Stuff You Should Know - How Hoarding Works

Episode Date: January 23, 2018

You may be familiar with compulsive hoarding from TV, but something that’s often missing from those shows and the news is the deep and overwhelming shame that this disorder creates in its victims who are neurologically incapable of parting with their stuff. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

There's Jerry over there. And here we are doing stuff you should know about hoarding. Yeah, Jerry's over there under a stack of pizza boxes and newspapers. Yes, but Jerry proudly displays them to anybody who comes into the office and makes eye contact with her, which makes her a collector of those things,

a big difference. Well, yeah, I didn't save you a hoarder. She's a pizza box collector. I got you, okay. She likes those greasy after stains. Yeah, supposedly that prevents you from recycling pizza boxes. I think we talked about it in one of our episodes before,

but I think that's a PSA that bears repeating. Yeah, I'd never got a final answer on that, so I throw mine in the recycling anyway. I don't know if that comes up, the works or not. Is there a spectrum or anything like that? Or you're like, oh, this one is just so obviously loaded with cheese that I can't possibly recycle this? Well, mine are always loaded

because I specifically request that the pizza be delivered face down in the box. Do you? Yeah, it's a little weird, but I like it that way. That's it. It's a way to do it for sure, upside down pizza. Actually, you know what I should do is just tear the box in half and at least recycle the top.

That, I think you may have just solved a real problem. Yeah. All right, from now on. That's work. I think we do need to do a follow up recycling episode because I would imagine it's probably advanced by leaps and bounds since we last discussed it. Yeah, and here in my area of Atlanta,

they quit taking glass really a few months ago. Too heavy, not enough payoff. I think it was just, yeah, and our word got out that they weren't even recycling it. So since then, they have set up places around Atlanta, one specifically at the Edgewood Target Park, you know, there's a bunch of stuff there, but in the Target parking lot,

they have these huge glass recyclers there. And I meet up with the fellow winos about once every two weeks. We all shamefully toss in, you know, dozens of bottles of empty wine. So much dead yellowtail. Yeah, and we, no, I don't think that's tough, but we just, it's nice.

It's sort of like a wine meeting. So much dead polymason. Like a wine clatch. I'm like, oh, what are you throwing away there? How was that? Is that right, really? Have you gotten any recommendations from those chance encounters?

It's literally happened where we're, you know, I would meet a fellow wino, we're throwing away tons of bottles, and then we decide to own our shame and be like, hey, this one was pretty good, by the way, and start a conversation, and then I get maced. Yeah, you take the bottle and go, huh, night train, haven't heard of this one. Right.

I'll give that a try. And I like the handy grip of the bottle. I never tried night train. Did you have that? Dude, it's a nightmare is what it is. Yeah, I would drink the, like you don't even sober up before you get a crushing headache from it. Right, it comes with a headache,

that's what it says on the bottle. Yeah. What would I drink? Mad dog. Mm-hmm. Which they- I mean, there's a reason they are sold right next to each other.

Yeah, can you even call those wine? No. It's not wine? It's wine like- It's not even Pruto. It's wine like malt liquor is beer. It's related, but it's- Just drink malt liquor too.

It's funny the stuff you would drink in college. Sure. Remember the Mickey's Big Mouths? Yeah, and Col-45 came in like gigantic like bottles. That was one of the big attractions of it, you know? Yeah. It was inexpensive. Man, that was our jam for a little while.

I never got into those. I know what you're talking about. Didn't they have like the, like a question or a trivia thing or something on the underside of it? The bottle, the lid? I don't know. Well, there were the little green hang grenade bottles, little barrels and I don't know which came first or after.

It was either, I guess they switched to just the regular like Coca-Cola style twist-off cap, metal twist-off. I think they might've, I think they did have something underneath it actually. There was something under there. Maybe it was like a poker game or a card game. Or you've just won liver disease. But before that then,

I think they had these really unique pull tabs because it was a big fat mouth. Mickey's, that's why they called it that, Mickey's Big Mouth. So they had to have a very unique bottle cap, pull cap that was just sort of interesting. Nice. Back in the day, man. Back in the day when I was, yeah, I'm not gonna wrap now.

We're now refined with our beverage consumption. Yeah, we are. I only drink cold 45 out of a chilled glass now. I got a nice whiskey bar set up at home that's separate from the regular bar. Wow. It's just like rice and bourbons and scotches and Irish. It's very nice.

Nice. And a bunch of a little additional. I've gotten out to where I will put in little drops of little tinctures and shrubs and things. Oh yeah. Occasionally. Shrubs are great. I made my own once and it's actually worth the effort.

Yeah, my buddy, Eddie, you know, Eddie, he makes his own. He actually does it in the bottle, but he'll do like a cherry bourbon or an apple. Oh, like a confused bourbon? Yeah. Those shrubs though, man, it's actually not very hard and they last forever because what you're doing is basically, I don't know if it's fermenting or pickling or something,

but you're doing something to the fruit that you're macerating with the sugar and it just lasts forever. And it's just such a nice little tangy pop. It's like kimchi, you gotta bury it in your yard for? Kind of, it's close to that actually. It's not, it's like the Yankee version of kimchi, but with fruit and you put it in your booze.

Well, this is all very hoardy like. Well, hold on. Even before we get into hoarding, we still have another tangent to go on. Oh, are Earl Buds? Yeah. Yeah, let's announce it. Okay, so Caroline Irvin and Kristen Conger?

Seriously? Well, I know it was Conger, but she's been since gotten married and I don't know if she took her husband's last name. I thought she couldn't remember. No, of course, Kristen Conger. No, I don't know. Something tells me Conger did not take his last name.

