JAD: This is More Perfect, I’m Jad Abumrad. Season three…season three! This season we’re gonna do something different from what we’ve done in the past.

 

VOX: Alright, off the top of your head can you tell me how many amendments there are to the American Constitution?

VOX: No mam I can't--

VOX: Noooo--

VOX: Too many--

VOX: I don’t know. I don’t think I can name any of them.

VOX: Twenty-something. Offhand, I don’t know.

VOX: I have no idea, I’m guessing somewhere around 10.

VOX: I would guess somewhere around 20.

VOX: 21, or 23, 24, 25.

VOX: I know there are at least 25--

VOX: 26?

VOX: 27? No, 29?

VOX: 27, 27....27.

 

JAD: There are 27 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. And in season three, we are going to focus on those words...let me explain why.

 

MUSIC: We the people, in order to form a more perfect union…

 

I mean first of all,  the name “More Perfect,” the name of this podcast... comes of course from the preamble to the Constitution-- and the reason we chose that name--

 

TAPE: In this country, man walks with dignity...

 

JAD: Well, couple reasons. I mean first of all, it’s a weird phrase, you can’t really have something be ‘more perfect’ because ‘perfect’ is an absolute...but beyond that.

 

The phrase sort of gestures at this idea that America is constantly evolving. That it’s never done. That we’re always in this process of trying to drag ourselves out of the mud and get to those ideals. To make ourselves More Perfect. To be More Perfect. Very often we don’t make it. Very often. But we’re always trying, and that is embodied in our founding document. I mean, we wrote this thing called the Constitution and then we kept changing it. Amending it, adding in new rights, filling in holes where we’ve failed so that we don’t fail again.

 

So far we’ve done that 27 times.

 

This season, we’re gonna look at all 27.

 

What do they mean? Why are they important? How do they hold us together, in these turbulent times?

 

But the thing is, when you read these amendments, the words themselves, can feel very abstract. Very musty. Very far away.

 

So...we decided to make an album. An actual album.

 

[PREVIEWS OF SONGS ON THE ALBUM]

 

JAD: In the spirit of Schoolhouse Rock--

 

KASH DOLL SONG: Freedom, freedom...

 

JAD: We reached out to some of the best artists and musicians in the world, we asked them to make a song about an amendment to the United States Constitution.

 

KASH DOLL SONG: Free at last, thanks to the 13th Amendment...

 

JAD: No idea if this was gonna work, but we put out some calls...and we got all of these amazing artists to participate in this compilation. Kash Doll, who you just heard. Dolly Parton-- the Dolly Parton wrote a song for us about the 19th Amendment. Devendra Banhart wrote a song about the 25th Amendment, the impeachment amendment.

 

After two years of continuously working on this, we are super proud to announce: “27: The Most Perfect Album.”

 

Which is now on Spotify, iTunes, all the places. And you can listen to it online right now, in its entirety-- and it’s amazing-- at themostperfectalbum.org

 

Now in the podcast season, which begins now, what we’re gonna do is tell stories about these amendments. Sort of like little audio liner notes to accompany the songs. These will be funny, sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, sometimes poetic-- little stories about the amendments that hopefully explain what they are, and why they matter to us now.

 

So, to get started.

 

Jeffrey Wright: First Amendment. Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

 

[TAPE/MUSIC MONTAGE]

 

[CHERRY GLAZERR SONG]

 

JAD: That was one of the submissions that we got for the First Amendment by the band Cherry Glazerr. You can hear that song and everything in its entirety at themostperfectalbum.org. We actually got two submissions for the First Amendment-- gonna play you another one in a second.

 

First, the liner notes for the First Amendment, which come from More Perfect producer Sarah Qari.

 

Sarah, you ready?

 

SARAH: Um, OK. Here it goes.

 

Burt Neuborne: This is a this is this is a funny story.

Burt Neuborne: This is a this is a story about my about my technological incompetence.

 

SARAH: This is Burt Neuborne.

 

Burt Neuborne: I am the Norman Dorsen professor in civil liberties at New York University Law School.

 

SARAH: He’s like...casually a big deal.

 

Burt Neuborne: I was the national legal director of the ACLU under Ronald Reagan, and...I've been I've been a constitutional cop. I mean I'm someone who tries to enforce the Constitution for more than 50 years.

 

Sarah: And I remember you saying that you've argued cases in front of the Supreme Court, right?

