Speaker 1: That is the zipper of my suitcase, and it is
Speaker 1: one of the most emotionally loaded sounds of my life
Speaker 1: as a touring musician. That noise means its van call,
Speaker 1: your morning deadline to meet all your bandmates in the
Speaker 1: hotel parking lot, and you are frantically packing, running mental checklists, toothbrush,
Speaker 1: who bearings, water bottle, sleep mask thing, and you're zipping
Speaker 1: your suitcase hoping that the seems hold as you lean
Speaker 1: on it, smashing your entire life like a Panini, trying
Speaker 1: to fit all the possessions you'll need for the next
Speaker 1: span of weeks or months into a two inch wheely
Speaker 1: carry on and a Duffel bag okay, and yet living
Speaker 1: out of only a couple of bags. I almost always
Speaker 1: packed something that never gets used, address that doesn't make
Speaker 1: it on stage, a book I don't end up cracking,
Speaker 1: which begs the question, if I don't really need all
Speaker 1: this stuff in this carry on, then what the heck
Speaker 1: is all the stuff at home for the drill that
Speaker 1: I can't find? The power cord floor, the velcrow curlers,
Speaker 1: the box full of power chords, none of them fitting
Speaker 1: the drill. Living light for a while can make an
Speaker 1: apartment feel like a walk in junk drawer of heart
Speaker 1: to part with bits and pieces. I'm Dessa. This is
Speaker 1: deeply human. Presuming you're not a hardcore ascetic tuning in
Speaker 1: on a d I Y crystal radio, you probably have
Speaker 1: some stuff you don't really need, maybe even more than
Speaker 1: you want. So why are humans so driven to a
Speaker 1: choir collect and even horde? Why do you own so much?
Speaker 1: And when does your stuff start to own you? The
Speaker 1: Royal Charter was a ship which sank off the coasts
Speaker 1: of Wales actually on this route to Liverpool from the
Speaker 1: gold fields of Australia. Sank in eighteen fifty nine and
Speaker 1: I think loss about six lives. What made this tragic
Speaker 1: According to reports, many of the people who drowned they
Speaker 1: were the miners who were carrying the gold on them
Speaker 1: and money belts. They drowned because they wouldn't let go
Speaker 1: of all the gold that they were carrying. And that goal,
Speaker 1: by the way, is washing up on the shores of
Speaker 1: North Wales as we speak. Prospectives are going out to
Speaker 1: try and retrieve it. That is Bruce Hood, professor of
Speaker 1: developmental psychology at the University of Bristol in England, Bruce
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Possessed, which explores why humans strive
Speaker 1: to own so much stuff. But before we can examine
Speaker 1: the motives buried in our golumy little hearts, we've got
Speaker 1: to get some terms straight. Possession versus ownership. Bruce, possession
Speaker 1: is the physical control of an item, usually a material thing,
Speaker 1: whereas ownership is a convention of social contract, whereby people
Speaker 1: are recognized to have control over something in perpetuity even
Speaker 1: when they're not there. So it's like, this is my
Speaker 1: spoon when it's in my best possession, This is my
Speaker 1: spoon when it's in the drawer and I'm asleep. Ownership,
Speaker 1: that's it. As a general rule, the rest of the
Speaker 1: animal world doesn't own item in the same way we do.
Speaker 1: Possible exceptions might be the California sea otter, known to
Speaker 1: store one stone in a special little pouch, a handy
Speaker 1: tool for whatever they've got, a crack open a mollusk shell,
Speaker 1: and some birds like rooks or Jay's are known to
Speaker 1: play with bottle caps, marbles, and other shiny treasures and
Speaker 1: bury their personal cash for safe keeping. But usually even
Speaker 1: if animals possess an object, a stick used for termite
Speaker 1: hunting say, they just discard it when they're done with it.
