Money Talks: Contemplations on Consumption

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1:09Hello, and welcome to Money Talks. I'm your host, Elizabeth Spires, and today I'm joined by Emily Mester, the author of American Folk, Essays on Excess. So Emily, thank you for being with us. Why don't you introduce yourself and give us a sense of who you are and what brought you to writing this book. I grew up in the suburban Midwest in a family of excess of a couple people with hoarding tendencies. My dad was a major compulsive shopper. And I wrote an essay originally about how my family would just go to Costco every Sunday and it was kind of like our church. And then once I wrote that essay, I was like, oh, this seems to go deeper than that.

1:49And then I had to write a whole book about it. So I love the description of your book. It says, what if we explored our relationship to consumption with the same depth and feeling we used to tell stories of love and loss? Just to go back to Costco, what is it about Costco that makes people obsessed with it? Well, there's the guise of like, you're getting a good deal, which is true, you are. But I think it's partly this sense of possibility and discovery. It's so cavernous in there. And it's so labyrinthine. And like, I mean, it's like sailing through like with mountains on the side of you. You know, it's, it's, there's something kind of fantastical about it.

2:23And there's, I'll follow, I follow Instagram accounts that are like called like Costco does it again. And it's people being like, wow, ladies, look what Costco has. They have this deer foam slippers. I think there's a sense of discovery and possibility in it for a lot of people and a good deal. The good deal gives you an excuse to go. So I love that idea that you go into Costco with a sense of possibility, especially given that, you know, periodically they start selling something that's just completely insane. They were selling gold bars for a while. Yes, yes. And that giant teddy bear, which isn't that insane, but it was like, I never, it was like the one thing my parents were like, they like drew the line and were like, you're not getting that.

2:57Yeah, I think some of it too is just that, you know, you're going to Costco to buy mostly stuff in bulk. And, you know, I remember when Amazon did those little buttons where you could just press something for a specific product and they would automatically reorder stuff. And I had a toddler at the time, so I was afraid to ever use one of those or I might get, you know, 48 things of bleach. But if you're going into Costco, that's the point. You know, you feel like you do need 48 cans of beans or whatever. Yeah, there's a there's a real delight, I think, in just seeing things piled up. I mean, it's why people love those restock my guest bathroom videos where there's for some reason like five micellar waters and you're like, who is this for?

3:37How many guests do you have? I think people just love. It's like viscerally pleasurable. And I think just like seeing a palette of like toilet paper, it just makes you want to kind of dive into it. And yeah, Costco is just that in the extreme. Also, those buttons always were so funny to me because for me, the pleasure is like getting to buy it, but it's doing the transaction. And obviously it's probably not for people that are addicted to shopping, but I was like, I know I want to browse for it. I don't want to just press a button. I wonder if that's why they get rid of it too, because you're probably less likely to do, you know, you're not browsing, so you're just going to buy that one thing you need and not the 40 other things you came across.

4:13It's too efficient. I feel like people want to sort of wander the house. Not enough of a dopamine hit either. No, not at all. I also think maybe with the Kutsuko thing, part of it too is, you know, when you're describing the videos online of people buying a lot of things and, you know, kind of over-organizing them, it's all got like a kind of aesthetically pleasing prepper feel to me. It's like taking something excessive and chaotic and like organizing it. Yeah, you'll see people just do these neat rows of just like endless like cans of beans or whatever. And you're right. It's like it's both.

4:44It's the excess and then also being able to kind of manage it and contain it. Whenever my like dresser was messy or my desk when I was a kid, I would say I was quote unquote cleaning it. And I would just like arrange every I would not pick up a single thing, but I would arrange it really intricately in a way that wasn't functional at all. I was like, good. I've done my work here. So you also mentioned there are people in your family who are hoarders. Were they hoarders in the sort of classical sense where you would walk into a house and there would just be stuff everywhere? Or are they more like what we're talking about, where you just have a lot of stuff, but it's impeccably organized?

5:16Well, it's funny. It's like, so my dad is not a classical one, but there is stuff everywhere. But it's yet it's in storage spaces or it's in the attic. Our house is not clean, but it's not sort of squalid. Yeah. Others, my grandma is a more classical sort of hoarding type. It's just kind of, you know, she doesn't buy, she's so frugal, she doesn't buy anything, but she manages to like accumulate brochures and, you know, never throws away leftovers and has all these like mysterious plastic grocery bags filled with, she calls them her papers, but I feel like it's just receipts and like little post-it notes.

