What happens when you look at Christmas through the eyes of a waste bin?
In this special holiday episode, Samara — as the Ghost of Christmas Trash — walks through the morning-after archaeology of the season: wrapping paper that lived for nine seconds, boxes that lasted longer on Instagram than in the house, and the quiet violence hidden behind our festive rituals.
Drawing on Marco Armiero’s Wasteocene and Ed Conway’sMaterial World, the episode explores how waste is not just an object but a system of relationships, and how the raw materials behind our gifts — sand, copper, lithium, oil — carry stories of extraction, displacement, and ecological wounds that usually remain invisible.
This is not a moral lecture about buying less.
It’s a haunting invitation to see more clearly — and to recognise the hidden journeys behind the objects we celebrate, discard, and forget.
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Relevant previous episodes:
Episode 21 Material World: When the Invisible Fails Us — On the hidden infrastructure and physicality behind modern life.