Accessibility links
Code Switch Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get...stuck? Code Switch can help. We're all journalists of color, and this isn't just the work we do. It's the lives we lead. Sometimes, we'll make you laugh. Other times, you'll get uncomfortable. But we'll always be unflinchingly honest and empathetic. Come mix it up with us.
Code Switch

Podcast Directory
Code Switch
NPR

Code Switch

From NPR

Ever find yourself in a conversation about race and identity where you just get...stuck? Code Switch can help. We're all journalists of color, and this isn't just the work we do. It's the lives we lead. Sometimes, we'll make you laugh. Other times, you'll get uncomfortable. But we'll always be unflinchingly honest and empathetic. Come mix it up with us.

Most Recent Episodes

Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Candice Evers/WNYC hide caption

toggle caption
Candice Evers/WNYC

Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC

A text message gone wrong. A bachelorette party exclusion. A racist comment during the 2016 debates. When our friends at WNYC's Death, Sex and Money asked about the moments when race became a flashpoint in your friendships, they heard about awkward, funny, and deeply painful moments.

Bonus Episode: 'Between Friends' From WNYC

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/798622605/798735173" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends?

Friendships are hard. Simoul Alva for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Simoul Alva for NPR

Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends?

We help our listeners understand how race and its evil play cousin, racism, affect our friendships. And we're doing it with help from WNYC's Death, Sex & Money podcast. Be a good friend and listen.

Ask Code Switch: What About Your Friends?

Listen · 50:15
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/798367810/798370991" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever?

Iranians carrying flags while attending a mass funeral for Qasem Soleimani. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever?

In light of all the news coming out of Iran, we're talking with Jason Rezaian — an Iranian-American author and journalist who has experienced Iran's contradictions up close.

Is The Door To Iran Closed Forever?

Listen · 31:22
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/795227290/796501402" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House'

Carmen Maria Machado's new memoir is called "In The Dreamhouse." Art Streiber/AUGUST hide caption

toggle caption
Art Streiber/AUGUST

Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House'

When Carmen Maria Machado started searching for stories about intimate partner violence in queer relationships, there wasn't much out there. But in her new memoir, she says that type of abuse can still be "common as dirt."

Carmen Maria Machado Takes Us 'In The Dream House'

Listen · 27:53
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/793291687/794397646" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Beautiful Lies
LA Johnson/NPR

Beautiful Lies

So many people's New Year's resolutions are centered around getting in shape, updating their skincare routine, and generally being more attractive. But beauty ideals have a funny way of reinforcing society's ideas of who matters and why. Once you start to unpack them, things get real ugly real quick.

Beautiful Lies

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/790639980/790893492" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
The Birth Of A 'New Negro'

Exterior of the Bauhaus School at Dessau, designed by architect Walter Gropius. General Photographic Agency/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption
General Photographic Agency/Getty Images

The Birth Of A 'New Negro'

Can travel change your identity? It certainly did for one man. Alain Locke, nicknamed the 'Dean of the Harlem Renaissance,' traveled back and forth between Washington, D.C. and Berlin, Germany. In doing so, he was able to completely reimagine what it meant to be black and gay in the 1920s.

The Birth Of A 'New Negro'

Listen · 37:24
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/790381948/790766364" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Who Shot Ya?

Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Photo illustration by LA Johnson hide caption

toggle caption
Photo illustration by LA Johnson

Who Shot Ya?

The shootings of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur in the late 1990s are widely thought to be connected, but have never been officially solved. On the latest season of the Slow Burn podcast, Joel Anderson has been examining the rappers' meteoric rises, untimely deaths, and what they illustrate about race, violence, and policing in the United States, then and now.

Who Shot Ya?

Listen · 45:19
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/788916589/789164928" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
The Reverse Freedom Rides

Lela Mae Williams, 36, and seven of her nine children on arrival in Hyannis, Mass., May 23, 1962. Frank C. Curtin/Associated Press hide caption

toggle caption
Frank C. Curtin/Associated Press

The Reverse Freedom Rides

Many people have heard of the Freedom Rides of 1961, when black and white civil rights activists rode buses together to the South to protest segregation. But most people have never heard of what happened the very next summer, when Southern segregationists decided to strike back, using unsuspecting black families as pawns.

The Reverse Freedom Rides

Listen · 43:00
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/786790638/786961021" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Death Of A Blood Sport

A cockfight at one of the oldest cockfighting arenas in Puerto Rico, the Gallera Borinquén in the municipality of Arecibo. Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR hide caption

toggle caption
Erika P. Rodríguez for NPR

Death Of A Blood Sport

Later this month, a Congressional ban will make cockfighting illegal in U.S. territories. Animal rights activists argue that the sport is cruel and inhumane. But in Puerto Rico, many people plan to defy the ban. They say cockfighting has been ingrained in the culture for centuries, and that the ban is an attempt to wipe out an integral part of Puerto Rican identity.

Death Of A Blood Sport

Listen · 34:14
  • Download
  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/784229308/784585658" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript
Sometimes Explain, Always Complain
Chelsea Beck/NPR

Sometimes Explain, Always Complain

It's Thanksgiving week, so we wanted to give y'all a question to fight about: How much context should you have to give when talking about race and culture? Is it better to explain every reference, or let people go along for the ride? Comedian Hari Kondabolu joins us to hash it out.

Sometimes Explain, Always Complain

  • <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/782331005/783144537" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player">
  • Transcript

Related Podcasts

Code Switch

Podcast Directory
Back To Top
or search npr.org