Why People Hoard: Identity, Usefulness, and Potential

People are fascinated by hoarding culture — in part because it presents a reality that's not that distant from our current accumulation habits. Like, turn one screw in my brain slightly more to the left, and my dahlia collecting habit becomes something that's widely understood as a social problem. When I heard about Amanda Uhle's Destroy This House, a memoir of growing up in a hoarding household, I knew listeners would want to explore that fine line between "proper" consumption and hoarding, the stories we tell about why people hoard, and the real difficulty in navigating hoarding behaviors by people you love.

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Show Notes:

• GO BUY DESTROY THIS HOUSE: https://bookshop.org/a/56144/9781668083444

• Follow Amanda's work here: https://www.instagram.com/amanda.uhle/?hl=en

• I reference Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things: https://bookshop.org/a/56144/9780547422558

• I reference my interview with Emily Mester about American Bulk: https://annehelen.substack.com/p/american-bulk

• The episode we did on "over-consumption" of books: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/all-the-latest-book-publishing-trends-explained/id1718662839?i=1000718656026

We’re currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

• BIG KOREAN ENERGY with Mash-Up Americans (Their framework for questions: What is this Korean vibe everywhere in culture, in food, in beauty, in politics? Definitely not complaining, but maybe confused? Well. Do we have the explainer for all of you Korean Americans, Korean Koreans, and everyone who is adjacent to Korean culture -- which is everyone. What are YOUR questions?)

• Contemporary Dating Culture!!! Why does it suck, how can it suck less! (with Jonquilyn Hill)

• Eldest daughter discourse

• The sociology of NAMES (naming trends, naming assumptions)

• WEIRD ENGLISH WORDS (where do they come from!) with Colin Gorrie, who writes explainers like this one on the word DOG

• Anything you need advice or want musings on for the AAA segment. You can ask about anything, it’s literally the name of the segment!

• As always, you can submit them (and ideas for future eps) here

For this week’s discussion: What is YOUR relationship to stuff? How did this conversation reframe it?