GENE DEMBY, HOST:
I'm Gene Demby, and you are listening to CODE SWITCH from NPR.
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DEMBY: (Singing) I believe the children are the future.
All right, that's enough of my singing. Usually, that's the kind of thing that Shereen handles on the podcast, but it's just me today. So, you know, that's your bad luck. Anyway, in each of the last two years, we have set aside an episode of our podcast to bring y'all some of the best podcasts from young folks around the country. Those podcasts come to us from NPR's Student Podcast Challenge. For those of y'all who don't know, that challenge is where we ask young people to make a podcast and then send it in. And our judges - and Shereen is one of those judges, by the way - pick the winners. So our play cousins on the NPR Ed Team have now heard from more than 50,000 students from across the country - 50,000 - and from students in all 50 states. As you might guess - and relevant to our interests on CODE SWITCH - a whole lot of those young people are making podcasts about who they are or who they want to be and how they fit into the world. So today, we're doing it again. But this time, we're also going to hear from college students as well as the younger folks who usually participate. Here's a little taste.
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LUCILLE BORNAND: Hi, I'm Lucille, and I have an important question for you. What do you think of when you hear the word slug?
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: You know, 1 in 6 Americans get sick from foodborne diseases each year. That could be us.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: I wish my parents knew...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #3: I wish my parents knew...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #4: I wish my parents knew...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #5: I wish my parents knew...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #6: I wish my parents knew...
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #7: I wish my parents knew how to switch from HDMI one to HDMI two.
ASTRID JOHNSON: If you could change one thing about me, what would you change?
ZOURI JOHNSON: That you don't punch me (laughter).
A JOHNSON: Zouri, you can't say that. I don't punch you.
DEMBY: But it's not all cuteness and slugs. You got politics. You got racism. There's people grappling with these big, thorny questions about culture. Am I missing anything, Sequoia?
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, BYLINE: Lots of podcasts calling for no more homework. That is a big one.
DEMBY: Of course. Of course. You might remember Sequoia Carrillo. She's an editor with the NPR Ed Team. Welcome back to CODE SWITCH, Sequoia.
CARRILLO: Thanks for having me back.
DEMBY: So, Sequoia, you have spent I don't know how many months listening to hundreds of these podcast submissions, and I'm just really amped to hear what you're bringing us. Last year, I know I asked you how much time you spent listening to this podcasts, but since then, y'all decided to add college students to the contest. So I'm just, like, terrified as to how much time goes into listening to something like this.
CARRILLO: Really, I could not tell you how many hours I've spent listening to these podcasts but definitely weeks of my life, I would say. Don't get me wrong, the middle school and high school ones are all so cute and bring joy and, like, fresh perspective, all of these things. We'll get to them later. But the college ones have super high audio quality, really good storytelling, and adding them in was really easy, a no-brainer. For example, here's one from our college finalists called "A Tale Of Two Crawfish."
DEMBY: "A Tale Of Two Crawfish." OK. OK.
CARRILLO: Yep (laughter).
DEMBY: All right. I want to hear this.
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BRIAN LE: I have a question. Do you like crawfish?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Yes.
LE: And have you ever had Vietnamese Cajun crawfish?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: No.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: No.
LE: Interesting. Allow me to tell you a story, a story of two crawfish. There once was a crawfish. His name was Cajun, and he was born in an old town in Canada before moving to the city of New Orleans. Though he wasn't necessarily the most well-liked fellow in the city, Cajun was liked by other Acadians from Canada. He knew how to make food, and he made the best food he could and perfected his craft. Cajun spent years in the kitchen serving mostly Acadians until one fateful day when a local person from New Orleans sat themselves down, curious about what the commotion was about.
DEMBY: OK, so we have an Acadian Cajun crustacean.
CARRILLO: Yeah. So that's Brian Le from Emory University in Atlanta, and he brings us this winding story about two fictional crawfish in New Orleans.
DEMBY: OK, I'm very curious about where this is going, but OK, I'm with it so far. I'm with this.
CARRILLO: So Brian has these two crawfish, Cajun, who we just met, and Viet, who's also a transplant to New Orleans, but she's from Vietnam. She's amazing at fishing and also really great at cooking. But there's a problem.