Speaker 1: When humans are young, they don't really get the idea
Speaker 1: of ownership either. They think if you can't control something,
Speaker 1: you can't own them. So yeah, so if they think
Speaker 1: you're a sleeper in a comor you're tied up, you
Speaker 1: can't own something, because they have used this issue of
Speaker 1: control as a basis for establishing possession and for the
Speaker 1: basis of later ownership. We enter the world with no stuff,
Speaker 1: only a little plastic hospital bracelet announcing the names. Somebody
Speaker 1: just bestowed upon us our first bit of intellectual property,
Speaker 1: I suppose. But so somebody sets it up with a blanket,
Speaker 1: a passive fire, a stuffed bunny. You learn the word mine,
Speaker 1: and you wear it out, and the great acquisition has begun.
Speaker 1: Before long, we're outgrowing shoes, sleeping on our very own
Speaker 1: big kid bed, maybe cruising around and a sweet rides
Speaker 1: on training wheels. Even in modern homes of pretty modest means,
Speaker 1: there's usually a bunch of stuff. Then you're full grown
Speaker 1: and it's time to move out, find a gig, maybe
Speaker 1: partner up with somebody and get a place of your own.
Speaker 1: We had two front seats in the volks fucking and
Speaker 1: then wait to put all of our worldly goods in
Speaker 1: the back. It was the most exciting time in my life.
Speaker 1: I would say that's Candy Hyatt for counting her experience
Speaker 1: of this particular life stage to go out and make
Speaker 1: a home for thine self. Part She'd grown up in
Speaker 1: New York, but headed out west with her guide Jack
Speaker 1: to start a life together. And they set off with
Speaker 1: only a car load of essentials, but she brought a
Speaker 1: handful of precious items with her too. And I played
Speaker 1: violin all the way through high school and then just
Speaker 1: for enjoyment, and I had an antique box with diaries
Speaker 1: in it. They landed in Colorado, bought some land on
Speaker 1: Sugar Loaf Mountain, and Jack started to build a house
Speaker 1: using all sorts of salvage materials. We had the bumper
Speaker 1: car pavilion floor from ilitch Is, which was an amusement
Speaker 1: park in Denver, and we had radiators from Shannon's, which
Speaker 1: was a biker bar in Boulder. They were those old
Speaker 1: metal banded up with a one of a kind home
Speaker 1: full of red stuff and unusual features stories built right
Speaker 1: into the walls. They had a little girl and the
Speaker 1: boy went into family mode, the years unspooling as years do,
Speaker 1: but then everything went off script. In nine we went
Speaker 1: on a vacation. We were watching the news and we
Speaker 1: saw I think it was CNN, they said a fire
Speaker 1: is raging out of control in Boulder, Colorado. I said, wow,
Speaker 1: that looks like our road, and I'm known to catastrophize.
Speaker 1: So Jack said, no, that's not our road. That's further
Speaker 1: west than us. Everything's fine, don't worry, but not too much.
Speaker 1: Later the phone rang. One of my best friends who
Speaker 1: lived in town in Boulder called me and said, is
Speaker 1: Jack there, which is never a good question. You know
Speaker 1: you're going to hear some bad news and maybe pass out,
Speaker 1: so they want they want somebody there with you. I
Speaker 1: said yes, and she said there's a fire in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Everything is not fine. And I had a picture in
Speaker 1: my mind of a corner of the house being gone,
Speaker 1: or maybe the curtains having caught em fire. But then
Speaker 1: she said it's gone, it's all gone. Oh gosh, the
Speaker 1: house exploded before the flames even got there because it
Speaker 1: was so hot. Wow. I have a few tears in
Speaker 1: my eyes. Um. When we came back, we stood at
Speaker 1: the foundation and looked down into the hole that was
Speaker 1: left the house Jack built, my hand gone, the antique violin,
Speaker 1: all her diaries gone, and everything had fallen down into
Speaker 1: the foundation, and you could still see the words on
Speaker 1: the pages, even though everything was all burned, and some
Speaker 1: of that was my journals. Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: It was quite a lot. Candy and Jack had less
Speaker 1: than when they started. And I would also say that
Speaker 1: the fire was kind of the beginning of our splitting
Speaker 1: up to their marriage didn't survive the fire. Candy says
Speaker 1: that was partly because Jack's connection to the place was
Speaker 1: incinerated along with all their stuff. The emotional link was
