The holiday industrial complex (Classic)
*This episode originally aired in 2017*
It's December 31st, and we hope that New Year's Eve celebrations are upon you. But did you know that you could also be celebrating National Champagne Day? And Make Up Your Mind Day? Where do these made-up holidays come from, anyway?
It seems like there are legions of people inventing holidays to get people to buy things. But there are even more holidays that are just... weird. So we figured if we could follow the events that got one of these questionable holidays on TV, then maybe there was a way to find out who is running the holiday machine.
We picked National Splurge Day. It was easy enough to find coverage about it. But few people wanted to talk about how it wound up on their television shows.
Today on the show, we journey to the center of the holiday industrial complex. And we go on a trip that takes us from harried TV news bookers to the halls of Congress to a storage locker in Chicago.
Music: "Baiser Fatal Instrumental" and "Big Black Boots"
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