Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast - Karen Pittman on Acting Against the Odds

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

In this special, live-taped episode actress Karen Pittman join Michele on stage to talk about her journey from Nashville to her career in Hollywood. She revisits the childhood kitchen where she watched her parents' fraught dynamics play out and where she learned to build worlds of her own imagination. Plus, we learn how to make her mama's buttery cinnamon rolls. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Details at fizz.ca. Hi everyone, I'm Jenna Bush Hager from Today with Hoda and Jenna. And I'm excited to share my new podcast, Open Book with Jenna. Each week, celebrities, experts, friends, and authors will share candid stories with me about their lives and new projects.

Guests like Steven and Evy Colbert, Nicholas Sparks, Emily Henry, and more. Like a good book, you will be feeling inspired and entertained. Join me for my brand new podcast, Open Book with Jenna. New episodes of Open Book with Jenna are released every Thursday. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everyone.

Welcome back to Your Mama's Kitchen. This is the place where we explore how we are shaped as adults by all the things that happen in the kitchens of our use. Everything that happened there, not just the food, the memories, the homework at the kitchen table, the laughter, the arguments. I'm Michelle Norris. And today's episode is a little bit different than our usual programming. You're about to hear a conversation that I had with Karen Pittman, the actress known

for her incredible range. You've probably seen her on the Apple TV series called The Morning Show. You may have caught her in the Netflix hit series that's running right now called Forever. It's a remake of the popular Judy

Bloom novel of that same name. I spoke to Karen Pittman in front of a live audience at a conference in California called Leading Women Defying. It was a beautiful conversation about defying expectations and letting go of the things that sometimes can hold us back. It's a beautiful conversation and I can't wait for you to hear this one. Let's listen. This is such a special treat for me because I get to make all of you a part of an important

part of my life. And as you just heard, I host this little podcast called Your Mama's Kitchen. And what we do is we talk to people based on the theory that we are who we are as adults based on the kitchens that we grow up in. It shapes us in fundamental ways, not just the food, not just the nourishment, but the arguments, the anxieties, the sibling rivalries, the things that we eavesdrop on that we're not supposed to hear, the laughter because it's always where we have our loudest laughter and sometimes it's where we have our deepest tears. And I'm

joined tonight by someone that I'm so excited to talk to, Karen Pittman. And you all get to be a part of this conversation because normally I have to put together a list of questions and I have, but we want to include your questions as well And so please participate in this conversation I want to tell you just a little bit about Karen we know and love her work But there are a few things that you might not know She began her career with appearances in television shows such as law and order 30 rock and house of cards

She went on to land recurring roles in The Americans and on Luke Cage, remember that? Mmm, mmm, mmm. I'm sorry. She rose to prominence starring as Mia Jordan in the Apple TV Plus drama series The Morning Show. And I'm gonna ask you about the look, because you had a way of giving people a look,

and I think that you may have got that look yourself in your mama's kitchen. You might not know that she is an opera singer. I am. I am. She is a southerner. Definitely. I am. She is a southerner. Definitely.

She comes from a family with a strong gumbo tradition. We'll probably talk about that too. And she's had ups and downs in her career. We might talk about that. Mainly highs. But we're going to talk about the struggles also in the rough side of the mountain. And you will see her this, if you did your pre-watching as well as your pre-reading, you know that she is also, she plays a very strong role that will be familiar to many people. She plays the mother of one of the main

characters in Forever. So thank you so much for being with us. We always began with that simple question. Tell me about your mama's kitchen. But you grew up in Mississippi and Tennessee, so I wonder what kitchen your mind goes to when I ask that question. What goes to Nashville, where I grew up? Hey, Nastyville up in here. I grew up in North Nashville. Anyone who knows

their US history, African-American, knows that was bastion of civil rights movement, North Nashville, Tennessee. My parents moved us there in the mid-70s. And my mother's kitchen was a very southern kitchen. What does that mean? Smelled like salt meat. Smelled like hams, bacon, almost all the time. There were pots of collard greens or pinto beans. It wasn't clean. It wasn't a clean kitchen. People were all, I have four siblings, so people were always eating. Both my parents were scientists, so there was often some science experiment on the dining room table. So my father would have, well we had a full garden in the back where my father would grow.

