NPR to Debut Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Podcast, ‘Code Switch’ Next Week

(Washington, DC) – NPR’s award-winning Code Switch team will launch a podcast this month exploring how race and culture collide with everything else in people’s lives. With a rotating cast of Code Switch reporters, editors and guest contributors, the podcast will invite listeners to re-examine their perspectives about race and identity in ways that might inspire, entertain and challenge them.

“Code Switch has become an essential source for unflinchingly honest while empathetic discussions about race, ethnicity and identity,” said NPR’s Senior Vice President of News and Editorial Director Michael Oreskes. “It’s a crucial moment for these conversations. It is important to involve as many people from all backgrounds as possible. This new podcast expands the Code Switch team’s platforms to engage with audiences seeking greater perspective on these questions in their lives and in our world.”

The podcast will be hosted by NPR’s Gene Demby(@GeeDee215) and Shereen Marisol Meraji(@RadioMirage), who each have a broad base of experience on air and online, and will draw on the talents of the Code Switch writers and radio reporters. The Code Switch team’s diversity of voices, backgrounds and outlooks will enrich each conversation, giving listeners a space to look to look at themselves and their own preconceptions.

Launched in 2013, NPR’s Code Switch team has made its mark as a blog on NPR.org and with segments on NPR’s signature shows. The reporting team has tackled the constantly-shifting and overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture and how they play out in people’s lives and communities. Named after the many ways people shift how they express race and culture in daily life, Code Switch aims to deepen the coverage of these topics and capture the issues that define an increasingly diverse America.

“The racial experience of America is changing, so the way we talk, write and report about it also has to change too,” says Code Switch supervising senior producer Alicia Montgomery.

“Code Switch is where the next level of conversation about race, identity and culture happens,” adds Code Switch senior digital editor Tasneem Raja. “We are beyond excited to bring our reporting chops and street-level understanding of the issues to a podcast.”

The first episode of the Code Switch podcast will drop on Tuesday, May 31. The podcast will be available in the NPR One app and wherever podcasts are available.