Code Switch
Episodes
'Payback's A B****'
26 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're ending Black history month where we started it...talking about reparations. On this episode, we're joined by Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow, wh...
A Shot In The Dark
24 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As the rollout of coronavirus vaccines unfolds, one big challenge for public health officials has been the skepticism many Black people have toward th...
Becoming 'Black Moses'
17 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Marcus Garvey was an immigrant, a firebrand, a businessman. He was viewed with deep suspicion by the civil rights establishment. He would also become ...
Black Kiss-tory
10 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Too often, Black history is portrayed as a story of struggle and suffering, completely devoid of joy. So we called up some romance novelists whose wor...
Who's 'Black Enough' For Reparations?
03 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Black History Month is here, which means we're diving into big, sticky questions about what exactly it means to be Black. So this week on the show: Wh...
Stepping Out Of The Shadow Of 'Killer King'
27 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, residents of Compton and Watts in South Los Angeles had to rely on one particularly troubled hospital for their medical care. A new state...
The Last Four Years
20 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump administration is coming to a close, but which elements of the Trump era are here to stay? We spoke to NPR's White House reporter, Ayesha Ra...
From The Fringe To The Capitol
13 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Like all of you, we are still trying to make sense of Wednesday, January 6, 2021. Because even after the past four years, there are still new iteratio...
Finding 'A Perfect Match'
06 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Two close friends both suffered from the same aggressive form of cancer. After years of treatment, one lived and the other died. And while many variab...
The Fire Still Burning
30 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
If 2020 has taught us anything, it's that history informs every aspect of our present. So today we're bringing you an episode of NPR's history podcast...
From Generation To Generation
28 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This month on Code Switch, we're thinking a lot about family and history. So we wanted to bring you this special episode from our friends at NPR's It'...
Family Stories, Family Lies
23 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
December is a month when a lot of people are thinking about family and tradition. Reliving memories. Retelling old stories. Each year, those stories g...
Black And Up In Arms
16 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Guns. They're as American as apple pie. They represent independence and self-reliance. But ... not so much if you're Black. On this episode, we're get...
The Books That Got Away
13 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Listen, a lot has happened this year, and it's no shock that some things may have slipped under the radar. So our resident book expert, Karen Grigsby ...
Stepping Back Inside Carmen Maria Machado's 'Dream House'
09 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's no secret that Code Switch is a team full of book nerds. So this week, we're revisiting one of our favorite book conversations, with author Carme...
Words Of Advice
01 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Let's face it — we could all use some help right now. So today on the pod, we're looking at a few of our favorite questions about race and identity ...
Thank You, Next
25 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's Thanksgiving week, and like basically everything else about 2020, this holiday is on track to be...let's call it "different." But while the world...
The White Elephants In The Room
19 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
One of the biggest storylines from the 2020 presidential race has ... well, race at the center of it. If you paid attention to the stories about exit ...
Claim Us If You're Famous
11 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Kamala Harris is the vice president-elect, which marks an impressive list of firsts: woman in the White House; Black woman in the White House, Asian A...
We ... Don't Know Anything Yet
04 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Election Day has come and gone, but we're still awhile away from knowing what the outcome will be. But while there's a lot we don't about the results,...
An Historic Vote, Among Many
31 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For a lot of reasons, the 2020 election feels historic. But in one important way, it's like so many elections throughout American history: Black and b...
The Latinx Vote Comes Of Age
28 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
For the first time in election history, Latinos are projected to be the second-largest voting demographic in the country. The reason? Gen Z Latinx vot...
Is Trump Really That Racist?
21 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We know his rhetoric has been described as boundary breaking when it comes to race. But U.S. presidents have been enacting racist policies forever. So...
Let's Talk About Kamala Harris
14 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The VP candidate's biography and heritage allow people to project all kinds of ideas onto her, and to see what they want to see. But Kamala Harris's i...
Hip-Hop, Mass Incarceration, And A Conspiracy Theory For The Ages
09 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Why are hip-hop and mass incarceration so entangled in the U.S.? That's the question that our play cousins at NPR Music, Sidney Madden and Rodney Carm...
A Treaty Right For Cherokee Representation
07 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On this week's episode of Code Switch, we talk about the relevance of a 200 year old treaty — one that most Americans don't know that much about, bu...
A New Look For The Fashion Industry?
