Cheap Stuff
b'A History of Useless American Crap
Guest:\\xa0Wendy Woloson, Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Camden, and author of \\u201cCrap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America\\u201c
We all have crap in our lives: free T-shirts, a snow globe collection, little knickknacks that we never quite manage to throw away. What\'s the allure of cheap, useless stuff? The dollar store has vestiges of childhood treasure hunts, and so many of us fall prey to the promise\\xa0of a great deal. But there\'s something American about our willingness to "encrapify" our lives.
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Global Garage Sale
Guest: Adam Minter, business journalist and author of \\u201cJunkyard Planet,\\u201d and \\u201cSecondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale\\u201d\\xa0
The secondhand world\\xa0is a global market and Minter follows the path of unwanted American stuff (and there is so much of it!) from garage sales to border crossings. In one instance, Minter discovered a technician in Ghana converting a 40-year-old tube television into a remote-control model.'