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LE: Viet was a sweet girl, but she was too darn good for the other fishermen to keep up. Everyone asked her because she was the fastest in the water and the cheapest on the books. Unfortunately, this meant that the local fishermen were out of a job, so they enlisted the help of their local Ku Klux Klan to scare Viet into hiding. And, boy, Viet was scared. They burned her boat. They burned her fish. And when she tried to stop them, they even burned her skin.
DEMBY: Wow. That is not where I thought that was going.
CARRILLO: No. And Brian tells this story so well because he starts off kind of with, like, the fun, fictional crawfish. And then by the time you get to the middle, you're like, oh, my God, this is so intense. And he does that on purpose because this story means a lot to him. And while tracking the origin of Vietnamese Cajun food, he was really just tracking Vietnamese immigration in the South. And it let him sit with his own identity as a Vietnamese American from the South. I got to talk to him about this over Zoom recently.
LE: Food is one of the main ways I connect with my culture because I think my parents lost a lot of the traditions and practices when they came over here because they wanted to make sure that I could assimilate. And the surefire way that I can have the most genuine, authentic connection with my grandparents, my family back home in Vietnam is through the food because I know that I'm eating what my grandparents are eating back home.
CARRILLO: So Brian grew up with a lot of traditional Vietnamese food, but also he grew up in Texas. So Vietnamese Cajun crawfish was kind of a perfect blend of cultures. When he was about 3 years old, his mom tried her hand at making it.
LE: For her, she was reconnecting with her culture through cooking. And I was just connecting with it as, like, a kid for the first time.
CARRILLO: But Brian says her crawfish recipe wasn't very good (laughter) until she visited The Boiling Crab in Texas. It's one of the only Vietnamese Cajun food chains in the country.
DEMBY: I've never had Vietnamese Cajun, but my spirit, my body is ready for Vietnamese Cajun. Sign me up.
CARRILLO: It sounds so good, and Brian's mom thought so, too. So when she finished her meal at The Boiling Crab, she went home and immediately tried to recreate the dish.
LE: She, like, memorized the taste, and then she like recreated the recipe at home. And she replicates it for us, like, probably like four or five times a year because it's just so delicious.
DEMBY: So she just cribbed it from the chain. OK. That's very impressive that she pulled it off.
CARRILLO: I wish I could do that. I wish I had that palate (laughter). And Brian said she only went back a couple times to make sure she got the flavors right. But now her recipe is so good that they don't really go anymore. He says it's buttery, garlicky...
DEMBY: Wow.
CARRILLO: ...Pretty much everything you want from crawfish.
DEMBY: OK. First of all, that sounds ridiculous. I want all of this. But I'm thinking, OK, so this is about, you know, picking up tradition and passing it down. Right? Is Brian taking on any of the cooking himself these days?
CARRILLO: Not really. That's still his mom's thing, but he's kind of taken on a new role at the table.
LE: I've eaten it since I was 3, before I knew how to peel the crawfish. And now I'm, like, teaching my little brother and, like, the little young kids in my family to peel it as well.
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DEMBY: So I just want to bring this story home. OK. So we have our Acadian Cajun crustacean and our Southeast Asian Cajun crustacean. How does this end?
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LE: Vietnamese Cajun crawfish is very hard to find in New Orleans. The oppressive nature of traditional Cajun food leaves no room for innovation despite itself originating from innovation. You will see Vietnamese people making crawfish in the traditional Cajun style in New Orleans. But if you go anywhere beyond the walls, you will find Vietnamese Cajun food everywhere.
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DEMBY: Now, Sequoia, I know our editor Leah Donnella was one of your judges this year.
CARRILLO: Yes, one of the best (laughter).
DEMBY: And she could not - OK. I mean, you don't have to say that 'cause she's listening. And I know she could not stop talking about her favorite podcast from this year's batch. I think it was about tattoos.
CARRILLO: Yes. This was one of my favorites, too. It was called "Teens And Ink," made by two high school students from Cicero, Ill., right outside Chicago. And they talked about teenagers getting tattoos.
