0:00

Before we get to the show, a lot

0:02

of our listeners have been asking

0:04

CodeSwitch some really good questions lately,

0:06

and we want to respond. So

0:08

in the new year, we'll be

0:10

answering more of your questions about

0:12

race and identity. The kinds of

0:14

sticky stuff you could only ask

0:16

CodeSwitch. So if you

0:18

have a question for us, send us a message

0:21

on Instagram at MPR CodeSwitch, or you

0:23

can send us questions in a voice note

0:25

or an email to CodeSwitch at mpr.org. Subject

0:28

line, ask CodeSwitch. Okay,

0:30

onto the show. You're

0:35

listening to CodeSwitch. I'm

0:37

Lori Lissaraga. I don't

0:40

know about you, but

0:42

I'm looking back on the past

0:44

12 months and thinking, how did

0:46

we already get here? I know,

0:48

I know. The end of December

0:50

comes around every single

0:52

year without fail. But

0:55

we here at CodeSwitch didn't want

0:57

this year to come and go

0:59

without really taking it in. So

1:02

for today's episode, each

1:05

member of the CodeSwitch massive is

1:07

taking some time to reflect on

1:09

and recommend an episode from 2023

1:12

that stayed with us.

1:14

You'll be hearing about moments that

1:16

resonated, made us feel something,

1:18

or changed the way we think. I'll

1:21

go first. It's

1:24

really hard to choose a favorite

1:26

episode. I mean, between Parker's Climate

1:29

Solutions episode with student activists in

1:31

Baltimore, to working with

1:33

my colleagues on Finding Home Condaca with Brian

1:36

De Los Santos from the Alleist. There

1:39

are a lot of really good episodes to

1:41

choose from. But

1:44

I think for me this year, it all comes

1:46

back to one year ago in

1:49

my very first episode at CodeSwitch with

1:53

Nymami. Hi

2:01

Lori. Hi Mom. Will

2:03

you introduce yourself, like start by saying your

2:05

full name how you introduce yourself to people?

2:09

Well how I introduce myself

2:11

to people is Paula Lizeraga.

2:15

As people around me

2:17

weren't able to pronounce my

2:20

name properly and then they would tell me,

2:22

you know, your name is, that's how

2:25

you say it, it's P-A-O-L, that's

2:27

payola. And

2:29

I do remember something rising

2:31

within me and just thinking,

2:33

I hate that name, that's

2:35

so ugly. That's not my name.

2:37

They would

2:40

ask like, what is it in English? And

2:43

so I began to understand

2:45

that it just needed to be like translated.

2:47

Getting a chance to sit across from my

2:49

mom and interview

2:52

her for my very first episode at Code

2:54

Switch meant a lot to me for so

2:56

many reasons because names have so much to

2:58

do with sitting in or

3:00

standing out with

3:02

authenticating yourself or feeling like you

3:04

are who you are assimilating and

3:08

identity. And I

3:10

also spoke to an expert about

3:13

the long-term implications of having your

3:15

name is pronounced. A number of

3:17

studies have found that especially when

3:20

children's names are mispronounced in

3:22

schools, it can create

3:25

these really negative knock-on effects, whether

3:27

it's lower self-esteem, whether it's a

3:29

shame associated with your identity, and

3:32

eventually it can even lead to

3:34

you wanting to completely reject your

3:36

cultural identity in order to want

3:39

to assimilate. I

3:41

love that my mom's once really

3:44

isolating experience ended up being one

3:46

that resonated with so many of

3:49

our listeners in such a real

3:51

way. So thanks mommy

3:54

for coming on the show and for helping me

3:56

with everything but especially with

3:58

my very first episode. here at

4:00

Code Switch, te quiero mucho. And

4:03

with that, I'm passing the mic on to

4:05

the rest of my compadres. Happy

4:07

New Year, everyone. De fruida.