Speaker 1: broken when the material anchors gave way, and he wanted
Speaker 1: to leave, to go someplace new. Candy wanted to stay,
Speaker 1: to start again where they were in normal life, you know,
Speaker 1: without the extremes of like fires and floods. Think it
Speaker 1: can be kind of tempting to imagine there's the world
Speaker 1: of stuff and then there's the world of our personal relationships, right,
Speaker 1: But it sounds like those two worlds aren't completely as
Speaker 1: strictly separate. No, they're not, particularly when some of that
Speaker 1: stuff is a house that you've put your heart and
Speaker 1: soul into and your stuff is part of the picture
Speaker 1: that you have, and the picture has your relationships in it,
Speaker 1: and it has your stuff in it. But when all
Speaker 1: of that stuff has gone and the picture has changed
Speaker 1: that dramatically, it changes your personal relationship as well. I
Speaker 1: think years and years ago, I found a half used
Speaker 1: yellow legal pad at my mom's house. On the top page,
Speaker 1: neat straight line had been drawn down the middle, and
Speaker 1: there was a short list of stuff on either side,
Speaker 1: elemental stuff like car or house. I don't remember all
Speaker 1: the items exactly because they're obscured by the big wave
Speaker 1: of feelings that hit me when I realized what I
Speaker 1: was looking at. I was looking at my parents divorce.
Speaker 1: I'd know only hadn't hired a lawyer to expense it,
Speaker 1: but I'd never considered the mechanics of a d i
Speaker 1: y version of marital dissolution, like two people sitting at
Speaker 1: a table with a pen and a pad, dividing all
Speaker 1: their worldly possessions on either side of a sketched line.
Speaker 1: It was such a sad and humble piece of paper,
Speaker 1: but also deeply moving to me because it was their
Speaker 1: alternative to court dates and legal battles that would have
Speaker 1: divided the assorted possessions of twenty years together. For a while,
Speaker 1: that sheet of paper itself was really precious to me.
Speaker 1: We keep things for all sorts of reasons. One of
Speaker 1: the most powerful emotional reasons is sentimental value, where people
Speaker 1: will really value something which is of no worth to
Speaker 1: anyone else, but objects form part of our identities. That's
Speaker 1: Bruce again, our developmental psychologist, who, for what it's worth,
Speaker 1: has a soft spot for horror movie posters and golden
Speaker 1: eraw Hollywood stuff and a sidebar. If his voice rings
Speaker 1: familiar to you die hard, deeply human fans out there,
Speaker 1: it's because he made an appearance on the Spooked episode
Speaker 1: in season one, or maybe you just went to high
Speaker 1: school with him or something. He says that our ability
Speaker 1: to own things and to catch feelings for him is
Speaker 1: historically linked to the way we grow our food. So,
Speaker 1: you know, when we transition from hunter gatherers into sort
Speaker 1: of settling down and farming and raising cattle and things
Speaker 1: like that, and then going off to fight wars, we
Speaker 1: had to have a system of rules, which meant that
Speaker 1: when we came back from the wars, we had our property.
Speaker 1: Is it the case that throughout history we've had really
Speaker 1: different understandings of what kinds of things are eligible for ownership. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's absolutely true. So that was the origin of
Speaker 1: a lot of the misunderstandings with the invasion of North
Speaker 1: America because the indigenous people didn't have a concept of
Speaker 1: anyone owning the land. That seemed ridiculous. And that's why
Speaker 1: they sold something like Manhattan for forty two hours or
Speaker 1: whatever it was, because they didn't have a kind of
Speaker 1: understanding how that could ever be a binding agreement. And
Speaker 1: now in that same Manhattan, we've expanded our concept of
Speaker 1: ownership to encompass almost mythical realms. You can own other
Speaker 1: people's debt or soybeans that haven't been planted yet. You
Speaker 1: can shot for shoes twenty four hours a day without
Speaker 1: putting on any to leave your own house. You can
Speaker 1: order custom bubbleheads or a bag of Ladybugs delivered to
Speaker 1: your door front of twenty bucks. Our world is a
Speaker 1: veritable bonanza of sale stuff and ownership. I worked with
Speaker 1: one lady, very complex lady, for about ten ten years
Speaker 1: after she had the miscarriage. She was acquiring and awarding
Speaker 1: baby clothes and baby toys in response to that loss.
