Code Switch
Kanalaren Xehetasunak
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 everythi...
Atal Berriak
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Trump's 'weaponization' fund steals reparations blueprint
The DOJ created a $1.776 billion fund to compensate January 6 defendants. The fund may not survive, but the federal redress system it was reaching int...
Pete Hegseth's American crusade
It’s no secret that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has embraced the idea of crusading for American dominance — he published a book titled American...
DACA recipients are trapped in Trump's limbo
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program has been around for almost 14 years — long enough that the so-called "DACA kids" are now middle-age...
The trans athlete debate is about a lot more than sports
The Supreme Court is about to rule on whether states can ban transfeminine student athletes from playing on girls' and women's teams. But we're talkin...
It's giving incel: The evolution of internet slang
How have recommendation algorithms affected language? Linguist Adam Aleksic — aka the Etymology Nerd — says most “Gen-Z slang” is either appropriated...
Why so many Americans never learned to swim
In the U.S., roughly 8 in 10 kids from lower-income households grow up with few or no swimming skills — and Black and Latino children lag behind their...
Why do Latinos join ICE?
Latinos make up at least 50% of all Customs and Border Patrol agents and 20% of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — which has a lot of critic...
Is astrology real? Depends who you ask
Happy tenth birthday to us! In true Gemini fashion - we're that sign - we're celebrating by exploring our duality through astrology. Our intrepid Aqua...
What the Savannah Bananas have to do with race and baseball
Ever heard of the Savannah Bananas? They're a baseball team with millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram — known as much for their dance routine...
How the Supreme Court gutted Black voting power
The passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act marked what many historians mark as the actual beginning of democracy in the US. But last week the Supreme C...
The minefields of parenting and race
Parenting is one of the toughest jobs in the world. Between choosing a neighborhood to live in or whether to send your kid to public school, there are...
Tradwives and the pressures of modern motherhood
Motherhood in the U.S. is revered. Actual mothers? Not so much. So where's a bedraggled mom to turn when she feels overworked, overwhelmed, and undera...
Are Black men facing a mental health crisis, a patriarchy crisis, or both?
Over the past few weeks, there have been multiple high-profile incidents of Black men committing acts of violence against their loved ones, from a man...
In college admission, trauma is shorthand for Blackness
At most elite colleges and universities, affirmative action is a thing of the past. But admissions offices are still interested in building racially d...
Hate it or love it, is DEI a distraction?
The Trump administration has been very candid about their disdain for all things DEI. But it's not just conservatives who have critiques. On this epis...
Is the U.S. 'empire' beginning to show cracks?
The Trump administration's recent military actions have had certain observers asking... are we going full empire? But Daniel Immerwahr, a historian an...
Gaza commanded our attention. Why hasn't Sudan?
What makes people pay a lot of attention to some wars and crises, but not others? And what does that attention actually do for the people in those sit...
How your vote became your identity
Do you vote Republican or Democrat? And why does that answer reveal so much about the rest of who you are? We talk to political scientist Lilliana Mas...
As the definition of “terrorist” expands, so does state violence
The Trump administration has called more and more groups “terrorists,” from “narco-terrorists” in Ecuador to people who protest ICE to the entire Demo...
From the Confederacy to the White House: How Southern beauty traditions went MAGA
What do the women in Bama Rush, beauty pageants and President Trump's orbit have in common? Their look traces back to the beauty traditions of the whi...
'Mar-a-Lago face:' MAGA's aesthetic loyalty test
The MAGA look — you know the one: dramatic eyeliner, long, wavy hair, sheath dresses — is a defining feature of President Trump's Republican Party. An...
Being an “ally” is kind of cringe. Why?
People have been talking about being "allies" for a long time now. But what has that actually meant, over the years? And how performative should allys...
Markwayne Mullin is conservative, Christian, Cherokee, and the new head of DHS
On Monday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin was confirmed as the newest head of the Department of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem. It's an enormously co...
What Trump's language has in common with cult language
When President Trump says things like “fake news,” “witch hunt” or even “Make America Great Again,” he’s not just using catchy phrases -- he’s persuad...
The Scouts are too woke, according to Pete Hegseth
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently put Scouting America — formerly known as the Boy Scouts — "on notice." The once great organization was beco...
The Black civil rights leader who sued to be called “Miss”
It’s Alabama, 1963. A black woman stands before a judge, but she refuses to acknowledge his questions until he addresses her by the same honorific giv...
What the success of "Sinners" does (and doesn't) say about race and Hollywood
Sinners has already broken records — it's the most Oscar-nominated film in the history of the Academy Awards. But is the movie itself actually histori...
Why Iranian perspectives often get flattened and caricatured
Iran has 90 million people of different ethnicities, faiths, and backgrounds, who have very different ideas about the country. Iranian American schola...
How the internet got gentrified
We all know what gentrification looks like IRL — boxy, corporate-owned apartment complexes, places to get a quick bowl for lunch, streets that are dub...
Remembering Jesse Jackson
The late Reverend Jesse Jackson was — and still is — a revered civil rights activist, political trailblazer, and pop culture icon. For his critics, he...
The Young Lords' legacy of fighting for Puerto Rico from the mainland
While Puerto Rican independence is in the spotlight after Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show, we're throwing it to our play cousins at La Brega, a s...
White Culture
Jeremy Carl — President Trump's nominee for a senior State Department role -- was called out for his commentary on "white erasure" during his Senate c...
The U.S., Cuba, and the people caught between
The U.S. has been deporting people from Cuba in record numbers. That has come as a shock to many Cuban American communities, who had long enjoyed spec...
Trump shared a racist "joke." That humor is an American tradition
When President Trump shared a racist video on his Truth Social account last week, the blowback was real. But the video is also part of a tradition tha...
Was dating while Black always so hard?
Dating can be tough. Dating while Black? That can feel nigh impossible sometimes, given how the long tentacles of racism have wrapped themselves aroun...
Bad Bunny, resistance, and the Super Bowl halftime show
Can a superstar be an actual voice of resistance? How does Bad Bunny's choice to perform at the NFL Super Bowl halftime show square with his politics...
The history of Black History Month, one hundred years in
In so many spaces, celebrating Black History History month means learning a few fun facts about famous African Americans. But Black History Month was...
Americans are worried about crime. Here’s how politicians leverage it
"Fighting crime" is often used as a justification for many of the Trump administration's policies — from mass deportations to its actions in Venezuela...
What the history of U.S. protests illuminates about today
To the casual observer, it might seem like the U.S. has spent years in a constant state of protest — and they’re only getting more intense under the s...
What the quarter-zip craze tells us about Blackness and respectability
What does the humble, boring quarter-zip sweater have to do with respectability politics and Blackness? Apparently, a lot! When two young Black men on...