Parker has been trying to find her place in the banjo world. So this week, she talks to Black banjo players like Grammy nominee Rhiannon Giddens about creating community and reclaiming an instrument that's historically already theirs.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This week Code Switch digs into The Ministry of Time, a new book that author Kailene Bradley describes as a "romance about imperialism." It focuses on real-life Victorian explorer Graham Gore, who died on a doomed Arctic expedition in 1847. But in this novel, time travel is possible and Gore is brought to the 21st century where he's confronted with the fact that everyone he's ever known is dead, that the British Empire has collapsed, and that perhaps he was a colonizer.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Falling in love in a time of colonization

This week on the podcast, we're revisiting a conversation we had with Ava Chin about her book, Mott Street. Through decades of painstaking research, the fifth-generation New Yorker discovered the stories of how her ancestors bore and resisted the weight of the Chinese Exclusion laws in the U.S. – and how the legacy of that history still affects her family today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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

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 hip-hop — and the people who make it — is complicated.

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

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 of "culturally significant historical places."

Honoring My Enslaved Ancestors, Part One

B.A. Parker is learning the banjo

Dominique Foxworth played in the NFL from 2005 to 2011. After he retired, he went on to become the head of the NFL Players' Association, the union that represents players in the league. In this conversation, he describes what it was like sitting across from the league's lawyers, advocating for things like players' health care at a time when the risks of playing football were becoming clearer.NOTE: This episode includes discussions of suicide. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 9 8 8 to reach the Suicide &amp; Crisis Lifeline.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

An NFL star on what the game costs those who play it

The way football is played and who plays it — from the pee-wees to the pros — tells us so much about race, labor and power in the United States. In a conversation with cultural anthropologist Tracie Canada we explore how starting from young ages, Black players are nudged towards more physically taxing positions that require more strength, athleticism, speed. That affects who gets injured, how they're cared for and how they get paid.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What football tells us about race, labor and power

Critics point out the apparent hypocrisy of a pro-Black rapper like Kendrick Lamar headlining the Super Bowl halftime show, since the NFL isn't exactly an institution that's known for its support of Black lives. So on this episode, we're digging into the history of hip hop and how it's been co-opted.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hip-hop is 'fight the power' but also advertises for the power

Martin Luther King Jr. was relatively unpopular when he was assassinated. But the way Americans of all political stripes invoke his memory today, you'd think he was held up as a hero. In this episode, we hear how King's legacy got co-opted.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The co-opting of MLK Jr. by...everybody

Comedian Youngmi Mayer talks about how her Korean family uses humor as a tool for survival. She gets into the Korean comedic tradition and why the saddest stuff is what makes them laugh the hardest.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Why laughing while crying is so Korean

How should Black parents talk to their kids about the police? Gene gets into it with his friend Chenjerai Kumanyika, host of Empire City, a podcast about the history of the NYPD. Chenjerai's show sprang out of his own attempts to talk with his young daughter about the police and what they do.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

"The police are our friends"?

Happy New Year, fam! This year, we're celebrating Ecuadorian style: by burning away what we want to let go of from last year and creating space for moving ahead with this year. Code Switch producer Xavier Lopez takes us on his journey to explore the tradition of his childhood, learn its origins, and honor it in his life in New York today.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How celebrating an Ecuadorian New Year's tradition brings us closer together

Shot and severely injured while visiting family in Vermont in 2023, Hisham Awartani grapples with his recovery in the U.S., and the unfolding war at home in the West Bank.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

He was shot in Vermont. Now he wants to go home to the West Bank

Even before Luigi Mangione was arrested for killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the reaction to the shooter was far different than other instances of gun violence.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Luigi Mangione and America's pent up pain

Twenty-five years ago, a boy named Eliaán Gonzaález appeared — remarkably alive — in the waters off the coast of Miami. Immediately, his fate became the subject of an international debate: Should he stay in the U.S.? Or should he be returned to Cuba, to live with his father? From our play cousins at Futuro Studios, this is part of their series Chess Piece: The Elián González Story.We want to hear from you! Please tell us what you think about Code Switch by taking our short survey. Thank you!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Freedom, Autonomy and the Elián González Story

