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

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 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