I’m writing this from New Bedford, Massachusetts.
If you’ve never heard of it, you’re not alone. But if you like whales and Portuguese food, you’re in for a real treat. This was the whaling capital of the world in the 1800s, the richest city per head in America for a while, and the port Ishmael sails out of in Moby-Dick.
And today, it’s one of the most Portuguese places in the United States, with more Portuguese Americans per head than anywhere else in the country, most of them descended from Azorean whalers who came for the work and never left. It’s got a working harbour and lots of meat-loving Portuguese restaurants (to my glee and the distain of my vegetarian colleague). It’s a strange, fascinating place.
But I’m not here for any of those tidbits.
I’m here because tonight I’m going to be locked up.
First, if you’re new here
A lot of people have subscribed to this newsletter off the back of our trad wife film release a week ago (which has now had over 1.3 million views, thanks guys). So a quick hello before I get myself arrested.
I’m Ben. I run Zandland, and we make documentaries about the real world. We meet trad wives, get millionaires to meet homeless men and try to understand things like intimacy and the human experience. We go into worlds that get judged a lot, but hardly ever properly understood. And I personally spend real time with the people in them, and try not to impose my views on them (too hard, I’m only human).
Zandland is led by me, but it’s a team of (badass) journalists, filmmakers, editors, producers, people who really want to understand the world and ask challenging questions. Our mission is to bridge divides rather than widen them.
Those films live on our YouTube. We also partner with major broadcasters and streamers on special projects, like Inside Iran for ITV and The Cult of NatureBoy on Hulu and Disney+.
In short, we just freaking love documentaries.
This newsletter is where I write about how those films get made, what I’m thinking about, and where we’re going next. Which, this week, is jail.
BTW - Everything we’ve ever made lives at zand.land if you want to catch up on some of our other documentaries.
Twenty-four hours inside
A quick explainer for the non-Americans in the room because it is a bit confusing… In the US, a jail isn’t a prison. Prisons are for people serving long sentences. Jails are run by the county sheriff and hold people who haven’t been convicted yet, or who are doing short stretches. This could be the same elsewhere, but I’m currently too tired to look that up so let’s just go with this version of events. All this means that a jail is a much stranger mix of humanity: someone arrested last night, someone waiting months for on a murder charge, someone finishing a two-year sentence, all in the same building.
A few streets from where I’m sitting right now is Ash Street Jail. It opened in 1829, which makes it the oldest continuously operating jail in the United States. Nearly two centuries of people have been held behind the same walls. And today, I go in as an inmate for twenty-four hours. It’s one of two films we’re making with the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office this week, part of a big batch of new documentaries for the Zandland YouTube.
I’ll admit it’s a bit stunty. A guy from Liverpool Engerland voluntarily spending a night in an American jail is, on paper, a gimmick. But there’s some thinking behind it.
First of all, Ash Street is a phenomenon. The oldest jail in America, and one, by virtue, that is fascinating to experience. It’s also one that the Sheriff himself has said he’d prefer to shut down. Also, everything we make is about people. If you’ve watched our films, you’ll know the thing our audience responds to most isn’t the topic, it’s the person. Larry the poet on the patio of a sports bar. A woman and her AI. You love character, and you love understanding people you’d never otherwise meet. That’s the whole engine of Zandland.
And normally I do that more from the outside, with a camera and a question. This time I want to get closer. Not because 24 hours makes me an inmate, it obviously doesn’t, I get to leave. But because it slightly changes the conversations I have with the people I come across. And in this instance, the story is the jail.
I don’t know what I’m going to find in there. That’s sort of the point, and also the bit that’s making me slightly regret suggesting it.
Another thing that’s interesting about this though is more about us than the jail. Five years ago, a working American jail would only really open its doors for 24 hours to a major broadcaster. Now, it’s opening them for a YouTube documentary studio. This isn’t just because we asked politely, which we obv did we are nice people here at Zandland, but because institutions have clocked where the audience went. Our films now reach more people than a lot of television programmes do, and the people who control access see that.
Which leaves me with the question I’ll be carrying into that cell tonight:
What happens to a place, and the people in it, when the world it was built for has gone?
I’ll tell you what I found next week. Assuming they let me out.
Where we’re headed
We’re filming a few stories on this trip, and in a couple of days we move on to Miami for more filming. If you’re in Miami and you’re a Zandland fan, give us a shout. Some of our best stories have come from exactly that.
And what’s next
A week today, on Tuesday 16 September, part two of the trad wives story drops.
It’ll be called something like, I Took A Feminist to Trad Wife Academy, and it’s a different take on the same world. Instead of following one woman, it puts two completely contrasting versions of what a woman’s life should be head to head. A feminist, inside a trad wife academy, surrounded by a woman who believes the exact opposite of everything she does.
The question is simple, and it’s one of our core missions here at Zandland: can two people who think the other is completely wrong find any understanding at all? Let’s see.
If this resonated, forward it to someone who thinks about these things.
If someone sent this to you, subscribe at newsletter.zand.land.
Thanks for reading.
Ben Z
Written from an AirBnB, soon to be a cell.