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The Last Archive

From Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders

The Last Archive

Pushkin Industries

Society & Culture, History

4.61.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Here's a preview of a podcast we think you'll enjoy. It's from the new season of Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History podcast, The Alabama Murders. Florence, Alabama. 1988. A preacher has an affair. A woman is murdered. One death cascades into more, stretching across decades and leaving no one untouched — victims, bystanders, perpetrators, and those just trying to help. Eventually, the consequences lead to the center of a hot national debate on who should be allowed to live, who should die, and how the state should kill them. On The Alabama Murders, Malcolm asks: why, in our efforts to alleviate suffering, do we so often make it worse? Find Revisionist History: The Alabama Murders wherever you get podcasts.


Get early, ad-free access to the full season of The Alabama Murders by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. Pushkin+ subscribers can access ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin shows.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is an IHeart podcast.

0:13.2

Hello, hello, Malcolm here.

0:15.2

Before we get to the episode, I want to let you know you can get this entire season now, ad-free,

0:21.9

by subscribing to revisionist history on Pushkin Plus.

0:25.4

Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm.

0:29.8

slash plus.

0:31.6

Pushkin Plus subscribers can access ad-free episodes,

0:35.3

full audiobooks, exclusive binges, and bonus content for all Pushkin

0:40.2

shows. A little while ago, a friend of mine told me, you have to meet this person I know. Kate

0:47.5

Porterfield. She's got the strangest job in America. So I did. We got together, Porterfield and I, in a little conference room in Manhattan.

0:57.4

I just want to understand how you ended up where you are. So you're kind of viewing as we're just

1:04.8

talking, you're thinking about whether there's something here that will, that'll evolve over time that you would imagine putting

1:13.3

in the podcast? Is that kind of what you're thinking? Yeah. Yeah.

1:17.4

Porterfield is a psychologist. We talked for a few hours. Then again, and again, one conversation

1:23.8

leading to another until she began to talk about a case that had affected her

1:27.9

deeply. Although she doesn't use the word case. She says, person, a man on death row.

1:35.3

When I first went to see Kenny, so now it had been two months since the execution attempt,

1:41.1

he wanted to talk for the first probably two hours of our visit

1:46.5

about how beautiful his goodbyes were and the love he received from his family as he was going

1:53.8

into the execution. That's what he wanted to start with. And I found this so powerful and also

2:00.5

fascinating, honestly, as a clinician, because what I first thought was, oh, he's avoiding, right? He can't talk about the execution. He talked to me about love for probably two, two and a half hours. To the point where I had to say, you know, this is incredible and and I'm so happy you're sharing it, and I'm not surprised.

2:20.8

I also, though, I want to know what happened.

...

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