We would eat out of my backyard and just everything, all vegetables. But he had a peach tree, loved growing peach trees. So he put a peach in a glass terrarium, top on it, and watch all the fruit flies grow over it, and then they would die off, and then fruit flies would grow again, they'd grow the eggs on the fruit. This was happening inside the house on the dining room table It was a science it but he what what he wanted us to see was that life Exactly it regenerates regenerate regenerates it comes back things change and then they come back and think it is the

comes back, things change and then they come back and think it is the arc of life. What does Octavia Butler says? The only God is change is what she says. That's the only God. And that was powerful. So my mother's kitchen was a classroom. It was a conference room. It was a war room. When I would see my mother in the kitchen she was always sitting with a cup of coffee in front of her, always. A glass of iced tea. Your father was Jack. Yeah. And your mother was Willie. Willie Ray. Yeah.

Miss you, mama. Oh, yeah. Were they, were they, I guess I'm wondering what you learned about their relationship when you watched the two of them in the kitchen? Because often it's where we figure out

power dynamics. My mother was in charge, is what I figured out. In charge of her kitchen or in charge generally? In charge of the house or in charge generally? In charge of the house. She's in charge of everything. I realized my father didn't like it. If I would see my parents sitting together in the kitchen at the kitchen day, they were often...

It was like the CEO and the COO. Do you know what I mean by that? It was like the head of our family was, they were plotting, strategizing. But I often didn't see them sitting together unless they were connecting well. For much of my childhood, my parents didn't connect well. So I would see my mother in the kitchen

separate from my father. If I saw my father in a kitchen cooking, my mother was nowhere around. So did you say your father did some of the cooking? My father did a lot of cooking. I learned how to cook from my father. What kind of cook was he? He was a... You know, my father was an artist. He loved a recipe. He loved a science. He liked to go and measure. He also would build a clock.

You know, this was the days before cell phones. So, you know, if you didn't have nothing to do, you were doing, he was never idle. So he was making lasagna or gumbo or a cake, Mississippi mud cake. He would make, you know, he would make just a brilliant soups, a soup that I make today and that I taught my son how to make. But he would build clocks. He would be under the car. He'd be on the roof.

Those Renaissance black man that just be out doing everything. He would grow vegetables and green thumb like he had he was like he would Anoint the soil and it would Talk about blooming He was extraordinary in that way My mother didn't have that But my father did. What was your mother's personality?

My mother was very, throw it together. She was the one that helped coin this phrase that we hear in my mind, that we hear all the time now, make a way out of no way. So she would, you know, she grew up with a sharecropper father and she picked cotton with him in Mississippi. So she understood what it was to, you know, make a little something taste good, add a flour and water, or corn meal and water, or it's, you know, she would throw things together in a pot and it was like just the most delicious friggin' thing I'd ever eaten in my life. She was, her fried chicken is extraordinary. Her fried chicken is extraordinary. She would can tomatoes. She would take whatever my father grew and extend it.

So we would have it in the winter. We would have it in the fall. She would cultivate whatever harvest he created. But he did most of the cooking. He didn't. What's memorable to me is when he was in the kitchen, in my mother's kitchen. That was memorable to me, because his food was so good.

He would let me cook with him. It was kind of a playground for him. And so that's what my kitchen looks. My kitchen looks a lot like a playground. You come in my kitchen, don't tell me to clean up, because I make a mess. And that's how I, you know, it's very, you know, it's my playground.

I do what I want to do. And I think I learned that from my father, not from my mother. Okay, we'll talk about your kitchen in a minute, but before we do, just a little bit more about your parents. When I was reading about you, I read that you noticed early on that they loved each other, but they had a hard time communing with each other. Yeah, they had a very hard time. And that you would retreat to your bedroom and you would create new worlds in your bedroom. And is that the roots of your life as an actor?

The roots of my life as an actor are seeing my parents unable to create a healthy bond with each other. And I desperately wanted them to connect. That's the root. The root of my work as an artist and as an actor is through empathy. We don't have enough of that in this world. But by seeing my parents never be able

to really connect with each other, I developed this deep sense of compassion for them individually. So my mother was in the kitchen on her own with a cup, it was often like this with a cup of coffee, right? I would, I would touch her. My father was in the other room watching whatever sports. I would just sit with him quietly. So that's the start of my work as an actor. You just sit in the seat of the soul of the character. And I learned that by sitting with my parents. That was the start, the actual start. And from doing that, I would go into my room

and build worlds of my own, characters and people of my imagination. What kind of worlds were you building in your room? Well, my parents were teachers as well as scientists, so I was often teaching my dolls what to do. I was singing my heart out. I loved a Patti LaBelle song.

