete, a pioneer in the industry, started tattooing fellow inmates in the early 1970s. And while he's no longer tatting people up with guitar strings and ballpoint pens, he's still using some of the same techniques he mastered back in the day.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
23:5516/05/2018
Tough Questions For The World's Toughest Job
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 do if your kid's afraid of black people.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
31:1709/05/2018
Code Switch Census Watch 2020
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 question that the Trump administration added to the 2020 census. We also talk about how the U.S. Census helped create the 'Hispanic' label.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
28:5102/05/2018
It's Bigger Than The Ban
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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
42:0925/04/2018
Members of Whose Tribe?
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 — especially now, when anti-Semitism is on the rise.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
31:4518/04/2018
Location! Location! Location!
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 ways we live. We head to a border with an ironic name , before dropping in on a movement to remap parts of the South.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
35:1911/04/2018
The Road To The Promised Land, 50 Years Later
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 final days. The second brings us to Oakland, Calif., where King's assassination "transformed the position of the Black Panther Party overnight."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
23:3104/04/2018
Amara La Negra: Too Black To Be Latina? Too Latina To Be Black?
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't rare and they're no cause for confusion — they're just in dire need of more representation.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
35:3628/03/2018
The Madness Of March
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 players on the court are MOSTLY black. So what, if anything, are those players owed?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
26:1621/03/2018
Who Is 'Us,' Anyway?
"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. On this episode, that celebrity makes his case.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
20:1714/03/2018
Searching For A Home After Hate
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 trying to figure out what it means to stay — and find community — in the small Kansas town where her husband was killed.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
18:1707/03/2018
A House Divided By Immigration Status
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. That's because she comes from a mixed-status family, where some members are free to work, and others are constrained by the fear of deportation.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
17:4928/02/2018
Throw Some Respeck On My Name
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 the forgotten story of Mary Hamilton, a Freedom Rider who struck a blow against a pervasive form of disrespect.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
27:3021/02/2018
Feelings, Finances And Fetishes: Love Is A Racial Battlefield
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 difference between a preference and a fetish? And what's the quickest way for black women to find love?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
26:4714/02/2018
It's Not Just About The Blood
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 they've come to understand their own Native identities and how they'll pass that on to future generations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
21:5307/02/2018
The State Of Our Union Is...Uh, How Much Time You Got?
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 nationalist fringe, and how Puerto Rico is faring as the federal government prepares to cut off its emergency aid.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
31:2731/01/2018
The 'R-Word' In The Age Of Trump
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?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
24:3324/01/2018
A Racial Impostor Epidemic
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?"Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
19:1717/01/2018
Before We Give 2017 The Middle Finger, Part 2
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 look ahead to a year of looking back: the 50th anniversaries of the tumultuous events of 1968.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
26:1903/01/2018
Before We Give 2017 The Middle Finger, Part 1
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, you'll cheer, you'll shed a tear.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
37:4527/12/2017