More Perfect | podcast
Black Flight and the New Suburbia (R4) | iPlayer
Virgin Radio
Radiolab is a podcast staple, one of those long-running US shows that you turn to whenever, wherever, because it’s consistently good (others: 99% Invisible, This American Life, oh you know…). And now it has a seven-part spin-off series, More Perfect. We’re five episodes in, so you can binge on it during a long evening or train journey.
More Perfect concerns itself with the US supreme court, the decisions of which “shape everything from marriage and money to public safety and sex”. It’s a topic that is close enough to be interesting to UK listeners, but far enough away not to make us anxious. (Our own political systems will do that, thanks.) The episodes cover subjects such as the death penalty, a law designed to protect Native American families, how the supreme court actually came about… and they are absorbing. One, called Adoptive Couple v Baby Girl, ran on Radiolab itself three years ago. It’s a powerful listen, a singularly upsetting situation that is, in the end, resolved, but all these shows are interesting stories, interestingly told.
More Perfect, like Radiolab, is the opposite of a one-voice show: it prefers many voices, chiming in, different people taking single lines or even words, running over recordings. I enjoy this, though the approach can sometimes seem a bit light for more serious topics. And, very occasionally, the tone is off too. During the Adoptive Couple episode, a vital character whose point of view had not been heard is presented as a quarry. “Did you get him?” says one journalist. Big pause. “Yes, I got him,” replies another. It’s a teensy bit self-satisfied. The light, multi-voice approach works better during the Kittens Kick… episode, which is set around the era of Thomas Jefferson. The variety of voices, the call and response of the journalists involved, means the story zips along. I also liked the fact that, in the first episode (about lethal injections), they asked a UK journalist to go back to a particular Ealing shop to talk to someone involved, even though their involvement was long since over. It gave the story more relevance.
Back to the UK for a nice documentary on Black Flight and the New Suburbia, presented by Hugh Muir. House prices are moving everyone out of the centre of towns and BAME people are no exception. Muir met Asian people in Chalfont St Giles, black people in Chigwell (“We haven’t made any changes, we bring the West Indian wherever we go!”) and members of the congregation of a black Pentecostal church so successful it had to move to larger, suburban premises. These new out-of-town residents had very few gripes. They missed certain foods, hair stylists and places of worship, but not enough to make them unhappy. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to find that gardens could be a flashpoint: “The Asian community have different sorts of ideas about gardens…” Different ideas, such as fruit trees instead of flowers, or – even more shocking – paving over the whole front lawn, so there’s more room for cars. Interesting stuff, especially when extended to politics. Aspirational, children-centred ethnic minority voters change a suburban political demographic. “Living history,” one expert called it. “Changing, becoming stronger.” “We’re a diverse country,” said a new suburbanite. “And change is good – you’ve got to embrace it.”
The new Virgin Radio has been going for more than three months now and celebrated its 100 days birthday on Thursday. It’s a station that seems happy in its skin: presenters such as Edith Bowman, Jamie East, Matt Richardson are great at their jobs, the music policy is sensible (fun, but nothing to frighten the cat), the atmosphere is upbeat. It’s nice to have a happy, slick, new national station. Many (well, not that many) happy returns.