We're right, right, I could see that. Cause then I would no longer be able to call her Congs, which I know she loved. That's true. And she was probably there at the Social Security Administration thinking, I can't do this, what about Chuck? I'm sure she thought of that. At any rate, Caroline and Kristen,

the former host of Stuff Mom Never Told You, which is now hosted by our pals, Emily and Bridget. That's right. So Kristen and Caroline went off on their own and they have now started a new podcast. That's right. And this is the grand announcement here on Stuff You Should Know.

That's right, it's called Unladylike. And I've heard the trailer, so it sounds great. And anything they're gonna do is gonna be great. They're just, they're pros. They really like, I know Stuff Mom Never Told You started with Molly in Conger, but when Caroline came along, it really just found its true voice.

No offense, Molly. She just trashed her home office. It's just a great show. And Unladylike is gonna be awesome. And I believe it's got a bit of a different flavor with interviews and stuff like that. But it is definitely going to be dealing with feminism and women's issues and advocacy.

And their logo is great. It's a big middle finger, which is just so them. Yep, so they have a site, but I think you can get their podcast anywhere you get podcasts, that's kind of how it works. But they have a site as well called Unladylike.co. Super British, not.com.co, okay? That's right.

So best of luck, ladies. I'm sure it'll be great. And you are always on our minds and in our hearts about that. So nice of you. Good luck, Caroline and Kristen. It's gonna be great. Now can we hoard? Yes, finally, long last.

Well, let's take a commercial break, shall we? No. Can you imagine? Molly would trash her home office again. So we're talking hoarding today, believe it or not, everybody. And basically everyone is fairly well aware of hoarding thanks to a couple of high profile reality TV shows about hoarders and hoarding.

And then there have also been appearances of hoarders and literature. So even before it kind of became like part of the cultural awareness, it was also already kind of there. Like everybody thought, you know, there's some guy out there who has a house full of something that he picked up on the side of the road and it's just accumulated and he can barely get around his house.

Like that was there before. But thanks to those TV shows, which actually sprung out of the first real research on hoarding as its own disorder from the early 1990s by a Smith College psychology professor named David O. Frost. And then two of his students, Rachel Gross and Tamara Hartle. Those three people together actually formed the basis of our knowledge about hoarding the disorder.

They took it out of the cultural reference, they took it out of the realm of Freud and they got it ultimately all the way up into the DSM-5 in 2013, which is about the best you can hope for as an undergrad psychology student. Yeah, you get your DSM tattoo to two. Yep. And I believe those shows, one was called Hoarders

and one was called Jerry's Pizza Box Collection. No, Jerry's a collector. Well, it was Jerry's Pizza Box Collection, colon, I'm not a hoarder. Right. It was a little mouthy, little wordy. The logline was, if you're looking for a show about a hoarder, keep looking.

But if you like pizza boxes and a lady who doesn't speak. Eight, seven central. Be very David Lynchian, just this mute woman walking around poking at pizza boxes. Blackout bar over most of her face everywhere she looks. That'd be great. Yeah. All right, so we'll go ahead and get it going

with a stat here, back in the day I was stat man. Remember that? Oh, of course. So I'm gonna reprise that role. Okay, do you have a cape still? Oh yeah, it's on. See? Oh yeah, I see.

I couldn't see it, you weren't turned the right way. Yeah. Well, it's a thin cape for a broad fella. Right. So estimates, no one really knows because like you said, it's very recently that it's being recognized as its own disease and not a symptom of another thing,

even though it is, as we will see later, very much co-morbid with other issues and mental illnesses. But despite the fact that we don't know a ton about the stats, there are estimates that say anywhere from 0.4% to as many as 5% of. That's high. Is this humans or? Humans.

Americans, humans? Yeah, I think the general population. Okay. Which that would make its prevalence higher than schizophrenia. Oh wow. Yeah. Which I actually kind of believe

if I stop and think about it. Sure. Well, the thing is though, you don't, this is, and we're gonna talk about all this stuff, but it's not often the kind of thing that presents itself out in public because these people are hiding in their houses full of stuff.

No, no, and one of the things, one of the early misconceptions about hoarders that we'll see is that it was mostly older people who were hoarding. Yeah. But it turns out that they're the ones who get thrust into the limelight because it's a progressive chronic disease.

They've been hoarding longer. Exactly. So by the time the news media becomes aware of this and drags these poor people out into the limelight, their hoard has gotten very big and they have aged. So that's why we initially thought that just older people were hoarders. It turns out it actually starts far earlier

in life, typically. Yeah, like a show about a 12 year old with one corner of their room, too messy. Yeah, just looking at it like, this is gonna be huge one day. We're joking here, but this is a serious mental illness, but we joke about all kinds of things. So I don't want anyone to get upset about things like that.

No, no, if you're new to the podcast, go listen to the Coma's episode. That'll set things straight. All right, so some of the symptoms of hoarding, and we're gonna get into also in a bit the, I guess, myths and separating those two is really important because it's very easy for someone to very dismissively say, oh, they're a hoarder

because they have a lot of stuff in my family, my in-laws, well, let me let Steve off the hook, specifically my mother-in-law, my grandmother-in-law, Mary, the eldest general, the stuff you should know, Army. And my aunt, Sue, Sharon, Sue, and Mary, they have a lot of stuff, and we call it the disease, sort of as a joke, but they are not. But do they actually?

