Code Switch
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. Support public media by joining NPR+ at plus.npr.org. You’ll get perks for over 25 NPR podcasts, including bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Code Switch.
Episodes
October 30, 2026 • 29 mins
Every election season, politicians remember Black voters exist, and then lecture them, pander to them or skip their doors entirely. MS NOW’s Eugene Daniels has been reporting on Black voters in Cleveland and Detroit, and he tells Parker what actually gets people to the polls (hint: it’s not guilt-tripping).
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October 27, 2026 • 36 mins
President Trump and Silicon Valley tech bros are obsessed with IQ, but the history of intelligence testing is full of bunk race science and eugenics. With the rise of AI's "super intelligence," should we still be ranking human intelligence at all? We teamed up with our play cousins from It's Been a Minute to find out who gets to be labeled as smart with Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and Angela S...
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October 23, 2026 • 41 mins
Are the men in your life reading? How do you convince people to check out more novels? This week, we turn to our play cousins at It's Been a Minute and their recent conversation with author Jason Reynolds. Reynolds is the acclaimed author of young adult novels, Look Both Ways, Long Way Down, and Ghost and he joins host Brittany Luse to discuss the lessons in empathy, friendship and hope that novels can inspire in all readers.
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October 20, 2026 • 33 mins
In 2020, “defund the police” was everywhere. Now, even politicians like AOC and Zohran Mamdani have turned around on it. But some proposals that fell under the defund umbrella, like unarmed crisis responders and violence prevention programs, actually took hold. Gene talks with Chenjerai Kumanyika, journalism professor and creator of the Empire City podcast about the history of the NYPD. They dig into why politicians wil...
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October 16, 2026 • 37 mins
Right-wing ideology has crept into gyms across the country. Is this a new phenomenon, or is the very idea of "fitness" ripe for politicization? Is our idea of fitness inherently fascist? We find out with political commentator Hasan Piker, historian Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and professor Ava Purkiss, author of Fit Citizens.
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October 13, 2026 • 27 mins
Why do Black contestants on reality TV keep getting voted out first? Like a lot of people, B.A. Parker watches reality TV to escape. But seeing contestants of color on the receiving end of microaggressions keeps pulling her back to reality. Parker talks with Xavier Prather, Big Brother’s first Black winner, and sociologist Danielle Lindemann, author of True Story: What Reality TV Says About Us, about whether reality TV has an...
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October 9, 2026 • 28 mins
Zombies have roots most fans have never heard of. In Haitian Vodou, being zombified meant being enslaved even in death. B.A. Parker talks to Maya Annik Bedward, director of the new documentary Black Zombie, about how a spiritual metaphor for slavery was repackaged by Hollywood and sold back to the world, all while Haitian culture keeps getting cast as something to fear.
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October 6, 2026 • 31 mins
Clarksdale, Mississippi, the birthplace of the blues, has been losing people, jobs, and businesses for years. Now land there has been rezoned to make room for a hyperscale data center, a process that got underway before anyone even put the words “data center” in writing. Capital B reporter Aallyah Wright walks us through the hard bargain her hometown is weighing over a project nobody will even confirm is happening.
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October 2, 2026 • 42 mins
Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, Black parents still face an impossible choice about where to send their kids. Gene talks with his twin sister about the different choices they’ve made for their kids, and with historian Noliwe Rooks about why Black families are still stuck choosing between schools that will teach their children and schools that will love them.
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September 29, 2026 • 29 mins
The Lindsay Clancy trial captured the nation this summer, and reactions toward Clancy have been split. The case brought much needed attention to postpartum psychosis, but some question the support Clancy received from the public. This week, we speak with writer Myriam Gurba about why some cases of family annihilation get more attention than others, why we villainize mothers and the parallels with the Latin American legend of La Llo...
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September 25, 2026 • 34 mins
When Rep. Jasmine Crockett took the stage at a Chris Brown concert to honor him, the backlash came fast. It's a familiar cycle: every few years, Brown lands back in the news, and the public relitigates a history of violence stretching back to 2009. Gene talks with cultural critic Jamilah Lemieux and writer and DJ Noella Williams about why so many fans stay 10 toes down for him, and what accountability could even look like.
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September 22, 2026 • 37 mins
Lots of progressive politicians eyeing runs for higher office are distancing themselves from the politics of 2020, like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez declaring, "woke 1.0 was crazy." But should they be? Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times says voters are swayed more by identity than ideology — so it's less about the ideas and more about the vibes. We talk to him about who gets read as radical (even if they're no...
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September 18, 2026 • 25 mins
Cubans are living through near-constant blackouts after an executive order that called the Cuban government an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and blocked their fuel imports. A hundred-page State Department report describes Cuba as the puppeteer behind everything from the George Floyd protests to what it calls the rise of antifa. We talk to historians Michael Bustamante and Alexander Hall ab...
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September 15, 2026 • 35 mins
The WNBA is more popular than ever, but the growth has come with a lot of unwanted attention, like protests at games and death threats directed towards players. This week, we talk with independent journalist Frankie de la Cretaz about what brought all of this hate into the league, and NPR’s domestic extremism correspondent, Odette Yousef, about the ways the league is responding.
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September 11, 2026 • 36 mins
There’s a growing backlash to the surveillance systems that have quietly wired themselves into American neighborhoods, with concern growing among people who have never felt watched this way before. Gene talks with historian Matthew Guariglia about how the surveillance state got built, who it was built on first, and why opposing it now unites so many factions.
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September 8, 2026 • 27 mins
In the 25 years since 9/11, we've seen the definition of terrorism expand. The Trump administration has called more and more groups “terrorists,” from “narco-terrorists” in Ecuador to people who protest ICE to the entire Democratic party. This week, our conversation with Saher Selod, an expert on the surveillance of Muslims, about the effects of the war on terror after 9/11, and historian Alex Lubin about ho...
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September 4, 2026 • 65 mins
Lauryn Hill is a generational voice, a cultural lightning rod, and one of music’s biggest what-ifs. Our very own B.A. Parker joined the Big Lives podcast, hosted by Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi, to unpack the meteoric rise of the Fugees frontwoman and the intense pressures that pushed one of hip-hop and R&B’s brightest stars out of the spotlight.
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September 1, 2026 • 32 mins
Ads for GLP-1s are everywhere. This week, we dig into why so many of those ads seem to feature Black women with Sabrina Strings, author of “Fearing the Black Body” a book about the racial origins of fatphobia. We get into the toxic comment culture around everyone from Lizzo to Ariana Grande, and how the origins of body shaming have all led us to this post-body positive moment.
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August 28, 2026 • 27 mins
Banana Ball is a barnstorming baseball league revived by the tremendously popular Savannah Bananas, a team with millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram — known as much for their dance routines and shenanigans as their actual baseball. Recently the league resurrected the Indianapolis Clowns, a Negro League team with a contentious history of racial minstrelsy. We talk with journalist Josh Levin, who followed the Clowns th...
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August 25, 2026 • 33 mins
Is there a family estrangement epidemic? This week, we dig into what’s behind the no-contact movement with sociologist Rin Reczek, author of the new book, “Families We Lose.” Rin walks us through who gets cut off, why the numbers look so different for Black mothers and Black fathers, and how we can start rethinking what family means.
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