4:13

Hey, I'm Jess Kung, one of the show's

4:15

producers. An episode that stuck with me

4:17

from 2023 was our interview

4:19

with Ava Chen, author of Mott Street, a

4:22

book I adored. And I know

4:24

Lori liked it too, because she took Parker on

4:26

a whole field trip to New York's Chinatown to

4:28

see Mott Street for herself. And then we walked

4:31

0.4 miles, and

4:33

then we'll get to Mott Street. It

4:35

feels very, very bubbled

4:37

in and protected from the bustle

4:39

that we just came from. There's

4:42

a soapy smell that's familiar to me. So

4:47

the book is the story of

4:50

a family, Ava's family, a profoundly

4:52

Chinese-American family over four generations in

4:54

the States. And we

4:56

got to talk to her about how

4:58

her book brings together historical evidence and

5:00

family mythology. Ava told

5:02

us about combing through 19th-century newspaper

5:05

articles for stories about Chinese people,

5:07

or her family members specifically, which

5:10

were mostly, you know, really racist

5:12

in a way that was also

5:14

very normal. But as

5:16

a person, a contemporary person living today,

5:19

reading this and knowing that

5:21

my family members are living not too far

5:23

away was really

5:25

painful and difficult for me, you

5:28

know, personal. And then the

5:30

official records, like birth certificates, immigration

5:33

records, if they existed in

5:35

the first place, if they were preserved to the

5:37

21st century, they're

5:40

full of holes or straight-up

5:42

lies, fake names and fake

5:44

relations to get around Chinese Exclusion Act

5:46

policies. Knowing that the

5:49

National Archives files

5:51

were filled with so much fiction allowed

5:54

me to give space to the

5:56

oral stories and the family stories.

5:58

A lot of the book... Is

6:00

driven by Eva, meeting her strains and

6:02

absent father in her twenties. And.

6:04

Learning more about his family and

6:06

his history. Through. Her

6:08

wide ranging research she got a

6:10

better feel for how generations of

6:12

men living under races policy and

6:14

women living under the same policy

6:16

and also under their husbands trickle

6:18

down to her. The. We

6:20

and which Chinese exclusion

6:23

impacted families on the

6:25

grounds. Wheeling was eye

6:27

opening to me and and allowed

6:29

me to see the ways in

6:32

which my father has lived his

6:34

life. As being a

6:36

kind of i'm an asshole

6:38

or resonance of the original

6:41

Chinese exclusion. Masri.

6:43

Allows forgotten truths to exists between

6:45

incomplete government records and racist newspapers

6:47

and old family gossip and the

6:50

kind of projections you can make

6:52

when you spent a lifetime observing

6:54

your family. Lights were like this

6:57

for some kind of reason. Rise.

7:01

And I'm just really glad we got to have a va on the show!

7:08

And Courtney sign as sometimes producer

7:10

and sometimes editor. Here occurred since

7:12

I got out Parker make a

7:14

beautiful series of episodes about how

7:16

descendants of enslaved people can honor

7:18

their ancestors and the second until

7:20

episodes architect the road trip with

7:22

her mom back to the plantation

7:24

where their ancestors were enslaved the

7:26

to places avoided for most of

7:28

our allies and Parker been Parker

7:30

brings life. Is

7:33

accurate it's you put your arm our any do

7:35

the full as the time. Set

7:38

of. I've

7:41

always wanted to do. Not.

7:45

Taken advantage of the road ship

7:47

experience. When

7:51

we talking about ways to begin the episode,

7:53

Parker told me about the hours of recording

7:55

said she'd done with her gram of before

7:57

she died and and something unrelated to. In

8:00

one of the reasons I even got into

8:02

making radio on the first place as we

8:04

see Up and Me games. What

8:06

Are these? He just spoke

8:09

with me that saw. That's. My games.

8:11

She. Helped raise me, And fact, she

8:13

was my kindergarten. Teacher and for.

8:16

The longest time she was my mean.

