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
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
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
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
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
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 aw ay to explore and express identity. Featuring Kishi Bashi, Erin Aoyama and Mary Nomura.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
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
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
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
"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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Leah
“…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.
Arpita Sen Gupta
ALL>FUL>MOVIES>LINK👉https://co.fastmovies.org
MaPepa
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!
Joe A. Finley II
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...
Janet Lafler
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.