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.

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So go to people-stuff.com