03 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Fall is the time for glossy fashion magazines, full of dazzling looks and the seasons hottest looks. But this year, we noticed something unusual: The ...
Is It Time To Say R.I.P. To 'POC'?
30 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Suffice it to say, we use the term "POC" a lot on Code Switch. But critiques of the initialism — and the popularization of the term "BIPOC" — caus...
Battle Of The Books
23 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Code Switch team has been mired in a months-long debate that we're attempting to settle once and for all: What kind of books are best to read duri...
The Protests Heard 'Round The World
16 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How did a police killing in Minneapolis lead people thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to pull down the statue of a slave trader who's been ...
The Kids Are All Right
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Adults often find it really hard to talk about race. But kids? Maybe not so much. NPR received more than 2,000 entries in this year's Student Podcast ...
Balls And Strikes
02 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Matilda Crawford. Sallie Bell. Carrie Jones. Dora Jones. Orphelia Turner. Sarah A. Collier. In 1881, these six Black women brought the city of Atlanta...
The United States' Pre-Existing Conditions
26 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
How was the the richest and most powerful country in the world laid low by a virus only nanometers in size? Ed Yong, a science reporter for The Atlant...
Keep Your Friends Closer
19 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As part of our Ask Code Switch series, we're tackling your toughest questions about race and friendship. We help our listeners understand how race and...
Kamala, Joe, And The Fissures In The Base
12 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Black voters are the Democrats' most reliable and influential voting bloc. But this election has underscored the tensions between those Black voters, ...
Bonus Episode: Katrina, 15 Years Later
08 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's hurricane season, so this week, we're bringing you a bonus episode, from the Atlantic's Floodlines podcast. On this episode, "Through the Looking...
The Long, Bloody Strike For Ethnic Studies
05 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The largest public university system in the country, the Cal State system, just announced a new graduation requirement: students must take an ethnic s...
One Korean American's Reckoning
29 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
At a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, a young Korean American man named Edmond Hong decided to grab a megaphone. Addressing other Asian Amer...
Un-HolyLand? An Arab Muslim Reckoning With Racism
22 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
After his daughter's racist and anti-LGBTQ social media posts became public, an Arab-Muslim entrepreneur is fighting to keep his once-burgeoning busin...
Remembering The 'Divine Diahann Carroll'
17 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On what would have been Diahann Carroll's 85th birthday, we're celebrating the legacy of the actress, model and singer. Reporter Sonari Glinton went t...
What's In A 'Karen'?
15 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"Karen" has become cultural shorthand for a white woman who wields her race as a cudgel. And look, we all love to hate a good Karen. But where did thi...
An Immune System
08 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 techn...
We Aren't Who We Think We Are
01 Jul 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
They Don't Say Our Names Enough
27 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 looki...
Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Talks 'The Undocumented Americans'
24 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, The Undocumented Americans, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio writes about delivery men, housekeepers, and day laborers — the undocumente...
DACA Decision: Check-In with Miriam Gonzalez
19 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that DACA could remain in place, recipient Miriam Gonzalez was relieved. As a plaintiff in the case, she's be...
Why Now, White People?
17 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The video is horrific, and the brutality is stark. But that was the case in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 and Minnesota in 2016. This time, though, white peo...
Bonus Episode: 'Not Just Another Protest'
12 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Unmasking The 'Outside Agitator'
10 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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, exa...
A Decade Of Watching Black People Die
31 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The last few weeks have been filled with devastating news — stories about the police killing black people. At this point, these calamities feel fami...
Songs Giving Us (Much Needed) Life
27 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 feeling...
COVID Diaries: Jessica And Sean Apply For A Loan
20 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
On March 1, two Los Angeles-based capoeira instructors realized a dream almost 15 years in the making — they opened up their very own gym. Two weeks...
Ask Code Switch: The Coronavirus Edition
13 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
We take on some of your questions about race, the coronavirus and social distancing. The questions are tricky, and as usual on Code Switch, the realit...
What Does 'Hood Feminism' Mean For A Pandemic?
06 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated issues that disproportionately affect women. So on this episode, we're talking to Mikki Kendall — author of...
When Poets Decide Who Counts
29 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
All month long, we've been answering versions of one giant question: Who counts in 2020? Well, April is poetry month, so we decided to end our series ...
Puerto Rico, Island Of Racial Harmony?
