Episode 9: Health and Horror, Dignity and Disgust, with Dr. Catherine Belling

The Question in Bodies

Bioethicist, expert in medical humanities, horror fan and Jeopardy runner-up Dr. Catherine Belling joins me in this week's episode to talk about why horror and health are inextricably linked. Starting with the throughline between Dr. Pimple Popper and the early work of Ridley Scott, we examine a whole casebook of media – including hereditary possessions, anti-Hippocratic oaths, verminous transformations and infested Mayan ruins – and touch on dissection, infestation, plastination, cancerification and death.

There's some pretty grim stuff mentioned in this one, so content warnings for discussion of suicide, eugenics, ablism, and that white goopy stuff that comes out of pimples and cysts.

By the way, the anthropological text neither of us could think of the name of was Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger.