Radiolab Presents: More Perfect

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 9

Dec 4, 2018 • 23 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 8

Nov 30, 2018 • 30 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 7

Nov 20, 2018 • 41 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 6

Nov 14, 2018 • 26 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 5

Oct 24, 2018 • 29 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 4

Oct 12, 2018 • 42 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 3

Oct 2, 2018 • 33 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 2

Sep 25, 2018 • 28 min

This season, More Perfect is taking its camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

The Gun Show Reprise

Sep 19, 2018 • 69 min

Last year in the wake of the attack in Las Vegas, reporter Sean Rameswaram took a deep dive into America’s twisty, thorny, seemingly irreconcilable relationship with guns. It’s a story about the Second Amendment, the Black Panthers, the NRA, and a guy…

The Most Perfect Album: Episode 1

Sep 18, 2018 • 39 min

This season, More Perfect is taking our camera lens off the Supreme Court and zooming in on the words of the people: the 27 amendments that We The People have made to our Constitution. We’re taking on these 27 amendments both in song and in story. This…

We’ve Got a Surprise For You

Sep 11, 2018 • 2 min

This fall, More Perfect is doing something brand new: We’re making an album! It’s called 27: The Most Perfect Album. We’ve partnered with some of the best musicians in the world— artists like Dolly Parton, Kevin Morby, Devendra Banhart, Aisha Burns, and…

American Pendulum Reprise

Jun 26, 2018 • 46 min

What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s internment of American citizens during World War II based solely on their Japanese heritage, for…

One Nation, Under Money

Jan 30, 2018 • 52 min

An unassuming string of 16 words tucked into the Constitution grants Congress extensive power to make laws that impact the entire nation. The Commerce Clause has allowed Congress to intervene in all kinds of situations — from penalizing one man for…

Justice, Interrupted

Dec 19, 2017 • 24 min

The rules of oral argument at the Supreme Court are strict: when a justice speaks, the advocate has to shut up. But a law student noticed that the rules were getting broken again and again — by men. He and his professor set out to chart an epidemic of…

The Architect

Dec 7, 2017 • 34 min

On this episode, we revisit Edward Blum, a self-described “legal entrepreneur” and former stockbroker who has become something of a Supreme Court matchmaker: he takes an issue, finds the perfect plaintiff, matches them with lawyers, and helps the case…

Mr. Graham and the Reasonable Man

Nov 30, 2017 • 68 min

On a fall afternoon in 1984, Dethorne Graham ran into a convenience store for a bottle of orange juice. Minutes later he was unconscious, injured, and in police handcuffs. In this episode, we explore a case that sent two Charlotte lawyers on a quest for…

Sex Appeal

Nov 23, 2017 • 55 min

“Equal protection of the laws” was granted to all persons by the 14th Amendment in 1868. But for nearly a century after that, women had a hard time convincing the courts that they should be allowed to be jurors, lawyers, and bartenders, just the same as…

The Hate Debate

Nov 6, 2017 • 36 min

Should you be able to say and do whatever you want online? And if not, who should police this? More Perfect hosts a debate about online hate speech, fake news and whether the First Amendment needs an update for the digital age.

Citizens United

Nov 2, 2017 • 60 min

Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission is one of the most polarizing Supreme Court cases of all time. So what is it actually about, and why did the Justices decide the way they did? Justice Anthony Kennedy, often called the “most powerful man in…

Enemy of Mankind

Oct 24, 2017 • 54 min

Should the U.S. Supreme Court be the court of the world? In the 18th century, two feuding Frenchmen inspired a one-sentence law that helped launch American human rights litigation into the 20th century. The Alien Tort Statute allowed a Paraguayan woman to…

The Heist

Oct 16, 2017 • 21 min

The Supreme Court may not have been conceptualized as a co-equal branch of the federal government, but it became one as a result of the political maneuvering of Chief Justice John Marshall. The fourth (and longest-serving) chief justice was “a great lover…

The Gun Show

Oct 12, 2017 • 69 min

For nearly 200 years of our nation’s history, the Second Amendment was an all-but-forgotten rule about the importance of militias. But in the 1960s and 70s, a movement emerged — led by Black Panthers and a recently-repositioned NRA — that insisted owning…

Who’s Gerry and Why Is He So Bad at Drawing Maps?

Oct 3, 2017 • 21 min

“It is an invidious, undemocratic, and unconstitutional practice,” Justice John Paul Stevens said of gerrymandering in Vieth v. Jubelirer (2004). Politicians have been manipulating district lines to favor one party over another since the founding of our…

American Pendulum II

Oct 2, 2017 • 31 min

In this episode of More Perfect, how two families grapple with one terrible Supreme Court decision. Dred Scott v. Sandford is one of the most infamous cases in Supreme Court history: in 1857, a slave named Dred Scott filed a suit for his freedom and lost.…

American Pendulum I

Oct 1, 2017 • 46 min

What happens when the Supreme Court, the highest court in the land, seems to get it wrong? Korematsu v. United States is a case that’s been widely denounced and discredited, but it still remains on the books. This is the case that upheld President…

We’re Back

Sep 28, 2017 • 1 min

More Perfect, the show that takes you inside the United States Supreme Court, is back on October 2, 2017. Sex, race, guns, executive orders: Season two has it all. We’ll see you in court.

Object Anyway

Jul 16, 2016 • 48 min

At the trial of James Batson in 1983, the prosecution eliminated all the black jurors from the jury pool. Batson objected, setting off a complicated discussion about jury selection that would make its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. On this…

Kittens Kick The Giggly Blue Robot All Summer

Jul 1, 2016 • 36 min

We think of the Supreme Court justices as all-powerful beings, issuing momentous rulings from on high. But they haven’t always been so, you know, supreme. On this episode, we go all the way back to the case that, in a lot of ways, started it all.

The Imperfect Plaintiffs

Jun 28, 2016 • 64 min

On this episode, we visit Edward Blum, a 64-year-old “legal entrepreneur” and former stockbroker who has become something of a Supreme Court matchmaker. He’s had remarkable success, with 6 cases heard before the Supreme Court, including that of Abigail…

More Perfect presents: Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

Jun 17, 2016 • 42 min

On this episode, a three-year-old girl and the highest court in the land. From the Radiolab archives, Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is the story that inspired More Perfect’s creation.

The Political Thicket

Jun 10, 2016 • 42 min

The question of how much power the Supreme Court should possess has divided justices over time. But the issue was perhaps never more hotly debated than in Baker v. Carr. On this episode of More Perfect, we talk about the case that pushed one Supreme Court…

Cruel and Unusual

Jun 2, 2016 • 40 min

On the inaugural episode of More Perfect, we explore three little words embedded in the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “cruel and unusual.” The Supreme Court has continually grappled with what these words mean, especially as they pertain to one…

Coming Soon: More Perfect

May 24, 2016 • 1 min

How does an elite group of nine people shape everything from marriage and money, to safety and sex for an entire nation? From the producers of Radiolab, More Perfect dives into the rarefied world of the Supreme Court to explain how cases deliberated…