643. Why Do Candles Still Exist?

Podcast: Freakonomics Radio (LS 83 · TOP 0.01% what is this?)
Episode: 643. Why Do Candles Still Exist?
Pub date: 2025-08-01

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They should have died out when the lightbulb was invented. Instead they’re a $10 billion industry. What does it mean that we still want tiny fires inside our homes?

 

• SOURCES:
  • Tim Cooper, professor emeritus of sustainable design and consumption at Nottingham Trent University.
  • Gökçe Günel, professor of anthropology at Rice University.
  • Steve Horenziak, president of the National Candle Association.
  • Meik Wiking, Danish happiness researcher, C.E.O. of the Happiness Research Institute.

 

• RESOURCES:
  • "The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy," by Markus Krajewski (IEEE Spectrum, 2024).
  • "The Obsolescence Issue," edited by Townsend Middleton, Gökçe Günel, and Ashley Carse (Limn, 2024).
  • More and More and More, by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (2024).
  • "What Yankee Candle reviews can tell us about COVID," by Manuela López Restrepo, Christopher Intagliata, Ailsa Chang, and Sacha Pfeiffer (NPR, 2022).
  • Spaceship in the Desert, by Gökçe Günel (2019).
  • "The Birth of Planned Obsolescence," by Livia Gershon (JSTOR Daily, 2017).
  • "Beeswax for the Ages," by G. Jeffrey MacDonald (The Living Church, 2016).
  • The Waste Makers, by Vance Packard (2011).

 

• EXTRAS:
  • "Why Do People Still Hunt Whales?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
  • "How to Be Happy," by Freakonomics Radio (2018).

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