Well, they're not hoarders at all, but they got a lot of stuff. They have a hard time throwing away the stuff that they had that they think someone in the family might want, but I think that stuff, that's pretty typical. A lot of people are like that, and a lot of people have a basement room with a lot of junk in it, out of being too busy or lazy,

or maybe just a bit of the disease where you're just like, eh, I can't bear to part with it, even though I really should, but that is not hoarding. Well, so my question would be then, have you ever seen them and do you feel like they have the ability to clear out the attic or donate some of the stuff? Like, do they have the ability to part with this stuff?

There have been pushes at various times, like when they're moving and stuff like that, of course, it's a good time to do that. It is always a bit of a painful experience, but I think, like I said, everyone's got a little, not everyone, some people are so unsinimental that they'll just back the dumpster up and just empty their house into it

and say, I'll get new junk. Sure, that's a good way to move. Yeah, exactly, but it is a little bit of a hard time and very famously, Charlie, Emily's grandpa who left us on our wedding day, he famously passed away with buckets of bent rusty nails, but he was not a hoarder, he was legitimately one of those guys who was like,

I can straighten these and reuse them one day and he believed in the value of just not throwing everything away, which is great. So let me ask you this though, he would say kind of with pride, like, look at all these awesome nails that I'm not wasting, you chump. No, not at all, it was just...

Was he ashamed of his bucket of nails? No, he would occasionally get out a nail and straighten it and use it and it was just everyone in the family knew, like, Charlie, he did grow up in the Great Depression and as we will see, that is one of the myths that, oh, all these people just grew up in the depression so they value things more, that is not the case,

there's no tie to that, but he is one of those gentlemen who grew up in the Great Depression and I love that attitude, we're in such a disposable frame of mind these days. The depression thing has kind of come back for the generation behind us. Where they value things a bit more? Good, you know, because the disposability of products

and just everything... Just pulling a dumpster up to your back door and pushing your stuff out as a means of moving? Yeah, that thing didn't work well, I could probably get it repaired but screw it, I'll get another one, it's only 20 bucks. Things like that, it kind of drives me nuts. Oh wait, my phone has a new version of my phone

has just come out, so now the company that made my phone is remotely slowing my phone down so I have to throw it away and go buy another one, that's definitely part of the problem as well. You know what's funny? I can totally see Grandpa Charlie saying, everybody gather around, getting a nail out of his rusty nail bucket,

straightening it and just driving it right through the webbing of his hand as a part of trick. That's what I thought of when you said, yeah, every once in a while he'd get a nail out and straighten it and use it. That's what I was thinking. You know what were the people with ease of pinhead? The people that would drive the nails through their nose.

The blockhead, that's what it was. Blockheads, can't believe we did a whole podcast on that. That shows a good one too. All right, so number one on the symptoms though is you literally have an inability to get rid of things and to stop acquiring things. So you may, if you go into a hoarder's home, you may go into their closet and see

a rack of clothes with tags on them because they're like, oh this is on sale, it's such a good deal. I feel like I just have to get it and then it's unworn a decade later. Yeah, so the early researchers, David Froston is two students, Tamara Hartle and Rachel Gross, they initially, I think it was specifically Rachel Gross

and David Frost, sorry, but that first study that they did on hoarders, they assumed that it would be all just junk, like stuff nobody could possibly want and they were really surprised when they toured some of their study participants' homes and found like stuff still in the package, like clothes, perfectly fine clothes

that had never been worn, but piles up to the ceiling that had now taken over the kitchen. You know what I'm saying, that's the difference between being like, oh this is actually a pretty good deal, I could use this someday and hoarding. And another aspect of that too is if you're buying these clothes, sure it might be a good bargain, but these are women's jeans and you're a man

and they're like half of your size. The people do that? Yeah, they'll buy clothes that don't even fit them. And are not, well, I guess you have people gonna wear what they want, so. Sure, sure, but I'm saying like don't even fit you, right? And they, yeah, good point Chuck, thank you for that, but they basically won't pass up a bargain,

it's one of the ways that they might acquire something. My mom has a little bit of that. Yeah, if you're a man and you dress in women's clothing that is not a symptom of hoarding. No, no, no, and my mom doesn't have that, she has a little bit of the like, oh it's such a good deal, I feel like I have to get it. You mean I went through an open house once

and I've never seen more clothing owned, not just by one person, by several families put together, but it was just one lady's clothes. And like they had built on like in addition to their attic and their garage top and it was just filled with clothes, more clothes than anyone could possibly wear. And we noticed that like some of them

still had the tags on, we're like, God, this lady has so many clothes. Now looking back after researching this, I'm like, she definitely had a touch of the hoarders disorder, I guess. She had a little bit of the hoards? Yeah, it didn't spill out into the rest of her house, so either she, it was just a touch of it,

or her family was keeping it in check. But there was definitely, you wouldn't believe me if I told you how many, just sweaters and shirts and dresses this lady had. Give me a number, how many sweaters? Sweaters? Yeah. I know you're one of your superpowers,

the sweater guesstimating. Right, sweaters and jelly beans. I would say just from what we saw, she easily had 200 something sweaters. Easily, and those were just the sweaters, man. That's not including like tops, blouses, dresses. She had so many clothes. Wow.

Yeah. My friend Ryan, I won't say his last name. He, his dad very famously had a, and I don't know, you know what I asked him last time I saw him, and I can't remember the answer now, but at one point his dad had like warehouses with stuff. Because. Wow, he's like a dream hoarder. Yeah, but I don't know if it was hoarding either,

because as you will see there, as we go on, there are very specific definitions, and just because you want warehouses full of stuff doesn't necessarily mean you're a hoarder, you know? Yeah. What was his stuff? I don't know. I'll find out.

Okay. And follow up. But getting back to the inability to stop acquiring, one of the key points about not getting rid of stuff is they're holding onto things with no value at all. Like. Right. Even sentimental value. Like when you have stacks and stacks of newspapers

and magazines for decades and decades, those don't hold sentimental value, any monetary value, unless you happen to have like the moon landing stuffed in there or something. You know, it's just like literally junk. Right, it can be. It can also be stuff that like, as is actually useful and somebody would want this

unopened, unworn dress or something like that, right? So it can go either way, but the point is they can't stop acquiring stuff. They can't help themselves. That's part one, part two, and these things are part and parcel with one another, is they can't bear to give any of it up. Like you said, even if it's totally useless,

even if it doesn't have any actual real emotional value, but that is a big one that a lot of them point to is like they say, well, no, this means a lot to me or another explanation or another rationalization among hoarders is that like, they're just kind of stockpiling. They might need all these clothes one day. That's the big thing,

is some future event that never happens. Right, exactly. And the other one I think is that they use it as a reminder. Apparently there's a correlation between faulty recall or inaccurate memory or a lack of trust in one's own memory and hoarding. And so some hoarders will say, well, I keep this to remind me

that I have to do this in the future or remind me to get in touch with this person. So they imbue importance into all these objects that from the outside are junk. And apparently the stuff that they imbue these objects with is just rationalization. It's not necessarily really valuable in the way that they feel like it is to them.

Totally. Another symptom is that, in this one I'm kind of curious about, we should talk about is the stuff is disorganized and very disorganized. However, I would think that you could be a hoarder and also be very, and maybe be anal retentive

and have everything organized, but does that immediately disqualify you? From what I understand it does. Yeah, you can have a lot of stuff and even very odd stuff. And if you organize it, that's a huge symptom of hoarding that you're not, that a box is not being checked and would probably preclude you

from a diagnosis of hoarding. Because they think that it has to do with your ability in the brain to make decisions. It supposedly stems from perfectionism, which we'll talk about. But this inability to make decisions about what to keep and what to throw away and being so paralyzed by it

that you just don't make the decision at all and all this stuff accumulates. That also extends to organizing and sorting. You can't make the decision about what you go where or what goes with what. You just can't make decisions when it comes to your material possessions. That's a huge hallmark of,

and I think a cornerstone of hoarding, the diagnosis. I'm gonna take issue with that one officially then on the record. Okay, okay. Like you could literally have every single symptom and you just might be like, no, all the newspapers go here and all the stuff goes here

and it's literally caving in on me and I can't get rid of any of it and I'm ashamed of it and I have no quality of life, but I'm anal retentive. Like, so I'm officially taking issue. No one cares. Well, you, I mean, you make, you paint a pretty good picture in that sense.

I think if you have stuff organized, it's probably not having, it's probably not taking over your life. Maybe financially, maybe time-wise, but like you could still have people over. Your husband or wife isn't leaving you as a result. Your kids aren't ashamed to bring friends over to play. Who knows?

But yeah, I don't think, from what I understand though, as far as the psychological community is concerned, if you can organize, you're probably not a hoarder. I think all those things you just mentioned could still happen if you were organized. Yeah. And this is just my dumb opinion.

It's possible though. I might start a show called Chuck's Dumb Opinions. It's a good one. Just to follow up each week to this. Yeah, you do. Where I get it all out. Number three. Did you get a little bit of Josh said?

Stupid. Number three is the hoarder feels ashamed. And we talked a little bit about this here and there, but that is definitely one of them. It's not like you walk into a hoarder's house and they're like, have you seen my collection of dead goldfish floating in bowls? Although that'd be a weird thing.

Although animal hoarding, we'll get to this definitely thing. That's like traipsing along the line of performance art. Right. But this is the thing is you feel ashamed and that can feed the beast. So you gather all this stuff, you accumulate it, you feel really guilty about it.

And then one of the things that hoarders do is it makes them feel better to collect the stuff. So then you start hoarding more and the Gravster wrote this one, right? So the Gravster said it's really not unlike an alcoholic. You drink, you get ashamed, you feel those feelings of shame. So you drink to sort of feel better or forget.

Right. Same loop. Like alcohol is to an alcoholic or like somebody who eats for comfort. These people acquire stuff for comfort. Or like their material possessions or like food to somebody who eats as comfort. Right.

Yeah. But they do feel ashamed of the whole thing. Like that's a huge thing. And that's also like I was saying what differentiates them from collectors. Even if you have a collection of some really weird stuff, if you wanna show it off to people and you really value it, you're a collector.

If you are ashamed of your collection, you're hoard and you don't want people to see it and you know that it's weird but you just can't do anything about it, that's a symptom of hoarding. That's one of the reasons also why it makes it such a terrible mental disorder because the people who are hoarders,

they're not like off their rocker or something like that. They're not mentally impaired. They're not like out of touch with reality. They have enough perspective to feel shame about the state that their life is in because of these material possessions that they can't get rid of and can't stop accumulating. They can't do anything about it.

And that's what makes it just such a sad disorders. They're aware of this and feel shame as a result. Yeah, they're incapable of change. Well, I think that, I don't know if incapable is the right word, but with the right help, they're capable. But I think on their own, they're generally incapable. Yes. Well, that's what I mean.