5:48Yeah, that's a generational thing, I think. I don't know how old your grandmother is, but I know with my greatest generation, grandparents, part of it was really coming from a scarcity mindset. So they would save things forever. And my mom has a little bit of that mentality. But also I think when you see that sort of applied to random things, it's always disconcerting. I had a grandmother who was sort of a hoarder in the sense that she would buy all these things from like SkyMall catalogs and FingerHut catalogs. And then she would just store it in one room of her house. Yeah, my grandma had one.

6:20And there's just like unopened boxes, you know. Did it have a name? My grandma's was called the Purple Room. I never went in it. I just heard about it. I think we just called it the Room with the Stuff. for who made this stuff. That's an interesting thing about any kind of hoarding or compulsive shopping is how often it's just not used, which I guess is obvious. But, you know, when you look at it, my dad has all of these belongings. And then sometimes the only times he sees them is when he buys them. And then years later, when he gives them to Goodwill or something like that. It's like even when you're logically aware of that, and I've gone through this thought process myself, you're logically aware that you're not using it.

6:51But the idea of getting rid of it, it's not that it sparks joy, but it sparks fear to not have it. I can't help but view all this stuff through the lens of dopamine hits. You know, the first hit is looking for something, purchasing it, especially if you're doing it online. And then you get the box. And then I think this is why unboxing is popular. You get this like vicarious sense that you're opening the present. It's like a mirror neuron thing, I feel. Just watching someone else be alive is pretty pleasurable. But yeah, online shopping, I think that's part of why it's so potent. I mean, people, I think, are getting increasingly a little bit like agoraphobic and afraid of sociality.

7:26but also it's like the dopamine hit of sort of the hunter-gatherer, like you're browsing and then you hit buy and then you get to anticipate it and you get to open it. It's like a little Christmas every single time you get a package. And I completely fall for it, to be clear. You also talk a little bit about familiarity and how that shapes the way that people feel about what they're consuming. And, you know, I was thinking in particular about, you know, chain restaurants. You know, you mentioned that you love the Olive Garden and that that was kind of a formative place for you to go when you were younger.

7:58What was it about the Olive Garden that made it feel familiar and safe for you? Oh, so many things. I think, oh, I grew up, I was a picky child. So, I mean, everything there was bread and cheese and the tomato sauce didn't have a lot of tomato chunks. And then it was just, you know, pillowed booths, incandescent lights, the suggestion of the Mediterranean. And yeah, it felt just like a very familiar place. I liked that, you know, in a chain restaurant, it's the same thing no matter where you go. There's no surprises. If there's sort of a cognitive load in like having a new experience, which is part of why they're good for you.

8:30Obviously, they kind of stretch your brain out. Olive Garden was like no cognitive load there. And I find myself and I don't really go there anymore. But I talk about in the book, I was trying to parse like, why do I find myself there? It's not irony. It's not like I'm just being like, oh, the Olive Garden. But it's not. It's almost like I've wrapped it around irony. but inside it's just this like child with a blanket or something. Yeah, chain restaurants are like, they all feel like my hometown kind of. Where did you grow up again? Suburbs of Chicago. I feel like some of it too is just that maybe years ago when there were fewer options in the burbs for places to eat, a place like the Olive Garden would be maybe differentiated from whatever the local food was.

9:09And, you know, you could fake convince yourself that you were in Italy and that was a different experience. I read somewhere when I was writing the book, I didn't put it in the book, But that they did, I think MIT did some sort of study using cell phone data and they found that the place where people of different classes mixed the most, it was not church. It was not the grocery store. It was not CVS. It was the Olive Garden or like chain restaurants. And I guess it's because there's few enough that like they're going to draw people from different places. They're not hyper local. But yeah, they kind of cater to a wide enough variety of tastes that like for some people, it's the nice place you go like once a year.

9:41And for some people, it's like just sort of a solid place to go every time you want to go out to dinner, which is a lot. But that shocked me. I was like, I didn't expect that. I thought it was just kind of people in the middle. You know, I grew up in a small town in Alabama who will come and visit Times Square. And they go to the Olive Garden in Times Square. There are a million restaurants in New York to eat. And I assume that part of it is they're out of their comfort zone enough by being in New York. Yes, yes. They want to go somewhere that feels a little bit familiar to them, even if it's way more expensive here.

