Episodes

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

    What Trump's fixation on 'white genocide' in South Africa tells us about the U.S.
    Jun 4 2025
    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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    35 mins
  • Why tacos are as 'American' as apple pie

    Why tacos are as 'American' as apple pie
    May 28 2025
    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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    32 mins
  • How race science shows up at the doctor's office

    How race science shows up at the doctor's office
    May 21 2025
    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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    35 mins
  • Arab and Black communities are trying to reconcile after Trump's election

    Arab and Black communities are trying to reconcile after Trump's election
    May 14 2025
    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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    28 mins
  • 40 years ago, Philadelphia police bombed this Black neighborhood on live TV

    40 years ago, Philadelphia police bombed this Black neighborhood on live TV
    May 7 2025
    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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    36 mins
  • In the face of trans erasure, what can we learn from Marsha P. Johnson?

    In the face of trans erasure, what can we learn from Marsha P. Johnson?
    Apr 30 2025
    Marsha P. Johnson was a trailblazer in the fight for gay rights. But Johnson's legacy extends beyond her activism: "Marsha was a really full person who lived a vibrant life. She was a muse and model for Andy Warhol," and a performer in New York City and London. In this episode, we talk to activist and author Tourmaline about what we can all learn from Johnson's legacy in times of adversity.

    Tourmaline's two books about Marsha P. Johnson — Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson and One Day in June — are out on May 20, 2025.

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    32 mins
  • Why now is the time to find power in "otherness"

    Why now is the time to find power in "otherness"
    Apr 23 2025
    Viet Thanh Nguyen came to the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam when he was four years old. Growing up in San Jose, California, Nguyen remembers the moment he understood he was Asian-American. In his latest book, To Save and To Destroy: Writing as an Other, Nguyen examines the power in finding solidarity with other Others, especially in today's America.

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    31 mins
  • Revisiting the fight over the Lakota language as Trump targets "divisive narratives"

    Revisiting the fight over the Lakota language as Trump targets "divisive narratives"
    Apr 16 2025
    As the Trump administration targets the Smithsonian Institute for "divisive narratives" and "improper ideology," it got us thinking about how we preserve our history and everything that builds it, like language. So we're revisiting an episode from last year from the Lakota Nation in South Dakota over language — who preserves it, who has the right to the stories told in it, and who (literally) owns it.

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    42 mins