I'm not saying you seek treatment and you still can't stop, although that happens too. Yeah. And then finally, another symptom is that you are, it is really impacting your life. So you may have rooms in your house that you can't even use anymore. Like I can't take a bath

because that's where I keep the backing peanuts or I can't use a stove because it has seven microwaves that I bought that are still in boxes stacked on it. And you will, a lot of times they will, like a snowplow, just dig a path through their home just so they can get around where they can get around. Yeah, apparently among hoarders or among psychologists who study hoarding,

it's called, they call them goat paths. Yeah. Yeah. And they can be dangerous. Two hoarders have been known to have died from their walking along their goat paths and there's stuff on either side just coming down on top of them and pinning them and suffocating them.

Yeah, and this is the point too where you talked about where they impacting your life, they don't get out much maybe because they don't wanna leave their stuff because they're afraid a family member might come over and take things, they are holed up, they don't have anyone over because of the shame. So it's just, they're literally trapped by their things.

Yeah, figuratively and literally. And they also, their houses will also very frequently be in disrepair, not just from the collections of stuff taking over rooms and just totally changing their meaning, but also like if you have a hot water heater and it breaks, you're not gonna let some repair man come over, you don't know him, he might touch your stuff,

he might take something or you feel so much shame that you just won't even invite a stranger to come in and fix your hot water heater. So they'll just live without hot water forever. They may also, it's super sad man. We're like, because of documentary television, because of reality television, I think hoarders have kind of gotten reputation

as people are like, go on, look at those freaks. But if you really start to dig into it, and I'm sure some of these shows do this from time to time too, it is an extremely sad condition. It just makes you wanna help them when you come across them. And then one other thing is they're also very frequently in debt, Ed gives the example of if their kitchen

is just totally covered in stuff and they can't get to the oven any longer, they have to order takeout, which is much more expensive than grocery shopping. So their finances are very likely impacted by their hoarding behavior. Good point. Should we take a break?

Yeah. All right, let's do it. And we'll come back and talk about some of the myths right after this. Let's see what happens next. So, to start with, first, little guy will get horns, and the way all of us love to have horns is that

he knows how to clean up the ill זה with … loud horns. Making theseín ears disappear like a choking feather. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult-classic show Hey Dude,

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Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so we talked about some of the truths, and some of the myths are as follows. And you mentioned, well, you mentioned the first one, that it affects only older people.

Another one is that hoarders are lazy, and that is just not true. They, in fact, they may be very busy in there with, while they may not be organizing, they may be moving things around and obsessing about it, and, or, you know, they also might be on the recliner, just hoping they don't get caved in on. But the point is, stuff isn't there because they're lazy.

It's a mental illness. Right, that's a big one. Yeah. Another, another early idea about hoarders is that, the reason they hoard, is because they had some experience, previously in their lives, where they came face to face with deprivation or scarcity. Yeah, like the Great Depression.

Yeah, the Great Depression, or their dad lost his job when they were a kid, and like their family really went through a hard time. So now, as a, in response to that experience, they're just trying to get their hands on everything they can, and they don't want to throw anything away. Apparently, that is absolutely not the case, that the science doesn't bear that out at all.

And then, they do think that they are connected to some sort of difficult event, previous in life, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with deprivation at any point. Like, they may have been wealthy. I read a Nautilus, I think, a Nautilus article on hoarding, and they profiled this guy who was quite well off, and he hoarded, and I don't think he had ever gone

through any financial hardship, and that's apparently par for the course. Well, one of the things that says, one of the traumas could be excessive discipline, which I thought was interesting, because Freud, and I know he said it's been mentioned, it's not a new thing, like it's been in everything from Dante's Inferno to Silas Marner in 1861,

and Freud talked about it in his day. But, here's the thing, everyone says Freud was way off, but he thought it could be as a result of overly harsh toilet training, which I thought was interesting, because while that is not true, if it came from excessive discipline, and you were excessively disciplined while toilet training,

maybe he wasn't that far off. Yeah, you're right, he probably wasn't. Like I said before, the guy was one of the history's great thinkers. It's just, you shouldn't use the phrase anal character when you're describing what the problem was with hoarding. Which he did. He did.

But yeah, you make a really good point, actually, that maybe he wasn't that far off, but if it is discipline, overly harsh discipline in adolescence, I think that's a big one. I think the loss of a significant other, of a close family member, some sort of loss of love

can trigger hoarding behavior in some people, or has been known to bring the disorder on as well. I can see that, like I lost that thing, but I can keep all this. Right. Like that I can control. Right, and that also would explain why they tend to imbue emotional attachment

into their possessions. You know, like these things are, these things equal love to me, and now I can hang on to them, and they're never going to leave me. Yeah. I'm telling you, it's a very sad disorder. Another myth is that it's a symptom of OCD,

obsessive compulsive disorder for many, many, many years. We're just now starting to understand more about it. But for many years, they thought it was either just straight up was OCD, or was just an offshoot of it. But like you said, with the DSM, it is its own distinct disease, but it can be comorbid with OCD,

and other things like anxiety. So it's, I see why people get that confused. Yeah. Some study took away the criteria for, took away the hoarding criteria from OCD, right? So it just gave these people a checklist to determine whether they had OCD or not, but took hoarding out of the equation.

And hoarders tended to not qualify for OCD, only like 16% of them do or something like that. So it's connected in some cases, but definitely not in all cases. And it's certainly not just an offshoot of OCD itself, like you're saying. Right. And then finally, and of course,

because this is a disease, and just because you finally get a family member in there against all odds to clean everything out of there, that does not cure you of anything. No, I saw that it just is, first of all, what a horrible experience that would be for the poor hoarding. Oh yeah.

The county comes in or some family members come in with some tough love and just clear all your stuff out. Yeah. So that's number one, but number two, apparently they say, okay, well I've got a lot of space to fill now, I better get to work. I'm sure.