In his new book, The Black Utopians, author Aaron Robertson tells the story of how Black folks have created many different versions of utopian communities throughout history — and why those communities tend to be especially meaningful during times of political tension and racial unrest.We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about Code Switch and how we could do better. Please tell us what you think by taking our short survey, and thank you!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Dreaming of a Black Utopia in Trump's America

We continue our conversation about the hellscape of modern motherhood, and look into an alternative to the tradwife lifestyle.We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about Code Switch and how we could do better. Please tell us what you think by taking our short survey, and thank you!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Where tradwives and leftists agree

Motherhood in the U.S. is revered. Actual mothers? Not so much. But momfluencers and tradwives are stepping in to fill that void. We dive into that world to understand how it intersects with the incoming presidential administration, what it has to do with white supremacy, and where moms of color fit in.We want to hear from our listeners about what you like about Code Switch and how we could do better. Please tell us what you think by taking our short survey, and thank you!Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Momfluencers, tradwives, and the perils of modern motherhood

What lessons should we all be taking from the historic match-up between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris? New York Times political correspondent Astead Herndon says the big takeaway from this election isn't the divide between Republicans and Democrats, it's the divide between political elites and the American public. And he says it may be time to rethink our presumptions about how much voters care about representation.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The 'little r' racist idea that swung the election

There are wild stories about the fraudsters who pretend to be Indigenous, but sometimes casting doubt on people's indigeneity can cause more harm than good. On this episode we hear from the person behind the "Alleged Pretendians List" and someone whose name appeared on that controversial list. The problem? He's legitimately Native.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When Pretendian investigations go wrong

The Code Switch team spent Election Day talking to folks about how the outcome might impact them. From green card holding Trump supporters in Queens, to first-time voters at Harris' watch party in DC, we bring you this time capsule of the day before we knew.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The day Trump won...again

As we take in the news of another Donald Trump administration, we thought who better to turn the mic over to than the hosts of NPR's Politics Podcast.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

You can't outrun voters' feelings about the economy

The manosphere is a sprawling online ecosystem aimed at disgruntled men. Now a subset of the manosphere aimed at Black men is exposing cracks in Black voters' steadfast support of Democrats. On this episode, we take a look at how the Black manosphere came to be and wonder: could this loose community of aggrieved dudes swing the election?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Diving into the Black Manosphere

That's how Nagle begins her new book and how she frames the version of history she's telling. The book digs into the past and future of Native sovereignty through the lens of one of the most significant Supreme Court rulings for Native Americans in over 100 years.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Spitting on Andrew Jackson's grave with Rebecca Nagle

We travel to Dearborn, aka the "capital of Arab America." The Dearbornites we met said that the war in Gaza is the key issue on their minds as they consider how to cast their ballots. What these voters ultimately decide could have huge consequences for the whole country.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In Michigan, Arab Americans weigh the power of a vote

This week on Ask Code Switch, we're getting into the question a lot of minorities face when climbing the ladder at work – am I rising because I'm talented or because I'm tokenized?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ask Code Switch: Am I the "token" at work?

In the year since the devastating Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Even more have been injured or displaced. Still, many Palestinians across the diaspora feel that they aren't allowed to share their stories — that the fullness of their humanity is too often reduced to a few soundbites on the news, or images of people dying. So on this episode, we're revisiting conversations with Fady Joudah and Tariq Luthun — two Palestinian American poets who have tried to carve out space to expand the kind of stories that Palestinians are allowed to tell.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Two Palestinian writers on the right to share their stories

This week on Ask Code Switch, when it comes to race and dating, how important is diversity in your dating history? What does the race of our past romances say about us? And how do we know when we've crossed the line from preference to fetish?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ask Code Switch: Is it a preference or fetish?