8:18

Into the subject because it was

8:20

just me. And her hanging out during

8:22

the day gala visit? That's all I'm

8:24

doing that is that. You

8:27

need to do. Like. Lists of

8:29

the learn a learning how to do. That

8:32

as upset with somebody. In

8:35

to have talked about. A

8:38

specific story or whatever. Grammar.

8:40

Specific story always started with

8:42

where she's from. Grams.

8:48

Grew up in farming country and Cresswell.

8:50

I grew up. there's bomb and.

8:54

Gray long row. And

8:58

group trod big clouds

9:00

under. When

9:03

my grandma is dying I bought my

9:05

first recorder and wanted to have a

9:08

bit of her, her sense of humor,

9:10

her directness, her sometimes harshness but when

9:12

I never said that that the microphone

9:14

for the first time she sat me

9:16

down see want that the interface at

9:19

I Get Side Emperor said I became

9:21

a producer of other people's recordings. Are

9:23

just sitting and getting to help Parker

9:25

make this episode as one of my

9:28

favorite stories of Africa and the work

9:30

on. I highly recommend listening to the

9:32

full episode and going on this road

9:34

trip with Parker and her mom. be

9:41

a parker here one of the closest

9:43

of cassettes i wanted to talk about

9:45

an episode that came out earlier in

9:47

the year that really stayed with me

9:49

they came from loyalists a lotta and

9:52

our beloved can greasy these and it

9:54

was called the women who influence how

9:56

america eats now laureen kgb really deep

9:58

dive into the divers female voices

10:00

in food media, talking

10:02

to food journalists like Priya

10:05

Krishna, Vondias, women

10:07

who have leaned into their own

10:09

histories when it comes to the

10:11

kitchen and refused to compromise themselves.

10:15

A moment that really opened my

10:17

eyes was when Karen spoke with

10:19

Chef Reema Seel. Now Chef

10:21

Seel grew up in a Palestinian Syrian

10:23

household in the US and that meant

10:25

that some of the recipes that were

10:28

being passed down inevitably had

10:30

to change simply because

10:32

of access to ingredients. But

10:35

that never changed the food's authenticity

10:38

or as KGB likes to call it, the

10:41

dreaded A word. My apologies. You know for

10:43

me like every dish has a soul to

10:45

the dish, has a spirit, has a history

10:47

and as long as that stays intact I

10:50

feel very strongly that everything else is

10:53

flexible and I say this because

10:55

that's how people have evolved over the

10:57

course of time. Like I think that

10:59

for the immigrant experience for Arabs the

11:01

food that they remembered when they left

11:04

in the you know 60s or 70s

11:06

has evolved right? No one

11:08

family has that authentic way to

11:10

make that recipe. Everybody has a

11:12

different spin on it based on

11:15

what's available to them so why not be

11:17

flexible? You know you don't have

11:19

pomegranate. What is another thing that's

11:21

tart and that you can put in there? Like

11:23

I don't think that there's anything wrong with that

11:26

and and in fact the dish becomes better over

11:28

time when people discover

11:30

these things. Also there's this conception

11:32

that our cuisine is not

11:35

adaptable, is not flexible. In fact it

11:37

is very adaptable. Personally

11:39

I can't cook even

11:41

though I come from a deep bench

11:43

of southern female cooks who are carrying

11:45

a cultural and historical spirit in their

11:47

dishes which is why I will fight for

11:50

chilins till my dying day. But

11:52

to hear these women fully embrace

11:54

the metaphorical and literal melting pot

11:56

that we've been handed down was a

11:59

very really hotwarming experience.