 

Burt Neuborne: Yeah. I've argued a number of cases myself in the court, and have written the briefs in upwards of 200 of them. so I've spent a fair amount of my time waiting on the Supreme Court steps for opinions.

 

SARAH: Ok so-- one summer--

 

Burt Neuborne: This is um, this was in the mid 90s.

 

SARAH: When he was just starting out as a professor…

 

Burt Neuborne: 1995, 1996. I had a wonderful assistant who worked for me and she'd been with me for years and one day she said to me Professor Neuborne, I'm so tired of taking your handwritten drafts, typing them up and then having you, you know, giving you the typewritten version, then you change it, then I have to retype it. Have you ever heard of this thing called a laptop or you know, a computer?

 

SARAH: She basically says to him: you know crazy idea, why don’t you just... learn how to type?

 

Burt Neuborne: That way, we could make the changes much faster, I wouldn’t have to retype all the time, and you’d find it much easier to work. And I said No I'm too old for that. I don't know how to type, I never learned to type. I can't I just can't do it. Let's just keep going. I like writing by hand it makes me think.

 

Burt Neuborne: And she said well I'm going to do you a great favor. She said I'm not going to type your stuff anymore. And I said “No no no, you don't understand how it works. I'm the boss, you're the employee. I tell you what to do. You type this if I tell you.” And she said “No no no, you don't understand. I know who you are. You're not going to fire me. Learn how to use the computer. It's the best present I can give you.”

 

Burt Neuborne: So what do I do? I took my laptop and and I decided I would learn how to read...how to use WordPerfect.

 

SOUND FX: WordPerfect Suite 8, loading.

 

Burt Neuborne: Which was the program that everybody was using in those years. So what do I do? I type out the-- I type the Bill of Rights out.

 

SOUND FX: [slow typing]

 

Burt Neuborne: that's the text I know best.

 

SARAH: So the Bill of Rights starts with this text. That basically says, we the States-- we think that this Constitution needs some work. It doesn't do enough to give the people rights. To protect them from all of this power that the government has. So what we’re gonna do is, we’re gonna throw in these extra rights. These extra protections that we think, really, every American should have.

 

Burt Neuborne: And so one of the things I wanted to do was figure out how to move text. You know, you highlight the text and you can move it from one place to another. So I was practicing on how to learn how to highlight text. And so I type the Bill of Rights out, all ten amendments. Um, and then I start practicing by highlighting portions of the text.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Congress shall make no law...

 

Burt Neuborne: I move the First Amendment to the--

 

Jeffrey Wright: The right of trial by jury...

 

Burt Neuborne: Seventh Amendment.

 

Jeffrey Wright: ...Or involuntary servitude..

 

Burt Neuborne: And the Seventh Amendment I move up to--

 

Jeffrey Wright: ...the number of electors…

 

Burt Neuborne: The First.

 

SARAH: Copy, paste, copy paste…

 

Jeffrey Wright: Excessive bail.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Search and seizure.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Quartering soldiers.

 

Burt Neuborne: And I’m moving stuff around.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Cruel and unusual punishment.

 

Burt Neuborne: But-- every single time I move it around it around, it looks wrong. It just looks wrong. There’s something that tells me it’s not-- you know, it's it's something fundamentally flawed in it.

 

Burt Neuborne: So first I thought well, it’s because you’re so used to seeing it the old way that seeing it the new way is more than-- you know, is something that you really can’t process. But then I realized you know, I don’t really look at it very much as a whole anyway! I mean I would have been hard pressed to tell you exactly what words came where. I then-- I began to realize that there is in the text that we have, the ten amendments that we have, a deep structure. The same kind of deep structure that you’d find in a poem.

 

SARAH: Take, for example, the First Amendment.

 

Jeffrey Wright: First Amendment. Freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition.

 

Burt Neuborne: It consists of six ideas.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion--

 

SARAH: One.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

 

SARAH: Two.

 

Jeffrey Wright: or abridging the freedom of speech,

 

SARAH: Three

 

Jeffrey Wright: or of the press;

 

SARAH: Four.

 

Jeffrey Wright: or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,

 

SARAH: Five.

 

Jeffrey Wright: and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

SARAH: Six.

 

Burt Neuborne: It’s only 45 words long. Could have been written on the back of an envelope.

 

SARAH: These days the First Amendment is wrapped up in all kinds of thorny stuff. Like, kneeling at football games, and hate speech, and money in politics...but if you just step back from all of that-- and you read the text of the First Amendment, and you really try to think about what the words are trying to say-- you find that the logic behind it is...kind of beautiful.