Speaker 1: That is Joe Cook. She's the director of Hoarding Disorders
Speaker 1: UK and she works with people whose stuff threatens to
Speaker 1: overwhelm the rest of their lives. She got into the
Speaker 1: business of organizing and decluttering because of her own experience
Speaker 1: with her dad. After my father died, it took me
Speaker 1: four months to clear the family home out. He was Polish.
Speaker 1: He grew up during the war. He remembers his parents
Speaker 1: sacrificing their food to give to him. He hated any
Speaker 1: kind of food waste, but he also hated throwing anything away.
Speaker 1: There are people that have emotional attachments to things where
Speaker 1: they find it difficult to let go of an empty
Speaker 1: Chris packet a newspaper from thirty years ago. Acquiring and
Speaker 1: keeping stuff can be a self soothing maneuver, a response
Speaker 1: to loss or uncertainty or scarcity, the emotional installation, as
Speaker 1: I call it. I think we can all relate to
Speaker 1: how we responded to the pandemic. I mean, who didn't
Speaker 1: go out and buy more petrol, Who didn't go out
Speaker 1: buy more Loo rolls or extra tins of soup? In
Speaker 1: terms of responding to anxious times. But by the time
Speaker 1: a prospective client calls Joe. Their lives have usually reached
Speaker 1: a crisis point. People might not be able to sleep
Speaker 1: in their bed, cook on their oven, or be able
Speaker 1: to use a bath, or it might well be that
Speaker 1: the hoarding has attracted vermin. It can be hard to
Speaker 1: ask for help because hoarding has been so stigmatized in
Speaker 1: pop culture, but that's changing. The World Health Organization now
Speaker 1: treats hoarding behaviors as part of a medical condition. But
Speaker 1: letting go of stuff can be hard for a lot
Speaker 1: of us. The declutterer Maria Condo is like an international superstar.
Speaker 1: Joe notes that a history of scarcity might make someone
Speaker 1: afraid to toss out even extraneous items, and grief might
Speaker 1: make throwing away a loved one's bathrobe feel like a
Speaker 1: denigration of their memory. People are now recognizing that actually,
Speaker 1: body isn't about people that are lazy and dirty. It's
Speaker 1: getting people to recognize and to understand and look at.
Speaker 1: We call it the meaning and the mess, the meaning
Speaker 1: in the mess. Well, let's turn back to Candy, who
Speaker 1: we left standing over a particularly meaningful mess, looking into
Speaker 1: the ashes of her home with Jack. Their split was
Speaker 1: hard and messy at first, but over time, temper is
Speaker 1: cool and Candy moved into a house outside of Boulder, Colorado,
Speaker 1: near enough to Jack's new place, but on the days
Speaker 1: the kids spent with her, they could see him flashing
Speaker 1: a mirror from his porch to say hello. And after
Speaker 1: a walk one day, Candy and a friend stood talking
Speaker 1: in her new home when something caught their eye. We
Speaker 1: were standing oh by a window, and we looked up
Speaker 1: and she said, oh, my god, is that smoke. My
Speaker 1: landline was ringing and it was a reverse nine one
Speaker 1: one call saying you need to evacuate, And I said,
Speaker 1: I think we need to go over to Jack's and
Speaker 1: get stuff out of his house. Another fire was headed
Speaker 1: their way, and both Candy and Jack's new houses were
Speaker 1: in its path. Jack, at that time was headed out
Speaker 1: of town on vacation with his new wife, but Candy
Speaker 1: caught him on the phone. Do you want me to
Speaker 1: go over and get anything? Jack just kind of rolled
Speaker 1: his eyes into there she goes again, catastrophizing it was
Speaker 1: it was a pattern in our relationship. Everything is not fine.
Speaker 1: And then about twenty minutes later he called back and
Speaker 1: he said, well, maybe there's a few things you could get.