12:30

One of the episodes that really stood out to

12:32

me was this moment where Jean and one of

12:34

the writers, Fadi Judah, briefly

12:36

talked about this very racist

12:39

question that many Palestinians, or

12:41

anyone who sympathizes with the Palestinian

12:44

cause really, were being

12:46

asked in the aftermath of the

12:48

Hamas attack in early October. Do

12:51

you condemn the murder of

12:53

women and children of the States

12:55

by Palestinian terrorists? Do you condemn

12:57

what the Hamas terrorists did in

13:00

Israel on Saturday? Underneath that question

13:02

is obviously this presumption, you know,

13:05

whether it's intended or not, that you

13:07

are guilty by association and you're guilty

13:09

until you declare otherwise. I've

13:12

been asked so many times that

13:16

I almost no

13:18

longer recognize the

13:21

question, because the

13:23

question is actually disinterested in me. The

13:25

question is only interested in me when

13:29

it, I say in quotation mark,

13:31

feels that I

13:33

need to be threatened. The question

13:35

is so pervasive that there is

13:37

no possible argument around it. It

13:40

feels like constantly an interrogation

13:42

of one's humanity or

13:45

a justification for oppression.

13:48

The entire episode is very moving and one

13:50

that I am extremely proud to have been

13:53

a part of. I'm really

13:55

glad that we were able to hold space

13:57

for these writers to talk about their grief,

13:59

their love. their joy and to add some

14:01

nuance to all of the noise that is

14:03

out there when it comes to

14:05

coverage of Palestinians. Hey

14:11

everyone, my name is Christina Kala and

14:14

I'm Code Switch's senior producer. Before

14:16

I came to Code Switch, I used to leave music

14:18

coverage on all things considered. I did

14:20

quite a bit of field reporting also with

14:23

different people from NPR, including a trip

14:25

to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in

14:28

2017 with Adrian Florido. And

14:31

this year, I worked

14:33

on this episode, Bad Bunny, Vegaton,

14:35

and Resistance, that kind of

14:37

brought a lot of that experience together. All

14:42

right, so what would you say in there? Because

14:44

the most bandage is trash. Well,

14:47

he was kind of going after like

14:49

the entire political class in Puerto Rico,

14:51

including calling out the governor. But

14:54

the thing he said that really

14:56

drew that massive roar that I

14:59

heard was, Luma

15:02

Paltcarajo. Luma can go to

15:04

hell. Huh, okay. Who

15:08

is Luma? Well, Luma runs

15:10

Puerto Rico's power grid. It's

15:13

the island's electric company. And

15:15

a lot of Puerto Ricans hate it. I wasn't

15:17

a Bad Bunny super fan before working on this

15:19

episode. Like our other

15:21

guest, Vanessa Diaz, who is teaching a

15:23

college class on Bad Bunny and Resistance.

15:26

I feel like I can admit this now because

15:28

I am one. And the

15:30

reason is this episode and the

15:32

people we talked to and the context

15:35

they gave about Bad Bunny's music. We

15:38

often think of music as background,

15:40

something soft to vibe with or

15:42

score our big moments in life.

15:46

In that softness, there's actually a lot of

15:48

power. Even

15:53

for music about dancing and

15:55

beaches and blackouts, Bad

15:58

Bunny is responding to the critique

18:00

of Bad Bunny, but also

18:02

feeling that appreciation for Puerto Rico,

18:04

for Puerto Rican people, for

18:07

the struggles of Puerto

18:09

Rico, the continued struggles for independence,

18:13

liberation. And

18:15

I just feel like that song is so, so

18:17

beautiful and such an homage

18:19

to the beauty

18:22

of the island. And to me, that's

18:25

the most beautiful love story for

18:27

Puerto Rico that he ever wrote. When

18:41

we come back, more top episode

18:43

picks from the people who make

18:45

Code Switch possible. That's

18:47

coming up. This

18:50

message comes from Apple Card. Reboot your credit

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card with Apple Card. It gives you unlimited

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accounts by Goldman Sachs Bank USA. Member

19:16

FDIC. Terms apply. Before

19:22

we get back to the show, the end of

19:24

the year is coming up and we're reflecting a

19:26

bit here at Code Switch. We

19:29

have loved bringing you stories

19:31

about our families, our ancestors,

19:34

race and taxes, race and football

19:36

in 2023. And

19:38

we're excited about everything we'll dig into in 2024.

