Shop Till You Drop

Listen Up

• From NPR’s Day to Day (11/28/2003) this short piece about Shopping Day or Buy Nothing Day” (4:13), the day after Thanksgiving.
  
  
• From the Money Talks series at Chicago Public Radio comes this documentary, Consuming Desire (27:08), an examination of our collective love of shopping. The show focuses on a group of Chicagoans who show off their favorite “things”—“purses, pottery, designer clothes and more.” The show concludes with a look at the counter-movement known as Voluntary Simplicity.
  
  
• City X is a mood piece that also serves as a commentary on the place of the modern shopping mall in a “real, yet unnamed, city”: “Using a sound rich audio mosaic of observations and ruminations, all scored to Muzak, the universal mall experience comes to life, for better or for worse.” It was first broadcast (in a shortened form) on NPR’s Living on Earth (15:52) in November, 2004., and is also available in its original full length at the Third Coast Festival (22:32).
  
  
• Ellen Kushner’s WGBH program Sound and Spirit offers a wide-ranging, weekly musical tribute to a single theme. Here is the playlist for her show on stuff--click here to listen (59:00).
  

Write Now

• Describe a highly promoted product that you feel comfortable doing without.
• Gadgets are part tool and part toy; describe a gadget you have found both helpful and fun.
• Describe an activity you enjoy doing that does not involve spending any or much money.

Read On

• More from Wikipedia on simple living (or what is known as "voluntary simplicity").