Latest Episode
Home Is Where the Asset Is: FIRE Roommates, Haunted Houses, and Billionaires Who Don’t Pay Taxes
This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael ask a deceptively simple question: what is a home? Unfortunately, modern America has several conflicting answers. A home is a sanctuary. A speculative asset. A retirement plan. A personality test. A tax shelter. A haunted structure slowly collapsing under the weight of deferred maintenance and financial ideology.
Recent Episodes
May 11, 2026
Home Is Where the Asset Is: FIRE Roommates, Haunted Houses, and Billionaires Who Don’t Pay Taxes
This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael ask a deceptively simple question: what is a home? Unfortunately, modern America has several conflicting answers. A home is a sanctuary. A speculative asset. A retirement plan. A personality test. A tax shelter. A haunted structure slowly collapsing under …
May 4, 2026
Dan and Michael Get Back in the Saddle (with Jennifer Van Tiem) | Horses and the Anthropology of Riding
Equine obsession, Western mythologies, and why horses are better at reading you than you are.
April 27, 2026
Is It Really Human Nature? Gender, Boys, Parenting & Bad Anthropology | People Stuff feat. Agustín Fuentes
“Human nature” is one of those phrases people use when they want to stop arguing. Boys are just like that. Men are naturally competitive. Women are better at caregiving. Kids need expensive enrichment classes. Gen Z is becoming weirdly conservative about gender. It’s just human nature. …except anth…
April 20, 2026
Dan and Michael Read a Book: Why We Treat Books as Sacred (and When They’re Just Trash)
This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael tackle the strange cultural life of books—why we treat them like holy objects, why libraries throw them away, and how to decide what’s actually worth reading.
April 13, 2026
Dan and Michael Glimpse Paradise (feat. Jeff Greger) | Utopias, Communes, Gatekeeping & Why Perfect Systems Fail
Hackerspaces, communes, constitutional bugs, and the fantasy of getting people to do their chores.
April 6, 2026
Dan and Michael Are Connecting the Dots | Conspiracies, Ghosts, QAnon & Why Humans See Patterns Everywhere
From UFOs to ghosts to QAnon — an anthropological guide to why humans connect dots that may or may not exist. This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael explore conspiracies, ghosts, elite scandals, and the deeply human urge to find meaning in chaos.
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