The Shadows of the Constitution (2020)

Throughline

NPR

Society & Culture, History, Documentary

4.7 • 15K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Constitution is like America's secular Bible, our sacred founding document. As the Supreme Court debates the future of Roe v. Wade, many of us are looking more closely at the Constitution, trying to discern how it protects us. In her play, "What the Constitution Means to Me," Heidi Schreck goes through her own process of discovering what the Constitution is really about: who wrote it, who it was for, who it protected and who it didn't. Through Heidi's personal story, we learn how both the document itself and the way it's been interpreted have affected generations of Americans — and how those effects are far from ended.

Transcript

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0:00.0	A quick warning on what you're about to hear.
0:02.4	This episode contains adult language and has several references to sexual violence and abuse.
0:08.2	It originally ran in 2020.
0:17.6	Close your eyes.
0:19.0	Imagine everything you are doing right now floats away.
0:34.4	All the things that stress you out, like money or being on time or the fight you had with your partner.
0:41.6	Imagine all that is gone and you are in a completely empty room sitting on a chair.
0:54.4	Directly in front of you, maybe 10 feet away is a singular dark orb floating.
1:01.6	It is small, completely devoid of light.
1:19.2	But from behind that orb, a faint flickering light begins to emerge.
1:24.4	Slowly, bit by bit, the light surrounds the dark like a mini eclipse happening just for you in that room.
1:45.1	But closely at this space, between complete darkness and full light,
1:50.6	see the shadowy gradients between something and nothing.
1:56.3	A surrounding or a joining region in which something exists and the lesser degree.
2:04.9	That zone of partial illumination is like the space between us.
2:09.6	It is a penumbra.
2:30.3	And for some of us, it may feel like freedom where many things are possible.
2:34.7	And for others, it can feel like an unstable, rumbling and shaking earth.
3:04.8	Back before the pandemic, the throughline team gathered in Washington, DC to go on a field trip to see a play.
3:19.6	But this wasn't just any play. This was a one woman play that I'd seen on Broadway months earlier
3:25.7	that completely blew me away. I couldn't stop thinking about it and I kept talking about it.
3:31.1	And eventually, I handed every member of our team a range schedule and secured tickets
	...

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