The Most Perfect Album: Episode 4 | Radiolab Presents: More Perfect Podcast | Season 3

This episode begins, as all episodes should, with Dolly Parton. Parton wrote a song for us (!) about the 19th Amendment and women (finally) getting the right to vote. Watch the music video here: https://youtu.be/3mSYyz-Sxb0

Also in this episode: Our siblings at Radiolab share a story with us that they did about how the 19th Amendment almost died on a hot summer night in Tennessee. The 19th Amendment was obviously a huge milestone for women in the United States. But it was pretty well-understood that this wasn’t a victory for all women; it was a victory for white women. People of color have faced all sorts of barriers to voting throughout our nation's history. This includes poll taxes, which were fees people had to pay in order to vote. The 24th Amendment eliminated federal poll taxes in 1964.

We hear a song inspired by the 24th Amendment by Caroline Shaw: https://youtu.be/pd-huZcypIM
Kevin Morby made an excellent song for us about the 24th, too: https://youtu.be/8C654fdlK-U
Finally, Simon Tam, from the band The Slants, tells the story of the Supreme Court case about their name — https://youtu.be/Wrc4B6caJ5k — and talks about the song they wrote about the 18th and 21st Amendments for our album: https://youtu.be/hlrL_eEy7F4

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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 episode is best listened to alongside 27: The Most Perfect Album, an entire album (an ALBUM!) of original music and art inspired by the 27 Amendments. Think of these episodes as the audio liner notes.

27: The Most Perfect Album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC4pipL-NwI&list=PLLHAUHF-RPhlzK3b_5ddE9BcX5abtjaNM

Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/membership

Illustration by Mitch Boyer.
Video by Michael Snyder, Kim Nowacki and Andrea Latimer.