22. Why Do We Buy Things We’ll Never Use?

You guys are gonna eat steak and mashed potatoes for the next three weeks and you guys are going to eat mung bean stew. I'm Angela Duckworth. I'm Steven Dubner and you're listening to No Stupid Questions. Today on the show, why do we buy exercise equipment that we'll never use and health food that we'll never eat? Who am I?

I'm like Beyoncé. What would Beyoncé do? She would drink the sparkling water. Also, is social media net positive for society? I personally would much rather have people rant online than punch someone in the face in real life.

So Angela, I have a habit, and I suspect many other people do as well, of acquiring, often by purchase. what I've come to think of as aspirational objects, which is to say, I will buy stuff that I think I want, or maybe more accurately, that I would like to want, but which in fact I'll never actually use. So one tiny example, at home, we probably have 600 boxes of quinoa in our cupboard. Quinoa? Yeah, as far as I know, we've never actually eaten quinoa at home.

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