 

Burt Neuborne: The order of the words in the First Amendment is the life cycle of a Democratic idea.

 

SARAH: Here’s what he means.

 

Burt Neuborne: So those first two clauses--

 

Jeffrey Wright: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

 

Burt Neuborne: Create a free space inside your mind to think and believe as you wish.

 

SARAH: That’s the Founders saying, that space inside your head, where you think your thoughts-- that’s sacred. The government can’t touch that.

 

Burt Neuborne: Without that free space, there can be no self-government.

 

SARAH: So that’s the first idea. The freedom of your thoughts.

Burt Neuborne: Once you've believed and thought something, then then it's natural for you to want to say it.

 

SARAH: Which brings us to the next clause.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Or abridging the freedom of speech.

 

Burt Neuborne: The speech clause says, if you have an idea formed in the freedom of your mind, by all means go ahead and share it.

 

SARAH: So you have the freedom to think a thought, the freedom to speak that thought--

 

Burt Neuborne: But that's not enough... if you really want to make a real dent in a society. So you need some way to be able to speak to a mass of people. To speak in a very loud voice.

 

SARAH: Which brings you to the fourth clause.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Or of the press,

 

SARAH: Which is speech...amplified.

 

Burt Neuborne: Then, once you’ve gotten your message out to a large number of people, when people have listened to these ideas and moved by them, it's natural for those people to want to do something about it. To move together, to organize.

    

Jeffrey Wright: Or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.

 

TAPE: My body my choice!

 

SARAH: So you can think a thought, you can speak that thought, you can create a movement--

 

Burt Neuborne: But that’s not enough. Finally the petition clause, which is the sixth idea-- the petition clause says, once you’ve assembled, once you’ve organized--

 

TAPE: We demand the protection of our First Amendment rights!

 

TAPE: We assert! We assert!

 

Burt Neuborne: Then you have a right to take your argument to the government...

 

Jeffrey Wright: And to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

TAPE: We speak for this country and we demand reform now!

 

Burt Neuborne: And force the government into confronting it and either accepting it or rejecting it. And then that government, if it says no, is subject to being voted out of office. So this is Madison giving us the blueprint for democracy. The big bang, when democracy begins.

 

Sarah: The way I'm hearing it is like, like concentric circles, like starting in inside the mind of one person and then reverberating out.

 

Burt Neuborne: Yeah exactly, the First Amendment is a series of concentric circles beginning within your mind and then moving to your close acquaintances. Then to the society at large, then finally to the entire polity to the entire people.  

 

Burt Neuborne: That by the way, is the only time in human history that those six ideas have ever been united in a single text. Only time. I went back and looked at every single rights bearing document in our tradition-- all the way from the Magna Carta through the English Bills of Rights through the colonial charters through the state constitutions--

 

Sarah: Oh wow.

 

Burt Neuborne: --through the other through the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. It's never been done before. To put the six building blocks of democracy together in a single coherent text.

 

[MUSIC]

 

Burt Neuborne: The First Amendment is the ideal city on the Hill that the Founders were trying to establish, and remember, establish for the first time in human history.

 

JAD: That was NYU professor Burt Neuborne and More Perfect’s Sarah Qari...with liner notes for the First amendment.  

 

Now as I mentioned, we got two songs about the First Amendment. We left it open for people to choose whichever amendment inspired them the most.

 

And the other song about the First Amendment we got is from an artist named Joey Stylez. He is a First Nations, Canadian rapper and hip-hop artist.  And he, you might say, took that idea of the gleaming city on the hill...and looked at its underbelly.

 

STYLEZ: On my track, Ghost Dance Part 2, I was dealing with the freedom of religion. From 1870 up until 1934 it was illegal for Native Americans to practice our ceremonies. I had in mind specifically the Ghost Dance because in 1890 at Wounded Knee, 150 to 300 mostly women and children were massacred for Ghost Dancing. And to me that shows that they were scared. They were scared of us having our culture and ceremonies because they empower us. I truly hope the warrior spirit shines on this track and our natural side of being wild and free sets the tone. Aho.

 

[JOEY STYLEZ SONG]

 

JAD: That was Joey Stylez with his song about the First Amendment. The Second Amendment is up next. This is More Perfect, Most Perfect Album. I’m Jad Abumrad. We’ll be back in a minute.