10:11Yeah, having been to the Times Square Olive Garden. I was thinking about this with the book, too. I was like, what is it about Times Square? why do people go here when they visit New York? It clearly is not really representative of the rest of New York. But I started to realize it was kind of like going to like the headquarters of Capitol, like the Vatican. It's like, yes, you've seen a church, but have you seen this church? And yeah, I think they're like, I want to see a flagship American Eagle. Like I want to go to the Olive Garden that's three stories tall. And it's so interesting to me. And I used to sort of be baffled by it.

10:39And now, I don't know. Yeah, I think I kind of get it more. It's like you've grown up with these things. And it's like, I want to see it in the greatest city in the world. My kid is nine now, but we moved to our part of Brooklyn two years ago. And the thing he was most excited about was being very near a Target and a bunch of kind of strip mall type stores. Because to him, that means that's where the action is. It's not a sleepy bodega. It's where everybody goes. And so he has the same feeling about Times Square. yeah the city center yeah I feel like there's like a visceral suburban like my heart is singing when I walk into like a suburban space even in New York I'm like I remember once I think I mentioned this in the book but I was I got out at Atlantic Barclays and I was like meeting my girlfriend and I saw Bath and Body Works and before I could even before the level of like cognition I like darted in and like sprayed on for vanilla sugar and darted out and then I was like babe smell my wrist doesn't this bring you back to and she was like no you just smell like a girl that would like call me a lesbian in the locker room.

11:35And but I was like, I didn't even know what I was like before I even knew what I was doing. I was I was running in. The writer Kyle Chica writes about the flattening of culture. And he talks a little bit about how the Internet is sort of exacerbated that. And his big example is that coffee shops somehow look the same all over the world now. You know, you have Edison bulbs and certain kind of blonde wood and so on. And, you know, it didn't start with the Internet. You know, we've always had these kind of commoditized ways to shop and consume things. But it seems worse now. You know, how do you see it in terms of the way it affects your everyday experience?

12:10Yeah, I think I have noticed myself and other people just generally being a little more cautious of just like the chaos of the outside world. And I see it played out in like, yeah, when you travel, I do it too. I instinctively Google like hip neighborhood in wherever I'm going and I find myself, despite myself, back at those places or I see it a lot in self-checkout. I'll see people go to self-checkout when it's actually like there's nobody in the other line. And again, I find myself doing it too. There's like the friction of kind of a real experience or a slightly unknown experience is becoming more and more, I don't know, maybe, yeah, the like cognitive weight of it is too much because of all the other shit people are going through.

12:50But I think that the decline of in-store shopping has probably been like overblown. And I think now they're finding ways that people do actually want to be around other people. I think of the stores where I do that, where I go because I just want to browse for no reason. You know, I'll do that with Sephora, anything with a lot of bright, tiny objects. We had an episode of Slate Money a while back where we talked about 7-Elevens in Japan. Oh, yes. They're so good. Somebody did a tour of one on YouTube that was like 20 minutes and I watched all of it. You're just like a monkey in a lab, just like picking up twigs and being like...

13:26400 different kinds of triangle sandwiches and all sorts of things. We're going to look at them all. I know. Yeah. The pleasure of discovery. I think that's what people retain. The pleasure of discovery. And then like the base desire to be around other people. But I think because there's so many opportunities to not be around other people, I feel like we're kind of forgetting about it. I think one of the trends that people have talked about in the last few years, and I don't know if this is still true, was that people who are millennials and Gen Zers will pay more for experience than things. It's funny because my dad is, I suppose, yeah, I suppose he's a boomer.

13:58And he had to be like taught how to do that. You know, he grew up, his parents were like very frugal. And in college, he like didn't have any money. He was like, you know, taking out a bunch of loans. And he would buy a bunch of stuff on as seen on TV, like pizza ovens and, you know, egg-tastic makers. And my mom was like, what if we went out to dinner? What if we went to like, you know, the Denny's or whatever? And he really had to be taught over the course of years and years, even when he had plenty of money to do it, to like pay money for something that you can't put in your pocket at the end of the day.

14:28And it was really hard for, so it's interesting that, that other generations are learning to that. I need to learn to do it better. I mean, I have experiences, but I do find myself like, like I won't, I really don't want to pay for an Uber, which is good because it gets me to take the bus more, but I'll like buy something that's the equivalent at Target and it just feels totally different. Yeah. I feel like living in New York as a renter though, is paying for experience. Oh, my God. Oh, no. Any sort of concept of how much space do I need and how many things do I need just to be here. And another thing that I was thinking about, you know, you made a really astute point in the book about how different people think of wealth and class different ways.

