New Podcast Highlights Supreme Court History, And Future

“More Perfect,” a podcast series focusing on untold stories from the Supreme Court, is the first spinoff from popular and influential podcast “Radiolab,” hosted by Jad Abumrad. The new podcast kicked off with, “Cruel and Unusual,” an episode tracing the legal history of the death penalty in the U.S., leading to Utah’s adoption of death by firing squad in 2015. “These nine justices are hugely powerful,” Abumrad said. “One of the sub-narratives is about how this group grew from partisan hacks to the priests of the Constitution.” The podcast doesn’t seek to take an inside baseball approach, but legal editor Elie Mystal told the New York Times, “We didn’t want to dumb it down. We want listeners to feel like they understand what’s going on.”