This week, we're looking into the endgame of the racist and false rumors targeting Haitian immigrants. Are the lies being told about migrants across the country part of a strategy to land a bigger lie: that undocumented immigrants could steal the election?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Trump campaign strategy to demonize Haitian immigrants

Today on Ask Code Switch, we're talking about taste. How we eat, why we prefer certain foods, and where those preferences come from. We're getting into all the things that shape and change our taste buds, from the genes you inherit to falling in love.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ask Code Switch: Is picky eating about taste or race?

As we close in on the election, it's Trump-supporting Latinos that some pollsters believe could decide this race. So how did we get here? In her new book, Defectors, Paola Ramos explains that part of the story of being Latino has always been this temptation to defect.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Latinos are moving to the far right. Paola Ramos thinks she knows why

Today on Ask Code Switch, we tackle a question about race, bike lanes and gentrification. Who are bike lanes serving? Are these safety measures protecting everyone equally, or are bike advocates on the wrong side of progress?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ask Code Switch: Do bike lanes cause gentrification?

B.A. Parker brings us around the country to see what access to books is looking like for students in Texas, librarians in Idaho and her own high school English teacher in Pennsylvania.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Fighting back on book bans

This week on Ask Code Switch, we're getting into the politics and power dynamics of race and dishes in the workplace (which is more fraught than you might think). When no one is "technically" the "dishwasher" at work...who's washing the dishes and should you feel some type of way about it?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ask Code Switch: The racial politics of washing dishes?

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, everyday life of the immigrant. Code Switch producer, Xavier Lopez and NPR immigration reporter, Jasmine Garsd spend a day at Flushing Meadows Corona Park.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The park. Sunday. Queens, New York.

Ask Code Switch is back! Lori Lizarraga and the Code Switch team tackle all new listener questions this fall. From the tacky and tricky to the cringe and candid – we're bringing our race advice to the questions you're scared to ask.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Ask Code Switch: Is this a racist question?

Michael Vargas Arango was having a fairly typical day — hanging out at his home in Medellín, playing Xbox with one of his friends. Only, when he spoke to his mom during the day, he realized that she had no idea what "friend" he was talking about — she hadn't seen or heard anyone besides her son in the house all day. That was the first inkling either of them had that Michael was dealing with something unusual. It was the beginning of the long road toward Michael being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. On this episode, we're talking to Michael about how he experiences the world, and how he's helping to educate people about what it really means to live with a rare, stigmatized, and widely misunderstood mental health condition.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Going back to school with schizoaffective disorder

It's been more than ten months since devastating violence began unfolding in Israel and Gaza. And in the midst of all the death, so many people are trying to better understand what's going on in that region, and how the United States is implicated in it. So on this episode, we're looking back to the writing of James Baldwin, whose views on the country transformed significantly over the course of his life. His thoughts offer some ideas about how to grapple with trauma, and how to bridge the gap between places and ideas that, on their surface, might seem oceans apart.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What James Baldwin can teach us about Israel, and ourselves

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 in this week's episode of Code Switch. He talks to us about Black Christians who, like him for a time, found their spiritual homes in white evangelical churches.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Black praise in white pews: When your church doesn't love you back

Reality TV has been referred to as a funhouse mirror of our culture. But even with its distortions, it can reflect back to us what we accept as a society – especially when it comes to things like gender, sexuality and race. On today's episode we get into all of that, zeroing in on the Bachelorette, but also looking at a dating show that's trying to do it differently.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Race, Romance and Reality TV

Why are some female athletes asked to prove her womanhood? To understand how we got here, we're bringing you episode one of Tested, a new podcast series by our play cousins over at Embedded, made in partnership with CBC in Canada.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Who's "woman" enough: The long history of sex testing in sports

Summer is a time when many Americans are taking off from work and setting their sights on far-off vacation destinations: tropical beaches, fairy-tale cities, sun-drenched countrysides. But in her book Airplane Mode, the reluctant travel writer Shahnaz Habib warns of recklessly embracing what she calls "passport privilege," — and how that can skew peoples' images of what the world is and who it belongs to.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The beauty and entitlement of traveling as a tourist