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JULIAN FAUSTO: All right, listeners. Listen. So I'm going to start off from the beginning. So basically, ever since I was younger, I knew since pre-K that I wanted tattoos.
ERIC GUADARRAMA: Whoa. For real? That long? Sorry to cut you off. But before you continue, who influenced you? From...
FAUSTO: A lot of people actually did, but I'm going to tell you main ones - rappers like Lil Wayne, Soulja Boy, MGK. But the main influences actually came from WWE, wrestlers such as, you know, CM Punk.
GUADARRAMA: Continue your story.
FAUSTO: All right. So every year, I asked my mom for a tattoo as a birthday gift. And yes, I know that it is illegal since I wasn't even a teenager at the time. But I didn't know 'cause I remember seeing for a photo of Lil Wayne with tattoos. So long story short, after years - and I mean a lot of years - of asking for a tattoo, I finally got one for my 16th birthday.
CARRILLO: That was Julian Fausto and his cousin Eric Guadarrama. This year, Julian will be a senior in high school, and Eric will be a junior. But they've grown up together their whole lives. This podcast goes on to talk about the stigmas around tattoos and why some people even regret their tattoos. But don't get me wrong - Julian and Eric are very pro-tattoos (laughter). They try to give a balanced argument, but it's clear that their hearts are with tattoos. They love it. One big reason for this is that Julian is actually an artist himself, and he wants to draw all of his own tattoos and maybe even give them to other people one day. I talked to them about this recently at Julian's school.
When did you start drawing?
FAUSTO: Not to sound cringe-y (ph) or corny, but, like, since, like, Day 1 basically.
GUADARRAMA: Yeah. I used to draw, too.
CARRILLO: Really?
GUADARRAMA: But then - but when I saw his drawings, I'm like, damn. I need to stop, bro. Like, I was good at drawing - you can even ask him (ph) - but not too good. Just looking at his stuff is like, damn, so amazed. Like - so I just focused on my own things.
CARRILLO: Eric is so proud of Julian. He kept pulling out his phone throughout the interview and showing pictures of original designs he'd drawn dating all the way back to when they were in middle school.
GUADARRAMA: So that's Bart Simpson. And then on my eyebrows, it says Chicago. Then I got a cross, and then after that, the heart beat thing. And on my, like, chest, I had the girlfriend that I was dating back in the - (laughter) we're not with her anymore. But - (laughter).
CARRILLO: They used to do this thing with deodorant and Sharpie. They'll explain it better than I can.
FAUSTO: There's a thing if - where you draw on a piece of paper with pin. And then you trace it from the back. And you put it on someone. But before you put it on them, you put deodorant. And you put it on them, and you put deodorant again. And it stays on them for a little bit.
DEMBY: So I'm actually interested in how they figured out this deodorant tattoo situation. Like, that seems very ingenious. But also, you walking around all week with a tattoo that smells like Degree or something. You know what I mean? It's, like, a very fragrant...
CARRILLO: (Laughter).
DEMBY: It's very fragrant body art.
CARRILLO: Totally. I think a lot of it was from the Internet.
DEMBY: Got you. OK. That makes sense.
CARRILLO: (Laughter) By the way, the reason that they started on this whole tattoo kick was actually their moms.
DEMBY: OK. (Laughter) That's not where I thought you were going with that.
FAUSTO: I looked up to people that have tattoos. So that made me want to get more. And my mom has tattoos. And everyone in my family has tattoos.
CARRILLO: Their moms are sisters. And they actually got their first tattoos together when they were 13. They were in a friend's basement. The guys love that story. But they really want professional-quality tattoos. So when Julian's 16th birthday rolled around, he wanted his tattoo to be perfect. He drew it himself. He researched this artist online. He drove to Indiana because Illinois, even with parental consent, you have to be 18 to get a tattoo. I mean, Julian really put in the work.
DEMBY: So they went to great lengths to get this tattoo. You know, to get these tattoos they wanted for a long time, they went to another state. I'm curious, like, what was the tattoo that he ended up getting?
CARRILLO: He has Chicago written on his forearm in a really cool font. And the I...
