Stress isn’t just biology—it’s culture, symbols, expectations, and the stories we tell ourselves. This week Dan and Michael are joined by UCLA’s Dr. Michelle Rensel to unpack why Americans are so stressed, why hunters get buck fever, why high-schoolers are spiraling, and why self-discipline has become a competitive sport.

We dig into social prescribing, predator-prey symbolism, the high-wire act of modern work, and whether our bodies are betraying us or sending a message we should finally listen to.

Chapters
00:00 — Intro
02:30 — What Stress Actually Is
06:10 — Fresh Hell: Doctors Prescribing Parties
11:45 — Question 1: Buck Fever in the Deer Stand
19:30 — Predator vs Prey Symbol Systems
25:00 — Question 2: High-School Stress Spiral
34:10 — Fixing Shit: The Cult of Self-Discipline
47:00 — Question 3: Catastrophe Thinking for Adults
58:00 — Outro + Fake Sponsorship

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.

You can also sign up for our newsletter, drop us a voice memo, or become a Friend of People Stuff — which is our fancy way of saying you get to support the show and we get to keep talking about dust, dads, and late capitalism.

So go to people-stuff.com

This week, Dan and Michael welcome writer and sports scholar John Florio to dig into America’s real religion: sports. We cover the rise of prop bets, whether athletes can ethically nudge a stat or two, why AI-powered officiating is killing the pathos of the bad call, and how youth sports became an arms race disguised as “character building.”

Along the way, we detour through Birkin bag lawsuits, Tommy John surgery, the death of knuckleballing, and the eternal question: Can you force your kid to play sports without turning into a meritocratic ghoul?

As always: we’re anthropologists, and we know stuff about people. People Stuff.

Chapters:
0:00 — Intro & Why Americans Worship Sports
4:32 — Birkin Bags and the Anthropology of Luxury
11:20 — Prop Bets and the Ethics of Self-Rigging
21:55 — MLB, Corruption & the Luis Ortiz Case
28:40 — AI Officiating & the Death of the Bad Call
37:15 — Children’s Sports & Class Panic
50:22 — Fixing Shit: Baseball Pitchers Edition
58:10 — How to Raise Non-Doughy Kids
1:08:45 — People Ball: Our Fake Sponsor
1:10:00 — Outro & Credits

Send us your dilemmas: www.people-stuff.com

Subscribe for more anthropological takes on the weirdness of modern life.

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.

You can also sign up for our newsletter, drop us a voice memo, or become a Friend of People Stuff — which is our fancy way of saying you get to support the show and we get to keep talking about dust, dads, and late capitalism.

So go to people-stuff.com

We’re joined by Steve Black, linguistic and medical anthropologist at Georgia State University, whose work spans ethics, care, Zulu gospel choirs, Indigenous youth in Costa Rica, and global health discourse.

In this episode:

🚗 Why millennials think a new car should cost exactly $30k

🧮 Inflation as a vibe, not a natural law

👑 Letters of recommendation: the medieval patronage system we somehow still use

🏛️ First-generation students & the unwritten rules of academia

🤖 Why academic publishing is drowning in AI slop (and rat genitals)

🧑‍💼 How to quit your job without burning your whole life down

🏃‍♀️ Why tech workers accidentally work two jobs at once

Anthropology: because the economy is mostly feelings.

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.

You can also sign up for our newsletter, drop us a voice memo, or become a Friend of People Stuff — which is our fancy way of saying you get to support the show and we get to keep talking about dust, dads, and late capitalism.

So go to people-stuff.com