Code Switch

Why do Black contestants on reality TV keep getting voted out first? Like a lot of people, B.A. Parker watches reality TV to escape. But seeing contestants of color on the receiving end of microaggressions keeps pulling...

Zombies have roots most fans have never heard of. In Haitian Vodou, being zombified meant being enslaved even in death. B.A. Parker talks to Maya Annik Bedward, director of the new documentary Black Zombie , about how a...

Clarksdale, Mississippi, the birthplace of the blues, has been losing people, jobs, and businesses for years. Now land there has been rezoned to make room for a hyperscale data center, a process that got underway before...

Seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education, Black parents still face an impossible choice about where to send their kids. Gene talks with his twin sister about the different choices they’ve made for their kids, and...

The Lindsay Clancy trial captured the nation this summer, and reactions toward Clancy have been split. The case brought much needed attention to postpartum psychosis, but some question the support Clancy received from...

When Rep. Jasmine Crockett took the stage at a Chris Brown concert to honor him, the backlash came fast. It's a familiar cycle: every few years, Brown lands back in the news, and the public relitigates a history of...

Lots of progressive politicians eyeing runs for higher office are distancing themselves from the politics of 2020, like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez declaring, "woke 1.0 was crazy." But should they be? Jamelle...

Cubans are living through near-constant blackouts after an executive order that called the Cuban government an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and blocked their fuel imports. A hundred-page...

The WNBA is more popular than ever, but the growth has come with a lot of unwanted attention, like protests at games and death threats directed towards players. This week, we talk with independent journalist Frankie de...

There’s a growing backlash to the surveillance systems that have quietly wired themselves into American neighborhoods, with concern growing among people who have never felt watched this way before. Gene talks with...

In the 25 years since 9/11, we've seen the definition of terrorism expand. The Trump administration has called more and more groups “terrorists,” from “narco-terrorists” in Ecuador to people who protest ICE to the...

Lauryn Hill is a generational voice, a cultural lightning rod, and one of music’s biggest what-ifs. Our very own B.A. Parker joined the Big Lives podcast, hosted by Kai Wright and Emmanuel Dzotsi, to unpack the meteoric...

Ads for GLP-1s are everywhere. This week, we dig into why so many of those ads seem to feature Black women with Sabrina Strings, author of “Fearing the Black Body” a book about the racial origins of fatphobia. We get...

Banana Ball is a barnstorming baseball league revived by the tremendously popular Savannah Bananas, a team with millions of followers on TikTok and Instagram — known as much for their dance routines and shenanigans as...

Is there a family estrangement epidemic? This week, we dig into what’s behind the no-contact movement with sociologist Rin Reczek, author of the new book, “Families We Lose.” Rin walks us through who gets cut off, why...