15:06And, you know, you sort of contrasted the way people in the Midwest think about it versus, say, coastal elites in places like New York. And I believe the way you described it was for people who are more middle class or Midwestern, it's about having things in excess. And then for upper class people, it's more about having high end things. I noticed, yeah, growing up, my family had, you know, money, but culturally it didn't feel upper class. And it was, yeah, you just sort of had more of the same things everybody else had. You had a couple more cars, you went to Disney more, you maybe went to the Olive Garden more.

15:38And I went to like a, you know, fancy, super waspy prep school in the East Coast, which I think my dad sent me there partly because he grew up feeling kind of left out of that aspect of, I don't know, the upper crust. And it was it was like a mind blowing. I didn't know that like old wood furniture was cool. I didn't know that like having a little hole in the elbow of your sweater was actually like a fancy thing. And I think, yeah, just in like suburban spaces or especially or the Midwest or really just any place that's not a major urban center, I feel like wealth is more just having more. But it's not sort of the cultural residue of elitism is not as fair.

16:19Well, the signifiers are so different. I had a similar experience going from a working class family in Alabama to Duke, which I had never set foot on the campus before I got there. So I didn't really know what it was like. and I had a lot of culture shock going from Alabama to Duke and none going from Duke to New York. Duke's preppy ground zero. But I had to, it took me a minute to sort of realize what the class signifiers were because, you know, as you just said, they weren't necessarily obvious. There are certainly ideas about wealth that I had growing up that were maybe a little too informed by movies and TV.

16:52Even the way that sort of that type of rich person acted was not what I expected. I was expecting Gossip Girl and it's different. It's like they're actually pretty like affable and windblown and at ease I was finding and yeah it was just totally different I was expecting like gold watches and you know Ferraris and it like sometimes is that but just as often it's just this like like they've been at kind of finishing school their whole lives. Yeah there was a social scientist and I forget who it was who actually sort of referred to that behavior as a sort of class oriented behavior that you could identify he said it was affecting ease.

17:28Oh yeah Yeah, my dad went to Yale and he came from Iowa and he, yeah, had exactly that experience. And he doesn't, he sometimes wouldn't air it that way to me. He'd be like, yeah, I just, I did well and it was great. But then I talked to my grandma and she was like, no, she was like, he called me after the first week and was like, back home, you're fancy if you get braces here. Everybody has an analyst and a nose job. And he was like, please let me transfer back to Iowa State. I can't be here. Nobody even like knows where Iowa is. And I think, yeah, he just took it and he like went the other way culturally.

17:57And he's like, I hate New York. I hate liberal elites.

18:03And with that, we'll take a little ad break. We'll be right back.

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21:48I want to talk a little bit about your time at Ulta. Oh, yeah. Tell me a little bit about how and why you got that job. Yeah, I graduated from college and I realized the thing you realize when you graduate from college, which is that you've been like having your your specialness courted and tested for your whole life. And then you're dumped into a job market that isn't going to like court that from you and doesn't really care. And I applied to like Groupon, Qdoba, Urban Outfitters. And I ended up having to like move back in with my parents. And then I was like, well, shit, I still need a job. So I got a seasonal position at Ulta.

22:20That was the only people that would hire me. And I had heard all of the things about just how hard retail is, how stressful it is and like draining and it can be demoralizing, but it still took me by surprise just to feel it. But then there was also this part of me that really got off on like seeing how the sausage was made or something or being kind of on the other end of the retail transaction, at least for a while. I think you mentioned that you felt like you were selling yourself as much as you were the product sometimes. Yeah. Like I would wear this one Stila liquid lipstick called Baso and it was like a true red.

22:53And I wasn't even, they didn't even let me go on the sales floor, but I would just be like behind the register and people would buy it. And it was like the biggest rush I've ever had in my life. Or when I would like, I remember Lipstick Queen was, I was like a big stand for that brand. I don't even know if it still exists, but I would like swatch it on my arm for people. And then when they bought it and I had like convinced someone to like part with their hard earned money, it was like the biggest rhetorical coup of my life. It was like, yeah, it was hard to describe how elated I felt when I convinced someone to buy something.

23:21So tell us the secrets of Ulta. What were some of the things that they did to try to convince people to buy more? Well, one big thing was I was on the very first day, they were like, every, you know, we have a rewards program. Everybody has points. They get a certain amount of money off their purchase, but you are never, ever to tell them how many points they have before the transaction is over. And I could see it every time I've checked them out. And so I'd be like, oh, wow, this person has like$30 off. And I was never to tell them that. But what I was supposed to do is at the end, the receipt would print and I would lay it flat on the table and And I would take my little highlighter and I'd be like, wow, you have 500 points.

