6/7/2010 Listening Lounge

Stuff and the People Who Love It (Several independent producers, including KFAI's Todd Melby and Diane Richard)

Americans love to buy stuff. We buy everything from computers to baseball cards to Barbie dolls to scrap. In this episode of the Listening Lounge, we air several portraits of buyers and collectors, including two profiles of shoppers that Diane Richard and I interviewed for Consuming Desire, a 2005 documentary we produced for Chicago Public Radio. You'll meet Fadia, a woman who sometimes uses her sister's credit card to buy jewelry at a department store and Rolf, a collector of fine ceramics. We'll also air The Junk King, a story produced by Joshua Gleason of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. The Junk King features a Main junk dealer who dreams of creating a museum filled with his finds. And finally, we'll hear reporter Eric Molinsky's take on planned obsolescence — it's called Built to Fail.