19:42

Hopefully with your financial support.

19:45

This is where we want to say a

19:47

big thank you to our Code Switch Plus

19:49

supporters and anyone listening who already donates to

19:51

public media. Your support ensures

19:53

that everyone has free access

19:56

to reliable news and podcasts,

19:58

including those who can't afford

20:00

to get this season. And to

20:02

anyone out there who isn't a supporter

20:05

yet, right now is the time to

20:07

get behind the NPR network, especially

20:09

with journalists gearing up for

20:11

an important election year. Supporting

20:13

public media now takes just a few

20:15

minutes and makes a real difference in

20:17

what's possible moving forward. So

20:19

join NPR Plus or make

20:22

a tax-deductible donation

20:25

now at donate.mpr.org-slash-codeswitch.

20:28

Thank you. Lori,

20:36

Jeff, Lori, Codeswitch. This

20:39

week, we've been hearing from each

20:41

member of the Codeswitch massive about

20:43

our favorite Codeswitch episodes in 2023.

20:46

So without further delay,

20:48

I'm passing the mic along. What's

20:53

good, y'all? I'm Gene W. I'm one of the co-hosts

20:55

of Codeswitch, which means I've sat in

20:57

on a lot of really fascinating conversations over the

21:00

last year. And so it was kind of hard

21:02

to narrow it down for this episode. But I

21:04

think a lot about this conversation I had with

21:06

Hank Azaria, who was famously the voice of so

21:09

many characters on The Simpsons, including

21:11

Apu and Hari Kondabolu, the

21:13

comedian who made a documentary about all

21:15

the problems and all the racial tropes

21:18

embedded in Apu. When

21:20

that documentary dropped, they opened up this

21:23

whole discourse around race and brownface and

21:25

fandom. So, you know, obviously the

21:28

discourse is all civil and thoughtful,

21:30

right? But nah, it got

21:33

real ugly. And these two dudes, you know, were

21:35

in the center of all of it and it

21:37

became something of an inflection point

21:39

in both of their careers. I

21:41

get called names. Hari

21:43

got death threats, right? This,

21:47

you know, was an episode for me that I

21:49

suppose if I mishandled could have gotten a lot

21:51

worse, essentially, it ultimately

21:55

was a very challenging inconvenience for a

21:57

long time. And for Hari, I'd

21:59

like to... Completely define his career, you

22:01

know, which by the way, I don't think I

22:03

realized when I made this thing because I honestly

22:06

if I had realized Some

22:08

of this stuff part of me as someone who also

22:10

is in a career in show business

22:12

I don't know if I would have done some of it And

22:14

so the two of them came on code switch

22:17

They asked if they could come on code switch

22:19

to sit down and chop it up and

22:21

hash all this out with us And

22:23

so I was sitting right between them in this little

22:26

studio as they had this conversation

22:28

They both felt to be a model and how to

22:30

do this sort of thing to have this kind of

22:32

conversation And yeah

22:34

I think about it a lot because you know

22:36

This is gonna sound weird because my literal job

22:38

is to talk to people about race But I

22:41

wonder all the time about the limits of dialogue

22:43

about you know If we have time for trying

22:45

to win people over one heart and

22:47

mind at a time like the world is on fire I

22:49

mean even the combo on the show that was years in

22:51

the making like Given

22:53

how urgent everything is do

22:55

we have time for all that? I Don't

22:57

know I don't know but you should listen to the episode

23:00

is called the fallout of a call out and then you

23:02

know Get at me and us by email or IG or

23:04

whatever it is you use and tell us what you go

23:06

I really want to talk to you about it. All right,

23:09

cool be easy I'm

23:16

Dalia Mortada the managing editor and showrunner

23:19

of code switch. I

23:21

can't possibly choose a favorite episode in 2023 It's