For some authors, finding their book on a "banned" list can feel almost like an accolade, putting them right there with classics like The Bluest Eye and To Kill a Mockingbird. But the reality is, most banned books never get the kind of recognition or readership that the most famous ones do.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

'Not a badge of honor': how book bans affect Indigenous literature

With Kamala Harris entering the presidential race, we look back at what has shaped her personally and politically —from being the self-described "top cop" of California, to taking on a former president with dozens of felony convictions.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Kamala Harris, Revisited

For decades now, drag queens have captured the national imagination. Drag kings, on the other hand, have been relegated to a less prominent position in pop culture. But today on the show, we're telling the story of one Elsie Saldaña — aka El Daña. As someone who started performing in drag in 1965, she's now considered one of the oldest drag kings still performing in the U.S. Over the course of her long performance career, many forces have converged that could have stopped her from taking to the stage. But today, almost 60 years after her debut, she hasn't stopped yet.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The return of the U.S.'s oldest drag king

Every summer B.A. Parker returns to Creswell, North Carolina, where her family still has a farm. But she's mostly avoided actually going to the nearby site where her ancestors were enslaved. This week, we revisit the second of two episodes, where Parker and her mom decide to go back to the plantation.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Honoring my enslaved ancestors: Episode 2

In part one of two episodes, B.A. Parker meets people who, like her, are grappling with how to honor their enslaved ancestors. She asks herself: what kind of descendant does she want to be?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Honoring my enslaved ancestors: Episode 1

This week we're bringing you the first episode in a new series called Inheriting, created in collaboration with our friends at LAist Studios. In each episode, NPR's Emily Kwong sits down with Asian American and Pacific Islander families and explores how one event in history can ripple through generations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How one event in history can ripple through generations of a family

Author Mike Curato wrote Flamer as a way to help young queer kids, like he once was, better understand and accept themselves. It was met with immediate praise and accolades — until it wasn't. When the book got caught up in a wave of Texas-based book bans, suddenly the narrative changed. And like so many books that address queer identity, Flamer quickly became a flashpoint in a long, messy culture war that tried to distort the nature of the book.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The truth and lies behind one of the most banned books in America

The promise of "40 acres and a mule", is often thought of as a broken one. But it turns out, some freed people actually received land as reparations after the Civil War. And what happened to that land and the families it was given to is the subject of a new series, 40 Acres and a Lie, by our colleagues at Reveal and the Center for Public Integrity.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Some freed people actually received '40 acres and a mule.' Then it got taken away.

As anti-trans legislation has ramped up, historian Jules Gill-Peterson turns the lens to the past in her book, A Short History of Trans Misogyny. This week, we talk about how panics around trans femininity are shaped by wider forces of colonialism, segregation and class interests.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The history of trans misogyny is the history of segregation

This week, we're turning our sights on the word "felon", and looking into what it tells us (and can't tell us) about the 19 million people in the U.S. — like Donald Trump and Hunter Biden — carrying that designation around.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Should we stop using the word "felon"?

President Biden just issued an executive order that can temporarily shut down the U.S.-Mexico border to asylum seekers once a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded.  On this episode, we dig into how the political panic surrounding what many are calling an immigration "crisis" at the border, isn't new. And in fact...it's a problem of our own creation.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

100 years of immigration policies working to keep out immigrants

As war continues to rage in the Middle East, attention has been turned to how American Jews, Muslims, and Palestinians relate to the state of Israel. But when we talk about the region, American Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, are often not part of that story. But their political support for Israel is a major driver for U.S. policy — in part because Evangelicals make up an organized, dedicated constituency with the numbers to exert major influence on U.S. politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

White evangelical Christians are some of Israel's biggest supporters. Why?