DEMBY: OK. But wait, you said that they're from Cicero. But, OK. OK. Anyway. Go ahead.
CARRILLO: (Laughter) Yes. And the I is dotted with the number 16 because he got it for his 16th birthday. And after he turns 18, it seems like he really wants to go all out with tattoos.
FAUSTO: Like, my goal by the end of college is to have my neck down. And then, I'm not getting my face. But I do plan to get something, like, behind ear or something along those lines.
CARRILLO: They're really expensive.
FAUSTO: Yeah, they are.
CARRILLO: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
CARRILLO: So that's, like, an investment.
FAUSTO: Yeah.
CARRILLO: Cool.
GUADARRAMA: That's why we got a job for it.
(LAUGHTER)
DEMBY: So it's obvious, you know, that these kids are smart. And they care about the art behind their tattoos. It's also just amazing how much the sort of politics around tattoos have changed, like, over the last couple decades. But also, you know, they like these tattoos because they think they're dope. Like, they - and that's totally OK. That is enough of a reason to get one if you want one.
CARRILLO: Yeah, I think they would agree. Even if their tattoos have meaning, that doesn't mean tattoos without meaning are any worse. It's all art. Julian loves the art. He said his dream since he was in kindergarten was to attend the school at the Art Institute of Chicago and go into animation, maybe even doing tattoos on the side. Eric's dreams are a little different. He is shooting for the NBA right now.
DEMBY: Me, too. But aren't we all, though, Eric? Aren't we all?
CARRILLO: Truly.
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CARRILLO: So the last question that I asked them was one that I love to ask to students, which is, if you had an audience with a million people, what would you say? And Eric said this.
GUADARRAMA: Don't ever judge somebody, you know? Like, you could see a 17-year-old kid with Chicago on it. It doesn't mean that he's in a gang, you know? Like, let's normalize having tattoos, you know, having, like, the dress - clothes you wear and all that stuff. Let's normalize that. Not anything means a gang because that's what nowadays are, you know? (ph) So yeah - that's the reason why most of these people don't even want to get tattoos because they're afraid they're going to get checked. They're afraid of many of the things that happen. So if you see somebody with a tattoo, you know, just pretend like it's not even there. Don't think too much about it.
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DEMBY: After the break, we will definitely not be in Chicago.
JAMIN CROW: It was cold that morning. It was about 40 degrees, so we kind of had our gear on. It was cold enough to where you could see your breath every time you breathe. And the wind would nip at your face when you're driving on the boat.
DEMBY: Actually, I mean, that does sound a lot like Chicago, but it's not. We're going on a moose hunt in the Alaskan wilderness. Stay tuned, y'all
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DEMBY: Gene.
CARRILLO: Sequoia.
DEMBY: CODE SWITCH.
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DEMBY: All right, Sequoia, so we're going moose hunting with some native students in Alaska?
CARRILLO: Pretty cool, right? Yeah. So Jamin Crow, Kaylee King and Ethan Lincoln from southwestern Alaska.
DEMBY: OK.
CARRILLO: They're all from the same area, but they don't go to the same school. They actually met as interns at member station KYUK.
DEMBY: Shout out to local public radio station KYUK.
CARRILLO: I know - Bethel, Alaska. And you can really tell that these students are storytellers, and they all grew up in families where there's a tradition of living off the land.
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ETHAN LINCOLN: Yeah. Going hunting, it really helps forget about the pandemic, and you have more time than before because other stuff like going to school or going to meetings or festivals and stuff like that, are canceled, you know? And that makes more time for us to go hunting.
CROW: It's helped me a lot, especially due to the lack of sports. I've been able to get homework done and then go out and ptarmigan hunt for a couple of hours. I - it's just - it's really helped me get outside and also connect with my family members more and give me a chance to go out and be with them while subsistence hunting. And it's really helped me get through the quarantining and stuff.
E LINCOLN: Hello. My name is Ethan Lincoln, and I'm a senior in Toksook Bay, Alaska. It's located in the west coast area of Alaska.
