The idea of dirtiness

The following podcast was posted on How To Read on March 1:

We tend to have a visceral response to someone we think is dirty. But Stephanie Newell,  Professor of English at Yale University, argues that judging other people as dirty is more in our minds than it is about medical reality. Through examples ranging from the travel diaries of colonial British traders in West Africa to the surprising ways Nigerian popular culture makes comedy out of disease, Stephanie shows how judging people to be dirty always involves a failure to understand them – but sometimes can also spark empathy.