Dan and Michael Are Definitely Out of Place: Why Some Places Feel Wrong, Why Seats Matter, and Why the Dead Deserve Space
This week on People Stuff, anthropologists Dan and Michael get very, very lost — in Carmel-by-the-Sea, at the dinner table, and even among the dead.
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.
Plus: Dan fixes superheroes (they’re fascists), Michael defends ghosts, and everyone learns something about the anthropology of being uncomfortable.
🎧 People Stuff — because we’re anthropologists, and we know stuff about people.
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 got a question, a dilemma, or just something deeply weird about humanity you’d like us to unpack, send it our way at people-stuff.com
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