Consumerism: Having and Being Had, Eula Biss

Best-selling American author and essayist Eula Biss talks to Kathryn Ryan about her new book Having and Being Had, which looks at the psychological effects of consumerism, and what it means about who we are and how we see ourselves. Within this framework Eula scrutinises our tendency to monetise everything, the baggage that comes with buying a home, set against her own experience of buying, furnishing and decorating her own home. Eula looks at the lies we tell ourselves and others, and says there is perhaps no bigger lie in her home country, America, than that unfettered capitalism is a functioning system.