Speaker 1: Candy and her friend raced over, and it was already
Speaker 1: so hot that they were afraid the paint on the
Speaker 1: car would melt. Jack's house sitters had already fled. They
Speaker 1: left the door open, so Candy and her friend just
Speaker 1: ran in started putting stuff in boxes, two computers, Jack's briefcase,
Speaker 1: which was essentially his office, the art hanging in the
Speaker 1: kid's rooms. By the time we left, I could see flames.
Speaker 1: We then, probably three hours um, someone called me and
Speaker 1: said that they had heard the propane tank at his
Speaker 1: house explode. It burned to the ground. He lost everything.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Not everyone would drive into the smoking
Speaker 1: heart of a wildfire, risking life and limb to save
Speaker 1: a few boxes of stuff for her ex husband, even
Speaker 1: after being dismissed as overreactive after the hard divorce. But
Speaker 1: Candy understood what was really at stake, and she knew
Speaker 1: exactly what losing a home and all the things inside
Speaker 1: it could do to somebody's whole life. I think it
Speaker 1: was us against the fire. In my mind, it was like, God,
Speaker 1: damn it, this is not going to happen a second time.
Speaker 1: We are not going to lose everything a second time.
Speaker 1: Bruce Hood argues that our strong compulsion to own and
Speaker 1: keep things is a basic impulse potentially driven by evolutionary forces.
Speaker 1: Collecting property might be a way of signaling our status,
Speaker 1: that our stuff was essentially proof of our fitness. Chest
Speaker 1: pass to Bruce think that humans are inclined to competition
Speaker 1: because of well, we were competing to reproduce. And the
Speaker 1: more that you have, the more that you're signaling your
Speaker 1: competence or your ability to provide for future generations. So
Speaker 1: there's a kind of real imperative to China accumulate as
Speaker 1: much as you can control. According to this theory, our
Speaker 1: possessions were one way to signal status, dominance power. But
Speaker 1: of course our attachment to stuff isn't driven only by
Speaker 1: ancient forces. It's also driven by ads on Instagram or
Speaker 1: the fancy window displays on Fifth Avenue. The TV commercials
Speaker 1: were the hottest. A list actor looks into the middle
Speaker 1: distance with an expression of sensuous boredom to help selk alone,
Speaker 1: like it's marketing man, think about something like a celebrity endorsement.
Speaker 1: All right, that was something which was meant by John
Speaker 1: Watson is a psychologist academic footnote here. John Watson American
Speaker 1: active during the first half of the twentieth century known
Speaker 1: for advertising campaigns that appeal to consumers. Deep psychological means
Speaker 1: if you realize that if you pair certain desirable things together,
Speaker 1: people make the association that owning one will achieve the other.
Speaker 1: And so he just figured, let's get all these celebrities,
Speaker 1: these heroes that people worship to smoke certain brands of
Speaker 1: cigarettes or use certain toothpastes, and then that's why people
Speaker 1: would buy it in an attempt to emulate their heroes. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Dessa, host of the self referential hit program Deeply Human,
Speaker 1: and fans often ask Dessa, with your dulcet voice and
Speaker 1: poignant insights on human behavior, what sort of nonstick cookwear
Speaker 1: could you recommend? Is there anything that's easy to clean
Speaker 1: an oven safe? Well, let me tell you. When I'm
Speaker 1: not cooking up another episode of Deeply Human, you can
Speaker 1: find me at the stove using Dessa's Deep Dishes brand
Speaker 1: cookery items. I'm too busy cleaning up of the podcast
Speaker 1: to words to worry about cleaning up pots and pants.
Speaker 1: Enough already, James Faub. When you've got your own brand
Speaker 1: of cookery items, holler. Big ad agencies launch huge campaigns
Speaker 1: trying to link consumer goods with status and prestige and
Speaker 1: then pushing in exactly the opposite direction. Is a blogger
Speaker 1: named Mr Money Mustache, a dude who has been called
Speaker 1: the Frugal Guru by The New Yorker. What I realized
Speaker 1: at one point is that I hadn't just started a blog.
