How far would you go for a boycott?
This Is Uncomfortable
Marketplace
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How far would you go to participate in a boycott? Cancel your concert tickets? Spend 25% more on groceries? What about refusing to visit your family? This week, Reema speaks to Canadians who are going to great lengths to boycott the United States. Plus, a conversation with financial therapist Lindsay Bryan-Podvin about how to practice “good enough” boycotting.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I've been boycotting Target. I'm working on getting off of Spotify. I've been boycotting Walmart for |
| 0:07.2 | years. I feel like I can't really do much as one person, but putting my money where my mouth is is really |
| 0:14.3 | important to me. I'm Rima Grace and welcome to This Is Uncomfortable, the weekly show for Marketplace about life and how money messes with it. |
| 0:24.5 | Something I like to think about is what actually pushes people to change how they spend their money. |
| 0:29.7 | Like there's something about boycotts that I think make people more willing to make a change, even when it's inconvenient or hard to stick with. |
| 0:36.4 | Like last year, after Disney pulled Jimmy Kimmel from the air, millions of people reportedly |
| 0:41.5 | canceled their Disney Plus subscriptions. |
| 0:43.6 | And right now, we're seeing people rethink where they spend their money, avoiding companies |
| 0:47.3 | from Amazon to Target, over everything from labor practices to how corporations are responding |
| 0:52.3 | to the Trump administration. |
| 0:54.5 | But, you know, usually when we hear about boycotts, the focus is on whether they worked, |
| 0:58.4 | like, did they actually hurt a company's bottom line? |
| 1:01.4 | That's important, but this week, I'm interested in turning the lens inward and asking, |
| 1:05.3 | what happens when we turn our values into rules for how we live? |
| 1:09.7 | How does participating in boycotts impact us? |
| 1:17.3 | As I started thinking of these questions, I went out to the streets of Portland, Oregon, |
| 1:21.0 | just to chat with people about how boycotts show up in their lives. |
| 1:25.0 | So are you boycotting anything right now? |
| 1:27.4 | Starbucks, I've been off. |
| 1:28.6 | Oh my God, Starbucks, yeah. |
| 1:30.4 | Don't really need to go back there. |
| 1:32.1 | Oh, yeah, McDonald's. |
... |
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