(theme music playing) GRAHAM: Good evening, and uh, welcome to P&P Live.

I'm Brad Graham, co-owner of Politics and Prose, along with my wife, Lissa Muscatine, and we have a quite a provocative program for you this evening, featuring author-journalist Eyal Press, here to talk with another author-journalist Patrick Radden Keefe about Eyal's new book, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America .

Eyal has, has written, uh, for a number of publications, that including The New Yorker and The New York Times .

And just last spring, he earned a PhD in Sociology from New York University.

In Dirty Work, Eyal looks at jobs that are considered essential but that many people see as morally compromised, like operating military drones or working in, uh, slaughterhouses or serving in, uh, mental ward of a prison.

In these instances, Eyal finds that a desire for efficiencies and lower costs of one kind or another, fewer American casualties in foreign wars for instance, or cheaper meat, or more mass incarceration, that such considerations have led to the exploitation of workers.

Eyal will be talking about his book with Patrick Radden Keefe, himself a master of narrative nonfiction and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he's been contributing since 2006.

He's also author of two best-selling books, most recently Empire of Pain , about the Sackler family, and Say Nothing , about the conflict in Northern Ireland and the people who were caught in what became known as The Troubles.

So Eyal and Patrick, the screen is yours.

KEEFE: Thank you so much Brad.

So I thought for starters, um, the term, dirty work, uh, which you introduced early on in the book, you attribute to Everett Hughes.

Could you tell us a little bit about who he was and what he meant by this phrase?

PRESS: He was, uh, an American Sociologist, uh, at the University of Chicago, who influenced a lot of very, very famous people, who of course are more well-known now than him.

Irving Kaufman being one of them, um, Howard Becker being another.

These were students of, of Everett Hughes.

Hughes himself is kind of, uh, less well known, but he wrote one essay, um, that is the kind of point of departure for my book, uh, and the essay was titled, Good People and Dirty Work, and it was based on conversations that he had while teaching in Frankfurt, uh, in post-war Germany.

And, um, when, uh, this was right after World War II, when Hughes went there, um, he met with the people he'd known before the war, and the people he knew were not supporters of the Nazi Party, they were intellectuals, they were writers, they were journalists, they were architects and professionals, um, and he sort of loosely terms them, the good people for this reason.

Um, he wanted to talk to them about the most uncomfortable subject possible, namely what had just happened in Germany and the horrors perpetrated by, um, German soldiers, and the German people, um, in the camps and the genocide of the Jews and, and other, um, racially targeted groups.

PRESS: And what Hughes heard, on one level, was unsurprising.

Uh, so in, in, I start the book with an evening he spent at an architect's home and they have tea in the drawing room of this architect and the, and, and when Hughes brings this up, the architect says, "Um, you know, I'm ashamed for my people, whenever, whenever I hear this this.

Um, is just horrible."

Uh, then the evening sort of continues and the conversation continues and the architect says, "You know, but the Jews they were a problem, um, and something had to be done about this problem."

I'm not saying, and sort of paraphrasing here, I'm not saying what the Nazis did was right, but we did have a problem here, and, and the sort of this expression of, on the one hand shame that this awful, awful thing has happened.

PRESS: On the other hand, kind of distancing of, of oneself from the victims and, and a sort of casting them as this out group that something had to be done about.

And Hughes sort of collects these stories and he keeps hearing this sort of ambivalence.

And in this essay, Good People and Dirty Work , he sort of lays out a theory in which he says, "You know, it'd be very comforting for us to think of the dirty work that was done in Nazi Germany as the act of, as, as, the conduct of rogue actors, people who were just acting in the name of the Nazi Party."

But that's not what I heard.

What I think happened was that these dirty workers were acting as agents of society and even indeed as agents of the good people, not because the good people actually approved of what the Nazis were doing, but because they distanced themselves and didn't ask questions, and in a sense, allowed someone else to take care of the problem, because it was convenient for them.

And so there's this theory he, he suggests and, and I know listeners are thinking, "Well, that's interesting for Nazi Germany but what does it have to do with Contemporary America?

What does it have to do with any democratic society?

Isn't that context unique?"

Um, and Hughes admitted, you know, that, that what the Na... what happened under the Nazis was in some sense unique.

He called it, you know, the most colossal piece of social dirty work, uh, in history.

But he actually didn't think that this dynamic that he had found was unique.

He sort of posits, as sociologists are want to do, that it exists in every society.

You have morally troubling tasks, and these tasks become delegated to certain people to do, and then they become hidden from view.

And the good people refrain from asking too much about what's being done in their name.

And if you think about that, and Hughes was actually explicit about this, um, that dynamic is arguably more relevant in a democratic society than it is in a totalitarian country like Nazi Germany, because in, in Nazi Germany, people really didn't have much choice about what to do.