I tried to hit every note Patti sang. Couldn't do it, but tried. And Whitney Houston, who was our, loved her and Michael Jackson and Prince. I was just singing my heart out just really trying to activate whatever I was holding energetically, I wanted to express it and let it out because it was dark. It was a very dark place to be in as a six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 year old. And ultimately it made its way into

made its way into an opera program at Vanderbilt University and then made it onto the high school stage. And I developed ambition from it and quickly grew out of the desire to stay in the South. I felt the pressure of tokenization. You can't be... I think very... I heard this phrase very often. From the time I was maybe very young, five or six, I heard, you can't do that. You can't do it. You can't do that.

You can't be an actress? You can't do anything, Michelle. You can't act like that. You can't have your hair like that. You can't, you know, you can't have the lead. You can't sing a solo. You can't, you know, I heard that from a very young age and I was done with that that

microaggression. So you knew you had to leave the South? I knew I had to leave the South. I knew I had to leave my house. I knew I had to leave the South. I knew I had to leave the South. I knew I had to leave my house. I knew I had to leave the small-minded mentality of the people around me. That included people in my family. That included my mother and my father. They didn't see a role for you as an actress or an actor. Oh, absolutely not. You know, in the television series Forever, Michael Cooper, Jr. plays my son.

His name is Justin, and Justin doesn't wanna go to Northwestern, which is where his mother wants him to go. She wants him to go. Which is where you went, also. Which is where I went, yeah. But if you haven't seen the show, you'll see it. I am not Dawn.

My kids watched the series with me, and I am still like, mom, where'd she come from? Because it's so far from who I said, my kids watched the series with me and I am still like, mom, where did she come from? Because it's so far from who I am, but in the series, he doesn't want to go to college. He wants to do something else. And that was me. That was me. I didn't want to go, but because my parents grew up during Jim Crow at a time where education

wasn't afforded to black people, I had to. Every mama in every kitchen since the beginning of time teaches this one truth. It's not how to boil an egg. It's that you don't waste food. And you can bet I'm passing the word onto my kids in my kitchen too. And now with the Mill Food Recycler, I can show them that it's not just the right thing to do, but it's also the easy thing to do. I just add my food scraps and mill runs automatically while I sleep.

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Hosting allows you to be a part of someone's special vacation memories, and the extra income might just help you make your own vacations. Your home could be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com slash host. Bon appetit. Hey there, it's Michelle Norris. I'm sure you've heard of that term aging gracefully. That's all good and fine. But I think most of us really want to age healthily. And that's why I want to spend a few minutes talking to you about Alloy, a company that gives women a toolkit designed to help them do just that, age healthily. Alloy recognized that this

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the ingredients are delivered directly to my door, directly to my house within an hour or two. And this idea for a backyard barbecue at the last minute suddenly becomes a reality. There are so many ways to save on summer grilling favorites at Whole Foods Market. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz.

Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. Hi there, it's Andy Richter. And I'm here to tell you about my podcast, The Three Questions with Andy Richter. Each week, I invite friends, comedians, actors,

and musicians to discuss these three questions. Where do you come from? Where are you going? And what have you learned? New episodes are out every Tuesday with guests like Julie Bowen, Ted Danson, Tignitara, Will Arnett, Phoebe Bridgers, and more. You can also tune in for my weekly Andy Richter call-in show episodes where me and a special guest invite callers to weigh in on topics like dating disasters, bad teachers, and lots more.

Listen to The Three Questions with Andy Richter wherever you get your podcasts. You know, I hope all of you have watched Forever. It is fantastic. So good. I mean, it is so good. It is so good. And knowing what I know about your story,

and she and Justin mix it up. And it's so real, the tensions between them. But I wondered if you had to go back to your childhood kitchen and revisit the moments when people were trying to put you in a box that you felt didn't fit for you. I did. I have such a strong bond with Michael. You guys will see, along with Lovey Simone and Michael,

that boy looks in your eyes and you, oh lord, you just want to help. But I did have to detach from that place that I was in as a child in a real way and embody a black woman that I completely understand who has great ambition for her children, but doesn't necessarily see who they are right in front of her, Dina, for her ambition for them.

They can't see the, literally can't see the forest for the tree in front of her, do you know, for her ambition for them. They can't see the, literally can't see the forest for the tree in front of her, yeah. Did your family come around at some point though? No, you know, it's so funny. No, no, that was, you know, lawyers always say don't ask a question unless you know the answer. That was not the answer I expected. I think usually you think that they'll eventually come around.

They never came around. No, no, they didn't. But you know what it taught me, Michelle, was it was a very important childhood lesson for me. Cause you know, and we all know this in this room, you know how many times I have heard, you're not gonna do that. If you can't do that, you can't be that.

You can't go there. Go, hi. You can't do that. You can't be that. You can't go there. Go, hi. You can't, you can't, you can't. Don't try, you know, it prepped me. It prepared me for this life that I lead where people are telling me I can't do it. I literally, I just can't, I don't hear it anymore. Do you know?

I can't hear it. You can you know? I can't hear it. You can't do it, I can do it. You know what I mean? So what is the voice that you hear in your head when someone is telling you, you can't do this, you're not right for that role? You... Yeah, I'm very Michael Jordan about it.

I'm like, you know, I take that shit personally. Oh, you think I can't do it? Let me show you what I can do. I hear it as a challenge. I hear it as a vocation. I hear it as a call from God. Well then I've gotta do it if you think I can a vocation. I hear it as a call from God. Well, then I've got to do it. If you think I can't do it, I must do it. Do you know what I mean?

And that goes back to the kitchen again, or the bedroom where you were creating the world and you were figuring out how to. I do think it goes back to my parents, you know, essentially, pulling us out of Mississippi into Tennessee was a huge thing for my father and for my mother. It's a lot of moral depravity in Mississippi where my parents grew up at the time that they grew up. My father grew up in a very small area of Mississippi down by the Gulf, and my mother

grew up in northern Mississippi, and they met at Mississippi Valley College. And they taught me the power of manifestation in the risks that they took. So I really learned how to throw myself out into the world, and off the proverbial cliff or whatever. I really learned that from them in that kitchen, sitting down at the war room or the conference table or whatever they were doing, strategizing.

You can't do this thing that we do as black women in this country without a plan, right? Without a strategy. I mean, you can get far on that overnight hustle, grind bullshit, and you go pretty far on that, I'ma work my butt off. But at some point, if you're gonna level up, you have to find, you gotta get strategy, sis, you gotta get a better strategy.

And I found that, you know, my parents growing up and coming of age and raising a family in the 60s, 70s, 80s, coming out of what they, they learned very early on that they had to create strategy. They lived in the country that we are afraid that we're going back to. And they achieved so much. My mother couldn't get a credit card, couldn't get a bank account, couldn't get a house, couldn't vote, none of those things. And they still made a way. And I think a part of that was that kitchen environment that you talk about so much in your work. I notice when you talk about your mother, I don't know what she looked like.

I wasn't able to find a picture of her. But your face changes when you talk about her. You know that? Yeah. Yeah, no, I don't. But I imagine both my parents passed away, which is why I said they didn't really, you know, if they had been here to see what my career has become, they would have been like, oh, okay.

So you say they didn't come around. That's an important thing. They didn't, they weren't here long enough. No, my father died when I was in grad school in 2006 and my mother died on election day 2016. Yeah, and the joke in the family is that she saw what was coming, so she was like, let me get out of here. Yeah, so, so yeah, they never saw it. You talk about how you don't hear no, which is kind of a, there's a toddler rule that you can,

you know if you've raised kids, you know how kids don't hear no? They just hear, I'm going to ask you again in three minutes. Oh. You know, so that sometimes is very useful. Did you say no? OK, I'm just going to ask again. Right, right, right. Did you say no? OK. I'm just going to ask again.