[MIDROLL BREAK]

JAD:This is More Perfect, I’m Jad Abumrad.

 

Jeffrey Wright: Second Amendment, right to bear arms.

 

JAD: Ok, so this amendment...kinda hard to summarize.

 

Here’s what we’ll do...last season, More Perfect did a very deep dive into the truly surprising history of the Second Amendment, how these 27 words and 3 commas became America’s favorite fight.

 

So in about five seconds we’re going to put that back into the feed.  

 

If you want the Cliff-Notes version, here it is…

 

The text itself:

 

Jeffrey Wright: Second Amendment, right to bear arms:

 

JAD: Here’s the text:

 

Jeffrey Wright: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

 

JAD: The first thing to notice about the text is it’s a weird sentence. Grammatically, it’s very strange.

 

Jeffrey Wright: A well regulated Militia,

 

JAD: comma--

 

Jeffrey Wright: being necessary to the security of a free State,

 

JAD: comma--

 

Jeffrey Wright: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,

 

JAD: comma--

 

Jeffrey Wright: shall not be infringed.

JAD: Does that scan, totally? I’m not sure. I mean, obviously this amendment is about the right to bear arms…but who-- for whom?  Who has the right?

 

If you diagram the sentence, it seems to offer two potential answers to that question.

 

In the first part of the sentence, you get:

 

Jeffrey Wright: “a well regulated militia”

 

JAD: One answer, which is the militia has the right to bear arms. If that’s the case then maybe only the people in the militia have the right to bear arms? So ok people in the army have a gun but the rest of us don't necessarily have that right.  

 

If you just look at the first clause you might come to that conclusion, but then later you’ve got that second clause...

 

Jeffrey Wright: the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

 

JAD: …here you have the PEOPLE’s right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed

 

Alright so first you have the militia and then you have the people...

 

Are the people, the people in the militia? Or are the people a larger category than the militia. Are we talking about all people here? If that’s what they meant, why would you start the sentence with the militia? Which, I don’t know, it’s weird. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. To me, at least.

 

Now one of the things that many historians will say about the Second Amendment, aside from the fact that it is confusing, is that, for many many years, it was assumed that the first part of the sentence

 

Jeffrey Wright: A well regulated militia.

 

JAD: That was the important part. And they’ll tell you that for a long time, no one really cared about the Second Amendment.  

 

JILL LEPORE (FROM SEAN’S “GUN SHOW”): Except for the Third Amendment. There was no amendment that was less written about, less legislated, less debated, than the Second Amendment.

 

JAD: According to historian Jill Lepore, people didn’t think about it, they didn’t argue about it.

 

But then-- you get this crazy chain of events…

 

[FAST CUTTING MONTAGE FROM MORE PERFECT’S “THE GUN SHOW”]

 

JAD: Now, we read the Second Amendment very differently. We take the first part and we basically forget it and we just focus on the second part.

 

To some Americans, this is a sacred right. A symbol of freedom from an oppressive government.

 

To other Americans, it’s an offense.

 

And so that grammatical confusion that once was there but ignored, now has been clarified but replaced by an even larger confusion. A deep, gut-wrenching confusion.

 

That will probably be with us for a long long time.

 

Listen to the episode.

 

[MUSIC]

 

JAD: OK, so for the our album about the amendments we got THREE submissions for songs about the Second Amendment. You can listen to all of them at themostperfectalbum.org.

 

One is by a group called Sateen, another by a musician called Michael Richard Klics, and another by an all-female mariachi band called Flor de Toloache. All three of the songs are pretty badass, but we will play you a bit of this one. Here’s Flor de Toloache:

 

[FLOR DE TOLOACHE SONG]

 

JAD: That was Flor de Toloache with their song inspired by the Second Amendment.

 

OK moving right along, we’ve done the First, done the Second, sort of.

 

Now?

 

Jeffrey Wright: Third Amendment. Quartering of soldiers. No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

 

NEWS: We don’t hear much about the Third Amendment.

 

ORNY ADAMS: We don’t even know what the Third Amendment is, do we? Does anybody know what the Third Amendment is?

 

NEWS: The Third Amendment is sort of the forgotten amendment. I bet most lawyers probably couldn’t even tell you what it says.

 

ORNY ADAMS: Nobody’s ever argued the Third. Nobody’s ever taken the Third. Or cited the Third. I got pulled over the other day. The cop says you know you’re driving alone in the carpool lane. I go yup. That’s my Third Amendment right.