Speaker 1: I started sort of a fake ironic cult. Pete aideny
Speaker 1: a k a. Mr. Money Mustache is like a cross
Speaker 1: between a cartoon gold prospector and a counterculture warrior fighting
Speaker 1: conspicuous consumption. He got Internet famous by advocating a low
Speaker 1: spend lifestyle and a really aggressive saving strategy. But before
Speaker 1: Pete had any money or a mustache, he was a
Speaker 1: boy in a small town of Caledonia in Canada. It's
Speaker 1: a working class community with a simple lifestyle. You don't
Speaker 1: really have much to compare yourself against. And I think
Speaker 1: that's a really healthy thing, because human nature is to
Speaker 1: compare ourselves with the richest people and then wonder why
Speaker 1: we can't have that. My dad was a frugal guy
Speaker 1: and he liked to keep things reasonable, So we were
Speaker 1: always like the last family to get the cool stuff,
Speaker 1: the last one to get a microwave, of and last
Speaker 1: one to get a nicer TV or VCR, all these
Speaker 1: nighties things that other people had. But what I realized
Speaker 1: later they were fairly well off, like, you know, fairly
Speaker 1: middle income, probably higher than some of my friends. But
Speaker 1: we had a lot less stuff. And Pete made note
Speaker 1: it was important not to spend too much of what
Speaker 1: you earned. When he first got a tech job in
Speaker 1: the US, he thought he was making a killing. But
Speaker 1: my co workers are like, oh, yeah, it's just enough.
Speaker 1: You know, things are so expensive these days. But he
Speaker 1: built his life to cause less. He biked the commute,
Speaker 1: for example, instead of leasing sleek new wheels. The reason
Speaker 1: I could do that is because I chose to buy
Speaker 1: a house that was, you know, within ten miles of
Speaker 1: work or less. And they were driving their mw is
Speaker 1: in from a super distant suburb because like, we looked
Speaker 1: the same and we had the same salary. But I
Speaker 1: was just able to save like more than half of it,
Speaker 1: and they were saving sometimes zero, going further and further
Speaker 1: into debt over the years. Meanwhile, he was going in
Speaker 1: the other direction, saving and investing a considerable chunk of
Speaker 1: his take home pay, which was possible because he wasn't
Speaker 1: buying a ton of stuff, and within about seven or
Speaker 1: eight years that was enough to live off forever, just
Speaker 1: passively off of the you know, the dividends and income
Speaker 1: from owning a few shares. Those of you familiar with
Speaker 1: the Fire movements are no doubt yelling at the radio
Speaker 1: by now, But for the uninitiated, Pete is one of
Speaker 1: many finance writers connected to a lifestyle trend sometimes referred
Speaker 1: to by the acronym fire financial independence retire Early devotees
Speaker 1: save up to sevent of their annual earnings and are
Speaker 1: generally very eager to talk with you about it. Individual
Speaker 1: mileage berries. But our good rule of thumb is you
Speaker 1: can retire or in about ten years if you're willing
Speaker 1: to live humble and stay super disciplined. The savings at
Speaker 1: up and according to Mr money Mustache, that doesn't have
Speaker 1: to mean crazy sacrifices. Just think of it this way.
Speaker 1: Whatever you're spending is, does anybody in your country live
Speaker 1: on half of your level of spending? And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that answer is yes. And then is it possible that
Speaker 1: any of those people are happy, having like fulfilling, great
Speaker 1: happy lives, maybe even more fulfilling than your life. Well,
Speaker 1: you know there's millions of people in every country, so
Speaker 1: you're damn right there is. The fire movement has definitely
Speaker 1: received some heat from being cheap, but Mr money Mustache
Speaker 1: explains it's really about clarifying your priorities. Does buying a
Speaker 1: new wide screen TV really make you happier than if
Speaker 1: you just played with your kids for all the hours
Speaker 1: that you spent working to buy the TV. Mustachio Ism
Speaker 1: isn't about self denial, and the lifestyle isn't all that monastic.
Speaker 1: I like to use the term slightly less ridiculous because
Speaker 1: it's still ridiculous. Like Mustachians, we all live luxurious lives.
