In the early 1960s, J.L. Moreno and Helen Hall Jennings set up an experiment at a women's reformatory in New York City. They wanted to learn about how groups work by mapping their interactions. But they met Fanny French Morse, who was trying to make it more re-educative instead of punitive. The girls were sent there for being incorrigible or ungovernable but had been placed in bucolic settings that could help them become better versions of themselves.
Malcolm talks with Ben Naddaff-Hafrey, host of The Last Archive, about the forgotten origins of a major social science, the missing chapter in Ella Fitzgerald’s life, and what it all has to do with the prison just down the street from Malcolm’s office. Listen, and check out the brand new season from Pushkin’s The Last Archive.
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