Learning English

Chris Evans
Define 'stuffocation' for us please, James.

James Wallman
Too much stuff. It's that feeling, Chris, when you go to your wardrobe, you open up the doors, and it's full of things that you could wear but there's nothing you actually want to put on. Or you go to a cupboard and you have to root around through loads of things that you never even use to find the one thing you actually need at the time.

Chris Evans
But we know that don't we? We do know that anyway. But you take it a lot further: you say that stuff can kill you, almost? 

James Wallman
Well, the thing is, materialism and the consumer revolution… Best idea of the 20th Century: so all of the stuff we are into, buying lots of stuff gave people lots of great jobs and it transforms standards of living in the 20th Century. So it was a great idea: it solved the problem of scarcity but it's given us the problem of abundance. So much stuff that it's causing stress and anxiety and depression in record levels and that point about 'too much stuff can kill you' comes from a study from some psychologists did in Los Angeles that found, in particular for women, that for women who had too much stuff in their home and talked about too much stuff in their home, had this signature pattern of something called cortisol, which is the pattern that people have who have post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue and a higher risk of mortality. So it's not quite a kind of 'too much stuff will kill you' but there is a very close kind of correlation, too much stuff, in a headline, will lead you to an earlier grave.

I think one of the interesting things about the book, and the idea of stuffocation, is just that we can all relate to it. If you mention stuffocation to people, everyone has got a story, everyone has got too much stuff. We've all got too much stuff.

Chris Evans
So what's the answer?

James Wallman
The answer is doing things. For me it's what I call 'experientialism'. Instead of thinking that were going to find happiness, identity, status and meaning in things, in stuff, I think we're going to find the best place to find happiness, identity, status and meaning is in experiences instead.