23:57That's up to$10 off. And then like put a heart around it with a highlighter. And they'd say, well, could I have used that today? And I'm like, just another chance to come back in. And it was so strange. And yeah, there were just so many like ways that people were supposed to be drawn in. Oh, we had this coupon. I think they still have this coupon. It's$3.50 off. It's always there. They always have it. But it only applies to the drugstore stuff. It doesn't apply to the fancy stuff, which is always what you want the discount on. And every day people would come in and be like, well, why can't I do it?

24:24And I'm like, man, that only applies to mass products, which is the not fancy stuff. And your products are prestige. I'm so sorry. It was such a, yeah, it was such a grift. Not even, I mean, to get people to buy, but more and more than that, just to get them in the store. And I think then maybe Ulta had like weapons grade arranged the store so that that could do the rest of the work. But you got to get them in. Was there any backlash to that? Did it create a customer service problem once people got in the store? and sometimes yeah if they kind of put up enough of a fuss I would like radio the manager and she would come in and like override it and override it it was always interesting because it was always like a little bit at my expense she would override it and would have to sort of be like no ma 'am we can do that for you but like I couldn't be the one to say that we could do it for her this asshole's not gonna do it for you but I'll do it yeah it's like this bimbo does not know what she's talking about we'll help you oh and then the other thing was yeah we did have a guest satisfaction survey and we were supposed to you know try to get good ratings but like it would ask things like were you greeted at the door, which I don't think anyone really cares about, but they understaffed the store.

25:23So we'd have to like yell. The person at the cash rep would have to yell like, welcome in, like over the din of the customers. And it was just, it just felt like I'd being pulled in like so many directions at once. And it was just so exhausting. It's the most exhausting work I've ever done. I feel like that would be disconcerting to me if someone yelled at me from the cash. Disembodied voice. Stop lifting. I know. Yeah. It feels like it feels kind of aggressive. I don't be asked the question and if they didn't they said no to the question then corporate got mad or something so when did we all collectively decide that the customer is always right what was the origin of that i believe it was some department store guy maybe marshall fields or macy's um and basically before that yeah the whole like customer's always right thing didn't really exist and people people weren't really like whipping out their wallets for the buyer beware caveat mtor thing they were like well i want a little bit of a promise back from the the object and i think this department store guy was like, okay.

26:20And he basically, yeah, I think kind of invented the idea that like the things you buy are giving you a bit of a promise that they're going to work. And it was sort of borne out over years and years and years to what we have now, which is this bizarre thing where, you know, on a grand scale, consumers are very kind of under the thumb of these corporations, but on this sort of customer service scale, they're like gods. And, you know, if you, I remember reading a forum where someone was like, Like, yeah, I messaged Target and I bought this waffle iron from them like six months ago. And I just sort of said I didn't like it and they let me return it.

26:53You have actually, you have so much power in this one realm. And I think people kind of go nuts with it because that's the only place they can really let it out. Seems like some of the customer service niceties are really just trying to distract you from what the companies are doing generally. really. And I think we've come to expect it so much that when you do encounter someone that's just being normal, has a normal voice, is not like being super chirpy, it does feel kind of jarring. You're so used to seeing like the professional smile. We've become so accustomed that you're labeled as like rude if you're just like, like, you know, when you go to like McDonald's and they're just like, next, what do you want?

27:29Okay. Which is a totally normal interaction. I worked at Walmart in high school and I was, they would always put me on the customer service desk and I'm kind of a reserved person, so I would get lectured a lot about being more teary and bubbly. And, you know, I'm constitutionally incapable of doing that, but I would always be polite. And there was this guy who came in one day with a big thing of dog food, and it was two-thirds gone, and it had a tag on it that said Kmart. And he insisted that, you know, he'd be able to return it to Walmart. And, you know, I was trying to be as polite as possible and as diplomatic as possible, And he immediately launched into, let me talk to your manager.

28:06And so finally, you know, I went and got the manager and she was like, he comes in here so much. I'm just just give it to him. It's not worth it. It's crazy. Apparently, a lot of retailers that do that are like clawing it back. A lot of online places are making you pay for shipping or they're refusing it after 30 days. I think Nordstrom famously has like a really lenient return policy, but I think they're clawing it back a little. L.L. Bean really famously. In fact, in like Cheryl Strayed's book, she says that she's like, you can return your boots after a year and they'll take them. And I think L.L.