Uh, if they dissented from what the Fuhrer wanted, um, they were enemies of the state, they could be imprisoned or shot.

Um, in a democracy, people do have a voice and some influence over what, um, is done in their name and what, you know, kinds of uh, uh, things are, are allowed or not.

And, and, and so, Hughes actually says, in sort of some exchanges with other scholars after this, "You know, I was addressing this essay to my fellow Americans, um, to make us aware of the dangers in our own midst," and he talked about racial violence and the kind of violence and lynchings that, that had gone on in the United States.

Um, well, let's fast forward.

That essay was published in 1962, here we are in 2021.

Um, we have a society that, um, on the one hand, uh, is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, um, and, uh, in some sense sees itself as a model and a pillar of democracy.

Uh, but that also has built the world's largest prison system, um, that also has, um, all kinds of morally troubling activities going on, um that I think would fit this rubric.

And so that's what the starting point of the book is and through that prism, I take it through four or five different areas to tell stories about the people doing the dirty work and what it means for all of us, what, what relationship is there between good people and dirty work here in the United States?

KEEFE: Yeah, I mean it's so fascinating that that was where you started because, um, once you get into the lives of these people who you write about, and we'll talk about them, you do so with a um, you know, your voice and your approach and I think this is very, very characteristic of your writing, um, is I think quite compassionate and there are moments, uh, throughout where I feel as though you are earnestly trying to understand these people, um, understand why they do what they do, understand the impact that it has on them, understand how they fit into the larger ecosystem.

There's a sense in which they are perpetrators, there's a sense in which they're also often victims, and I hope we can talk about that, but it is I think revealing that the anecdote you start with is about literal Nazis, right?

I mean that, that that is where the, where the, uh, the term comes from, and I think it, it sort of raises questions in my mind both as a threshold question, but also once you get into the, the meat of these stories and, and the um, and the lives of these people of how much sympathy should we rightly extend?

I mean, you know, it's one thing to diagnose a system which, uh, does morally abhorrent things and effectively outsources the, um, the, the doing to, uh, to a social underclass.

Um, it's another thing to, uh, absolve those people who are out there on the front lines of responsibility, and I don't mean to suggest that you are by any stretch, but I just wondered as a kind of threshold question when you, when you decided to do this book, um, about how fraught a delusion it was to, to create a cast of characters, who in each case, are, um, are in some ways I think, both perpetrator and victim.

PRESS: Yeah, I mean I think that, that's very true and, and I should say, um, that, uh, part of the, the other starting point for this book was in a sense my last book.

Um, so I wrote a book called Beautiful Souls about people who, um, as was mentioned, um, confront these moral dilemmas in their lives.

A police captain in Switzerland who is told, you know, protect the border, don't allow Jewish refugees in.

Um, a, uh, a soldier, uh, in the Balkans, um, who is, who is enlisted in the ethnic cleansing campaigns.

Um, and in each of those cases, these individuals heeded the voice of conscience, right, they kept their hands clean in a sense.

But as I was writing that book, I kept meeting and talking to people who didn't keep their hands clean, right?

PRESS: So I met people in the Balkans who had participated in the wars and had been on one side or the other.

Um, I read about all the border guards in Switzerland who went along with the law, um, and I got more and more interested, especially after the book, in the stories I hadn't told.

And the stories I hadn't told were the stories of these conflicted insiders who did go along.

Um, and, you know, one way to view them is as perpetrators.

Um, another way to see them as, as kind of gray actors.

Um, you know, they're, they're trying to sort things out and I think this, this came across to me as as I was meeting those people, um, they seemed very wounded, um, they seemed, uh, not at all to have gotten away scot-free from, from all of this.

Um, and, and I have to say that at some level, I, I felt the impulse to judge them is too easy, you know, what would I have done in their shoes?

How different am I?

How different are any of us, uh, than, than those people.

And of course, the grey actors who go along, we know from human history, are much more common than the exceptional people who, who do keep their hands clean, especially when they're under real risk and constraint.

Um, so if, to bring it all back to, to Dirty Work , I started out the book, um, in the mental health ward of a prison.

And, um, I'm telling the story of a woman named Harriet Krzykowski.

And Harriet, uh, has never worked in corrections before.

Um, she gets this job after The Great Recession of 2008.

She gets it because she needs a job, and it's that simple.

Uh, she really did not want to work in the mental health ward of a prison, an all-male prison by the way.

Um, she was scared and she, um, just hoped that the guards there would protect her as she was doing this work.

Um, now, as she works there, she starts hearing stories from some of the prisoners in the mental health unit, which was called the Transitional Care Unit, um, of prisoners telling her, you know, they're not giving me meals, they're starving me.

She hears this sort of repeatedly.

Um, she sees verbal abuse, um, she's, she senses that, that abuse is going on.