 

JAD: Here’s producer Julia Longoria.

 

Julia: So I’ve talked to several people about the Third Amendment, and they all point me to you. You are the Third Amendment man. So how did this happen to you?

 

Tom Bell: I think nobody else wanted the job. But boy they missed out.

 

JULIA: Professor Tom Bell.. is kind of a hipster of Constitutional law. He’s a sucker for obscurity.

 

Tom Bell: I went past the first and second, figuring other smarter and more knowledgeable people had covered those. I got to the Third, though, and I realized, after some research, no one had said much about the Third Amendment, bless its neglected heart.

 

JAD: Sorry Julia, just to barge in for a second. It feels appropriate actually.

 

JULIA: And rude, but yeah, sure. [laughs]

 

JAD: But on point, on topic! Just to explain the Third Amendment for a second. All that the Third Amendment really says is soldiers are not allowed to barge into your house the way I just did in your story. They’re not allowed to do it.

 

JULIA: They’re not allowed to come into your house and then stay in your house.

 

JAD: Right. Which might sound to us now, like, yeah. Why would we need a rule saying that? But the people who wrote the Third Amendment were worried about this. Because it had happened. During the Revolutionary War, British soldiers had basically treated the people of Boston like hotel owners. They barged into their homes. They stayed in their homes while they fought the war. The people of Boston were not happy. And so the Founders wrote the Third Amendment.

 

Jeffrey Wright: No soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner.

 

JAD: Which, thankfully looks kinda musty to us right now. Because that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore. Right?

 

JULIA: Uh, well not so fast. You’re right that there’s never been a Third Amendment case in the Supreme Court. Never. And that’s why this recent, relatively obscure case in the state of Nevada caught Tom Bell’s eye.

 

Tom Bell: Yes yes. They didn’t really grapple much with what is quartering but they did ask, is this a soldier?

 

JULIA: It starts…with a phone call.

 

[PHONE RING]

 

JULIA: To a man named--

 

[PHONE RING]

 

JULIA: Anthony Mitchell… from local police.

 

FOX NEWS: Local police officials called Mr. Mitchell up in the morning and said can we use your house to watch this fellow.

 

JULIA: They wanted to use his house as a kind of lookout to spy on his neighbor.

 

FOX NEWS: They had received some information that his neighbor was engaging in domestic violence and they wanted to watch him for a little while. Mr. Mitchell said I really don’t want to get involved. And they hung up the phone.

 

RT NEWS: According to court documents, after breaking down Anthony’s door, the cops yelled profanities and fired multiple pepperball rounds at his dog. And Anthony, while he laid in a fetal position.

 

Tom Bell: What I understand is his claim is premised on the police qualifying as soldiers because they have military apparatus.

 

JULIA: Unfortunately, Anthony Mitchell wasn’t able to go on the record about this. But according to court documents, Anthony claimed that the police quartered themselves when they stayed in his house for about nine hours. And not only did they stay there and apparently shoot pepperball rounds at his dog, but--

 

Julia: They ate his food? Like they went in his fridge?

 

Tom Bell: Yeah so he thought he had a quartering claim. I’m sympathetic to the complaint. If you look at our police, this is not Andy Griffith on Mayberry RFD anymore.

 

ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW CLIP: That was good goober … You gotta show me how you do that.

 

Tom Bell: These are guys in black face masks and helmets with--

 

UNKNOWN: Heavy armor. Riot gear!

 

Tom Bell: Truncheons and tear gas.

 

UNKNOWN: M16 rifles. Armored vehicles so big you need a crowbar to open the door.

 

Tom Bell: In what look like tanks. They look like armored troop carriers anyhow - on our domestic streets! It’s very upsetting. The Founders probably didn’t think seriously about you know, should this apply to police, because they didn’t think about police. Much less the kind of militarized police that we have. So that’s another reason to be sympathetic to this. Meh, I mean. I never had much hope in that-- that complaint. It’s just, you can’t put that heavy burden on the slim shoulders of the Third Amendment. That’s just not what that amendment is for.

 

JULIA: The judge in Nevada agreed. Anthony’s Third Amendment claim was shot down. Court said that basically, when it comes to the Third Amendment, the police don’t count.

 

Tom Bell: Because they’re not soldiers. They’re not.

 

JAD: Has anyone ever gotten any farther with that argument?

