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What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between. This podcast makes all of us part of the conversation — because we're all part of the story. Code Switch was named Apple Podcasts' first-ever Show of the Year in 2020.
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Want to level up your Code Switch game? Try Code Switch Plus. Your subscription supports the show and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/codeswitch
473 Episodes
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1With 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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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This episode really touched my heart, in particular at the end. Parker connected with the author, showing that humanity is very real. More of this. Please.
This episode really touched my heart, in particular at the end. Parker connected with the author, showing that humanity is very real. More of this. Please.
Hello I am from Iran. I am talking to you in Tehran and I wanted to tell you if you could talk about the rich culture and art of Iranians, of course, the culture of Iran has thousands of episodes from several podcasts, but I hope you can cover the most important topics in your time. Say Thanks
What a garbage episode! So we should stop using the word "felon" because it has different post-conviction ramifications depending on how rich, powerful and/or connected you are?! *News Flash!*: those ramifications have existed since time immemorial! A CORI doesn't care about about semantics. If anything, by changing the semantics, it sends a message that White Collar Crime is somehow a "less than" as far as adjudication, only bolstering White Privilege under the premise of "what's the big deal?"
Lol @ Casper missing his comeliness roll 😂
As a Christian, I find the singular application of Genesis 12:3 to Israel interesting. The actual passage reads: "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed." (KJV). In my understanding of this scripture, all descendants of Abraham would enjoy this blessing, not just Israel.
I would have loved to hear your thoughts on the impact of Spike Lee's films on black love.
“…Israel’s bombing of Gaza” THANK YOU for calling it what it is. It’s not a war when you are slaughtering an unarmed populace.
ALL>FUL>MOVIES>LINK👉https://co.fastmovies.org
The parallels being made in this episode are wild! Religion and BDSM taking a person to the same place-making them "whole" in the process-speaks very badly about religion. Dominance, control, and flagelation on one part and complete unquestioning submission on the other is abuse. Stockholn Syndrome--not community!
Sorry, but so far Viga (sp.) is making more sense in the 1st two minutes of her speaking, with her opening question, than any amount of dialogue of justification. It IS the religion of the oppressors. The irony is that, if we consider Europeans the oppressors, Western Europeans are moving AWAY from organized religion at a FAR more rapid pace than their counterparts in the USA, especially in the South and Midwest. Stay tuned as I make my way through the remaining 2/3 of the episode...
This is a small detail, but I just wanted to point out that the disproportionate numbers of Black women in battered women's shelters isn't necessarily an indication of greater rates of abuse in the Black community, but could be an indication of having fewer financial resources. Shelters are crowded and bare-bones, and you're stuck with a bunch of strangers. Women with the resources to stay in a hotel, or to travel to stay with friends or family, won't go to a shelter.
I found Kai’s quote from Jesus to be so profound in her letter of forgiveness. “Christians” so often wield Jesus as a weapon against trans people and Kai has used his beautiful words of forgiveness as a shield. I’m not a Christian and never have been, but I found this to be so striking and wonderful.
Interesting show!
I loved hearing this! It really shows that the line between appreciation and appropriation isn't as clear as chronically online teenagers would have us believe. This was truly a beautiful cultural exchange
Great Episode 👍🏽!
Thank you so for thiz herstory!!! Thiz iz so needed!!!
I think my discomfort with this story stems from three factors: Forgiveness must be earned. You can't apologize on someone else's behalf unless they authorize you to. An apology can make people feel obligated to forgive. Modern-day apologies for historical wrongs always bother me. I wish they were framed more in terms of acknowledgement of the harms done and a commitment to some sort of action.
such important subject!
Oh I'm actually interested in watching the Interview with the Vampire series now. When the books came out, we were still using lesbian and gay because the Q was considered a slur (and bi was often ignored), but me and my 'gay' friends (we all ID as queer now) were miffed at the gay erasure in the movie.