More Perfect

More Perfect is a narrative documentary series produced by WNYC Studios, hosted by Julia Longoria, that reconstructs how specific Supreme Court doctrines and rulings came to exist. Rather than covering the Court as a running news beat, each episode digs into the origin story of a single case or legal concept — the clerk memo behind Roe's viability standard, the confirmation strategy David Souter pioneered and later nominees copied, or the peyote case that gutted a religious-freedom test for 27 years. Episodes are built from primary-source interviews with former law clerks, judges, historians, litigants, and their families, alongside archival tape and court records. Recurring subjects include the mechanics of judicial confirmation hearings, the abortion-rights fight from Roe through Dobbs, religious liberty and Native American rights, and the history of constitutional amendments. The show occasionally crosses over with other WNYC properties, referencing sister podcasts like On the Media and Death, Sex and Money, suggesting a shared documentary unit and production style across the network. Some later episodes widen the lens beyond the Court itself to related government-power stories, such as a university's standoff with federal funding demands. The tone throughout is investigative and narrative rather than opinion-driven, with scripted narration layered over interview tape. Listeners get case histories told through the people who lived them — law clerks explaining decades-old memos, litigants describing why they refused to settle, historians untangling how a rallying cry became institutional policy. The show suits people who want long-form, research-heavy explanations of how legal doctrine actually gets made, rather than short takes on current rulings.