22. Why Do We Buy Things We’ll Never Use?
No Stupid Questions
Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2020
⏱️ 31 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | You guys are gonna eat steak and mashed potatoes for next three weeks, and you guys are going to eat mung bean stew. |
| 0:05.5 | Hi! |
| 0:06.5 | I'm Antelope Duckworth. |
| 0:07.6 | I'm Stephen Dovner, and you're listening to no stupid questions. |
| 0:12.1 | Today on the show, why do we buy exercise equipment that we'll never use, and health food that we'll never eat? |
| 0:18.7 | Who am I? I'm like Beyonce! What would Beyonce do? |
| 0:21.5 | She would drink the sparkling water. Also, is social media net positive for society? |
| 0:27.0 | I personally would much rather have people rant online than punch someone in the face in real life. |
| 0:35.5 | So, Angela, I have a habit, and I suspect many other people do as well, of acquiring, often by purchase, |
| 0:43.5 | what I've come to think of as aspirational objects, which is to say, |
| 0:49.8 | I will buy stuff that I think I want, or maybe more accurately, that I would like to want, |
| 0:55.4 | but which in fact, I'll never actually use. So, one tiny example, at home, we probably have |
| 1:01.7 | 600 boxes of quinoa in our cupboard. |
| 1:04.2 | Quinoa? |
| 1:05.0 | Yeah, as far as I know, we've never actually eaten quinoa at home. |
| 1:08.2 | Hi, protein, grain. |
| 1:09.9 | Well, it's not actually a grain per se. It's close to a grain. |
| 1:13.2 | Oh, it's a lagoon. |
| 1:15.0 | No, it's neither, it's a seed, I believe. But that's beside the point. |
| 1:18.9 | Also, similarly, I have, over my lifetime, bought hundreds, perhaps thousands of books that I've never read, |
| 1:27.1 | or at least not more than a few pages of. |
| 1:29.5 | I know many people who have bought closets and basements full of exercise equipment, |
... |
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