Code Switch

This week, we're looking into the history of public swimming pools in the U.S., and the legacy that pool segregation has had on swimming skills in the country today. Earlier this year, Jasmine Romero found herself surrounded by four- and five-year-olds, ready to take her first ever swim class. Jasmine, who is in her mid-thirties, has had a fear of swimming all her life. It's a fear that was passed down from her mother, and spread to all of her sisters, too. But the Romero family isn't alone. People of color have long been afraid of the water — and with good reason.

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On August 11, President Trump announced his intention to "rescue" the nation's capital. A central feature of his plan involved using federal officials to remove people experiencing homelessness from the city — people that he listed alongside "violent gangs, bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, and drugged out maniacs." On this episode, we're diving into what it means to criminalize homelessness, what it looks like when police officers are used to solve social problems, and what this D.C. takeover might portend for the rest of the country.

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Mo Amer is the creator and star of the hit Netflix comedy series Mo. It's a first-of-its kind Palestinian-American sitcom with a fraught plot line about the American immigration system and the hope to return, at least for a visit, to his family's homeland. We talk to Mo Amer what it’s like to make a show so centered on the real facts of his own life, and to be thrust into the role of spokesperson for Palestinian-Americans at this particular moment.

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The heat disproportionately kills poor, elderly and people of color. So on this episode we're focusing on the lives of those impacted, from roofers in Florida to prisoners who live and die in cells that feel more like ovens in Texas. We’re asking why so many people are dying from the heat and whose lives we value enough to count their deaths and try to prevent them.


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On this bonus episode of the show, we're hearing from some of YOU about what brings you joy, how you connect joy and justice work, and why joy is so important in your lives.

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The phrase "joy is resistance" has been popping up all over the place lately. But what, exactly, does it mean? In this episode, we're unpacking what joy is, when it can actually be used as a tool for social change, and why the slogan has become so popular (even when joy itself feels more tenuous.)

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To the casual observer, it might seem like the U.S. has been spent years in a constant state of protest, from the Women's March in 2017 to the racial uprisings in 2020 to the No Kings protests earlier in the summer. But some are starting to wonder: How effective are any of those protests? When it comes to achieving lasting social change, do any of them work?

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Once upon a time, members of the Code Switch team were just kids, learning about race and identity for the first time. So on this episode, we're sharing some of the books, movies and music that deeply influenced each of us at an early age — and set us on the path to being the race nerds we are today.

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Have you noticed people using terms like "unalive" and
"pew pews" on social media? There's a reason for that: some people are changing the way they speak on TikTok and other social media platforms to bypass what they think are algorithm blocks. For some users, it's a fun game — but for others, self-censoring certain words is crucial to being able to share their lived experience.

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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.

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Trans people are major targets of the second Trump administration. But in a way, that's nothing new; trans people have been fighting for their rights, dignity, and liberation for generations. So on this episode, we hear from trans elders about what their lives have looked like over the decades, and what messages they have for young people.

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We're throwing back to a conversation we had in 2020 with Jason Rezaian, Iranian American journalist who had been previously jailed in Iran. Back in January of 2020, the first Trump administration carried out a military operation killing Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian military commander. Now, the second Trump administration is striking Iranian nuclear sites. While lots has changed since 2020, much of our conversation with Jason is still eerily relevant.

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In recent months we've seen the Trump administration punishing speech critical of Israel in its widening effort to combat what it sees as antisemitism. As protestors have been detained for pro-Palestinian activism, we've seen attacks on Jews and people expressing concern for Israeli hostages in Gaza — and in the wake of all this, a lot Jews don't agree on which actions constitutive antisemitism. On this episode, we're looking at the landscape of this disagreement, and talking to the legal scholar who came up with the definition of antisemitism that the White House is using, and who says he's worried that definition is being used in a way that could hurt Jews instead of protect them.

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As President Trump flirts with invoking the Insurrection Act on anti-ICE demonstrators in LA, we look back at the national protests of 2020, when Trump last talked about invoking the act. Back then, there was broad energy around rethinking policing, but polls show that that energy has largely vanished. In this episode, we ask: what happened? Our guest points to what he calls copaganda – or pro-police propaganda.

A previous version of this episode incorrectly said that Alec Karakatsanis works at Equal Justice Under Law. He currently runs an organization called the Civil Rights Corps.

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How the false notion of "white genocide" traveled from the political fringes to the Oval Office. The week on Code Switch, we're talking to a reporter who was in the room during a meeting when President Trump pushed this conspiracy theory on the president of South Africa. And we're digging into what Trump's fixation on white South Africans tell us about anxieties over white replacement here in the U.S.

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The hunger for Mexican food in the U.S. is longstanding — from the conquistadors' love affair with chocolate, to the classic San Francisco burrito. This week, we're exploring the history of Mexican food in the United States, and asking what it takes for a cuisine to become quintessentially "American."

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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, from delayed diagnoses to ignoring environmental factors that lead to different health outcomes.

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Trump's win exposed political tensions between Arab-American voters — who were critical of Democratic support of Israel's war in Gaza, and Black voters — who remain the Democrats' most loyal supporters. That friction is especially pronounced in the majority Arab city of Dearborn, Michigan, and its majority Black neighbor, Detroit. This week, we go to a testy iftar dinner where Arab and Black folks sat down to begin having tough conversations.

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We're looking back on the day a Philadelphia police department helicopter dropped a bomb on a rowhouse in a middle-class neighborhood. Even though that bombing and the fire it set off killed eleven people and left hundreds homeless, it's been largely forgotten. So how did we collectively memory-hole an event this big? And what does that tell us about race and policing even today?

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