Code Switch
Episodes
It's giving incel: The evolution of internet slang
27 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
How have recommendation algorithms affected language? Linguist Adam Aleksic — aka the Etymology Nerd — says most “Gen-Z slang” is either appro...
Why so many Americans never learned to swim
23 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In the U.S., roughly 8 in 10 kids from lower-income households grow up with few or no swimming skills — and Black and Latino children lag behind the...
Why do Latinos join ICE?
20 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Latinos make up at least 50% of all Customs and Border Patrol agents and 20% of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — which has a lot of crit...
Is astrology real? Depends who you ask
16 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Happy tenth birthday to us! In true Gemini fashion - we're that sign - we're celebrating by exploring our duality through astrology. Our intrepid Aqua...
What the Savannah Bananas have to do with race and baseball
13 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Ever heard of the Savannah Bananas? They're a baseball team with millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram — known as much for their dance routi...
How the Supreme Court gutted Black voting power
09 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act marked what many historians mark as the actual beginning of democracy in the US. But last week the Supreme C...
The minefields of parenting and race
06 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world. Between choosing a neighborhood to live in or whether to send your kid to public school, there are...
Tradwives and the pressures of modern motherhood
02 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Motherhood in the U.S. is revered. Actual mothers? Not so much. So where's a bedraggled mom to turn when she feels overworked, overwhelmed, and undera...
Are Black men facing a mental health crisis, a patriarchy crisis, or both?
29 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few weeks, there have been multiple high-profile incidents of Black men committing acts of violence against their loved ones, from a man...
In college admission, trauma is shorthand for Blackness
25 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
At most elite colleges and universities, affirmative action is a thing of the past. But admissions offices are still interested in building racially d...
Hate it or love it, is DEI a distraction?
22 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump administration has been very candid about their disdain for all things DEI. But it's not just conservatives who have critiques. On this epis...
Is the U.S. 'empire' beginning to show cracks?
18 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump administration's recent military actions have had certain observers asking... are we going full empire? But Daniel Immerwahr, a historian an...
Gaza commanded our attention. Why hasn't Sudan?
15 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What makes people pay a lot of attention to some wars and crises, but not others? And what does that attention actually do for the people in those sit...
How your vote became your identity
11 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Do you vote Republican or Democrat? And why does that answer reveal so much about the rest of who you are? We talk to political scientist Lilliana Mas...
As the definition of “terrorist” expands, so does state violence
08 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump administration has called more and more groups “terrorists,” from “narco-terrorists” in Ecuador to people who protest ICE to the ent...
From the Confederacy to the White House: How Southern beauty traditions went MAGA
04 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What do the women in Bama Rush, beauty pageants and President Trump's orbit have in common? Their look traces back to the beauty traditions of the whi...
'Mar-a-Lago face:' MAGA's aesthetic loyalty test
01 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The MAGA look -- you know the one: dramatic eyeliner, long, wavy hair, sheath dresses -- is a defining feature of President Trump's Republican party. ...
Being an “ally” is kind of cringe. Why?
28 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
People have been talking about being "allies" for a long time now. But what has that actually meant, over the years? And how performative should allys...
Markwayne Mullin is conservative, Christian, Cherokee, and the new head of DHS
25 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as the newest head of the Department of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem. It's an enormously co...
What Trump's language has in common with cult language
21 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When President Trump says things like “fake news,” “witch hunt” or even “Make America Great Again,” he’s not just using catchy phrases -...
The Scouts are too woke, according to Pete Hegseth
18 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently put Scouting America — formerly known as the Boy Scouts — "on notice." The once great organization was ...
The Black civil rights leader who sued to be called “Miss”
14 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
It’s Alabama, 1963. A black woman stands before a judge, but she refuses to acknowledge his questions until he addresses her by the same honorific g...
What the success of "Sinners" does (and doesn't) say about race and Hollywood
11 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sinners has already broken records — it's the most Oscar-nominated film in the history of the Academy Awards. But is the movie itself actually histo...
Why Iranian perspectives often get flattened and caricatured
07 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Iran has 90 million people of different ethnicities, faiths, and backgrounds, who have very different ideas about the country. Iranian American schola...
How the internet got gentrified
04 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
We all know what gentrification looks like IRL — boxy, corporate-owned apartment complexes, places to get a quick bowl for lunch, streets that are d...
Remembering Jesse Jackson
28 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The late Reverend Jesse Jackson was — and still is — a revered civil rights activist, political trailblazer, and pop culture icon. For his critics...
