People Stuff

Why do people collect ridiculous kitchen gadgets? When do dietary restrictions become impossible to cook around? Why does feeding people create friendship, obligation, and family? This week on People Stuff , anthropologists Dan and Michael are joined by cook, marketer, and longtime friend Bryan Haut for an episode about the anthropology of home cooking . Together they explore why kitchens fill wit...

Highlights The cultural power of brutal honesty in hiring (and why job posts should repel as much as they attract). Vampires as symbols of modern alienation and eternal cool. Fascism as a false cure for loneliness and economic despair. Monsters as mirrors of humanity’s deepest fears and longings. A defense of national parks and public lands. Segment Breakdown 00:00 – Intro: Brutal honesty and vamp...

Why do we care so much about people we've never met? This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael are joined by trivia expert and television veteran Arianna Haut —whose résumé includes Jeopardy! , Who Wants to Be a Millionaire , The Chase , and five seasons on Master Minds —to ask what television actually does to us. Why do celebrities feel like old friends? Is it ever acceptable to talk to a TV st...

What exactly is Los Angeles? A city? A county? A collection of freeways? A lifestyle brand with excellent tacos and terrible traffic? This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael are joined by genetic counselor and longtime Angeleno-adjacent observer Saanchi Shah to tackle one of America's most confusing cities. Along the way they explore: Why Los Angeles seems designed entirely around cars Whether...

What is camping actually for? This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael head into the wilderness to investigate one of modern life's strangest contradictions: millions of people spend thousands of dollars on gear, drive hours into the woods, and then eat store-bought snacks while pretending they're escaping civilization. Along the way, they tackle some surprisingly deep questions: Why do some pe...

Why do humans need privacy? This week on People Stuff, Michael and Dan are joined by anthropologist and design researcher Gretchen Pfeil to explore one of the most basic—and surprisingly complicated—human needs: shelter. What makes a space feel private? Why do open offices drive people insane? Why does living and working in the same place feel so strange? And what happens when the social rules tha...

Home Depot may be the most American place on Earth. This week on People Stuff , Michael and Dan dive into the anthropology of DIY culture, suburban home repair, hardware stores, masculinity, construction work, and the strange emotional power of wandering the lumber aisle at 8:30 in the morning. Along the way: Why every home repair project somehow requires four separate trips to Home Depot The hidd...

Competition used to be for sports and maybe college admissions. Now it’s for internships, student clubs, networking coffee chats, LinkedIn visibility, and apparently sleep scores monitored by the national security state. This week on People Stuff , Michael and Dan are joined by Brown University senior and Product Management Club leader Justin Dang to talk about what happens when every institution...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael tackle one of the great contradictions of modern life: why Americans treat houses simultaneously as sacred homes, speculative assets, retirement plans, emotional support animals, and deeply cursed money pits. Along the way: FIRE enthusiasts buy a house without an inspection and immediately discover foundation problems; a listener wants to know the most i...

Horse girls. German cowboys. Private equity bowling alleys. This week on People Stuff , we take on horses—not just as animals, but as cultural objects, status symbols, and surprisingly effective therapists. Joined by medical anthropologist Jennifer Van Tiem, we explore how an eight-year-old’s horse obsession spirals into real estate searches, why the Western refuses to die (it just changes costume...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael are joined by Princeton anthropologist Agustín Fuentes —author of Sex Is a Spectrum and Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You —to ask what human nature actually means, and why people keep using it to justify behavior they don’t want to examine too closely. We cover: Why Lord of the Flies is bad anthropology Scout camp pranks, masculinity, and whet...