As protests continue to rock the campuses of colleges and universities, a familiar set of questions is being raised: Are these protests really being led by students? Or are the real drivers of the civil disobedience outsiders, seizing on an opportunity to wreak chaos and stir up trouble?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Why the trope of the 'outside agitator' persists

Daniel Olivas's novel puts a new spin on the age-old Frankenstein story. In this retelling, 12 million "reanimated" people provide a cheap workforce for the United States...and face a very familiar type of bigotry.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In 'Chicano Frankenstein,' the undead are the new underpaid labor force

In the wake of October 7, and the bombardment of Gaza by the Israeli government, many American Jews have found themselves questioning something that had long felt like a given: that if you were Jewish, you would support Israel, and that was that. But as more Jews speak out against Israel's actions in Gaza, it's exposing deep rifts within Jewish communities – including ones that are threatening to break apart friendships, families, and institutions.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How Jewish Communities Are Divided Over Support of Israel

The Panama Canal has been dubbed the greatest engineering feat in human history. It's also (perhaps less favorably) been called the greatest liberty mankind has ever taken with Mother Nature. But due to climate change, the Canal is drying up and fewer than half of the ships that used to pass through are now able to do so. So how did we get here? Today on the show, we're talking to Cristina Henriquez, the author of a new novel that explores the making of the Canal. It took 50,000 people from 90 different countries to carve the land in two — and the consequences of that extraordinary, nature-defying act are still echoing through our present.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Rise and Fall of the Panama Canal

With the news of O.J. Simpson's death on Thursday, we're revisiting our reporting from 2016, where we took a look into how Simpson went from being "too famous to be Black," to becoming a stand-in for the way Black people writ-large were mistreated by the U.S. carceral system.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Reflecting on the legacy of O.J. Simpson

What's a portrait of Frederick Douglass doing hanging in an Irish-themed pub in Washington, D.C.? To get to the answer, Parker and Gene dive deep into the long history of solidarity and exchange between Black civil rights leaders and Irish republican activists, starting with Frederick Douglass' visit to Ireland in 1845.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How Frederick Douglass launched generations of Black and Irish solidarity

It's that time of year again: time to file your taxes. And this week on the pod, we're revisiting our conversation with Dorothy A. Brown, a tax expert and author of The Whiteness Of Wealth: How The Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans And How To Fix It. She talks through the racial landmines in our tax code and how your race plays a big role in whether you get audited, how much you might owe the IRS, which tax breaks you can get, and even which benefits you can claim.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

WTF does race have to do with taxes?

Many Lakota people agree: It's imperative to revitalize the Lakota language. But how exactly to do that is a matter of broader debate. Should Lakota be codified and standardized to make learning it easier? Or should the language stay as it always has been, defined by many different ways of writing and speaking? We explore this complex, multi-generational fight that's been unfolding in the Lakota Nation, from Standing Rock to Pine Ridge.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Who does language belong to? A fight over the Lakota Language

This episode is brought to you by our play cousins over at NPR's It's Been A Minute. Brittany Luse chops it up with New Yorker writer and podcast host Vinson Cunningham to discuss his debut novel Great Expectations. It's a period piece that follows the story of a young man working on an election campaign that echoes Obama's 2008 run. Brittany and Vinson discuss American politics as a sort of religion - and why belief in politics has changed so much in the last decade.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Getting let down by the 'Great Expectations' of electoral politics

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 conditions, like keloids or cystic fibrosis? On this episode, Dr. Andrea Deyrup breaks it down for us, and unpacks the problems she sees with practicing race-based medicine.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In the world of medicine, race-based diagnoses are more than skin deep

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.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This conspiracy theory about eating bugs is also about race

In February of 1942 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government issued an executive order to incarcerate people of Japanese descent. That legacy has become a defining story of Japanese American identity. In this episode, B.A. Parker and producer Jess Kung explore how Japanese American musicians across generations turn to that story as a way to explore and express identity. Featuring Kishi Bashi, Erin Aoyama and Mary Nomura.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The musical legacy of Japanese American incarceration

In the U.S., flavored cigarettes have been banned since 2009, with one glaring exception: menthols. That exception was supposed to go away in 2023, but the Biden administration quietly delayed the ban on menthols. Why? Well, an estimated 85 percent of Black smokers smoke menthols — and some (potentially suspect) polls have indicated that a ban on menthols would chill Biden's support among Black people. Of course, it's more complicated than that. The story of menthol cigarettes is tied up in policing, advertising, influencer-culture, and the weaponization of race and gender studies. Oh, and a real-life Black superhero named Mandrake the Magician.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Why menthol cigarettes have a chokehold on Black smokers