The Young Lords' legacy of fighting for Puerto Rico from the mainland
25 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
While Puerto Rican independence is in the spotlight after Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show, we're throwing it to our play cousins at La Brega, a...
White Culture
21 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Jeremy Carl — President Trump's nominee for a senior State Department role -- was called out for his commentary on "white erasure" during his Senate...
The U.S., Cuba, and the people caught between
18 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. has been deporting people from Cuba in record numbers. That has come as a shock to many Cuban American communities, who had long enjoyed spec...
Trump shared a racist "joke." That humor is an American tradition
14 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
When President Trump shared a racist video on his Truth Social account last week, the blowback was real. But the video is also part of a tradition tha...
Was dating while Black always so hard?
11 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Dating can be tough. Dating while Black? That can feel nigh impossible sometimes, given how the long tentacles of racism have wrapped themselves aroun...
Bad Bunny, resistance, and the Super Bowl halftime show
07 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Can a superstar be an actual voice of resistance? How does Bad Bunny's choice to perform at the NFL Super Bowl halftime show square with his politics ...
The history of Black History Month, one hundred years in
04 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In so many spaces, celebrating Black History History month means learning a few fun facts about famous African Americans. But Black History Month was ...
Americans are worried about crime. Here’s how politicians leverage it
31 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
"Fighting crime" is often used as a justification for many of the Trump administration's policies — from mass deportations to its actions in Venezue...
What the history of U.S. protests illuminates about today
28 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
To the casual observer, it might seem like the U.S. has spent years in a constant state of protest — and they’re only getting more intense under t...
What the quarter-zip craze tells us about Blackness and respectability
24 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
What does the humble, boring quarter-zip sweater have to do with respectability politics and Blackness? Apparently, a lot! When two young Black men on...
How local police extend ICE's reach, even in sanctuary cities
21 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Sanctuary policies have been described on both sides of the aisle as protecting immigrants. But in many ways, in practice, they have given rise to a s...
Freedom through the eyes of foes: Rev. Martin Luther King and Sen. Barry Goldwater
17 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In honor of MLK Day, we sit down with historian Nicholas Buccola, author of One Man’s Freedom, to re-examine the concept of "freedom" by comparing t...
Venezuela and the long tradition of US interference
14 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. ousting of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is just the latest chapter in a long, troubling history of American intervention in Latin Ame...
Jelani Cobb talks democracy, Trumpism, and the future of journalism
10 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
2026 is off to an intense start, but many of the events we're seeing play out today come out of dynamics that have been building for years. Jelani Cob...
How 'The Joy Luck Club' highlighted the complicated dynamics of immigrant families
07 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Connecting across generations can be tough, even in the same family. This is at the heart of Amy Tan’s 1989 novel The Joy Luck Club. This week, we'r...
Support for Israel is waning, but many White Evangelical Christians remain steadfast
03 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Among the American public, support for Israel has fallen among almost every demographic group. But for many White Evangelical Christians over the age ...
From "CRT" to "DEI": A history of race and moral panics
31 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A few years back, many politicians were raising the alarm about the dangers of "CRT" in schools. Today, the new risk to public education is "DEI." Wha...
Where ICE came from, and where it needs to go
27 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2018, in light of some pretty aggressive rhetoric and policies being enacted by the Trump administration, many people were asking a pretty direct q...
What the 1968 fight for ethnic studies classes teaches us about today
24 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The fight over the soul of higher education is very alive right now, with the Trump administration engaged in dozens of investigations and multiple la...
Keep culture and tradition alive at the mahjong table
20 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we keep family traditions alive? For some people, it's by speaking their heritage language, or learning how to cook family recipes. For Nicole ...
The fight over public education, from Texas to the White House
17 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For months, the Trump administration has been making moves to dismantle the Department of Education — with mixed success. But when it comes to the f...
The evolution of blackface in the age of AI
13 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
With AI image and video generators, it's become easier than ever to create hyper-realistic clips of almost anything. Today, we're looking at the lands...
In the Trump era, has the word 'racist' lost its meaning?
10 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Over the past few weeks, President Trump has amplified derogatory and stereotypical comments about people from Afghanistan. He's derided Somalians as ...
Remembering disability activist Alice Wong
06 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Alice Wong was a major force in disability activism. She passed away last month at the age of 51. For Here and Now, reporter Elissa Nadworny speaks wi...
