Episode 54 – Idioms of Normality hosted by Dr. Paul H. Mason

In this episode of Idioms of Normality, Paul meets with Professor Andrea Wiley, a biological anthropologist at Indiana University who looks at how stats and figures about what constitutes normal can have a rebound effect on our biology. Descriptions of human populations can very quickly become conflated with prescriptions for human populations and Andrea specialises at looking at the various dimensions of these complex dynamics. Milk, she points out, is readily accepted as coming from a nonhuman species, but how did this become the standard? Andrea points out how our language, science and production of normality can create social disparities that we should be concerned about.