I Wish I Made That: Mary Randolph Carter

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mary Randolph Carter is an expert on all things junk. She's written many books on the topic including her latest called Live With the Things You Love: And You'll Live Happily Ever After. We asked Carter if there was ever one piece of junk she acquired over the years that stuck with her so much and lived inside her head rent free for so long that she wishes she made it. The object that came to mind was a very peculiar clock.

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0:25.1	Bullseye with Jesse Thorne is a production of maximum fun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:31.8	Music It's a bullseye. I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:48.0	If my next guest, Mary Randolph Carter, has one credo, it's this.
0:53.5	Junk gets a bad rap.
0:56.3	Junk like, I don't know, a weird little statue of a cat that you put on a shelf or a painting
1:03.3	of a big tractor or a bumblebee or a vase that looks nice, but you don't really have anything
1:10.2	to put in it.
1:13.5	Carter, as she prefers to be called, has written books and books on junk, The Joy of Junk,
1:19.8	Garden Junk, American Junk.
1:21.7	She considers junking a verb.
1:23.8	It's the act of acquiring, said junk.
1:27.7	Does collecting junk make for clutter?
1:29.7	Maybe you could call it that.
1:31.5	But if you do a quick internet search of what Carter's homes look like,
1:36.2	well, I think you'd feel otherwise.
1:37.9	They're beautiful, cozy, warm, and captivating.
1:42.1	She's written a brand new book called Live with the Things You Love and You'll
1:46.4	Live Happily Ever After. In it, Carter explores the homes and junking habits of antique dealers,
	...

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