Uncounted

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Science, Natural Sciences, History, Society & Culture, Documentary

4.6 • 43.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 August 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

First things first: our very own Latif Nasser has an exciting new show on Netflix. He talks to Jad about the hidden forces of the world that connect us all.

Then, with an eye on the upcoming election, we take a look back: at two pieces from More Perfect Season 3 about Constitutional amendments that determine who gets to vote.

Former Radiolab producer Julia Longoria takes us to Washington, D.C. The capital is at the heart of our democracy, but it’s not a state, and it wasn’t until the 23rd Amendment that its people got the right to vote for president. But that still left DC without full representation in Congress; D.C. sends a "non-voting delegate" to the House. Julia profiles that delegate, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, and her unique approach to fighting for power in a virtually powerless role.

Second, Radiolab producer Sarah Qari looks at a current fight to lower the US voting age to 16 that harkens back to the fight for the 26th Amendment in the 1960s. Eighteen-year-olds at the time argued that if they were old enough to be drafted to fight in the War, they were old enough to have a voice in our democracy. But what about today, when even younger Americans are finding themselves at the center of national political debates? Does it mean we should lower the voting age even further?

Music in this episode by Carling & Will

This episode was reported and produced by Julia Longoria and Sarah Qari.

Check out Latif Nasser’s new Netflix show Connected here.

Support Radiolab today at Radiolab.org/donate.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wait, you're listening to radio lab from W and Y.
0:14.0	Hey, hey, all right, well, first caveat, yes, I feel like I need to do, which is that I
0:26.3	have my, I literally just got a call. I have my phone on because my wife could go and
0:32.4	deliver it any minute. You just got to call for my sister, probably trying to see if my wife
0:38.8	is going in the labor. Hey, I'm Chad Abumarad. This is Radio Lab. We've got a couple things for you
0:45.0	today. We have a look forward. Then a couple looks back, which turn into a look forward. But to get going,
0:51.9	I want to share a conversation I had this week with our director of research, Latif Nasir,
0:57.9	who among other things hosted the recent series, The Other Latif. I might think of Arolatif as
1:03.5	the other, other Latif. I just want to point a spotlight at him for a second because man, he has
1:09.3	a lot going on right now. In addition to having a kid, he just released a TV show he did with Netflix.
1:18.0	I wanted to talk to him about it. Two days ago, my show came out and then today,
1:24.6	hopefully, supposedly, my baby's coming out. It's really, it's a lot going on right now.
1:30.6	Well, let's talk about the child, the creative child, the creative baby that you just had.
1:38.6	What is it? How did it come to be? Yeah. Just sort of set it up for me.
1:43.2	Yeah. I made this TV show. It's called Connected. The idea is it's a kind of meditation on the
1:54.9	many scientifically observed ways that each of us are connected to each other and our world,
2:02.5	and that are sort of so surprising. The kinds of things, I think a great radio lab show,
2:07.7	will make you kind of look at a thing you take for granted and see it in a whole new way.
2:14.4	It's one of these like Jason Bourne-esque shows where literally every scene is in a different country.
2:21.2	There's Latif in the desert. There's Latif on a plane. There's Latif in space. I don't know if
2:26.0	you were ever in space, but I was in space. I did go in a hot air balloon over a volcano.
2:31.3	I was jealous of you from the very beginning. Let's talk about dust because that's one of the
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.