What Trump's language has in common with cult language

When President Trump says things like “fake news,” “witch hunt” or even “Make America Great Again,” he’s not just using catchy phrases -- he’s persuading people into a way of thinking and believing. This week on Code Switch, we talk to Amanda Montell, author of Cultish and co-host of the podcast Sounds Like A Cult, about what the language of MAGA shares with cult language, and why it matters.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently put Scouting America — formerly known as the Boy Scouts — "on notice." The once great organization was becoming too woke, he said, and had been tarnished by embracing DEI. On this episode, we're talking to Benjamin René Jordan, author of Modern Manhood and the Boy Scouts of America, about the Scouts' surprisingly progressive history. And we ask him about the complex relationship between scouting and the military.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It’s Alabama, 1963. A black woman stands before a judge, but she refuses to acknowledge his questions until he addresses her by the same honorific given to white women: “Miss.” That woman's name is Mary Hamilton. Her case eventually reached the Supreme Court and changed the courts, and eventually broader culture, for good. We’re revisiting the largely forgotten story of Miss Mary Hamilton, a Freedom Rider who struck a blow against a pervasive form of disrespect.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Sinners has already broken records — it's the most Oscar-nominated film in the history of the Academy Awards. But is the movie itself actually historic? And what will its success mean for the future of Black filmmaking? This week, we're joined by Aisha Harris, a host of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour, and NY Mag film critic Angelica Jade Bastién. We get into what we loved, what we hated, and how Sinners fits into the broader landscape of big, splashy films that are beloved...yet never quite seem to move the needle on how Hollywood greenlights and funds future projects.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Iran has 90 million people of different ethnicities, faiths, and backgrounds, who have very different ideas about the country. Iranian American scholar Sina Toossi shares some of those varying perspectives with us to help complicate how Iranians feel about U.S. intervention, the war, and what should come next.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

We all know what gentrification looks like IRL — boxy, corporate-owned apartment complexes, places to get a quick bowl for lunch, streets that are dubbed "cleaner" and "safer" (even at the expense of the people who used to live there). But what does gentrification look like online? We’re talking to Jessa Lingel, who studies digital culture at the University of Pennsylvania, about her argument that the internet has become gentrified, and that we're all suffering the consequences.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The late Reverend Jesse Jackson was — and still is — a revered civil rights activist, political trailblazer, and pop culture icon. For his critics, he was also villainized, or at the very least, a punchline. As Jackson's home going ceremony continues, we take some time to remember how Jackson shaped American politics with journalist Adam Serwer, who warns us not to flatten Jackson into a cliche or caricature.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

While Puerto Rican independence is in the spotlight after Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show, we're throwing it to our play cousins at La Brega, a show about all things Puerto Rico. We hear from former Young Lords member Iris Morales about how the group took their love for their homeland to educate and organize against U.S. colonialism.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Jeremy Carl — President Trump's nominee for a senior State Department role -- was called out for his commentary on "white erasure" during his Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month. He defended the idea that "white culture" is in danger of being erased in the U.S. and that white people face more racial discrimination than any other group in country. So on this episode, we're talking to the Princeton historian Nell Irvin Painter about her book, The History of White People, and how definitions of whiteness have morphed over time depending on the interests of the people creating those definitions.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The U.S. has been deporting people from Cuba in record numbers. That has come as a shock to many Cuban American communities, who had long enjoyed special protections that don't apply to most other immigrant groups. This week on the show we're talking about where this change fits into the trajectory of Cuban immigration to the U.S. We'll hear from Ada Ferrer, a historian at Princeton who shares how her family's divergent paths to the U.S. reverberated through her life. Then, we talk to historian Michael Bustamante of the University of Miami about how U.S.-Cuba immigration policy has evolved since the Cuban Revolution.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy