This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael are joined by Princeton anthropologist Agustín Fuentes—author of Sex Is a Spectrum and Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You—to ask what human nature actually means, and why people keep using it to justify behavior they don’t want to examine too closely.

We cover:

Why Lord of the Flies is bad anthropology
Scout camp pranks, masculinity, and whether boys are “naturally” violent
Looksmaxxing, incel language, and why young men are hitting themselves in the jaw with hammers
Why Gen Z men are getting weird about gender roles
Parenting anxiety and whether your 3-year-old really needs $400/month gymnastics
Why gossip is stronger than capitalism
Why “human nature” is often just culture wearing a fake mustache

Plus: Michael tries to fix Gen Z, Dan defends gossip as civilization, and we discover that humanity may just be pre-crab evolution.

We’re anthropologists. 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

Is It Really Human Nature? Gender, Boys, Parenting & Bad Anthropology | People Stuff feat. Agustín Fuentes