People Stuff

Topics 🔹 Why men are turning to ChatGPT for emotional advice 🔹 The death of partying — and what it says about American loneliness 🔹 Can you separate baseball from capitalism? 🔹 What shamans and therapists actually have in common Sound bites "Alcohol is a social lubricant." "Fandom is about shared suffering." "Psychology can't critique society." Takeaways Psychology often prioritizes individual...

In this episode of People Stuff, Dan and Michael discuss and/or are informed by: “Unsinkable” by Daniel Mendelsohn https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/04/16/unsinkable-titanic-iceberg “Removing Knowledge” by Peter Galison https://dash.harvard.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/7312037c-4c4a-6bd4-e053-0100007fdf3b/content “On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets Broken windows, imaginary jars of urin...

Dan and Michael discuss: Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe by Agniezska Pasieka The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town 1922-1945 by William Allen Sheridan:  https://archive.org/details/naziseizureofpow0000alle_m2p7 The Jersey Devil:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey_Devil The Sopranos e3 ep11, "Pine Barrens:"  https://www.imdb.com/title/t...

Why do we feel like unique snowflakes when anthropology keeps insisting we’re mostly social slush? In this GSU-inspired bonus episode, we take on three very big questions from Professor Steve Black’s Intro to Anthro class in Atlanta: 1. Are humans individuals or societies? A tour through Lévi-Strauss, Marx, language as a shared hallucination, and the soul-destroying statistical powers of Pierre Bo...

Swedish Design by Keith Murphy can be found here: Swedish Design by Keith M. Murphy | Paperback | Cornell University Press Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin can be found here: Rabelais and His World by Mikhail Bakhtin | MIT Press Find all things People Stuff at: https://www.people-stuff.com/         That’s it for this week’s People Stuff — the show where two anthropologists try (and someti...

Why will people wait an hour in the rain for a lobster roll when the exact same food is available across the street with no line? This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael take on Red’s Eats, Magnolia Bakery, Courage Bagels, and the modern compulsion to be seen eating the “right” food in the “right” place. Drawing on Thorstein Veblen’s theory of conspicuous consumption—updated for the Instagram...

Dan gives an update on the end of Season 1 and previews what to expect in Season 2 of People Stuff. A big thanks to those of you who submitted questions! Expected to hear your questions and our answers in the upcoming season. As always, you can leave a question at: https://www.people-stuff.com/ That’s it for this week’s People Stuff — the show where two anthropologists try (and sometimes fail) to...

This week, Dan and Michael investigate suburban car psychosis and the anthropology of asphalt. Why do normal people turn feral over parking spaces? What makes ride-sharing feel both convenient and morally icky? And how exactly did Elon Musk turn the Hyperloop into the most expensive metaphor for magical thinking? Plus, Michael explains why gifts are actually acts of aggression, Dan redesigns publi...

Ever wondered why people still warn you to check your kids’ Halloween candy for razor blades — even though it’s never actually happened? Or why politicians say, “a lot of people are saying…” when they clearly made it up? In this week’s episode, Dan and Michael Heard It Through the Grapevine , our resident anthropologists dig into how rumors, myths, and moral panics shape our everyday lives. They u...

Key Themes and Topics: The decline of democracy and rise of tech authoritarianism Curtis Yarvin and the myth of the “CEO monarch” Liberal democracy vs. fascist aesthetics Student politics and the mirror of national elections Organizational governance and consensus decision-making Airline inequality and the anthropology of travel Humor, politics, and why anthropology still matters   Keywords Why de...

This week on People Stuff: What Fresh Hell: “Unsinkable” — Dan on Titanic déjà vu and the myth of technology. Question 1: UFOs, drone swarms, and why mystery still matters. Question 2: Body doubles, tacit knowledge, and classroom conspiracies. Fixing Shit: Dan fixes “ostracism.” Could democracy use a reboot? Question 3: True crime, Pacific Northwest serial killers, and paranoia. 💬 Got a question...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael wrestle with the fine art of naming—bars, gun clubs, and even your long-lost festival alter ego. What’s in a name, really? Turns out, quite a lot of cultural baggage, generational anxiety, and maybe a touch of nostalgia-induced regression. From a bar named Stacy’s Mom (a terrible idea, we all agree) to a gun club trying to rebrand itself into a “Second A...

This week on People Stuff , Dan and Michael get their hands dirty—literally and intellectually. 💥 They tackle the big questions: Should you go to college or learn a trade? What’s it really like working in a modern factory? Why are oil field jobs impossible to fill (and even harder to keep)? Along the way, they talk about: The myth of “college as transformation” How AI is reshaping universities (a...

This week on People Stuff , anthropologists Dan and Michael get their hands dirty with the real weirdness of modern life — from politicians oversharing on social media to waiters wanting crypto paychecks to a man who just keeps adding doors to his house. We’re asking the big questions: Should politicians be more boring online? Is crypto a union-busting fever dream? How many doors are too many door...

Timestamps: 00:00 – Intro: What is People Stuff ? 02:00 – What Fresh Hell: Baseball cards, blind packs, and CT scanners 08:00 – Question 1: Politics, podcasts, and the red-pill relationship 20:00 – Question 2: Anti-vaxx cousins and the anthropology of purity and danger 34:00 – Fixing Shit: How to fix college admissions (spoiler: lotteries) 44:00 – Question 3: Food, family, and why your boyfriend r...

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...

In season 1 of People Stuff, Dan and Michael take on CAT scans for baseball cards, stupidity, college admissions, pompous assholes, unionization, the Bakersfield restaurant scene, and much, much, much more. Season 1 of People Stuff will be available in early July. That’s it for this week’s People Stuff — the show where two anthropologists try (and sometimes fail) to make sense of people. If you’ve...

Segments What Fresh Hell: Michael wonders: what exactly is a tariff, and why do they matter? Dan breaks down the economics, politics, and psychological weirdness behind trade policy — and why tariffs might say more about national insecurity than global economics. The IKEA Question: A listener writes in after an IKEA trip threatens to end their relationship. Dan and Michael unpack what IKEA really...