Right, right, right. But you had a choice to make where there was something that you really wanted, but you were pregnant. And you decided to go and do the audition. Mm. Are you talking about when I got in grad school? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, because you have to. It was a performance, so you had to actually go in and do the performance. And you couldn't. You could have to, it was a performance, so you had to actually go in and do the performance. And you couldn't, you could have waited, I guess. But dreams sometimes just don't wait. Tell us about that experience. Well, I was pregnant with my first child, Jacob. And I was panicking, because I had, didn't, I didn't,

I spent my life up to that point obedient to what my parents thought my life should look like. And I realized I didn't own my life authentically. I didn't know what I wanted. And I knew my life would change in big ways when my son was born. And I wanted my son, but I did not, I desperately didn't want to be,

you know when I said I saw my mother in the kitchen like this with a cup of coffee, I didn't want to be that mom. I didn't want to be that mother. I wanted my son to see me upright, involved in a career that I loved and enjoyed. So the impulse was, I want to thrive. But the underbelly of it was, girl, you better get it together. So I went

to NYU, grad acting. I didn't know anything about it. At the time, it was the number one school in the country for acting. And as I walked through the hallway I saw Andre Holland. You guys know Andre? I saw Danai Gurira. I saw Sterling K. Brown and his... You were acting like you didn't remember his last name. I didn't. Well, I call him Sterling Kelby, but he, I have to make sure Sterling K. Brown. I'd seen Danai Gurira in the hallway. And in fact, when I walked past Danai,

she was like, ooh, because I was five months pregnant. And I walked in and took all my courage, put all my courage together and did a Susan Laurie Parks monologue and a monologue from Antony and Cleopatra. Yeah. Couldn't believe I did it. And at that time I was married to my first husband

and he said, you know, Karen, you're not gonna get in. He loved me, he loved me. He said, I love you, baby, but you're not gonna get in. I'm just warning you, so you don't get your hopes up. Don't get your hopes up. I said, I gotta try. Called my mother, she said, baby, I know you like this acting thing,

but you're not gonna get in. I said, okay, well, I got to try something, mama. And Jacob was in my belly like, let's try, mama. So I went in and I didn't. And the woman on the other side of the table, Zelda Fitchandler, extraordinary mentor of mindset, what are you doing? What are you doing? Get up off the floor. Do you know, like, and I said, if you're looking at me,

you think I could be here, then you should. Just because I'm pregnant, never mind. I have a husband, I have support, I can do this. If I'm talented enough for you to be paying attention to me, then give me a chance. And they called me back a couple months later, and my husband at the time said, you know, if they let you in, they're not gonna give you any money,

Karen, I don't know how we're gonna afford it. That's right, he's my ex. So. I'm just kidding. So I'm just I'm just kidding. He loved me, but you sometimes outgrow people. But sometimes you outgrow people. You do outgrow people.

But I do want to say this. People that love you sometimes will say to you, I want to save you from this heartache. I want to save you from this pain. But that's not a life, right? You have to have adversity to grow. Right, we talk about can't hear a garden grow. You can't grow without trying, yeah, without experiencing adversity. So obviously, I got in, obviously.

They gave me tons of money to go there. And I'm here. So but yeah. I want to talk about hands for a minute. Hands. Hands, yeah. When I heard I was gonna interview you, I was talking to people who work with you,

and they said she has the most beautiful hands, and you do. And they're adorned, you have tattoos on your hands. With my prayer hands. But I want the room to think about hands also. Because hands are something that I think about when I think about hands also. I want, because hands are something that I think about when I think about my mother and my grandmother. So I want the people in the room to think about

the woman who raised you and think about their hands. Because their hands held skillets and spatulas. They held us. They sometimes held us up by our shoulders. They made a way for us. And if you look at the people in this room, if you look at your hands right now, and take a minute and look at your hands,

most of you have hands that are adorned in ways that our mothers could not imagine. You know, I wouldn't gotta, because I knew about your hands, so I wouldn't gotta manicure to be prepared. Cause I'm a cook and gardener, and I don't normally do this. But we all have our hands done.

Some of us have tall ships painted on our fingernails. And jewelrys and adornments. Our mothers, in many cases, could not imagine that, right? And we use our hands sometimes to cook, sometimes to garden, sometimes to accentuate what we say, but everyone in this room also uses their hands to climb. They hold onto the rungs of the ladder that allow us to climb to places

that place us in a room like this. So how do we do that? Advice from you and all that you've learned in your mama's kitchen, in your life as an actor, in your time as an opera singer, as a mother, as someone who is so accomplished, how do we do that and continue to climb, but hold on to the people who made us?