This week, Dan and Michael talk about books. Along the way: A library purge shocks a 10-year-old (and maybe you) A listener in prison asks the ultimate question: what should I read? The anthropology of book bans, book burning, and moral panic Why most books are disposable commodities (yes, really) How to build a reading list without losing your mind Plus: Why Moby-Dick is still worth it The case f...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael are joined by applied anthropologist Jeff Greger to ask a deceptively simple question: Why do utopias always fall apart? From Silicon Valley hackerspaces to Danish communes to the U.S. Constitution itself, the episode explores humanity’s enduring obsession with building perfect systems—and our equally durable tendency to break them. Inspired by everythin...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael follow the red yarn across humanity’s favorite pastime: connecting dots. Inspired by Susan Lepselter’s The Resonance of Unseen Things , the hosts explore apophenia — the human tendency to impose meaning on scattered events — and why conspiracy thinking may be less irrational than we like to believe. Topics include: UFO stories and narrative inheritance W...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael are joined by technology manager, nonprofit veteran, and repeat Jeopardy contestant Mike Dawson to confront one of humanity’s oldest questions: Why do we care so much about things that don’t matter? Topics include: Why AP European History feels like intellectual hazing Trivia as cultural capital (and mild social violence) The anthropology of sports fando...

Is People Stuff a weekly podcast? Philosophically, yes. In this Season 3 preview, Dan and Michael emerge from their off-season hibernation to read listener messages ranging from supportive to Victorian-newspaper furious. Along the way: Programmers at Palantir identify as Hobbits protecting the Shire A parent blames anthropology for radicalizing their children A long-haul trucker offers perhaps the...

Stress isn’t just biology—it’s culture, symbols, expectations, and the stories we tell ourselves. This week Dan and Michael are joined by UCLA’s Dr. Michelle Rensel to unpack why Americans are so stressed, why hunters get buck fever, why high-schoolers are spiraling, and why self-discipline has become a competitive sport. We dig into social prescribing, predator-prey symbolism, the high-wire act o...

This week, Dan and Michael welcome writer and sports scholar John Florio to dig into America’s real religion: sports. We cover the rise of prop bets, whether athletes can ethically nudge a stat or two, why AI-powered officiating is killing the pathos of the bad call, and how youth sports became an arms race disguised as “character building.” Along the way, we detour through Birkin bag lawsuits, To...

We’re joined by Steve Black , linguistic and medical anthropologist at Georgia State University, whose work spans ethics, care, Zulu gospel choirs, Indigenous youth in Costa Rica, and global health discourse. In this episode: 🚗 Why millennials think a new car should cost exactly $30k 🧮 Inflation as a vibe, not a natural law 👑 Letters of recommendation: the medieval patronage system we somehow s...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael explore humanity’s oldest problem: people hitting other people and calling it “order.” Joined by anthropologist Scott Freeman , we talk violence, enclosure, billionaires, medieval sword fights, and the enduring smugness of horses. Featuring: Horse violence as a disciplinary technology The Enclosure Movement, Marx, and why Madonna legally can’t stop you r...

Are you a “blue brain,” a “Phoebe,” or just a person trying to do your job? This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael dig into the strange afterlife of psychological typing — from Jungian archetypes to workplace “whole brain” seminars and gifted testing for seven-year-olds. Why do employers, schools, and BuzzFeed quizzes all want to turn us into caricatures of ourselves? They’ll also diagnose Pe...

Are we what we eat? Should kale be a personality? Why are men suddenly shoveling raw beef into their mouths like feral crossfit raccoons? This week anthropologists Dan and Michael interview genetic counselor + legitimate adult Saanchi Shah, who tries to offer actual wisdom while the hosts spiral into food-based existentialism. Topics include: Paleo diets and why “we stopped evolving after the Ice...

They tackle listener questions about what it means to feel out of place : Why do perfect towns feel fake and claustrophobic? Why do we always sit in the same seat? And should you really avoid walking on a grave? Along the way, they explore how humans build belonging through repetition, ritual, and spatial order — and how those same habits can make us feel trapped, haunted, or just plain weird. Plu...

Dan and Michael tackle questions about: 🧹 A Zen priest frustrated by a fellow monk’s bad cleaning habits 💰 Whether kids should get paid for chores 🏚️ How to love a hoarder parent without losing your mind Plus, in Fixing Shit, Michael fixes Congress by bringing back pork barrel spending (seriously). Along the way, they dust off some anthropological wisdom from Mary Douglas, talk about pollution,...

When (if ever) should you intervene with someone else’s child? Why American parenting anxiety looks bizarre cross-culturally Aka childhood autonomy, Japanese errand culture, and European stroller norms TikTok detectives and the collapse of “mind your own business” Gender identity, performativity, and why pink tea parties won’t destroy society Judith Butler, trans theory, and early childhood gender...