28:36Bean had to stop doing that. So, you know, and just thinking about American consumption generally and our obsession with consuming things. Have we always been like this or do we just have a consumer culture that's really has grown as we modernize? I guess which of this are we talking about? Since the birth of the country. Like, I remember reading that, you know, George Washington was obsessed with having really nice clothes. And part of the reason why he went into debt was that he owed a bunch of clothesmakers in England money. And he would buy nice things for his house. Oh, I had no idea. People's disorder has always in some form, like, spoken the language of excess.

29:15And I think just with, whatever, you know, mass production, the Industrial Revolution, blah, blah, blah. There was a time when you used to just like go to the one store in your town and it had the one thing. And then, you know, obviously everything exploded and it became like a washing machine was a status symbol. But I think right now it especially speaks the language of stuff. But I think, yeah, people have always had the dopamine that they need to hit. But I do think we're probably, yeah, just being kind of run raw by all the opportunities for dopamine now. And I think a lot of people are moving away from it.

29:43I mean, I'm doing a no buy. A lot of people are doing versions of no buys or like detoxes because maybe they are starting to see that, you know, I feel like shopping is a relatively benign type of addiction to have compared to other ones. But it is still, you know, kind of draining on your finances, on your brain. It's been interesting to see how people are responding to it. It feels different than like the minimalism movement, which is also related. But it feels like people being like, I don't want to be like in the thrall of this anymore. And I've asked my dad. I've been like, Dad, just try.

30:12I've been like, I'm like you. I get it. Try for one week, one day to not buy anything just to see. I'm not being puritanical. I just want you to see. When I tell people or when I'm addicted to an app on my phone, I'll move the location on the screen and then I'll watch my wormy little thumb like move to where it used to be. And just realize the extent of like how deep at the like lizard brain level it all is. There was a big buy nothing boycott on February 28th. And I know a lot of people who participated in it. I decided I was going to do it. And it was amazing the number of times I thought, oh, I should just hit the button on Amazon or go out and get food or whatever.

30:48And I had to stop myself because you just buy so many things ambiently. Yeah. Ambient buying. I see people like TikToks that are like, wow, when did it happen that when you walk outside your door in New York, you spend like$50? I feel like it is so easy. Whenever I would listen to Imagine as a kid, the song, when he's like, imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. I'd be like, no. It's just like be in my bed being like, is my cat a possession? Is this wall a possession? And I feel like when, yeah, when you're trying not to spend any money or even when, you know, if you try to like swear off Amazon, you're like, well, I'm using their cloud services when I go to any website.

31:25And it's so, so embedded. It's kind of hard to, it feels increasingly like radical and scorched earth to just get around it. Yeah. And I think people also just have this fear of not having things. I think part of the reason why egg prices are going up and every time I go into a store that the egg counter is just empty, a few cartons or whatever. And I think it's people just kind of hoarding eggs, even though that's a totally bizarre thing to hoard. But as soon as people understand that they might not be as available, they race to just go buy a lot of it. Yeah, I think during COVID, a lot of people experienced scarcity for the first time, and especially the weird feeling of having the money to buy toilet paper or a can of black beans and not being able to do it.

32:04And I think it, yeah, exposed not the fragility of the supply chain, but how much we're relying on it to just get us through. Because, yeah, once there is a kink in the system, you're like, what does it mean to not have an egg? And then people, I mean, that's why, you know, preppers exist, which Costco, I will add, does sell a lot of doomsday kits, apparently of varying quality. There's like the crappy doomsday kit, and then there's like the Salisbury Steak doomsday kit. There's a lot of different levels. Yeah, I'm actually on the Costco site right now. Because I was thinking about, you know, I was looking at it in prep for this segment and they have a whole section that I think they just call it emergency preparedness.

32:39Preparedness. Because that's the like less scary way to talk about it. But the fact that they have an entire category for it. Yeah. Like they know they're marketing. They really do. Yeah. If you've ever gone and looked at the reviews, they're really interesting. It's people being like, some people just kind of eat them. They just start to rely on them. They're like, this is an efficient way to get nutrients. It's like the underbelly of Costco is the emergency preparedness. One of my big YouTube holes is like grocery hauls and pantry tours from people that are like Prepper or maybe like Prepper Lite.

33:08And it is it's both viscerally satisfying to watch all that stuff. And it's also very strange. You're just like, what are you? I don't know. What will all those beans do? I feel like sometimes they're disappointed that they haven't really been able to use all of this stuff. Yeah. I wonder if COVID for people that had already been doing it was like they were like my time to shine. Their system. Yeah. It's like when my dad, he has like a, you know, a tool and an object and a thing for everything. And so often he can't find it. Like I was, I think I was trying to like make a specific hole in a piece of plywood or something.

33:38And he was like, oh, I have that. He was like, I have that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was looking around and his garage is so messy. He actually ended up, he couldn't find it. And he was like, oh, you're going to have to buy it. But when he can find that specific cord or that specific like button cell battery that people need, it's like he's so excited that he anticipated a need and it was kind of fulfilled. It's like a lock and key thing. Yeah. We've sort of acquired over the years a lot of kitchen gadgets that we forget what they're for. So you'll pull out an oddly shaped plastic thing. And what does this do again?

34:06But do you do the, I had, I finally stopped doing this, but I used to keep the little manuals that would come with everything, even though it's like, I really don't need this for like a food processor. Yeah, I finally started throwing those away. Yeah. It's like the manual is going to outlast the food processor at some point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Finally, I was like, I don't, or like the weird little recipe book they give you with a lot of appliances that you're like, no, I'm going to make these cookies. Yeah, I finally threw them away. And then sometimes I throw away the little accessories too because I'm never going to use that little plastic cup, whatever it is.

34:35Now I'm inspired to go home and clean out my kitchen of all the mystery objects. The kitchen is like, yeah, a big hot zone because everything does kind of have a little purpose. Like it is a very utilitarian place. And I think sort of like how Costco, the guise of savings, allows you to be a little excessive. I think the guise of utility allows the kitchen to become this place where you're like, did I need like two separate whisks for slightly different purposes? Or like, did I need this spatula and then this other spatula? It's something I reckon with a lot in my kitchen, especially because I don't really cook that much, but I have a lot of the accoutrement that you need to cook.

35:10I feel like maybe the condo system is too narrow. It's like, instead of just does this spark joy, it should be like, does this spark confusion or disgust? Yeah. Yeah. Like, does this spark fear? And then if it sparks fear, it goes into a different pile. So you mentioned that you're going through a buy nothing phase. When did that start and what prompted you to do it? It started January 1st. Black Friday always is like very triggering for me. It just makes me, it just puts the like fear of God in me that I'm missing out on some, you know, big deal. And I just start going nuts. And I tried one a couple of years ago and I think it was too strict.

35:46I told myself it was going to be a whole year. I told myself I really couldn't buy like any clothes, any cosmetics, any home decor, just period. No. And this time I tried to modify it a little bit where it goes for three months and I make a list of every single thing I want. And then at the end of it, my girlfriend has to like approve like maybe like three things and then it renews. And then the other caveat was online shopping is my big problem, but I actually am pretty thoughtful, a pretty thoughtful consumer in person. I think because it's not as like dopamine-y and it's more, I can really hold the thing in my hands and be like, do I need this?

36:17So there's some concessions for thrifting or if I encounter a unique object in real life, but it's going surprisingly well. I broke it, I think one time for a lip liner that for the record, I don't really use. And I have this giant list and it's crazy to like put something that you just, yeah, that's like pit in your stomach, like lights on fire. And you're like, I need this and it's going to go away and I need it. And then a week later, yeah, I don't really want it. There's a couple of things that have stuck, but it's making it so clear how chemical it is and how like fear based it is. If you took out the time bound lie of buying stuff, I don't know.

36:49I was like, oh, I don't need to buy anything right now. There's no urgency pretty much. You find that the opposite is also true. Like, have you purged any of your stuff? There's some bags of clothes that I have to get rid of. And yeah, there's something, I mean, it's a hassle to go bring them, but I think there's also something a little pathological where I'm like, well, maybe I could sell them or like maybe I could upcycle them into something else. But yeah, I've started to get rid of those. My next task is doing like a lipstick purge because I have nothing more humbling than swatching all of your lipsticks on your arm and then seeing that you have like the same color.

37:22Yeah, the same color a million times. I did it like several years ago and it was humbling, but I've since acquired more. We have a thing we do with my kid where, because he acquires, you know, every birthday, every Christmas, he's got three sets of grandparents. So he just acquires stuff and our house is not infinite. So I'll give him a garbage bag and tell him if he can fill one up, he'll get like$10 for whatever he puts in there. And it's, you know, the fastest way to get him to make a decision about whether something is worth anything to him. It's kind of like the same logic as what would you grab in a fire.

