Alabama

I don't know.

It's Alabama.

Yeah.

Dude, my buddy's, my buddy's sister went to Alabama, and she's, like, a couple years younger than us.

And then, like, we were like, it was, like, when Instagram hit and we were just like, she'd be, like, at a party and I'm like, "This looks like you're at a swimsuit fucking event."

It's crazy.

She had moved into the Algonquin Hotel as a motherless teenager from an aristocratic Southern family.

Her father represented Alabama in Congress.

As she started building an acting resume on stage and in silent films over the next few years, Bankhead made more of a mark on the party scene, where she made valuable connections and impressed everyone with her wit and beauty.

Biographer Brenton Gill writes that Bankhead, quote, "Liked to be thought a party girl, and she had her reasons." But on the next page of his story of Tallulah's life, Gill adds, "During the mingled, indistinguishable days and nights of her prime in London, New York, or Hollywood, wherever Tallulah was was where the party was.

Democrats, though, would tell you, if you asked them or even if you didn't, [laughs] that in California and in Virginia and ultimately in Maryland, they're having the voters decide whether to do this and whether to approve new maps, whereas in other states it was legislatures or state officials doing it.

Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama.

Democrats would argue it's much less, ugh, sorry, Democratic.

Scott MacFarlane, our guest.

I'd love to hear it, and I'm sure Connie would too.

So in the meantime, everybody, we are sending you lots of love from sweet home Alabama , and next door from Georgia where Connie is too.

We'll see you next time.

Bye, everybody.

Um, I encountered the, the Nordics, right? Um, interacting with the military, and teaching them how to fly the, the flying saucers.

I, I saw that somewhere in Alabama.

And for some reason this year, [laughs] last year Trump moved the Space Command to Alabama.

Yep.

So we have it-

Yeah, Huntsville.

We have it all document...

Yeah, Huntsville, Alabama.

Each episode focuses on a different film to examine the various ways law operates across institutions, society, and culture, not just inside, but also outside courtrooms.

This episode, we look at The Alabama Solution, a searing documentary about Alabama's prison system and the broader crisis of mass incarceration.

Directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, the film draws on years of secretly recorded cell phone footage made by incarcerated people themselves, offering an unusually intimate and unfiltered account of violence, isolation, resistance and survival, inside one of the harshest prison systems in the United States.

The film shows how contraband cell phones transform incarcerated people from subjects of documentation into documentarians themselves, while prisoners' families emerge as advocates, investigators, and conduits to the outside world.

I'm joined for this episode by Joe Margulies to discuss how the Alabama solution illuminates not only the constitutional dimensions of incarceration, but also the broader political and social realities of the American carceral system.

Joe Margulies is a professor of the practice of government at Cornell University.

Joe is also a veteran civil rights lawyer and acclaimed author whose work explores punishment, exclusion, and the politics of belonging in American life.

Thanks for Everything came out in 2022.

Two balls, no strike.

McCovey, born in Mobile, Alabama.

His hobby is reading comic books and seeing motion pictures.

And hitting.

Um-

I did The Book of Chuck, and I did Moonrise Over New Jessup 'cause that's in Alabama, and then I did Leave Your Mess at Home 'cause that's in Chicago.

Well, Illinois.

Whatever.

There is generic Indian, but, like, Indians are completely different from fucking town to town.

It's like saying someone from Alabama, like the deep south somewhere, is the same as someone from fucking New York City.

It's not the same person.

There's different realities lived.