And so she tells her superior, "Um, you know, I'm hearing that the guys aren't being fed, is that true?"

Um, and what her superior tells her, the sort of, uh, person in charge of the mental health ward says is, "You know, our job is to get along with security."

Um, and this dilemma kind of frames Harriet's story from that point forward because she has what is sort of clinically called a dual loyalty which is true of any mental health provider in a prison.

On the one hand, she's there to provide care, um, for very mentally troubled individuals who need care.

On the other hand, she is beholden to security, because security runs the institution and also protects her.

As I mentioned, she went into this pretty frightened.

Um, she proceeds to learn, um, that if you defy security in any way at this prison, uh, they will let you know, and they will let you know by doing things like leaving you alone suddenly while you're doing your group therapy session and Harriet indeed encounters this after she writes an email to her supervisor complaining that they weren't letting the prisoners into the rec yard, which was their only ability to, to have, uh, day, you know, fresh light during the day.

Um, and so, so the dilemma that Harriet experiences seems sort of, you know, minor at this point but it becomes much more dramatic when she goes to work one day and hears that a prisoner named Darren Rainey, um, at the, at the mental health ward, uh, has, has collapsed in a shower and died, uh, the previous night.

And when she first hears this, she says to the nurses, "Oh he, so he had a heart attack?

He, he collapsed on his own?

Uh, and they say to her, "No, no, no, he was locked in there by guards who controlled the water flow of this stall and who were doing this to punish him, and to punish not just Rainey but other prisoners there."

Um, and at that point, is no longer a gray case, these are, this is, as she realizes, severe abuse, potentially criminal abuse, and if she stays silent about it, she is violating her oath to protect her patients from harm.

Uh, but she does stay silent about it, and she's not alone.

The entire mental health staff in the prison stay silent about it.

So that's the first story in the book and, you know, the, the reason I, I sort of wrote about Harriet is because I felt like, on the one hand, it's very easy from a distance to judge what she did, um, and she herself judged what she did, she was sort of, you know, how could I not say something, how could I not report this?

On the other hand, she was afraid to report it and I, I don't think anyone who who reads the book will, will fail to understand why.

She in fact, at one point, was left alone in the rec yard of the prison and was almost assaulted.

Um, so this, what you described as sort of, you know, is she a victim, is she a perpetrator?

That question sort of, I think, is, is really captured in Harriet's story and I don't think it's easy for anyone to really say from the outset, "Oh well, I would have done differently in that situation."

KEEFE: Can I, it's fascinating.

I mean, one, one thing I wondered about, um, as I was reading is and I just wonder if you thought about this, it's interesting, right, that the phrase comes from the immediate aftermath of the Second World War because there's, there's part of me that, that, as I was reading kept thinking, "You know, this isn't new, that societies of one sort or another have had these roles, uh, going back, you know, a long, long way, centuries."

And yet at the same time, there are these aspects of the story that are bracingly new and I think I mean, you know, I'm, I'm tempted to suggest that the mental health ward in a prison, uh, is the sort of scenario that that those conflicts and those dilemmas would have been around for a long time, but of course in the context of mass incarceration, in the context of the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill and the warehousing of those people in prisons, it is different.

It, it's, it's more strikingly different in, uh, the section where you get into, um, drones.

I mean there's a wonderful kind of paradox just literally in the, in the cover of your book which people will see over your shoulder where the title is Dirty Work and then, and then the top third is this clean antiseptic photo of a, of a drone with, you know, no human in sight.

Um, and you, you explore the ways in which, um, you know, there's kind of this illusion, right, which is that, that, uh, remote killing, you know, with a click of a button on a joystick, um, from thousands of miles away might seem to diminish, uh, you know, both, both the moral dilemmas but then also the, the level of kind of personal, moral, culpability, uh, and potentially trauma on the part of the, the person who's, who's making that kill.

Um, but then as your, as your profiles of these drone operators reveal, uh, nothing could be further from the truth.

And it's funny, you know, you, you don't get into this in the book, in a, in a, um, you know, an extensive way but I kept thinking about, um, in all your discussion of drone warfare, I kept thinking about Amazon, I kept thinking about, you know, the little joystick that, that people hit at home to order something up where they never have to engage in a human.

I thought a lot about another great book which has, which has, uh, come out recently, uh, Alec MacGillis' book, Fulfillment , about Amazon.

A lot of the themes in that, um, seem to resonate with the themes here.

And I just wondered if you could talk about, um, particularly in the drone context, the, the ways in which, you know, on some level there's always been dirty work, right, but then there are some aspects of our, uh, of our contemporary society, you seem to suggest, that have kind of supercharged these dynamics.

PRESS: So, um, I think that, the, the case studies were chosen in some sense to contrast, uh, so the book does open with prisons and what I say, um, both about Harriet's story and the stories that follow, including some of prison guards, is that this is a very visceral direct form of, um, in a sense dirtiness.

Uh, the sense of, uh, it's your decision and you're in this institution, the violence is very close, the abuse is very close, uh, the effect of not saying anything about it or allowing it to continue is, is very direct and visceral.

In, in Harriet's case it actually leads to depression, not being able to eat, losing her hair, just a whole set of kind of psychic wounds that not only she had, but that other members of that staff that kept silent, um, endure.

And, and they are by no means the primary victims of what's going on.

The primary victims are the prisoners, but there's this sort of secondary effect where they too come to, in a sense, be dehumanized by the institutional context they're working in.

PRESS: The second section of the book moves to what seems like the opposite, um, and as you said, drones, um, and drone warfare has this kind of, at least in a language that is officially used, you know, precision warfare, um, you know, uh, these these sort of, uh, strikes that, that are so laser targeted that only one person or one building is hit.

Um, this, in a sense, this cleanness and in fact the literature on, um, you know, what led us to drones, many analysts have said, "You know, what led us to drones was, uh, we didn't want to continue having Guantanamo, you know, this kind of visceral dirty, um, America is caught in running these prison camps, these black site prisons.

Torture is happening there.

It makes every citizen who reads about it feel dirtied."

Drones have this kind of opposite effect, it's sort of antiseptic, um, it's clean.

And yet, as you said Patrick, um, for the people who actually do it, um, we've learned a different story, um, so far from just kind of, you know, the, the, the fear I think both of, um, well, certainly the fear of of critics of, of the drone program at the very beginning was that it would be a video game, that people would, that the people, you know, in, in the sort of, uh, on drone bases would be pushing buttons and then going home and not thinking anything of it, because who thinks about a video game they've played, right, it's just an abstract target on a screen.

Um, and yet, inside the military, there were these extraordinary burnout rates.

Uh, there were people leaving the program so quickly that they couldn't find enough people to do it.

Um, and if, as I visited drone bases, uh, I learned that the bases themselves have psychologists and behavioral health specialists there to try to help the people doing this deal with the negative feelings that come up as they're doing this day after day, over and over.

Um, and so I talk about how this seemingly clean form of warfare, a form of warfare that I think we've, we've come to in part because of the aftermath of the Iraq War, the aftermath of Guantanamo and so forth, that as a society, we in a sense wanted this, um, and yet, it's created all kinds of moral dilemmas for the people in the trenches that we don't talk about and don't see.

KEEFE: Yeah, I mean, there's, there's, um, there's a wonderful phrase you use at some point in the book where you talk about the bonds of complicity and the idea that these things, um, you know, on the one hand, they, they happen out of sight sort of quite by design and on the other hand, we are all implicated, and, and I wondered if you could talk a bit about, um, about Flora and I mean it's interesting right because, in, in a sense, the, the, um, even for me just on a personal level, right, I, I can read these tales about what happens in a prison and I think, "Well, I, you know, I'm, I'm vehemently opposed to mass incarceration I, you know, I don't, I don't feel any complicity with this particular situation because, uh, I object to it, I don't subscribe to it."

Um, you know, you talk about drone warfare and I think, "Well, I, you know, it's, I, I think it's appalling what's happened, I don't think those..." you know, we, we, it's been heavily documented that those precision strikes are not as precise as we thought, uh, from a just war theory point of view, the idea that you would, you know, that you would, uh, you would take a life when you're not willing to sacrifice one of your own is, is pretty questionable.

Um, you know, I object therefore, I'm not, I, I'm not sort of stained vicariously by this.

Then you get to the poultry plant (laughs), and, yeah, my rationalizations all, all go out the window.

Um, could you talk a bit about the um, of Flora and the whole, I mean in a weird way, it's its own kind of, uh, sort of archipelago of, um, sort of industrial archipelago, um, uh, backstopping, you know, the whole American agricultural system, um, and where she finds herself.

PRESS: So, so, yeah, so, so, the, the first two examples of the book are both of public workers, people, people performing public functions in one form or another, um, whether it's, you know, uh, running a prison or, or carrying out, um, uh, a strike while in uniform.

Um, in that sense, I, I sort of posit, you know, where elected officials have, have, have played a role in, and, and to some extent, we're, we're all connected to this.

But you're right, a lot of citizens would say, "Well, I have no connection to that, I oppose it, I, I, you know, you, you tell me that, um, in this particular mental health ward these abuses happened, I, I, I have nothing to do with that, why does that implicate me in any way?"

Um, the second half of the book is, um, about forms of dirty work that are connected to us to, to the rest of society via our lifestyles and consumption habits.

So Flora Martinez, who you mentioned, um, is, uh, a Mexican undocumented immigrant, uh, who comes, crosses the border into Texas, winds up working in a poultry slaughter house.

And, um, the conditions in that slaughterhouse, very fast line speeds, um, denial of, um, not just breaks but even bathroom breaks for a lot of the, um, the line workers in there to the point that, um, some of Flora's co-workers start going to work wearing sanitary napkins or, or pampers, um, because they have to go to the bathroom on the line and continue working, um, they're not allowed, they don't have time, they have one break, but everybody goes to the bathroom then, and they can't go to the bathroom, so this is, this is how they adjust.

Um, you know, anyone who hears about that, uh, anyone who I think gets close to a slaughterhouse in this country, an industrial slaughterhouse, which by the way is very difficult to do because they're remotely situated and they're not accessible to the public, something that all of these sites share.

Um, but if you get close or if you read about these slaughterhouses in a book like Michael Pollan's, um, you know, The Omnivores Dilemma , I think very few people are, are comforted by what they read.

Um, there's this level of, "Okay, I don't wanna, I don't wanna hear too much about where my food came from."

Um, and, uh, so, and, and yet, it doesn't end with food, um, you know, it's also the fossil fuels that we burn, that, um, you know, the gas that's pumped into, into cars or that, you know, uh, runs our economy to no small extent.

Um, it's in the electronic gadgets that we all use, uh, where there's a form of dirty work that in a sense has been outsourced, um, to other countries and to other places in, particular the Congo, where much of the cobalt that powers the batteries that go into the machines we use, uh, comes from, and the conditions there are, um, are brutal, uh, with quite a bit of child labor and pretty systemic, um, abuse.

So that's where it gets more complicated I think for people who want to say, "Well, I have no connection to prisons, I have no connection to drones."

If you're a vegetarian, you could I suppose say, you know, the industrial meat system has, has nothing to do with me.

But, um, I chose all of these examples for a reason, um, and the book by the way is by no means claims to be a comprehensive look at sort of every morally troubling job, but the one commonality, uh, in these is that I don't think they're marginal activities to America today.

Um, what do I mean by that?

I mean our industrial, our industrial food and meat production system is, is not just a massive industry, um, but it's a massive part of our diets.

Americans consume twice the amount of meat that, that most, uh, nutritionists recommend and, and far more than most people in the world.

Um, much of it is cheap and that has to do with the conditions of production that I write about.

Um, you know, fossil fuels we, we burn about a quarter of, of the world's fossil fuels, not a marginal activity in, in the American way of life.

The digital, uh, devices that we have, again, not marginal to our lifestyles and the way, the way we go about our world.

Um, and even with, with prisons and drones, you know, I think that, that there it's a little different, but if you think about the way America is seen right now in the world, um, those are really central things.

Um, very few people from other countries, you know, if, if, of course, there are people who, who love to find, you know, the warts first in, in America and kind of fix on those, particularly sometimes Europeans, but, but, but, you know, my, my, my own European relatives, um, my own, um, relatives and extended family members from, from, uh, Argentina, um, the drone wars and, and the brutality in America's prisons are really well known and central and sort of shape how America, Contemporary America is seen, the kind of image it casts, and the sort of questions about, "Well, how can this country claim to be a democracy when it does all these things?"

So I chose these examples, uh, for that reason.

I think that they're, um, they're not small parts of what goes on in Contemporary America and I don't think it's as simple as saying, "Um, well, I, I disapprove of that therefore it has nothing to do with me," um, would that it were, were that simple.

KEEFE: I'm so glad you talked about how difficult it would be to find a poultry plant, because one of the things I was so fascinated by in the book was the kind of physical geography of all this, the places that you're going, um, which are often these quite remote, uh, difficult to get to out of the way places.

And it's interesting because that, that obviously plays into the, um, uh, the kind of what, what you've described is the moral inequality that there are some places where, you know, the prison is the only job in town, right?

Um, but it also adds to these things being out of sight and for many people out of mind.

I was, I was really happy that you, you referenced the work of the amazing photographer Trevor Paglen, who has kind of documented these secret places, and there's a line, it's a quote from someone that you had in the book about, um, I think it was referencing prisons about how they're often at the "unobtrusive margin of society."

I wonder if you could just talk about, you know, both to what degree there was some sort of strategy in locating these places in the unobtrusive margins, but also your experiences as a reporter working on this book for years and having to kind of go and seek these places out on the unobtrusive margins.

PRESS: So yeah, I think geography is a big part of, of, um how dirty work is organized in this country, um, and how it's kind of, how it ends up being delegated.

And you mentioned inequality and just so I can sort of say it as clearly as possible, um, the stories of the people in this book I think do tell a larger story about inequality and one we're less familiar with.

Uh, when we think about inequality, we think about who has wealth and who doesn't, uh, we think about it in terms of material disparities.

Um, but there's also, I think, um, a kind of moral inequality which, which, what I mean by that is, you know, who's doing this work?

Um, it's not society's privileged, it's not elites, um, it's not in the wealthy pockets of the country, uh, it tends to be industrial slaughterhouses, prisons, jails, where are these institutions located?

Um, they're located, as you said, in, in the unobtrusive margins of, um, various places, often poorer, um, often marginal and out of the way, um, so that you, you don't even see them.

In fact, um, you know, I've been to Florida a lot, uh, in, in, in my life, but, but, um, usually to go to the beaches or to go for vacation.

For the purposes of this book, I was going to the prisons, and they're really not easy to find, and they're nowhere near all of the sites that tourists and vacationers and snowbirds see all the time, and that's by design.

Um, we, you know, we, we've sort of tucked this, this kind of work and this, uh, these institutions, um, out of sight, uh, with drones as well, with industrial slaughterhouses.

Um, and so I think that the, um, you know, part of the challenge of writing the book was, how do we get inside those institutions?

And, um, I sort of learned pretty early on that going through the front door wasn't gonna show me so much, um, that if I, if I sort of, you can get a tour as a journalist just as you can probably get a tour, um, as a, you know, independent monitor or as a citizen, but, um, the tours are, are, you know, very stage managed, um, and the people you talk to are talking to you in front of their superiors and everything is being recorded and I didn't feel I would get inside those worlds that way.

The way I thought I could get inside was by finding people who had lived and worked in the front lines, um, people like Harriet, people like Chris Aarons, the, the drone operator, people like Flora Martinez, who worked in this poultry slaughter house.

KEEFE: It's very American to think that, that the way in which you would address these problems would be sort of through what you buy in the first place, right, that there's a kind of a, we have our blinders on as pr, as professional consumers in this country, that we think that that's the way you would do it.

But, um, I mean I, I think I, I take the suggestion in the book that some of this is actually about sort of, um, taking the invisible and making it visible, seeing it, reckoning with it.

We haven't had the chance to talk about moral injury as a concept but, but, there's a, it seems that there's a sort of a way towards a solution through, through, though that idea as well.

I just, I wonder, you know, for those who, who find this, um, dispiriting and, and wonder what can be done, um, where you would point to?

PRESS: I've said, you know, from the outset that I'm, I'm not a policy expert, um, I'm a reporter and an analyst of, of these issues, um, so, I, I don't, I don't offer a road map out, um, and I don't really advocate, um, at any point in the book for, you know, these are the things that should be done.

Um, what I'm trying to do is, as you say, make the unseen scene, and I do think that, that the invisibility and also that the kind of desire of many good people, uh, to not hear too much about this, um, perpetuates it and, and shapes the conditions under which it occurs.

So I think a lot of people, um, who read the book, a lot of people who may be tuning in tonight might say, "Okay, but, but it's inevitable, we need these things in our society, we're, we're not going to move off of fossil fuels tomorrow, um, we're not gonna, you know, stop producing meat for mass consumption, um, the prison system is not gonna disappear overnight, uh, so, you know, uh, some of this is inevitable isn't it?"

And I guess I would say to that, um, that public awareness can really alter how, you know, the conditions under which some of these things happen.

Um, not every prison system in the west and in the industrialized world, uh, is as brutal as ours.

Um, not every country has turned its jails and prisons into mental, into the largest mental health institutions in our society, and that's the case in literally every state in the United States.

Um, the point of the book is to get us talking about that and thinking about that.

Um, I do think there are real limits to what people can do about this individually, um, and, and you mentioned consumption is, is, is really the American kind of, you know, "Okay, I'll only buy humanely raised chicken that has no connection to these slaughterhouses," um, I have to say that in my reading and in research and investigation, um, I don't think that is gonna...

I think there are real limits to that approach, um, I think even the, some of the stuff that's labeled, you know, farm raised and pasture raised and so forth, um, the workers are not treated well, uh, the animals are often not treated well, uh, I don't think that's such a simple solution.

But at a, at an even larger level, I'm not sure that, uh, that the, that the sort of what do I do as an individual is the right way to go, because that, that's the, that's the decision of someone who wants to be pure and separated from all of this.

And, um, I think the only way to address these questions and think about them is collectively, so far more important in the case of the prisons, for example, being mental health institutions is the policies we have, is the fact that we don't fund, you know, community mental health services.

Um, is the fact that we had for so many years relied on jails and prisons to absorb a kind of excess population that just cycles through often with severe mental health problems.

Um, so I think the, the only solutions, to the extent there are solutions, are, you know, beginning first by seeing this work for what it is, seeing that it's not unconnected to us, and then thinking about how our collective decisions as citizens shape the, the nature of dirty work in this country.

KEEFE: Yeah.

Wow, fascinating.

We have a question.

Uh, this is an anonymous question.

You write at the end of the book about how the troubling work conditions you highlight are often seen as impervious to change which people then take as an excuse for resignation.

How do you suggest combating this kind of, kind of apathy?

So very close to my last question, but I wonder if you have anything to add on, on the specific idea of apathy?

PRESS: Yeah, I mean I think that, um, you know, again, to go back to Everett Hughes, I, I found really fascinating in, in the essay he wrote, um, he talked about sort of, uh, you know, the role of apathy and he said, you know, in democratic societies, what's off, what's often lacking is not information but what he called "the will to know."

I love that phrase, the will to know.

In other words, you know, yeah, the drone program is secret but you can find out an awful lot about it, um, just by going online after this conversation.

Um, there are non-profit organizations that publish reports, there's all kinds of news organizations that have dug in.

Um, similarly with just about every form of work or dirty work that I look at in the book, I'm not sure the problem is that, um, it's secret so much as that, you know, we, we sort of click on, on something and see it and then move on.

Uh, there's this sort of distracted, uh, citizen, um, what Hughes would have called a passive democrat, someone who, who's troubled but doesn't really want to engage, and I think that's the key to the whole relational theory that I'm positing.

Um, it's not that, um, you know, good, good people and good citizens are gung-ho about these things and say, "Sure, I'm all for, you know, someone like Flora Martinez being denied a bathroom break at the workplace."

I think very few people who read the stories in the book and the details would assent to it say, "Yeah, I'm for that."

Um, but a lot of us, I think, um, sort of tacitly end up condoning it because we don't want to hear too much about it, it's too troubling, it's too much work to think about.

Um, on the other hand I think that every single case, an example of dirty work that I wrote about in the book, is a shifting terrain, um, certainly with mass incarceration.

That phrase was, was not even on the map politically as, as a problem, um, in this country 15 years ago when it was still the case that elected officials, the one thing they couldn't be was soft on crime, um, they had to kind of, you know, subscribe to this, uh, to the point that that Bill Clinton, Democrat 1994 I think, passes a crime bill that is now seen as a driver, a, a major driver of mass incarceration.

Um, it wasn't one party, it wasn't one party with drones.

Uh, it was, it's not one party with fossil fuels, um, it's really, um, a sort of set of, of assumptions about the way we have to do this.

Um, and a lot of those have cracked in recent years, um, around mass incarceration, around fossil fuels.

Um, so I think that it's an ongoing, uh, process.

I don't think that dirty work is set in stone and we just have it and it is what it is and we can't do anything about it.

Um, I do very much think that, that it's up to us in, in, in terms of how much of it we tolerate and the conditions under which it takes place.

KEEFE: Great.

Another anonymous question, uh, what was the most difficult story for you to tell or write in this book?

PRESS: Um, so I, I think it actually was, um, the drone operator Chris Aarons, um, who's the first, uh, person, I, I write about in depth in that, um, section of the book.

Um, and you know, it's not just in Chris's case but really in, in all of the, all the characters that I wrote about, um, were deeply, deeply affected by what they did and we haven't talked about moral injury, but the idea of moral injury is that, in the course of doing your duties, your official duties, um, you witness or participate in acts that go against your core values.

Um, and it's a term that has, has really, um, come up a lot in recent years in the VA with veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, who don't really feel what they have is PTSD, but feel deeply troubled, uh, in some ways.

And so this, this idea, but, but my book is really taking this idea and saying it's not in any way unique to the military.

Um, I think moral injury is a term that has, um, a lot of diff, it applies to so many different professions and actually when you think about the pandemic, um, I doubt many people didn't come across a story at some point about frontline emergency workers or medical personnel who had to triage in a sense, who had to decide which patient in the ICU gets the ventilator which one doesn't, and making that choice, which you know is going to be a life and death thing, um, as is now being talked about in the medical professional, could cause moral injury, those are the kinds of injuries that, that these folks underwent.

Anyway, to get back to Chris, I didn't answer the question, um, he initially, the wounds were too fresh and he was going through them.

And so when I met him, he wasn't ready for an interview, and I could tell.

And so we just kind of connected, uh, didn't really talk, um, about what he'd done.

And then I got back in touch with him a good while later.

Um, we met, we did talk and his back froze up just from talking, just from kind of going through the history of everything he'd been through.

Um, and it was clear that although, he was more ready to talk, um, it still was kind of raw, what he'd been through and what he was, he was feeling.

And so we ended up just kind of having these conversations over an extended, extended period of time, which is part of what took a long time to write the book.

I felt I had to get really deep into the stories of the people I was writing about and it's not comfortable to talk about things you've done and participated in and seen that trouble you on an, on an ethical level.

Um, so in Chris's, case, um, you know, we developed a rapport but, but it really took a while.

KEEFE: Right.

So this one is from Alice H. And she says, "Can you discuss the impact that some of these folks like Flora and Aaron are or were impacted by their choice to tell their stories?

How can we protect their stories and hear more of them?"

PRESS: Yeah, I mean that, that's another reporting challenge, um, when, when people are doing, um, things that, uh, that cause them to feel stigma, guilt, corroded dignity, um, shame.

Uh, there's on one level, just an enormous risk to come forward and talk about those things, it's painful.

On another level, there's an institutional constraint.

In the case of, uh, industrial slaughterhouses in this country, much of the workforce is undocumented, um, and people are too afraid to come forward because they'll, they fear they'll lose their jobs or someone they know will, will, uh, lose their jobs.

In fact, I went and, and reported on another slaughterhouse that's not in the book, um, and I thought I had leads to talk to workers there, but, um, around the time that I did this, there was a raid on a slaughterhouse in Tennessee that ICE had done and they arrest...

It was one of the largest, uh, such raids, uh, in, in recent years.

They, um, they arrested and deported a number of workers and that went, that was known.

Um, and so at this place that, this other place that I went, um, not a single worker would talk to me, not even anonymously, you know, with, with pseudonyms.

Um, so I had to regroup and kind of find another place.

Um, in the case of drones, there's obviously great risk, um, to violating or being perceived to violate confidentiality and secrecy, uh, rules.

Um, you know the operators that I spoke to did not speak about specific details of missions for that reason, but even just sharing their stories is, is a risk.

Um, what can we do as a society?

I, you know, that's a tough one.

I, I hope, um, through books like mine, through, uh, conversation, uh, that some of this fear of coming forward, uh, abates a little bit.

KEEFE: Um, okay, we just have just a few minutes left, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, ask one last question.

Um, this one comes from Caroline Paulson, I should say there are, there are a series of questions from people all of them really wondering what can be done what can we do?

Um, Caroline comes at this from a slightly different angle and she says, "For years, I have refused to buy industrialized meats, purchasing local, small scale and very expensive meats and poultry at times.

But I question whether that's actually a meaningful gesture?

It seems that all I accomplish by this is feeling better about myself?"

I, I wonder what you would say to that in terms of sort of how, how we all, how each of us as individuals reckons with, um, you know, how to, how to feel like a moral actor in this world?

PRESS: Well Caroline, I'm 100% in the same category, and so I'm gonna, uh, say there's nothing wrong with purchasing things that make you feel better about yourself.

Um, you're making a moral judgment and, and, you know, an ethical decision, um, that sometimes means you pay more or you're inconvenienced in various ways, um, that's an admirable impulse.

Um, but I, I do, I do question, um, you know, whether that impulse alone, uh, can change much, and, and in fact, there's a section in the book called "Virtuous Consumption" in which in a sense, I'm, I'm writing about myself and I should say I'm, I'm writing about myself throughout the book, I, I'm not in any way, uh, you know, out here among those who, who don't feel implicated.

Um, but, um, you know, I think that, that what we've seen with, the consumption of meat is that the labels tell you a lot about the treatment of the animals, um, they tell you very little about the treatment of the workers, and the workers are, are well aware of this and point this out and often will say, you know, "Yeah, there's, you know, the company is so interested in having humanely raised on, on, on the package, um, what about humanely treated, you know, employees?"

Um, and, uh, so, you know, I think those labels if, it stops with I feel good because the label makes me feel good but nothing else follows from that, I do think there are real limits.

Um, I think that again, just to go back to what we said, um, Dirty Work is shaped by collective choices, by who we elect to office, by the kinds of policies we enact over time.

Um, you know, the, in the case of, you know, turning jails and prisons into mental health, our largest mental health institutions, that didn't happen overnight, it happened over many, many years.

Um, and to undo it is going to take a lot of time, it's not going to happen instantly.

Uh, but hopefully it starts with awareness and kind of seeing clearly and, and I hope empathically the people on the front lines who do dirty their hands, um, not, you know, to, to, to resist just kind of easy judgment, whether it's a prison guard, whether it's a drone operator, whether it's a slaughterhouse worker.

KEEFE: Read it and, and think hard about these issues and, and, and look hard at the stories, uh, and the places and the scenes that Eyal reveals, because I really think it's a profound piece of work, um, and, and one that we should all read to understand, uh, this world in which, in which we're living.

Thank you Eyal for writing the book and for doing this and, uh, over to you Brad.

GRAHAM: Well, well said, and great, great moderating Patrick and Eyal, such, such powerful stuff and such a moral wake-up call about what's sadly happening in these jobs and the responsibility many of the rest of us bear for it.

Let's, let's hope your book brings greater public awareness and helps spark a public reckoning.

Um, to everyone watching... PRESS: Thank you so much, thank you.

GRAHAM: Everyone watching, it's, thanks for tuning in.

From all of us here at Politics and Prose, stay well and well read.

NARRATOR: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose book store locations or online at politics-prose.com.

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