 

JULIA: No because there haven’t been very many Third Amendment cases at all. Like, you think about all the First Amendment cases and Second Amendment cases that have been brought forward, that didn’t go anywhere. There aren’t very many Third Amendment cases even in the lower courts.

 

Tom Bell: And that to me was a puzzle. I had to do some further research. And I discovered, holy mackerel. The Third Amendment has been violated time and again-- massively!-- in U.S. history. And most of the time no one apparently even noticed. First violation I could find was the War of 1812.

 

JULIA: That’s [the] U.S. fighting Britain.

 

Tom Bell: There were U.S. and British troops tramping around the east coast.

 

JULIA: U.S. troops took over a bunch of farms. Burned them down.

 

Tom Bell: Troops in the house. Burnt down the house. That’s quartering.

 

JULIA: Similar thing happened in the Civil War.

 

Tom Bell: You can read it in the facts. This was quartering. Shall I continue? Because I’ve got more! The worst was World War II. This is the one I discovered most recently. This one really breaks my heart.

 

JULIA: 1941. U.S. declares war on Japan. They send troops to the Aleutian Islands.

 

Tom Bell: This chain of islands up the kind of chin of Alaska. If you look at a map it has that long kind of beard out in the ocean. The Aleutian Islands. And pretty quickly, the federal troops appeared in the Aleutian Islands and said to the islanders, you’re in the way.

 

ALEUT TESTIMONY: All the military men-- all of a sudden, they were there. It seemed to me like overnight.

 

Tom Bell: We have their testimony. It’s very touching.

 

ALEUT TESTIMONY: Somebody came to our door and said we have to get ready because we will be taken off the island very soon.

 

Tom Bell: You had a bunch of boys a long way from home, lightly supervised. They tear the places up, they burn ‘em down, they steal things. That’s quartering. You know the only thing we could ask for is if they were wearing red coats and tricorn hats. You know how much more obviously do you need to have this spelled out to you? That’s quartering. No. Body. Said a thing.

 

Tom Bell: You end up feeling, frankly, a little ashamed for the legal system. How did all these victims suffer these violations. And no lawyer could pick up a Constitution and notice that? It’s shameful. To me, the Third Amendment. It’s like a canary in the coalmine. It tells us: how are our rights doin? Our really plainly spelled-out Constitutional rights. THIRD Amendment, right? That’s like bronze in the Olympics. It’s right up there at the top. How we doing on that? Terribly. It’s been violated many times. It’s mocked. It’s ridiculed. When it is violated, courts say ‘Well, who knew about that. That’s not a serious Constitutional violation. Maybe next time.’ I really hope for more from my Bill of Rights and my government.

 

JAD: OK. Julia Longoria, Tom Bell with some liner notes for the Third Amendment. Here’s the song. Comes from the band Palehound.

 

PALEHOUND VOICE MEMO: Hi, this is Ellen from Palehound. For my song, I chose the Third Amendment, which states that you are not required to house soldiers in peacetime. That doesn’t really apply to modern life at all, so I Kind of chose to write a song about keeping violent people out of your life.

 

[PALEHOUND SONG]

 

JAD: That’s Palehound with a song inspired by the Third Amendment. I love the lyrics: “You shoot your guns in my backyard / You crush my flowers and scar the lawn / With laws on my side I'm not letting you in tonight.”

 

Both Palehound and They Might be Giants wrote original songs for us about this amendment.

 

To listen to both go to themostperfectalbum.org.

 

Our website is super cool, by the way. We’ve got amazing artwork depicting each of the amendments, might actually make you laugh out loud, some of it. They are all by artist Luis Mazon.

 

Also, we collaborated with the National Constitution Center to write about each of the amendments in a way that is super easy to understand.

 

Go to themostperfectalbum.org to check it all out.

 

More Perfect is produced by me, Jad Abumrad, Suzie Lechtenberg, Julia Longoria, Kelly Prime, Sarah Qari, and Alex Overington with help from Elie Mystal, Michelle Harris, and David Gebel. Nora Keller is the reason our album “27: The Most Perfect Album” exists. Thank you Nora.

 

And thank you to actor Jeffrey Wright for spending an afternoon with us, donating his time to read all of the amendments. We’re super grateful to him and to all of the musicians who donated their time and energies and talents to this project.

 

And we’re grateful to you for listening.

 

I’m Jad Abumrad-- we’ll be back very soon with more episodes.