I'm Stephanie Safarian and this is episode 83.

You are listening to the Sustainable Minimalist Podcast, a show about living simply and sustainably with your family.

Here's your host, Stephanie Safarian.

Hello there and welcome back.

It is 2019.

Americans today own twice as many cars,

live in double the size homes, and have twice as much

credit card debt today than they did in 1965.

We also suffer from higher levels of depression and unhappiness.

Have you ever wondered why we in the Western world continue to buy and buy and

by and by despite the fact that it has been proven that our

purchases do not make us happy, send us into debt, and destroy our planet's most

precious resources? Well I wonder about this a lot actually and it's

exactly this that we're uncovering today. On today's show we are discussing four reasons why in the year 2019 Americans

continue to buy stuff we don't need and interestingly, in order to

answer this complex question, I'm taking you back.

I'm taking you way, way back, because the answer to this very complex question in part lies in our history.

So on today's show we're going to travel through time so to speak.

We start way back at our caveman days, then we're moving up to the 18th century,

then to the dawn of television in the 1950s and 60s,

and finally we end in the modern day 21st century Western world.

Now a quick note here I'm just giving you four reasons why we buy things we don't need. But there are many many factors at play

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