23:24

like asking me to choose a favorite child. There

23:26

are just so many good ones and you should

23:28

listen to them all But

23:30

there is one episode I loved listening

23:32

to for so many reasons It

23:35

comes from Leah Danella who is code switches senior

23:37

editor and we don't get to hear from her

23:40

on the mic very often She

23:42

took some time earlier this year to

23:44

report on black immigrants in Tennessee and

23:47

how they think about their racial identity in the

23:49

US and The episode

23:51

that she made is called remembering

23:53

and on remembering from Kigali to

23:55

Nashville and in it

23:57

Leah focuses on one guy in particular

24:00

My name is Claude Catebouquet.

24:02

Claude came to the U.S. as a kid

24:05

and a refugee of the Rwandan genocide. And

24:08

when he got here, he told his

24:10

story to one of his teachers who

24:12

told him that he was lying, that

24:14

his story didn't match the official record.

24:18

And that moment in the

24:20

episode is so infuriating. And

24:22

at the same time, not that surprising. I'm

24:25

the kid of Syrian immigrants, and I know a

24:27

lot of people who have fled wars and have

24:29

had their voices shut down just like Claude. And

24:32

it's a really effective way to silence

24:34

people and make them turn inward. But

24:38

there's this moment where Claude describes his

24:40

turning point, where he realizes that he

24:42

actually needs to share his story, that

24:44

it's crucial. And it's

24:47

when he reads the autobiography of Frederick

24:49

Douglass. I felt useless. This

24:51

guy was seven years old when he was

24:53

turned into basically somebody's microwave or lawnmower or

24:55

whatever. He was a tool. He

24:58

was not considered a human being. And

25:01

he did all of these things and used

25:03

his story. And I have a story. I

25:05

would say, no, no, no. I can't stay silent.

25:10

I found that turning point and

25:12

that evolution of Claude's so powerful.

25:14

And it reminds me of why

25:16

it's so important to speak out

25:18

and share your truth, tell

25:20

your story, because it can really affect

25:22

a lot of other people. My

25:28

name is Leah Danella. I'm Coates,

25:30

which is senior editor. And I've been working on

25:33

this team for eight years now. So there are

25:35

stretches when it feels like nothing in the world

25:37

of race and identity can truly surprise me. But

25:42

then every so often, I end up

25:44

kind of humbled. And

25:47

the last time that happened was with an episode

25:49

we did about probation and parole, or what Vinnie

25:51

Schiraldi calls mass supervision. So

25:54

this is not a trivial issue. About a

25:56

quarter of the people entering a... our

26:00

prison system, our largest

26:02

in the world prison

26:04

system, enter for

26:06

technical, non-criminal violations

26:09

of probation or parole, one out of

26:11

four. One of the things I

26:13

love about CodeSwitch is that we get to talk about

26:16

systems of power, how we

26:18

all like to think that we're individuals

26:20

making individual choices, but when

26:22

you really zoom out, you realize that so

26:24

many of our choices and our

26:26

life outcomes are constrained by

26:28

the systems that we're navigating. So

26:31

we talk pretty regularly about things

26:33

like policing and mass incarceration, but

26:36

I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I

26:38

had never really given a second thought to

26:40

probation or parole. But as

26:42

Vinny told us, they are two

26:44

systems that disrupt the lives of an enormous

26:46

number of people, and no

26:48

surprise, in ways that disproportionately burden people

26:51

of color and poor people. Vinny

26:54

gave an example that really stood out to me. He

26:57

said that as someone who's mostly worked professional

26:59

jobs, he could always have

27:01

taken time away from work to check in

27:03

with a parole or probation officer, for instance.

