This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael are joined by applied anthropologist Jeff Greger to ask a deceptively simple question:

Why do utopias always fall apart?

From Silicon Valley hackerspaces to Danish communes to the U.S. Constitution itself, the episode explores humanity’s enduring obsession with building perfect systems—and our equally durable tendency to break them.

Inspired by everything from communal farming dilemmas to sci-fi dreams of Starfleet, the conversation moves across scales: from chore wheels to constitutional design, from co-living conflict to cosmic hope.

Topics include:

• Why utopian communities struggle with shared labor
• The anthropology of communes and why chores are destiny
• Hackerspaces and the illusion of politics-free governance
• Constitutional “bugs” and the slow drift toward executive power
• Gatekeeping vs algorithms: who should decide what matters?
• Why fandom, sci-fi, and Star Trek still shape moral imagination
• Hopepunk, dystopia, and whether the future can still be better

Along the way, listeners ask about commune freeloaders, collapsing faith in American institutions, and whether it’s naïve to still believe in a better world.

As always, the anthropologists attempt to fix society—this week by bringing back gatekeeping.

Remember: 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

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 on People Stuff, Dan and Michael follow the red yarn across humanity’s favorite pastime: connecting dots.

Inspired by Susan Lepselter’s The Resonance of Unseen Things, the hosts explore apophenia — the human tendency to impose meaning on scattered events — and why conspiracy thinking may be less irrational than we like to believe.

Topics include:

• UFO stories and narrative inheritance
• Why jokes sometimes become political movements
• Costco diplomacy and the petty geopolitics of the UN
• QAnon, Epstein, and the genealogy of conspiracy theories
• How elites maintain legitimacy (until they don’t)
• Ghost sightings, grief, and cross-cultural personhood
• Why conspiracies provide meaning even when factually wrong

Along the way, listeners ask about spirit-protecting neighbors, uncomfortable family revelations, and whether sharing ghost encounters is ever a good idea.

As always, the anthropologists attempt to fix society — this week by solving childcare entirely.

Remember: 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

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 on People Stuff, Dan and Michael are joined by technology manager, nonprofit veteran, and repeat Jeopardy contestant Mike Dawson to confront one of humanity’s oldest questions:

Why do we care so much about things that don’t matter?

Topics include:

• Why AP European History feels like intellectual hazing
• Trivia as cultural capital (and mild social violence)
• The anthropology of sports fandom and gatekeeping
• America’s extremely weird history of almost-fascist coups
• Microplastics, scientific uncertainty, and modern risk anxiety
• Tarot cards, prediction markets, and contemporary divination
• Why humans keep inventing systems to predict the future

Along the way, the hosts debate whether knowledge should be endured, abandoned, or absorbed slowly like baseball statistics.

If you’ve ever felt intimidated by trivia, excluded by fandom, or haunted by the sense that culture is secretly a giant game show — this episode is for you.

Remember: 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

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