37:52Do you have to enact any limits on grandparents? I've thought about if I have a kid, I'm going to have to sit my dad down and talk to him. I don't think we can because his grandparents live in Nebraska and Alabama. So if they buy him too much stuff, we just can't take it home. Oh, okay. Yeah. You're like, sorry. It's kind of like limits are already imposed just by virtue of luggage size. I found it's hard to explain to my dad what New York is like. So he'll want to like get me like a, okay, this is like a hot dog maker. And I'm like, I can't like fit that. It's I actually I was like, I'm right there with you, man.

38:24I'm like you. But I actually cannot have a separate appliance for every single thing. I think my brain is readjusted so much that if I go to visit my family or something, I go into somebody who has a genuinely huge McMansion. I get anxious because it just feels like there's so much to maintain and there are too many things. And yeah, I think New York has just sort of brainwashed me into. You feel like you're like rattling around a little. I have a friend that she's actually from Iowa, but she does not like to go into big grocery stores here. She like needs to go into like the low ceiling kind of tight ones because the big ones just feel too expansive.

38:57I don't know. I don't think she's ever been to a Costco, but that would probably blow her mind. Or the Ikea in Red Hook, I think is an experience for anyone who goes into it. My hot tip about the Ikea is I wrote like a fair amount of the book there because it's a really good, the cafe is really good co-working space because the coffee is free and it's so corporate and like municipal feeling almost that you don't feel bad. Like I feel bad taking up space for a whole day in like an independent coffee shop, but at Ikea, I don't, it's fine. And you can see the water and you can watch people be extremely stressed out about purchases and you're kind of floating above it.

39:32It's great. Ikea is the unintentional relationship killer a lot of times. So if you were looking for drama and material. My dad will pay so much money on so much stupid stuff, but paying someone to assemble his Ikea furniture or unload it? Absolutely not. He would never do that. Is there anything that's happened since the book came out that you wish you would have included? Oh, I mean, I am really, really interested in, as many people are, in Ozempic and that as both a cultural thing and what it's going to do to this massive industry of weight loss and diets. I went to a fat camp and when I went to the website a couple of years ago just to see, I don't know how they were marketing themselves.

40:11I noticed that they were marketing themselves as a technology detox camp. It was still a fat camp, but it was also sort of being like, hey, now we have this other dopamine thing that's really almost as addictive as, you know, weapons-grade fast food. Let's just pair these together by, I guess, just taking away your access to your phone. And I think it's interesting to see, yeah, again, with the dopamine, like, Ozempic is, like, eliminating a big craving of a major, like, dopamine giver in a lot of people. And I'm interested in like how it's going to mesh with like consumption. I've heard it affects like shopping.

40:44It can affect like other dopamine seeking activities. And I'm like, what are these places going to do? Didn't I think I just read that some company is trying to come up with like it's trying to like get around the like semaglutide, whatever in it makes you not want junk food. They're trying to like genetically engineer it to circumvent that, which is insane. That's completely evil. Yeah, it's absolutely nuts. And yeah, I think they are probably freaked out. They're probably going to, I mean, they're going to think of something else to sell us, but. Well, what's been interesting to me is the way people have kind of moralized around Ozympic.

41:16And I think part of it is that there's some indignation that you could buy your way out of a weight problem. You know, there are a lot of people who, because they view obesity as some kind of moral failing, they need people to suffer. Yeah, it's very like Protestant work ethic. And then on the other side, and I encountered this whenever I would tell people I went to fat camp, which is certainly a fraught thing, but I would tell them that and they would immediately be like, oh, my God. And I would have to be like, you know, honestly, like that, oh, my God, you just said, I felt that all the time being in the world as a fat person.

41:46But at fat camp, it actually was the one place where I felt like a level of solidarity and acceptance. And I think for Ozempic too, even people who have like a sort of a fat positive attitude or a good attitude towards weight and food, I think there's a small part of them still that is like, oh, that's barbaric that people want to take that. And it's like, yeah, man, but that like, that's already there. Like, I don't know. I have so many thoughts about all of it. A lot of the takes I'm seeing are either too like moralistic about it or they're a little too gung ho and I can't find the middle.

42:20on that note i think we're gonna wrap up money talks and thank you emily for joining and thank you to jessmy molly of seaplane armada for producing we'll be back on saturday with our regular edition of slate money with the spark cash plus card from capital one you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase. And you get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash SparkCash Plus.

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