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Dan and Michael are not That Into Labels: Why naming things is both anthropology and chaos management
This week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael wrestle with the fine art of naming—bars, gun clubs, and even your long-lost festival alter ego. What’s in a name, really? Turns out, quite a lot of cultural baggage, generational anxiety, and maybe a touch of nostalgia-induced regression.
From a bar named Stacy’s Mom (a terrible idea, we all agree) to a gun club trying to rebrand itself into a “Second Amendment Tactical Brigade,” this episode digs into why naming things feels so loaded—and how those labels shape who we are. Along the way, Dan and Michael contemplate QR codes, nostalgia, and ritual theory, all while trying to fix “names” as a social institution.
Come for the anthropological analysis, stay for the fake sponsorships.
Chapters:
00:00 — Intro: The problem with labels
03:15 — What Fresh Hell: QR Codes and the Death of Memory
09:40 — Question 1: “Stacy’s Mom” is not a bar name
19:55 — Question 2: When your gun club becomes a militia
35:20 — Fixing Shit: Names, and why Michael is now a constitutional originalist
46:00 — Question 3: Losing (and finding) yourself at camp
57:10 — Nostalgia Suppositories and designer nicknames
59:00 — Outro
Works Cited:
Stacy’s Mom.
Ritual and Mantras: Rules Without Meaning by Frits Staal
The Rites of Passage by Arnold van Gennep
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Strucutre by Victor Turner
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
View all episodes
By Michael Scroggins, Dan SoulelesThis week on People Stuff, Dan and Michael wrestle with the fine art of naming—bars, gun clubs, and even your long-lost festival alter ego. What’s in a name, really? Turns out, quite a lot of cultural baggage, generational anxiety, and maybe a touch of nostalgia-induced regression.
From a bar named Stacy’s Mom (a terrible idea, we all agree) to a gun club trying to rebrand itself into a “Second Amendment Tactical Brigade,” this episode digs into why naming things feels so loaded—and how those labels shape who we are. Along the way, Dan and Michael contemplate QR codes, nostalgia, and ritual theory, all while trying to fix “names” as a social institution.
Come for the anthropological analysis, stay for the fake sponsorships.
Chapters:
00:00 — Intro: The problem with labels
03:15 — What Fresh Hell: QR Codes and the Death of Memory
09:40 — Question 1: “Stacy’s Mom” is not a bar name
19:55 — Question 2: When your gun club becomes a militia
35:20 — Fixing Shit: Names, and why Michael is now a constitutional originalist
46:00 — Question 3: Losing (and finding) yourself at camp
57:10 — Nostalgia Suppositories and designer nicknames
59:00 — Outro
Works Cited:
Stacy’s Mom.
Ritual and Mantras: Rules Without Meaning by Frits Staal
The Rites of Passage by Arnold van Gennep
The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Strucutre by Victor Turner
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