Code Switch

Comedian Julio Torres has made a career out of seeing the whimsical in the mundane, from the hidden meanings of shapes, colors, to the bureaucracy of the United States immigration system. Yet, he still feels like he's running out of time to make the art he wants to. This week, Julio joins us to talk about his new book The Perfect Gift, his appearance in La Bola Negra, and the urgency of making art in this moment.

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Being a Jewish comic who criticizes Israel right now means getting it from all sides. Ilana Glazer and Gianmarco Soresi talk to Gene about being called self-hating, getting accused of faking being Jewish, and watching gigs dry up. As comedy has become more intertwined with politics and power, some of the loudest critics of Israel are on the political right, and some of them traffic in antisemitic and racist tropes. Ilana and Gianmarco get into where that leaves them, and who the joke’s really on.

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Every election season, politicians remember Black voters exist, and then lecture them, pander to them or skip their doors entirely. MS NOW’s Eugene Daniels has been reporting on Black voters in Cleveland and Detroit, and he tells Parker what actually gets people to the polls (hint: it’s not guilt-tripping).

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President Trump and Silicon Valley tech bros are obsessed with IQ, but the history of intelligence testing is full of bunk race science and eugenics. With the rise of AI's "super intelligence," should we still be ranking human intelligence at all? We teamed up with our play cousins from It's Been a Minute to find out who gets to be labeled as smart with Quinn Slobodian, author of Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and Angela Saini, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science.

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Are the men in your life reading? How do you convince people to check out more novels? This week, we turn to our play cousins at It's Been a Minute and their recent conversation with author Jason Reynolds. Reynolds is the acclaimed author of young adult novels, Look Both Ways, Long Way Down, and Ghost and he joins host Brittany Luse to discuss the lessons in empathy, friendship and hope that novels can inspire in all readers.

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