Dan and Michael Are Not Your Type: Corporate astrology, MBTI madness, and the myth of the measurable self
Anthropologists Dan and Michael take on workplace personality tests, IQ tracking, and pop psychology’s obsession with turning people into types.
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 Peter Thiel’s end-times theology, dismantle the eugenic logic of IQ tests, and fix the entire school admissions system (again). Plus, a listener wonders: if your friend only speaks in Sex and the City quotes, are they still your friend… or just a Carrie with Wi-Fi?
🔹 Why workplace personality tests are corporate astrology
🔹 The dark history of IQ testing
🔹 How BuzzFeed quizzes became proto-surveillance capitalism
🔹 Why “fixing” education means letting everyone in
As always, it’s academic insight meets anthropological mischief — because we’re anthropologists, and we know stuff about people.
🎧 Listen now at people-stuff.com or on Apple Podcasts: People Stuff
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
Credits
Produced by Gabe Bullard
Music by The Endless Bummer
Art by Siobhan Henegan
Marketing by Bryan Haut
Legal support by The Law Office of Matthew Shayefar, the one true business uncle.
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