Like that's the result of it. Supposedly, so it's a chronic disease, chronic condition, and supposedly recurrence of this is a hundred percent in all cases without treatment. Yeah, the Grabster emailed this woman named Lisa Hale, sorry, Founding Director of the Kansas City Center for Anxiety Treatment, and also adjunct associate professor

at University of Missouri, Kansas City. Okay. Fighting hayseeds, haystacks. I like hayseeds. I think hayseed, isn't that a derogatory name for like a Kansan? It depends on whether they own it or not, you know? Okay.

I'm sure we'll hear. But yeah, she said that it approaches a hundred percent, like that is 100% straight up proof that cleaning things out. And while the family member, well a county just has their directive, but while a family member might think, oh, I've helped them, you really haven't

if that was your solve. No, you probably, the other part of it too, is if you come in there all tough love and you need to get your act together and you're just being lazy, what's wrong with you? And clean their stuff out for them? First of all, that's basically abuse. I don't even know if you need to qualify with basically,

I think that's abuse of a mentally ill person. But secondly, all you're doing is driving that behavior. That's a very stressful event. And the way they deal with stress is through hoarding behavior. So all it's going to do is just turn the notch up on the hoarding that they're doing anyway. And you can probably say goodbye to ever seeing them

again after that too. Man, what a terrible situation. Apparently we'll talk about treatment in a minute, but one of the key factors in treatment is that the family and friends and loved ones of the person who's hoarding and now undergoing treatment, they have to go through therapy themselves because it's I'm sure quite easy to look at this

with disgust, horror, anger. Like what is wrong with you? Like I know that that's a natural reaction, but you can't follow through on that. You have to approach it from a place of understanding or else all you're going to do is trigger the hoarding behavior even further. Yeah, for sure, if you go in there guns blazin'

with your broom and your dumpster, yeah, it's just gonna get worse. You just crumble that person. So what causes this is really interesting because we don't know for sure and they have been everything from lesions on the brain in certain studies that they found could account for it to chromosomal defects, to possibly genetics

because they found that it's other illnesses or at least that behavior is part of other illnesses that are definitely genetic and hoarders are more likely to have other family members who are also hoarders. Yeah, like 85% of hoarders surveyed say that they have a family member who's a hoarder which is way more than the general population. Yeah, so we have no idea what the really underlying cause is

but we do know it's what's called and this is what Hale said who Ed interviewed is that it is a neuropsychiatric condition and it's all about like you were talking about earlier of these processing challenges, not being able to process visually, organizationally, emotionally and your brain connections aren't working right.

Yeah, I remember hearing years ago like that they would stick these poor people into the Wonder Machine and talk to them about getting rid of their possessions saying like, I want you to imagine this room and think about all of your newspapers. Now, which newspaper do you wanna get rid of? And these people would experience basically physical pain,

huge spikes in their levels of stress just thinking about this. But when you said the same thing about somebody else's stuff, they had no reaction whatsoever. It's strictly their stuff and their attachment to it. And another study by David Frost showed that when you give somebody who is a hoarder something

and say this is yours now, I think he gave out key chains, their attachment to it was immediate. It was like right when they knew that they owned the thing and it was theirs, they were now as attached to it as if they'd had it for 50 years. It was as important to them. So there's a lot of stuff going on in the brain

and it does have to do with attachment, decision-making, finding comfort and de-escalation of stress through these material possessions as well. But they just don't quite know what did it. Was it a bad experience as a kid? Are you born with a chemical imbalance that doesn't begin to show its symptoms until adolescence? It's just too new.

Like it only became its own thing in the DSM-5 which came out in 2013. But it is in the DSM now, which means that insurance companies will pay for treatment for it, which means that a lot more people are going to be studying it than they ever were before. Man, I can't imagine anything more torturous

than being strapped in an MRI machine which is already stressful and confining and then having to quiz people on anxiety-inducing mental illness. Right. Like, you know, we're getting rid of this thing now and I'm sure that they're just like want to like bust out of that thing, you know?

I'm sure, yeah. It's like torture. Just like, and it's valuable research, so hats off to the people that do that and the people that administer it and the people that are brave enough to go in there and seek that treatment. Yeah, oh yeah, hats off to them for sure.

Man, literal hats off because you can't wear a hat in an MRI machine. No, you can only wear a mesh helmet. That's right. Well, there was one other kind of general explanation or hypothesis that explains hoarding, floating around and that is that we all have this innate evolutionary instinct.

This is great. To gather stuff. Yeah, I really like this. Like it's just, it's just, well, it's part of our mammalian heritage and they think that in people who hoard, this instinct has basically gone haywire. Yeah.

Like some synapse connected with another synapse that weren't supposed to be connected. Now all of a sudden this thing that's a natural thing where you go to the grocery store, you buy some stuff, you keep it in your refrigerator for a week, turns into you can't get enough Sunday circulars to possibly stave off these feelings of anxiety. Yeah, Ed's cool little story reference was

like an animal saving food for the winter. Do they work extra long to prepare for possibly long winter but stay out there and are more vulnerable to getting eaten by the cheetah while they're collecting stuff or do they say, you know what, I'm gonna go ahead and get in the cave. I've got enough stuff. Eventually there will be that long winter

and those animals will die out. So, you know, over the course of time, the long winter evolutionary trait will be the one that's passed on. Yeah. That's really interesting. The guy whose paper he based that on, you should see this paper, man.

It's got like sigma everywhere and he's talking about squirrels gathering nuts but there's all these really complex math and statistical formula that he's got on his paper but the overall gist of it is pretty fascinating and it proves or it definitely lends credence to the idea that it is a naturally selected evolutionary trait to gather a lot of stuff.