How the Trump administration is reshaping immigration
03 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Though there’s a massive backlog of immigration cases that need rulings, the Trump administration has been firing immigration judges. Ximena Bustill...
Gratitude isn’t just for Thanksgiving
29 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
For the millions of Americans that celebrate Thanksgiving, it's a time when many people reflect on the things and the people in our lives that they ap...
How poetry helps Ada Limon navigate life, even when it’s tough
26 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As we enter "cozy season," we're revisiting our conversation with Ada Limon, who just wrapped up her tenure as the U.S. Poet Laureate. She talks to us...
Fearing deportation, undocumented parents are preparing to leave their kids behind
22 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the show, NPR immigration reporter Jasmine Garsd introduces us to two families in Washington, D.C.. One has made the difficult decision to se...
How undocumented families are navigating the looming threat of ICE
19 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Today on the show, NPR immigration reporter Jasmine Garsd takes us into the dimly lit living rooms of immigrant families — families trying to figure...
How Trump's cuts to public media threaten the first Native American station
15 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On October 1, 2025, public radio stations lost all of their federal funding -- and for Black and Native American community stations, the cuts hit hard...
Tribal colleges are a unique resource — and they're under threat
12 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College has classes on everything from Native American studies to gardening to equine sciences to the Hidatsa language. Like oth...
The hidden history of demonizing SNAP recipients
08 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Around 42 million people in the United States get SNAP benefits each month to cover basic needs like eggs, bread, and infant formula. Because of the g...
Freedom of speech has never been for everyone
05 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fights over free speech have taken up a lot of space in the zeitgeist lately. People on both the left and right claim to be the defenders of free spee...
How Zohran Mamdani is scrambling establishment Democrat's brains
01 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Zohran Mamdani has become one of the most popular and polarizing politicians in the last year. How did the New York City mayoral candidate go from a r...
How Elon Musk and JD Vance plan to 'save civilization' with more babies
29 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
What do conservatives like JD Vance and tech executives like Elon Musk have in common? They, like other pronatalists, want to “save civilization” ...
Unpacking the Trump administration's immigration raid in Chicago
25 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
After midnight on September 30th, helicopters hovered above a large Chicago apartment building, and heavily armored agents rappelled from the choppers...
Racist slurs, naughty words, and how dictionary editors define them
22 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How do we define slurs like the N-word? Whether it’s heated debates about racist or ableist slurs, arguments about gender, or even new kinds of prof...
What does Israel mean to American Jews?
15 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Even since before October 7, 2023, American Jews have found themselves grappling with what it means to speak out against Israel and the rifts in their...
Stacey Abrams on how voter suppression threatens democracy
11 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Stacey Abrams is one of the most high-profile voting rights activists in the U.S. She says whether we have an actual democracy might literally depend ...
Voting rights are at risk. Here's why.
08 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Next Wednesday, the Supreme Court hears a case that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act, which was passed to ensure fair districting and voting...
Why Malala Yousafzai is a hero in the West but not back home
01 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Why is Malala Yousafzai so revered in the West while being much less popular in her home country of Pakistan? On this week's Code Switch, we unpack ho...
Is the American dream a scam?
24 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on the pod: author Edgar Gomez talks about what it was like growing up poor, queer, and Nicaraguan Puerto Rican in Florida. His new memoir, ...
The stakes of calling Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide
17 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week: why the term "genocide" matters when talking about Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza. On Tuesday, a UN commission said it found...
How calls for mass deportations went mainstream
10 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Calls to ban “third world immigration” in favor of “remigration” -- or, mass deportation -- went from fringe ideas in far right circles to one...
Digging into our ancestors' drama
03 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we're bringing you a special episode from our play cousins over at the podcast "Our Ancestors Were Messy." We hear about how Zora Neale Hur...
How racism kept Americans out of pools
27 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we're looking into the history of public swimming pools in the U.S., and the legacy that pool segregation has had on swimming skills in the...
How Trump's D.C. takeover criminalizes homelessness
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On August 11, President Trump announced his intention to "rescue" the nation's capital. A central feature of his plan involved using federal officials...
Statelessness, but make it funny
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mo Amer is the creator and star of the hit Netflix comedy series Mo. It's a first-of-its kind Palestinian-American sitcom with a fraught plot line a...
Hot weather kills. Who gets protected?
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The heat disproportionately kills poor, elderly and people of color. So on this episode we're focusing on the lives of those impacted, from roofers in...
You told us — what brings you joy
02 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On this bonus episode of the show, we're hearing from some of YOU about what brings you joy, how you connect joy and justice work, and why joy is so i...
Is joy an act of resistance?
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The phrase "joy is resistance" has been popping up all over the place lately. But what, exactly, does it mean? In this episode, we're unpacking what j...
Protests are near constant. Do they work?
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To the casual observer, it might seem like the U.S. has been spent years in a constant state of protest, from the Women's March in 2017 to the racial ...
Congress has voted to eliminate government funding for public media
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Act now to ensure public media remains free and accessible to all. Your donation will help this essential American service survive and thrive. Visit d...
The books, movies and music that shaped the Code Switch team
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Once upon a time, members of the Code Switch team were just kids, learning about race and identity for the first time. So on this episode, we're shari...
From gr*pists to nip nops, how self-censorship shapes the language of TikTok
09 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Have you noticed people using terms like "unalive" and "pew pews" on social media? There's a reason for that: some people are changing the way they sp...
The lighter side of immigration: A day at the park in Queens
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This week on Code Switch, we're doing a different kind of immigration coverage. We're telling a New York story: one that celebrates the beautiful, eve...
Dispatches from the living memory of trans people of color
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trans people are major targets of the second Trump administration. But in a way, that's nothing new; trans people have been fighting for their rights,...
Iranian American identity was under scrutiny long before the U.S. struck Iran
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're throwing back to a conversation we had in 2020 with Jason Rezaian, Iranian American journalist who had been previously jailed in Iran. Back in J...
The administration's fight against antisemitism is dividing Jews
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In recent months we've seen the Trump administration punishing speech critical of Israel in its widening effort to combat what it sees as antisemitism...
How the news can make us think we need more policing
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As President Trump flirts with invoking the Insurrection Act on anti-ICE demonstrators in LA, we look back at the national protests of 2020, when Trum...
What Trump's fixation on 'white genocide' in South Africa tells us about the U.S.
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How the false notion of "white genocide" traveled from the political fringes to the Oval Office. The week on Code Switch, we're talking to a reporter ...
Why tacos are as 'American' as apple pie
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The hunger for Mexican food in the U.S. is longstanding — from the conquistadors' love affair with chocolate, to the classic San Francisco burrito. ...
How race science shows up at the doctor's office
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We've probably said it a hundred times on Code Switch — biological race is not a real thing. So why is race still used to help diagnose certain cond...
Arab and Black communities are trying to reconcile after Trump's election
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Trump's win exposed political tensions between Arab-American voters — who were critical of Democratic support of Israel's war in Gaza, and Black vot...
40 years ago, Philadelphia police bombed this Black neighborhood on live TV
07 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We're looking back on the day a Philadelphia police department helicopter dropped a bomb on a rowhouse in a middle-class neighborhood. Even though tha...
In the face of trans erasure, what can we learn from Marsha P. Johnson?
30 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marsha P. Johnson was a trailblazer in the fight for gay rights. But Johnson's legacy extends beyond her activism: "Marsha was a really full person wh...
Why now is the time to find power in "otherness"
23 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Viet Thanh Nguyen came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam when he was four years old. Growing up in San Jose, California, Nguyen remembers the mome...
Revisiting the fight over the Lakota language as Trump targets "divisive narratives"
16 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the Trump administration targets the Smithsonian Institute for "divisive narratives" and "improper ideology," it got us thinking about how we prese...
Why Trump is sending Venezuelans to El Salvador
09 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of President Trump's main campaign promises was carrying out mass deportations. We look at how the Trump administration is testing the U.S. legal ...
What's lost in Trump's DEI ban?
02 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump has put diversity, equity, and inclusion in his crosshairs — but there's no consensus on what DEI even means. Some say that that fuz...
With measles on the rise, what we can learn from past epidemics
26 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As the U.S. health system grapples with new outbreaks and the risk of old diseases making a comeback, we're looking to the past to inform how people i...
What Mahmoud Khalil's arrest means for ... everyone
19 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia alum, was detained by ICE for his role in leading pro-Palestinian protests at his former unive...
This Palestinian American's debut novel may not be political — but her existence is
12 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
To be a Palestinian American writer right now can lead to a lot of expectation to focus on identity and devastation, but in her debut novel, Too Soon,...
A look at the human toll of the construction of the Panama Canal
05 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Panama Canal's impact on the geopolitical stage far outreaches its roughly 51-mile stretch of land and water. This week, we're trying to understan...