Speaker 1: We can do air travel, we live in climate control houses,
Speaker 1: we even have cars. But we're just being slightly less
Speaker 1: ridiculous than other people. It's not a life spent in
Speaker 1: recliners either were Early retirement is about it. It's not
Speaker 1: about quitting work. It's about freeing you to do your
Speaker 1: best work. At the heart of the Mustache there is
Speaker 1: a message that is as much about ethics as it
Speaker 1: is about finance. My goal with Mr Ronie Mustache is
Speaker 1: to make it a marketing project, to make frugality be
Speaker 1: an aspirational thing. For rich people. That's positive on on
Speaker 1: the world, the earth, and the ecosystem, as well as
Speaker 1: your your wallet. There's a photo you might have seen
Speaker 1: it online that's supposed to be a complete inventory of
Speaker 1: Gandhi's possessions at the time of his death. Spectacles, two
Speaker 1: pairs of sandals, a pocket watch, a prayer book, like
Speaker 1: a dozen or so items laid neatly on a piece
Speaker 1: of cloth. You could fit the entire estate into a
Speaker 1: kindergartener's backpack. People quibble over whether or not he owned
Speaker 1: a mattress or a desk in addition to the pictured items,
Speaker 1: whether his iconic spinning wheel was still in his possession
Speaker 1: at exactly this time. But looking at this photo, the
Speaker 1: man's commitment to a simple, spare existence is like genuinely breathtaking.
Speaker 1: A pair of Gandhi's sandals sold at auction for just
Speaker 1: north of dollars, and the new owner, one presumes, wasn't
Speaker 1: gonna wear him. It was the thrill of owning a
Speaker 1: piece of history. Humans are an owning animal in part
Speaker 1: because we can be settled lives allow us to keep
Speaker 1: more than we can carry, and in part we acquire
Speaker 1: our cash of things to compete with one another, maybe
Speaker 1: for mating rights other forms of social status. The ever
Speaker 1: present title pull of advertising pressures us to spend more,
Speaker 1: to own more, and then to upgrade to the new model.
Speaker 1: And in the hardest times of our lives, we might
Speaker 1: keep things because it's just too hard to let them go,
Speaker 1: even if they don't make us happy anymore, even if
Speaker 1: we have more than we can use, Even as the
Speaker 1: water rises around us, our fists want to hold tight
Speaker 1: to the objects that might weigh us to the bottom. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: I have got to get some rest before van call tomorrow.
Speaker 1: So for parting thought on stuff and our complicated relationship
Speaker 1: to it, let's go back to candy. Do you think
Speaker 1: about stuff and material possessions differently than other people? Do
Speaker 1: I do? I pack up some things, put them on
Speaker 1: a bed close to the front door, and alert a
Speaker 1: few of the neighbors, and the box says in case
Speaker 1: of fire, and all they have to do is run
Speaker 1: in and grab a few things. But every year that
Speaker 1: box gets smaller because there are fewer things that I
Speaker 1: think are really that important. Every year I think I
Speaker 1: would just start over. I don't owned that there are
Speaker 1: things that I really am so attached to that I
Speaker 1: couldn't go on with life without them. Deeply Human is
Speaker 1: a BBC World Service in American public media co production
Speaker 1: with I Heart Media. It's written and hosted by Medssa.
Speaker 1: Find me online at dssa on Instagram and Dessa Darling
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and you can find my cookwear on your
Speaker 1: next holiday whish list. Hey, every cooks wish desas Deeps.
Speaker 1: I'm worried about you. Shut up, James, I hate you.
Speaker 1: Those three words were forbidden in my house when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. There were just too serious, too mean.
Speaker 1: On the next Deeply Human, we're investigating hatred, that verbot
Speaker 1: and emotion, its role in culture wars, difficult family dynamics,
Speaker 1: and the cesspool of social media. And we'll get some
Speaker 1: hopeful psychological insights too. Why do we hate? And how
Speaker 1: can we stop? And if you've been enjoying the podcast
Speaker 1: so far, take a moment to pin a little review
Speaker 1: we read each and everyone. Thanks for listening, and I'll
Speaker 1: meet you back here for the next round.