Most of us, though, have this cutoff point where we know I don't need anything more than this or anything more than this is irrational and people who hoard definitely don't have that cutoff point. Yeah, we have a room in our house that is full of stuff and it's not hoarding, we don't have a place for this stuff. We live in an 80 something year old craftsman

and those houses just don't have the closet space in the storage space, we don't have a garage, we do have an attic that has some stuff and in theory we could probably move all of this stuff up there but most of this stuff we kinda need access to more often. So we're not hoarding but it's just like our house is small and we could go the other route

and go a little more minimalist for sure and get rid of this stuff, trust me. Sure, but if you don't want to, you don't want to. Well, yeah, but I mean it's a problem when we have a guest spend the night, which is not often because that's our quote, guest room. I got you. I was gonna say you guys need to get to the container store.

No, a lot of the stuff's in containers. You need a container for your containers. And what we do, it's funny, when we do have the occasional guests, they are invariably very, very close friend or family member and so they understand and we clear the code path. That's very nice.

To the bed. They're like, just dive over onto the bed and then when you wake up and you wanna get up, just call us and we'll lower the crane harness. That's right, but we are adding, not adding onto our house but we're finishing the basement. So hopefully that will be the solve. Nice.

Cause we're gonna have lots more good storage down there. There you go. Bing bang boom, problem solved. Except we're having to do house construction, which is the worst. For your stuff. All right, should we take one more break? Yeah.

All right, let's do that and we'll come back and talk just briefly about the very famous Collier Brothers and then hit on animal hoarding, which could be the saddest of all hoarding. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia

starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you.

Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the Langley, Homer and Langley Collier. You said you want to do a full show on them. Yes. But this will be the second time we've covered them. When did we talk about them before? Bizarre ways to die. Oh, wow.

Which is literally a nine-year-old episode. Yeah, that is old. So I would say we could probably still get away with the full episode. Because if you listen to the one in April 2009 and the segment on The Collier Brothers within that 25-minute episode, then you would probably appreciate a more fleshed out version.

I would love it. But just the broad strokes of it are that Homer Collier went blind later in life. And his brother Langley took care of him. Well, Langley was a hoarder and accumulated more and more stuff. And eventually, Langley died. He was crushed by his stuff. And Homer, who was 100% dependent on Langley,

starved to death in their brownstone. And they were found separately weeks apart. This is in Harlem, New York City. And if you just look up pictures of this and the crews and the removing of things, it's really something else. And there's actually a little park there named The Collier Brothers Park.

That in early 2000s, there was a push to get that changed. Because they were like, we should not name a park after these guys. But as far as I can tell, it's still named that. I don't think that went anywhere. But yeah, let's definitely do a, and in fact, I think it was called Collier Syndrome for a while too, huh? Yeah, for a while.

I mean, they were pretty famous, because all the New York papers got in there and printed all sorts of pictures. And they had just a fascinating story. All right, now we might as well finish on the saddest of notes, which is animal hoarding. And we're not talking about, well, it could be Crazy Cat Lady, but not necessarily. I think she's an archetype of animal hoarders.

Right, so in this case, we are talking about, and I know you've seen stories probably on the news here and there, these are people that hoard animals to the extent where it's just like the other stuff. It is, their house is often filled with feces and smells of ammonia, full of maybe fleas and ticks, can't have people over, and it's one of the saddest because it's, these people can't bear,

they think they're doing the right thing by saving these animals, but they're not because these animals almost 100% of the time are very much suffering. Yeah, yeah, it's like hoarding, but your newspapers and plastic grocery bags don't suffer with animal hoarding. The hoarder suffers and the animals suffer as well because no matter how great the intentions

of the animal hoarder are, and apparently that is the, one of the bases of animal hoarding is that they really do have the best of intentions. They feel like they're rescuing the animals that no one else wants. They're animal lovers. They're taking them into their home, yeah. They're feeding them, they're caring for them.

The problem is, is they can't stop acquiring them, so it reaches a point where the animals, they can't possibly, there's not enough hours in the day to properly care for all the animals, and even if you had help and you had the money to buy food and veterinary care for all these animals, there's still a huge factor in that these animals are living very close together in ways

that they should not be, that's not natural for them, so they're stressed out all the time. Yeah, and another one of the hallmarks could be, not always, but a lot of times these are people that are left alone in life either from being widowed or divorced or just their family has gone, or they just may have trouble interacting with people and these animals in this article you sent,

they call it a conflict-free relationship, and they surround themselves with this thing because it's filling them with something that they can't get oftentimes out of humans. Right, which is unconditional love. The problem is, is again, it is very sad because there's that extra component, the extra very important component of suffering animals,

and when people hear about this stuff, you just immediately like kind of hiss at the people who do this when you hear about it on the news and don't really know what's going on, but again, when you dive into the psychology behind it, it's extraordinarily sad, because these people have the best intentions for these animals, and even while they're caring

for these animals, they're suffering as well through this indecision like, do I love this dog or is this one my favorite or should I adopt it out? And they just can't decide, so they just avoid the decision and just acquire more and more animals, again, to the detriment of all the animals involved. Yeah, and just like with regular hoarding, removing these animals, because by the time you see it

on the news, it's probably because the county is in there and animal control is in there, and you see them, these sad sad stories where they're literally taking out these dogs clearly suffering from malnutrition or cats or whatever, and that does not solve the problem. They have to seek therapy, and just like with object hoarding, if you're a family member, confronting them, being angry,

even though this one is probably even tougher to not be angry if you're an animal lover, you need to just keep that in check and try and be compassionate and help them so you can help the animals as well. So there's some stats on this animal thing. Where did you get this? Where was this from?

This is a good article. Oh man, I wish you hadn't asked. I'll tell you by the time you're done with the stats. All right, I'll just take through a couple of these. Every year, 3,500 hoarders, animal hoarders come to the attention of the authorities. 250,000 animals affected each year. This one is really sad.

80% of animal hoarders have disease, dying, or dead animals on the premises at the time. It can become more of it, actually is, about 40% of the time object hoarders are also hoarding animals. And like I was talking about being lonely or widowed perhaps are divorced. 70% of animal hoarders who the authorities know about

are females who are single, widowed, or divorced. So the thing is, is that skewed differently for some reason. Apparently if you just go out and sample the community, hoarding is pretty much evenly divided among men and women. I'm not sure why we typically think of them as women but apparently- For animals or in general?

In general. Oh, well this is animal specifically, so. Oh, okay. I gotcha, I gotcha. There may be some sort of deeper compassion from women. I don't know. Who knows, but I don't want to undermine the efforts of the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

Of course. Whose site this came from. Yeah, thanks very much. Those great stats, good website. Yeah, so let's talk real quick about treatment of all kinds of hoarding. That's a big one is the family intervention and loving support is a huge part of it

because hoarders apparently don't initiate treatment themselves, even though they know that they're suffering typically. But apparently talk therapy is proving to be the best treatment for hoarding. And that's where say a cognitive behavioral therapist talks you through your own beliefs about things. Like, well, you know, what will happen exactly

if you have to give away your plastic grocery bags. And they make you say it out loud. And when you say it out loud, maybe there's a little part of your brain that's like, wait a minute, that sound a little kooky. And maybe they say, well, really what you just said, even if that did happen, even if that negative outcome did happen,

is that really as bad as it sounds in reality? And they just kind of talk you through your beliefs while at the same time basically dragging them out into the open so that they're not just in your head anymore. They're out there and you kind of have to evaluate them in a different way, speaking with this trained professional. Yeah, and I would imagine they, it's probably a go slow thing,

like maybe next week bring in something that you care about and we're gonna get rid of it together. I doubt if it's like they have some talk therapy and then they just go through and clear the house out. It's probably very gradual thing to heal someone of this. Yeah, but I think it is gradual, like you said. And again, family has to support it because they may give the person,

they say like your therapist knows exactly how you feel every Thursday at two o'clock. I mean, you're there for an hour, probably more than that if you are a diagnosed hoarder and you're undergoing treatment. But the point is, it's not an inpatient treatment. You go back home afterward and they give you homework. And if you're a chronic hoarder,

you're probably not going to do the homework. So you need to have family saying, well, didn't doctor so-and-so say you needed it to start to clear this room out this week and just kind of be there and know what's going on and support the treatment as well and not just leave them to their own devices. Yeah, and the hoarders that have no family

and support system, those are the ones that are just so tragic because they're the least likely to get help and seek help and potentially die a very kind of sad, lonely life surrounded by their stuff. Yeah, I think those are the ones that are the ones you see on the news, the ones that don't have family and friends anymore.

Yeah. So I guess the upshot of all this, Chuck, is that if you know a hoarder, maybe go be nice to them and see if you can help them out because they are most likely suffering. Compassion. Yeah, there you go. If you want to know more about hoarding,

you can type that word in the search bar, bring up this excellent article by Ed Grabinowski on howstuffworks.com and since I said that, it's time for a listener mail. Short and sweet is what I'm gonna call this because it cracks me up occasionally when someone is just cracked up by some dumb thing we said. Okay.

I know this one. Hey guys, you made my day once again. I spent December listening to Christmas music. Me too, by the way. Oh man, I was done in week one. Yeah, I can muscle through generally for the most part. Not 100% because eventually Emily can go 100%. It wasn't the Christmas spirit,

just Christmas music this year. I was like, ugh, I can't take this at all. Yeah, yeah, eventually I have to say, all right, we need to turn on Radiohead or something. And that's what I go to because she'll go, she can always listen to Radiohead. Yeah, she's like, I love Radiohead's Christmas album. Oh my God, can you imagine?

Now I'm just hearing various versions of that in my head. Listen! Very nice. So I spent December listening to Christmas music, so I got behind on my podcast. I'm currently listening in reverse to December. I was just driving to work listening to cake, and I almost had to pull over

because I was laughing so hard at the conversation about oven doors. Josh, or I'm sorry, Chuck, do you have a window in your oven door? Josh, of course, what am I, a communist? Between that and Chuck baking in his dishwasher, you two made this a perfect day. Gotta say, I cannot wait to see you next week.

Again, in Portland, my stuffy-snow bingo board is ready. Travel safe, and that is Jen Hunt. Jen, by the time this comes out, we will have just been in Portland, and maybe we have even met you. Yeah, hope you enjoyed the show. Hope everybody in Portland enjoyed the show. And as a follow-up, I don't know if I officially said...

Oh, I'm glad you're saying this. I think I posted it on Facebook, but I definitely do not have an oven window. No, Chuck is officially a communist. He has an oven without a window, and I've never seen anything like it before. It's like a tank. It's great.

Yeah, it's a good-looking oven. I don't want to see that junk cooking. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us to let us know how we cracked you up, we love hearing about that. You can tweet to us. I'm at Josh M. Clark and at SYSK Podcast.

I also have a website called rucerysclark.com. You can hang out with Chuck on facebook.com slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or at slashstuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit howstuffworks.com. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to, Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Never have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts.