Eyal Press on the Immorality of “Dirty Work”
In Conversation with Andrew Keen on Keen On
Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now.
In this episode of Keen On, Andrew is joined by Eyal Press, the author of Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, to discuss the fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America, as well as to highlight how these burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color.
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Eyal Press is a writer and journalist who contributes to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. Since the spring of 2021, he is also a sociologist with a PhD from New York University. He grew up in Buffalo, which served as the backdrop of his first book, Absolute Convictions (2006). His second book, Beautiful Souls (2012), examined the nature of moral courage through the stories of individuals who risked their careers, and sometimes their lives, to defy unjust orders. A New York Times editors’ choice, the book has been translated into numerous languages and selected as the common read at several universities, including Penn State and his alma mater, Brown University.
His most recent book, Dirty Work (2021), examines the morally troubling jobs that society tacitly condones and the hidden class of workers who do them. A recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, he has received an Andrew Carnegie fellowship, a Cullman Center fellowship at the New York Public Library and a Puffin Foundation fellowship at Type Media Center.
