Admit it: You think about buttheads a lot. You’ve dealt with a few, even been trapped in relationships with one or two. So of course, they’d be on your mind.

But what makes someone a butthead? How do you know whether you’re dealing with one and how do you deal with one without becoming a butthead yourself?

For 25 years I’ve been struggling with those questions:

What distinguishes a butthead since they can’t just be anyone we happen to butt heads with?

How can we stop and prevent buttheads without becoming one in the process?

I call this work psychoproctology, a light name for a serious subject. I consider psychoproctology’s questions the most important in moral thinking: Not what everyone should be but what no one should get away with being: A butthead.

I address psychoproctology from a natural history perspective, the best-guess, rigorous, neutral non-partisan perspective I can find. While in biology, there are plenty of predators and parasites, being a butthead is a human thing having to do with how language overwhelms humans with real and imaginary threats and affords us easy ways to ignore, deflect and deny them.

I’ve written a book with my best answers so far. It’s also a podclass, me reading the whole thing. If you’ve ever thought “what’s up with these a-holes?” check it out. Strangers with no background in psychology have read it and totally get it.

I think wising up about buttheads is crucial to our survival. We’ve got to figure out what makes some people tick…like time bombs.