You guys are going to eat steak and mashed potatoes for next three weeks, and you guys are going to eat mung bean stew.

I'm Angela Duckworth.

I'm Stephen Dubner.

And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, why do we buy exercise equipment that will never use and health food that will never eat?

Who am I?

I'm like Beyonce.

What would Beyonce do?

She would drink the sparkling water.

Also, is social media net positive for society?

I personally would much rather have people rant online than punch someone in the face in real life.

So, Angela, I have a habit, and I suspect many other people do as well, of acquiring,

often by purchase, what I've come to think of as aspirational objects, which is to say,

I will buy stuff that I think I want, or maybe more accurately,

that I would like to want, but which in fact, I'll never actually use. So one tiny example,

at home, we probably have 600 boxes of quinoa in our cupboard.

Kinoa.

Yeah, as far as I know, we've never actually eaten kinawa at home.

High protein grain. Well, it's not actually a grain per se. It's close to a grain.

Oh, it's a legume? No, it's neither. It's a seed, I believe. But that's beside the point.

Okay. Also, similarly, I have over my lifetime bought hundreds, perhaps thousands of books that I've never read,

or at least not more than a few pages of. I know many people who have bought closets and basements full of exercise equipment and golf equipment and nutritional supplements and hair oils.

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