Episodes

Politicians posting bread, waiters demanding crypto, and a guy installing 13 doors to keep the cosmos aligned. Just another week on People Stuff — the anthropological advice show where touching grass means thinking deeply about why humans do the weird things we do. This week, Dan and Michael tackle: 🗳️ When your politician’s social media feed is 90% baguettes — and why authenticity might be the last political virtue left. 🍝 The great restaurant union crypto debate — solidarity vs. speculation, and whether your paycheck belongs on the blockchain. 🚪 The man with too many doors — and what happens when liminality becomes a load-bearing problem. Plus, the Fixing Shit segment gets delightfully dystopian as Michael proposes paying (or darting?) people into vaccine compliance. Anthropology meets public health meets bounty hunting. From shamanic therapists to door-worshipping homeowners, People Stuff is your weekly reminder that culture is weird, funny, and completely unavoidable.

Dan and Michael dive deep into the art of refusal — from saying “no” to conversations, to food, to entire worldviews. They tackle listener questions on political red-pilling, vaccine hesitancy, and culinary snobbery, blending real anthropology with absurd humor and social critique. Along the way, you’ll hear about podcast epistemology, purity and danger, and why your boyfriend’s palate might just be a symptom of American decline. This week’s “What Fresh Hell” features the ethics of scanning baseball card boxes with CT machines (yes, that’s a real thing), and “Fixing Shit” takes on the college admissions racket. Join the People Stuff crew for a thoughtful, irreverent, and deeply human take on what happens when people just refuse.

This week on People Stuff, anthropologists Dan and Michael sink their teeth into the strange and the spooky — from vampire lifestyles and Nazi fanboys to the mysterious Jersey Devil lurking in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. They start with a “What Fresh Hell” segment exploring the surprising backlash against empathy, before diving into three listener questions that veer from the undead to the unhinged: High Stakes: A listener obsessed with vampires wonders — is it normal to want to become one? Dan and Michael dissect the anthropology of the night, from bloodlust to cultural obsession. I Did Not See That Coming: A young soldier asks why people are still drawn to Nazis. The hosts unpack fascism’s dark appeal, drawing on anthropology and history to explain why extremist movements persist. Devil Got My Tongue: A park ranger in the Pine Barrens asks about the persistence of monsters like the Jersey Devil. Dan and Michael debate whether monsters serve as scapegoats or companions to human loneli…

Season 1 of People is coming in early July. Here is a sneak peek of what Dan and Michael discuss.

People Stuff is a write-in anthropology podcast. In this episode, Dan and Michael go to Ikea and give advice on furniture shopping and relationships, whether you should make your bed, and how best to bring an urn to your in-laws. They also talk about the great chicken war, fix the Olympics, and shill for flat-pack coffins.