Sounds Like Hate
Sounds Like Hate is a podcast from the Southern Poverty Law Center that tells the stories of people and communities grappling with hate and searching for solutions. You will meet people who have been personally impacted by hate, hear their voices and be immersed in the sounds of their world. And, you will learn about the power of people to change – or to succumb to their worst instincts. Sounds Like Hate was nominated for two People’s Voice Webby awards in 2022.
Season One takes a deep dive into the realities of hate in modern America: how it functions, how it spreads, who is affected and what people are doing about it.
Season Two examines the distorted history of the Confederacy some people accept as truth and how the people we love the most could be guided toward violent extremist beliefs.
Season Three reveals the harms done to individuals and our democracy by hate and extremism – while also showcasing the hope and resilience of the people fighting back. Hear from the unsung heroes who have pushed back against voter suppression in the South, who have stood up for the rights of trans children in the foster care system and who have taken on the unlawful militias who target migrants, often in cahoots with U.S. Border Patrol agents.
Two of the series in this season were nominated for a prestigious Webby award.
In Season Four, we explore the many manifestations of white supremacy in our current moment – from Confederate memorials to the Jan. 6 insurrection. We begin with a special episode marking the one-year anniversary of the extremist assault on the Capitol, which examines clues scattered openly across the nation by antigovernment networks and white supremacists – and shows how SPLC analysts were sounding the alarm well before the attack. Then, we continue our “Monumental Problems” series by taking you inside Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and its racial reckoning. We investigate how students are impacted by VMI’s dangerous and pervasive glorification of the Confederacy – which casts a long shadow of white supremacy over the school. Student and alumni activists’ demands for change are part of a broader struggle in the South and beyond. The story at VMI is about confronting our nation’s past and the legacy of slavery in order to build a more inclusive democracy for us all.
- Update frequency
- every 6 days
- Average duration
- 38 minutes
- Episodes
- 27
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2022
Wake-Up Call: Part II
This episode opens with Matriculation Day at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington – the start of school for first-year students. Racial justice protests in 2020 promoted a state-ordered…
Wake-Up Call: Part I
The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington is a college embedded in Southern military tradition – which includes an unquestioning respect for the Confederacy. But in the spring of 2020, a rac…
Season 4 Sneak Peek
This exclusive trailer for season four of Sounds Like Hate (coming June 14) takes you inside the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, where an independent investigation exposed a longstand…
Red Flags Everywhere
In this special episode of Sounds Like Hate Season 4, we travel back to the months leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, to track white supremacists as they plan, prepare and execute their violent plot to atta…
The Unwelcome: Part II
The Season 3 finale of Sounds Like Hate centers on the small town of Arivaca, Arizona, just 11 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Here, residents have taken a decidedly pro-migrant stand – but ar…
The Unwelcome: Part I
In Part I of “The Unwelcome,” we’re on the southern border in Arizona, where armed militia groups stalk migrants traversing harsh desert conditions. In some cases, militia members arm themselves with…
Season 3 Update
This special bonus episode of Sounds Like Hate provides an exclusive update on The Base, an international “white power” terrorist group that we’ve been tracking since Season 1 of the podcast. Since t…
Fostering Hate: Part II
In part II of “Fostering Hate,” we tell the stories of LGBTQ parents and children navigating a foster system with a history of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Too often, foster parents are not adequately …
Fostering Hate: Part I
In 2018, Philadelphia tried to defend its policies to prevent discriminatory treatment of LGBTQ parents in its foster care system – and got sued by a religious right organization over it. This episod…
Collateral Damage: Part II
In Florida, many people who have previously been incarcerated have had their right to vote taken away by discriminatory legislative measures. In this episode, we meet some of these people who have se…
Collateral Damage: Part I
In this episode, we visit Georgia to investigate a devastating new voter suppression law and meet the activists and community members who are fighting its deliberate and calculated suppression of peo…
Sneak Peek: Season 3
In this exclusive sneak peek at Sounds Like Hate’s third season, we travel to the deadliest border crossing in the nation, along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, where undocumented migrants are cro…
Monumental Problems: Part III
Stone Mountain, Georgia, sometimes called the “Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy,” is home to one of the largest stone carvings in the world: An image of Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E…
Monumental Problems: Part II
In “Monumental Problems,” Part II, Sounds Like Hate producer Jordan Gass-Poore tells a personal story about her Texas Hill Country family. Gass-Poore is the descendant of Confederate veterans, and th…
Monumental Problems: Part I
“Monumental Problems,” Part I, brings us to Florence, Alabama, where a large Confederate monument has loomed in front of the county courthouse since 1903 – but perhaps not for much longer if communit…
Baseless Update
In the first 5 episodes of Baseless you listen to secret recordings of over 100 white supremacists applying for membership to a violent neo-Nazi hate group called The Base. In this bonus episode you’…
Baseless: Part V
Part five of Baseless continues the story of a young white supremacist and the family members who tried to intervene after it was too late. We also follow a 21-year-old recruit from Massachusetts who…
Baseless: Part IV
We continue our coverage of the neo-Nazi, accelerationist group The Base with two new episodes of Baseless. This time, Sounds Like Hate examines what parents should be doing to prevent radicalization…
Sneak Peek: Baseless Exclusive
In a sneak peek of Season Two’s Baseless, we hear portions of a harrowing conversation with the father of a white supremacist leader who operated The Base’s training compound in Bad Axe, Michigan. Po…
Baseless: Part III
Using secret recordings, Part III reveals what you don’t know about today’s increasingly violent white supremacists, including the Base, one of the most violent neo-Nazi groups in America. It’s about…