27:06

And if when I was at Columbia, I was

27:09

on probation, and I needed

27:11

to spend two and a half hours sitting in

27:13

a probation office waiting to see

27:16

my PO, I wouldn't get fired from

27:18

Columbia. They would give me that

27:20

two and a half hours, I'd tack it on to

27:22

the end of the day, or frankly, an academia, nobody

27:24

knows where you are anyway. If

27:27

I was working at McDonald's or

27:29

Mechanics, I can't just disappear for

27:31

two and a half hours. What

27:33

the mental conversation there is, is

27:36

who am I going to piss off today? Am

27:39

I going to piss off my boss, but coming back

27:41

late? Or am I going

27:43

to piss off my probation officer or parole

27:45

officer who has the power to incarcerate me?

27:48

The whole episode is full of fascinating history

27:50

about how probation and parole came to be.

27:53

Some extraordinary, if perhaps maddening details

27:55

about the way the systems currently

27:57

work. And a proposal from

27:59

Vinnie. about what a more just future might

28:01

look like. It's highly worth a

28:04

listen. Hey

28:10

y'all, this is Verilynn Williams. I'm the

28:13

executive producer of Cold Switch. And

28:15

for what I must admit are selfish reasons,

28:18

the episode that stuck with me the most this year

28:20

was WTF does race have to

28:23

do with taxes? So

28:25

right before I got married and checked the single

28:27

box on my taxes for the last time, Jean

28:30

spoke to tax expert, author, and

28:32

fellow Bronx girl Dorothy A Brown.

28:35

So this IRS, we can't be

28:37

racist because we're colorblind. Really? That's

28:40

just an accident? Stuff happens? No, I'm

28:42

not buying that. One of the gems

28:44

she shared was the moment she realized

28:46

the marriage benefit in taxes that I

28:48

personally was ready for has

28:50

really been a marriage penalty if you're

28:52

black. Then I came across a

28:55

study put out by the Commission on

28:57

Civil Rights on the economic status of

28:59

black women. And I'm reading it

29:02

and it says that married black women

29:04

contribute 41% to household income. And

29:08

that was my Eureka moment. That means

29:10

nothing to anybody else. But to these

29:12

tax size, oh my gosh, my

29:15

mother and father earned roughly equal

29:17

amounts. And what our

29:19

tax law does to those married

29:21

couples is cause their

29:23

taxes to increase when they marry.

29:26

So when I saw that, I said, that's why

29:28

my parents are paying so much money in taxes

29:31

because they're married to each other. If

29:33

they were single living

29:36

in a household, their tax bill would

29:38

not have been as high as it

29:40

was because they were married. Dorothy

29:43

then went on to break down all

29:45

the ways face is a critical component

29:47

of our entire tax system. And

29:50

to say the least, this makes us have spirited

29:52

conversations in my household. And

29:54

it's the exact impact I want our work to

29:56

have on the lives of our audience. Conversation.

30:00

about race that answer questions that

30:02

we may never even have thought

30:04

to ask with people like Dorothy

30:06

who are equally as invested in

30:08

the answer to. And

30:14

that's our show! You can follow

30:16

us on Instagram at MPR code

30:18

switch. If email is more your

30:20

thing, ours is code switch

30:22

at MPR org. You can sign up for

30:24

our newsletter at mpr.org/code switch

30:27

newsletter. And if you're not

30:29

subscribed to the podcast already,

30:31

go ahead and do

30:33

that wherever you get your

30:35

podcast. This episode of

30:37

code switch was produced by Javier

30:39

Lopez. It was edited by Dalia

30:42

Mortada. Our engineer was Maggie Luthar

30:44

and a reminder of all

30:47

the people you heard on

30:49

this episode, the people who

30:51

make code switch every single

30:53

week, my team, Christina Kala,

30:55

Javier Lopez, Jez Kong, Leah

30:57

Dinella, Dalia Mortada, Veralyn Williams,

30:59

BA Parker, Jean Devney, and

31:01

Courtney Stein. We're going to miss you

31:04

so, so much. Courtney, thank you

31:06

for all you've done for code

31:08

switch, for our team. We'll miss you. I'm

31:11

Lori Lizarraga. Call your mama.