# #1240 Roy Richard Grinker - Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dissenter-1161217/1240-roy-richard-grinker-nobody-s-normal-how-culture-created-the-stigma-of-mental-illness
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dissenter-1161217/1240-roy-richard-grinker-nobody-s-normal-how-culture-created-the-stigma-of-mental-illness.md
Podcast: [The Dissenter](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-dissenter-1161217)
Published: 2026-04-13T18:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thedissenter/episodes/1240-Roy-Richard-Grinker---Nobodys-Normal-How-Culture-Created-the-Stigma-of-Mental-Illness-e3dahap
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/822ba20/podcast/play/113640217/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-0-7%2F8ab77ec2-e00d-7ede-8458-c70cd6f1ecd5.m4a
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-dissenter-1161217/episodes/1240-roy-richard-grinker-nobody-s-normal-how-culture-created-the-stigma-of-mental-illness
Duration seconds: 2432

## Resource

******Support the channel****** Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenter PayPal: paypal.me/thedissenter PayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuy PayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9l PayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpz PayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9m PayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on****** Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/ The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoB Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/ Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University. Dr. Grinker is a cultural anthropologist specializing in ethnicity, nationalism, and psychological anthropology, with topical expertise in autism, Korea, and sub-Saharan Africa. He is also the director of GW's Institute for Ethnographic Research. He is the author of Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness. In this episode, we focus on Nobody’s Normal. We talk about mental illness from the perspective of cultural anthropology. We discuss the origins of the stigma surrounding mental illness, how capitalism changed our understanding of mental illness, and recent progress in how we deal with it. We also talk about how war shaped our understanding of mental illness, idioms of distress across different cultures, and the DSM and the classification of mental illness. Finally, we discuss what “normal” means. -- A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW W…

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