To celebrate the history of Black romance, Gene and Parker are joined by reporter Nichole Hill to explore the 1937 equivalent of dating apps — the personals section of one of D.C.'s Black newspapers. Parker attempts to match with a Depression-era bachelor, and along the way we learn about what love meant two generations removed from slavery.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Before the apps, people used newspapers to find love

It's 1969 at the University of Wyoming, where college football is treated like a second religion. But after racist treatment at an away game, 14 Black players decide to take a stand, and are hit with life-changing consequences. From our play cousins across the pond, our own B.A. Parker hosts the BBC World Service's Amazing Sport Stories: The Black 14. Listen to the rest of the series wherever you get your podcasts.*This episode contains lived experiences which involve the use of strong racist language.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How college footballers led the fight against racism in 1969

"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 shares her experience with biopolar disorder. She talks about how she's had to decipher what fears stem from her illness and which are backed by the history of racism.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What it's like to be a Black woman with bipolar disorder

Taylor Swift has become an American icon, (and she's got the awards, sales, and accolades to prove it.) With that status, she's often been celebrated as someone whose music is authentically representing the interior lives of young women and adolescent girls. On this episode, we're asking: Why? What is it about Swift's persona — and her fandom — that feels so deeply connected to girlhood? And, because this is Code Switch, what does all of that have to do with race?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Taylor Swift and the unbearable whiteness of girlhood

After leaving the Pentecostal Church, reporter Jess Alvarenga has been searching for a new spiritual home. They take us on their journey to find spirituality that includes the dining room dungeon of a dominatrix, Buddhist monks taking magic mushrooms and the pulpit of a Pentecostal church. This episode is a collaboration with our friends at LAist Studios. Special thanks to the Ferriss, UC Berkeley's Psychedelic Journalism program for their support.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A former church girl's search for a new spiritual home

The New York City Housing Authority is the biggest public housing program in the country. But with limited funding to address billions of dollars of outstanding repairs, NYCHA is turning to a controversial plan to change how public housing operates. Fanta Kaba of WNYC's Radio Rookies brings the story of how this will affect residents and the future of housing, as a resident of a NYCHA complex in the Bronx herself.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What happens when public housing goes private?

When people think back to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, they often remember just the bullet points: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, and voila. But on this episode, we're hearing directly from the many women who organized for months about what exactly it took to make the boycott happen.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The women who masterminded the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Martin Luther King Jr. was relatively unpopular when he was assassinated. But the way Americans of all political stripes invoke his memory today, you'd think he was held up as a hero. In this episode, we talk about the cooptation of King's legacy with Hajar Yazdiha, author of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Everyone wants a piece of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy

Classrooms in Arkansas were at the center of school desegregation in the 1950s. Now, with the LEARNS Act, they're in the spotlight again. Code Switch comes to you live from Little Rock, Arkansas this week to unpack the latest education bill and how it echoes themes from decades past.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

67 years after desegregation, Arkansas schools are in the spotlight again

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, is that changing? In this episode, we dive deep into food publishing, past and present.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Women of color have always shaped the way Americans eat

It's that time of year again, fam, when we look back at the past 12 months and think, "WHOA, HOW'D THAT GO BY SO FAST?" So we're taking a beat: for this week's episode, each one of us who makes Code Switch is getting on the mic to reflect on — and recommend — an episode we loved from 2023.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Here are our favorite Code Switch episodes from 2023

The Color Purple remake drops this week and to celebrate, we're bringing you this special episode from our play cousins over at Pop Culture Happy Hour. Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple has been adapted a few times. Next week, the new movie The Color Purple hits theaters – it's based on the Tony-winning musical. The 1985 film is remembered as a fan-favorite centering Black women's lives, but this acclaimed adaptation was received quite differently among female viewers and male viewers. Today, we revisit our episode about the original film from our three-part documentary series Screening Ourselves, which explored films through the lens of representation – and misrepresentation – on screen.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Revisiting 'The Color Purple' wars

"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 can you do? On this episode, host B.A. Parker asks: What are your options when a bubble bath won't cut it?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is what "real self-care" looks like

We're bringing you an extra treat this week from our play cousins over at It's Been A Minute: In the credits for 'Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé' the Queen Bee makes it clear who is in charge. Written by? Beyoncé. Directed by? Beyoncé. Produced by? Beyoncé. And of course, starring...Beyoncé. For someone who is so in control of their own image, what is spoken and what is unspoken are equally loud.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Watching 'Renaissance' and what we hear in Beyoncé's silence

Kai Cheng Thom is no stranger to misanthropy. There have been stretches of her life where she's felt burdened by anger, isolation, and resentment toward other people. And not without reason. Her identities, especially as a trans woman and a former sex worker, have frequently made her a locus for other people's fear and hatred. But at a certain point, Kai decided to embark on a radical experiment: to see if she could "fall back in love with being human." The result was a series of letters, poems, exercises and prayers that let Kai confront some of the most painful moments of her life, and then try to move past them.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The world can be painful. But love is possible, too

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 to upend them. Which means that people with "passport privilege" — AKA, the ability to travel freely from country to country — may end up feeling like the stars of some massive international adventure, while people whose travel is more restricted feel like perpetual interlopers.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Can you travel the world — ethically?

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 just a tiny fraction of its reservation land. But just northwest of Leech Lake is Red Lake: one of the only reservations in the country where the tribe owns all of its land.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

A Tale of Two Tribal Nations

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 told — has contributed to what they see as an erasure of their identities, and often of their humanity.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Who Has The "Right To A Story?"

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 at UCLA and the author of the book Algorithms of Oppression talks us through some of the messy issues that arise when algorithms and tech are used as substitutes for good old-fashioned human brains.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

How does a computer discriminate?

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 coming into their transness, as we learn about an historic trans person, Bernard, from Alabama in the early 1900s, fighting to be seen.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

All The Only Ones: The Missing Piece Of The Puzzle

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 faces?" Parker talks to James about what it means to be a Black punk, creating the Afropunk Festival and its evolution, and a new anthology he co-edited called Black Punk Now.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Looking For My People In The Black Punk Scene

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."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Giving up on identity with Ada Limón

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 of how to raise a kid in a complex, unjust, and ever-changing world.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The agony and ecstasy of parenting with Hari Kondabolu

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 what it means to help, and what it means to "want to star in the helping."Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What does it mean to be good?

South Baltimore has some of the most polluted air in the country. Local teenagers are fighting polluters back, and slowly building toward climate justice.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Student activists are fighting big coal, and winning

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 of the biggest feeders to the U.S.'s prison population. These systems surveil close to four million Americans, which Schiraldi says is both a huge waste of resources and a massive human rights violation. On this episode, we're talking to Schiraldi about how probation and parole came to be, why they're no longer working as they were once supposed to, and why he thinks they might need to be done away with entirely.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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

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?Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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

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 when those beliefs collide? Today ten percent of the Black population in the U.S. are immigrants, and many grapple with this question. In this episode, we'll hear from Claude Gatebuke, who moved from Kigali to Nashville as a teenager in the wake of the Rwandan genocide. He talks about how the move to the U.S. likely saved his life, while simultaneously challenging his belief that he could have a full, meaningful future as a Black man.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Remembering and unremembering, from Kigali to Nashville

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 coaches, the players, and the fans.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Fall football — or the fall of football?

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 Bad Bunny became the unlikely voice of resistance in Puerto Rico. This episode originally aired in January 2023.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Bad Bunny, Reggaeton, and Resistance

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 their jokes. Plus, one of our own reveals her early-career dabbling in comedy.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

What Makes A Good Race Joke?

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: an Osage headright. But the more Lonsinger learned about the history of the headrights, the more he began to wonder who was really entitled to them, and where he fit in.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Family, fortune, and the fight for Osage headrights

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 hip-hop — and the people who make it — is complicated.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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