NOAH LINCOLN: Hi. My name is Noah Lincoln (ph) from Toksook Bay, Alaska, on Nelson Island. I'm 41 years old, and I've been hunting since I was a young boy.
DEMBY: All right, I have so many questions. Because I'm a city boy, I know nothing about moose hunting.
CARRILLO: (Laughter).
DEMBY: Is the moose - is that for food?
CARRILLO: Yeah. Where they live, it's cheaper to hunt for food than actually buy it at the grocery store.
CROW: No meat is wasted. We don't go out just for the antlers. We're not looking for trophies. We're not hunting for something big. We're looking for meat to feed our families.
CARRILLO: And when I talked with them, they really wanted people to know that subsistence hunting is a generations-long tradition with set rules and lots of planning.
CROW: What we were really looking for was something that would grab the audience's attention and make ourselves stand out. It's so unique and so different living up here and the way we live and the way we hunt, and so we thought it was a great story to tell.
DEMBY: My hunch is that only a small percentage of hunters actually do so as a primary way to feed their families, right? Like, here in the mid-Atlantic, you know, in Virginia and West Virginia, it's about deer population control and things like that.
CARRILLO: I completely agree. I'm from Virginia, and the vibe around hunting is super different there. It's definitely more of a sport than a way to survive. And hearing Jamin talk in the podcast about hunting, you can tell there's a real emotional component. This is his reaction to finally getting the kill.
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CROW: Your ears are ringing after the gunshot, and I look at my brother, and he's giving me the happiest look I've ever seen. And it's just - everything's perfect at that moment. Everything after you get a hunt - you go hunting and you get a kill, everything's awesome and perfect, and you know you succeeded in what your goal was.
CARRILLO: Kaylee talked about why it's so emotional when I sat down and interviewed them recently.
KAYLEE KING: The way we used to do things is so different from how we do them now. And even our language is slowly fading away. And my Yup'ik language is - there's only a few people who speak it fluently. It's how they tell stories. So it makes me really sad.
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CARRILLO: Even as teenagers, they're thinking a lot about these issues. But Jamin was a little more optimistic.
CROW: We have pride in our culture, and we love where we are from, and we don't want to see it fade away.
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DEMBY: All right, Sequoia, so where are we going next?
CARRILLO: Our last stop is right in our own backyard at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: So I've lost enough family members and friends to gun violence and only just kind of harbored the trauma that I felt like, this time, I got to do something different, you know? I also would walk down Florida Avenue on my way back home uptown, and I would cry some nights because I was afraid that I wouldn't make it to college because I'd be killed.
DEMBY: So that was a clip from the podcast "Loss And Transformation" by Jonetta Harrison, Makiyah Hicks (ph) and Quin Wells. These students recorded and produced this podcast from their bedrooms this past school year.
DEMBY: Oh, I know that struggle.
CARRILLO: Oh, yeah (laughter). Their teacher, Thom Woodward, is actually a former NPR employee.
DEMBY: I remember Thom very well. He's used to work on the ops desk. He used to golf a lot. Yeah, shout out to Mr. Woodward.
CARRILLO: Yes. Shout out. He rocks. I mean, he's the kind of teacher who just told them to choose anything they care about and make a podcast. And after some deliberation, they chose gun violence in D.C. They did some reporting and interviewed three people for the podcast. One of them was actually Makiyah's grandmother.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: You know, it's all for a cause and a purpose when things occur in life that you don't anticipate or expect to happen to you, until it happened to you.
CARRILLO: One thing this podcast doesn't showcase is the students themselves. They're vibrant and energetic and passionate, but they really wanted to take a backseat in this podcast.
DEMBY: So this is what we call a non-narrated podcast, and that's just really ambitious. It's really hard to pull off. I mean, we hardly ever do it on CODE SWITCH. You probably remember when we do it. We had an episode called "A Strange And Bitter Crop." And this is the kind of episode when the subjects are telling the stories. You won't hear the hosts pretty much at all. And it's really hard to pull off because you need exceptional storytellers to do it.
CARRILLO: Yeah, I've never actually done it myself. It's very, very difficult to make it sound good. And so when I sat down with Jonetta and Makiyah to talk to them about their process, that was one of my first questions - why did you choose to tell it this way?
