Dan and Michael Are a Little Stressed (With Michelle Rensel): Stress, Snacks, and Mild Emotional Collapse.

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.Chapters00:00 — Intro02:30 — What Stress Actually Is06:10 — Fresh Hell: Doctors Prescribing Parties11:45 — Question 1: Buck Fever in the Deer Stand19:30 — Predator vs Prey Symbol Systems25:00 — Question 2: High-School Stress Spiral34:10 — Fixing Shit: The Cult of Self-Discipline47:00 — Question 3: Catastrophe Thinking for Adults58:00 — 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 CreditsProduced by Gabe BullardMusic by The Endless BummerArt by Siobhan HeneganMarketing by Bryan HautLegal 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