And at the same time, lift people up, to lift while we climb. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a well, you know, Michelle, sometimes you can't take people with you. We just can't. That's the advice. I mean, you sometimes have to detach from people you love. You love them.

And that is part of the journey, letting them go. Because a lot of the climb, for me, has been solo. No one could climb with me to the places that I went. I had to do it on my own. It was my journey. It was my woman's journey, it was my life's journey, and I had to do it by myself. In my room, I had to be there on my own, using my imagination.

Do you know, on the set of the morning show, I'm in my trailer by myself figuring things out, how to be a black woman on that set some days. Those are things I have to do on my own. So once I figured out how to climb on my own, then I could pull people up. Yeah.

But some of the journey, you have to detach with the deepest sense of love and compassion from people as you climb. Sometimes you'll have to let go. So I am so glad you came here because you say that you've had to do so much of this on your own. Thanks to your presence here and because of the woman in this room, you don't have to do anything alone. Thank you, yeah. Yeah. That you have a sisterhood of woman who support you

even though you can't see them. We are applauding you when we see you streaming on our televisions. We will continue to lift you up and know that you're really not alone. You may feel like you're alone, but you don't have to be alone. Thank you for. You that you're really not alone. You may feel like you're alone, but you don't have to be alone. Thank you for.

You don't have to be alone. Last thing I have to ask you, whenever we do one of these episodes, we always ask someone to share a recipe that means something to us. We're not gonna go through the whole recipe. But when you think back to that kitchen that you grew up in, what's the one thing that you would want people to know

that is the recipe that means something to you, maybe it's symbolic because it was, it meant something to you at an important moment in your life, it's something that you still cook for your kids today. It's by cinnamon, it's a cinnamon roll, you know. A cinnamon roll. Cinnamon rolls, yeah. There's a very elaborate cinnamon roll recipe now,

because my mother gave it to me. But on Christmas and on Easter, she would, you know, all the foods, everything, all the things you want. But in the morning, she would make cinnamon rolls. The best, you know, stay up all night making the dough. And it would come out and be fluffy, and not hard, but fluffy and yummy. And cinnamon roll recipe reminds me deeply of my mother

and her great love and time and energy she put in us and put in that kitchen. And again, her hands rolling out that dough, getting the cinnamon just right. Thank you so much for sharing your love. Thank you, oh my God, thank you. Teaching us a little bit about the kitchen where you were raised.

And I hope you do take the message that while you may feel like you're alone on your journey, you never are. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'll take that. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this special episode of Your Mama's Kitchen. Kieran was a delight to talk to. Her story reminds us that the kitchen is a place where resilience is stirred and Her story reminds us that the kitchen is a place where resilience is stirred and sometimes we first learn how to defy the word can't and replace that stop sign with a green light that allows us to go forward with confidence. Her story proves that the road ahead sometimes might seem difficult, but it can also be as bold as you choose for it to be.

And that's certainly in keeping with my outlook in life, especially now that I'm rolling around in a Rivian. Rivian has outfitted me with my very own R1S and I feel more inspired than ever to go on my own adventures and to create new memories and to look for the green lights that let me go forward with confidence. Now before we let you go, as always, our inbox is open for you to record your stories, your memories, maybe some thoughts on one of the previous episodes, maybe some of your own mama's recipes. You can make a voice memo or you can make a video and then you can send that to us at

ymk at highergroundproductions.com and you will have a chance for your voice or your video to be featured in one of our future episodes. Now that recipe that Karen mentioned, that will be on our website at yourmommaskitchen.com. You'll also find all the recipes from all the previous episodes. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure to come back next week and the week after that, because here at Your Mama's Kitchen, we always serve up something delicious. In the meantime, stay bountiful. [♪ Music playing. Fading out. Fading in. Fading out.]

[♪ Music Fades Out. Fading in. Fading in.] Some things just take too long. You ever been there when an uncomfortable question about race comes up, but you don't know how to answer? That's where Code Switch lives. Each week, we're talking about race and how it intersects with every other aspect of your life, from politics and pop culture to history and food. Listen now to the Code Switch podcast from NPR.