We The People: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In 1966, the federal government commissioned a massive survey aimed at solving educational inequality. Instead, the explosive Coleman Report unleashed a 60-year debate over race, resources, and what education in America is actually for. This is the story of how the report came to ...  Show more

For generations, the SAT has loomed large in the lives of teenagers. The quest for a perfect or near-perfect score has filled many test takers with dread. In this episode, a listener's question makes us wonder... who decided the SAT was the best and brightest way to filter studen ...  Show more

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 of our most ho ...

Last week, Cautionary Tales told the tragic story of Derek Bentley, exploring Britain's troubled relationship with capital punishment. Across the Atlantic, Revisionist History has also been scrutinizing what it means for a state to try to execute a person. For this bonus episode, ...  Show more

What can the Stanford Prison Experiment teach us about the dangers of censorship in the the modern world?

We want to share a first listen of a new podcast we're working on at WBUR.

Violation tells the story of two families bound together by an unthinkable crime. It explores America's opaque parole system and asks: How much time in prison is enough? Who gets to decide? And, ...