JONETTA HARRISON: I think for me, I feel like it's important for the people who are affected by it to be able to speak 'cause I feel like a lot of times the government is speaking for them. And, you know, the government's not affected by it, but the families are.
DEMBY: It's dope that they're already thinking through who gets centered in these stories 'cause that's something we talk about all the time when we're putting together episodes. Like, who is the focus of the story? And are we taking up too much space in it? Because we are mediating the story. We're the media, right? We are mediating the stories that people have to tell. Those are really chewy questions.
CARRILLO: Totally. I think they navigated it perfectly. And it's one of the reasons that their podcast was so good. Jonetta, Makiyah and Quin really just wanted to give a voice to the voiceless in this podcast, and I think they did that. Here's Makiyah to close us out.
MAKIYAH HICKS: People always look at us as numbers, you know? It's always marginalized. OK, violence happens in this place; it must be a - you know, it must be for a reason. No, it's deeper than that. Like, these are actual people at the end of the day. And we wanted to put an emphasis on that fact.
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DEMBY: One of the things that I noticed listening to these, Sequoia is that they're getting better, right?
CARRILLO: Yes, in so many ways. Technically, the students are learning how to record sound and tell stories better. And we actually have a podcast that teaches you all about that with NPR producers and hosts called The Students' Podcast. But, really, it's the thousands of teachers around the country who've really gotten into this project in a big way. We're hearing much better audio, really compelling writing. We're hearing original music. Sometimes they're even doing full-scale investigations. And that's really because teachers are allowing their students the freedom to do that.
DEMBY: And it seems like there's something else here, too. I mean, not to date myself as an older millennial (laughter), but this is something that I just couldn't have been done way back in the 1990s 'cause kids these days...
CARRILLO: (Laughter).
DEMBY: ...Are much more used to thinking of themselves as the subjects of story, as storytellers, right? They've grown up in a world where social media and podcasting are normal, and they're kind of a given. They're hearing other people like them talk about their experiences and their very particular fascinations. So storytelling, it feels like it's just much more democratic than it used to be. And that's probably a lot of what we're hearing, too?
CARRILLO: I think you're totally right. One of the things that really stood out to me when I was recently talking to teachers who've succeeded in this podcast challenge, they said that you don't really have to teach the students how to edit the audio or edit anything because they're already editing tons of things on TikTok, on YouTube. It's just kind of second nature for them at this point.
DEMBY: OK, so I guess we all got to be mindful of them taking our jobs.
CARRILLO: (Laughter).
DEMBY: But, Sequoia, you're about to venture back into the podcast salt mines for Year 4 of the podcast challenge?
CARRILLO: Yep. We'll announce the contest with some new twists later this fall, and we'll start accepting entries in 2022.
DEMBY: 2022 - right around the corner, my God.
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DEMBY: All right, y'all, that's our show. Sequoia, do you want to stick around and do the credits with me?
CARRILLO: Sure. You can follow us on Twitter and IG. We're at @nprcodeswitch. And we want to hear from you. Our email is codeswitch@npr.org. And subscribe to the podcast on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts.
DEMBY: This episode was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and edited by Steve Drummond. And of course, we would be remiss if we did not shout out the rest of the CODE SWITCH familia - Leah Donnella, Christina Cala, Jess Kung, Karen Grigsby Bates, Kumari Devarajan, LA Johnson, Natalie Escobar and Alyssa Jeong Perry. Our intern is Carmen Molina Acosta. I'm Gene Demby.
CARRILLO: And I'm Sequoia Carrillo.
DEMBY: Shereen will be back next week. Be easy, y'all.
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CARRILLO: Oh, my God. What is my sign-off? I did not think...
(LAUGHTER)
DEMBY: What do you say when people say, I'll see you later? Just, naturally, what do you say?
CARRILLO: Like, bye, y'all (laughter). Virginia's coming out. I can't do that on the radio.
DEMBY: Yes, you absolutely can. You absolutely should.
CARRILLO: OK.
DEMBY: All right, let's do it again.
Be easy.
CARRILLO: Bye, y'all.
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