Code Switch

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12 minutes 34 seconds ago
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.

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The stakes of calling Israel's actions in Gaza a genocide

3 hours 39 minutes ago
This week: why the term "genocide" matters when talking about Israel's actions against Palestinians in Gaza. On Tuesday, a UN commission said it found that Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip, as more people, groups and countries are alleging the same. We break down what the word genocide means on both a personal and geopolitical level, why it’s understood very differently by different people, and what that designation requires of the rest of the world.

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How calls for mass deportations went mainstream

1 week ago
Calls to ban “third world immigration” in favor of “remigration” -- or, mass deportation -- went from fringe ideas in far right circles to ones pedaled by mainstream conservatives. Now, those ideas are mirrored in government policy. On this week's Code Switch, we track how these ideas got their start among white nationalists and neo-Nazis in the U.S. and Europe and found their way into the language of popular right-wing influencers and Trump administration advisers. Note: This episode makes references to Charlie Kirk, and it was reported and recorded before he was shot in Utah.

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How racism kept Americans out of pools

3 weeks ago
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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How Trump's D.C. takeover criminalizes homelessness

3 weeks 6 days ago
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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Statelessness, but make it funny

1 month ago
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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Hot weather kills. Who gets protected?

1 month 1 week ago
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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Is joy an act of resistance?

1 month 2 weeks ago
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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Protests are near constant. Do they work?

1 month 3 weeks ago
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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From gr*pists to nip nops, how self-censorship shapes the language of TikTok

2 months 1 week ago
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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Dispatches from the living memory of trans people of color

2 months 3 weeks ago
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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Iranian American identity was under scrutiny long before the U.S. struck Iran

2 months 3 weeks ago
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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The administration's fight against antisemitism is dividing Jews

2 months 4 weeks ago
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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How the news can make us think we need more policing

3 months ago
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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What Trump's fixation on 'white genocide' in South Africa tells us about the U.S.

3 months 1 week ago
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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