24 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Many Puerto Ricans grow up being taught that they're a mixture of three races: black, white and indigenous. But on the U.S. census, a majority of Puer...
The News Beyond The COVID Numbers
22 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, numbers have been flying at us about the spread of the illness—and then the next minute those same numbers are ...
Black Like Who?
15 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
It's one of the thorniest questions in any theoretical plan for reparations for black people: Who should get them? On this episode, we dig into some i...
Why The Coronavirus Is Hitting Black Communities Hardest
11 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 A...
A Treacherous Choice And A Treaty Right
08 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The Principal Chief of Cherokee Nation told his people to stay strong during this pandemic, and to remember how much they've endured over a long histo...
Mother, Should I Trust The Census Bureau?
01 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Right now, the U.S. Census Bureau is trying to count every single person living in the country. It's a complex undertaking with enormous stakes. But s...
Code Switch: Race. In Your Face.
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ho...
Sex, Friendship And Aging: 'It's Not All Downhill From Here'
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This week, senior correspondent Karen Grigsby Bates talks with the best-selling author Terry McMillan, famous for her novels Waiting to Exhale and How...
The All-Women Mariachi Group That's Lifting Our Spirits
18 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
With all this pandemic anxiety swirling, we thought you might need some music to take your mind off things. So this week, we've got an episode from ou...
The Limits Of Empathy
11 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
When Fear Of The Coronavirus Turns Into Racism And Xenophobia
04 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As international health agencies warn that COVID-19 could become a pandemic, fears over the new coronavirus' spread have activated old, racist suspici...
Claude Neal: A Strange And Bitter Crop
26 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 Cla...
Blexodus: The Black Exodus From The GOP
19 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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? I...
Pt. 2: Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back
12 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 ove...
Black Parents Take Control, Teachers Strike Back
05 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 bro...
Books For Your Mind, Belly And Soul
29 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 o...
Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC
23 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends?
22 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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, Se...
Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever?
15 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House'
08 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Carmen Maria Machado started searching for stories about intimate partner violence in queer relationships, there wasn't much out there. But in he...
Beautiful Lies
01 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
So many people's New Year's resolutions are centered around getting in shape, updating their skincare routine, and generally being more attractive. Bu...
The Birth Of A 'New Negro'
25 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Can travel change your identity? It certainly did for one man. Alain Locke, nicknamed the 'Dean of the Harlem Renaissance,' traveled back and forth be...
Who Shot Ya?
18 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 Martha's Vineyard migrant flight has echoes of a dark past: Reverse Freedom Rides
11 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Many people have heard of the Freedom Rides of 1961, when civil rights activists rode buses through the South to protest segregation. But most people ...
Death Of A Blood Sport
04 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Later this month, a Congressional ban will make cockfighting illegal in U.S. territories. Animal rights activists argue that the sport is cruel and in...
Sometimes Explain, Always Complain
27 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 cul...
Sex, Lies And Audio Tape
20 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 be...
Status Update
13 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 con...
Is This What It Means To Be White?
06 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Fear In An Age Of Real-Life Horror
30 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
A Strange And Bitter Crop
23 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 Cla...
President Trump's (Anti-)Social Media
16 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 dee...
That's The Anthem, Get Your [Dang] Hands Up!
09 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
On this episode, we look closer at hit songs that have taken on broader resonances: from a wistful ode to Puerto Rico to a disco classic about outlast...
Political Prisoners?
02 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In "Prison City," Wisconsin, white elected officials are representing voting districts made up mostly of prisoners. Those prisoners are disproportiona...
The Original Blexit
25 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 an...
The Black Table In The Big Tent
18 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Black Republicans are basically unicorns — they might just be the biggest outliers in American two-party politics. So who are these folks who've fou...
A Tale Of Two School Districts
11 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In many parts of the U.S., public school districts are just minutes apart, but have vastly different racial demographics — and receive vastly differ...
'20 And Odd. Negroes'
28 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In August of 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia with dozens of enslaved Africans — the first black people in the colonies that wou...
All That Glisters Is Not Gold
21 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 grou...
Dora's Lasting Magic
14 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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...
After The Cameras Leave
07 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 bl...
Puerto Ricans Stand Up
31 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Chicago's Red Summer
24 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 doz...
Oh So Now It's Racist?
17 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 orga...
The Return Of Race Science
10 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...