Selects: How Black Friday Works

On the day after Thanksgiving, Americans go kind of crazy for the deep discount sales that kick off the holiday shopping season in stores. So crazy, in fact, at least four people have lost their lives and as many as 63 others have been injured during Black Friday sales. But as profitable as Black Friday is, some retailers are thinking about discontinuing the tradition to find ways to make even more money. Learn all about this bizarre, uniquely American holiday custom in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:49Josh Clark?

  So we kind of inadvertently came up with a document on a fading cultural phenomenon, and I assume historians of the future will rely heavily on this. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this episode.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com.

• 2:15Speaker 03

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's over there. And that makes this stuff you should know.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  You just checked to make sure Jerry was there.

• 2:26Speaker 03

  She's very quiet.

• 2:27Speaker 04

  You literally turned your head and body.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  Right.

• 2:29Speaker 04

  Yep, she's there.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  I did the Bigfoot thing. Like I had to turn my whole, the whole side of my body to look over my shoulder. That's how you know that was real footage.

• 2:39Speaker 04

  Well, typically when you know Jerry's here, because you can just smell like miso soup or something emanating from our right side.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:46Speaker 04

  Or my right side.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Your right side, but it's not emanating from you. It's coming from Jerry.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:52Speaker 03

  She stinks like miso, which is actually a very pleasant smell. Salty and umami.

• 2:58Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  So Chuck.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Have you ever been to a Black Friday sale?

• 3:05Speaker 04

  No.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  No.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  And I want to say H no.

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that's

• 3:11Speaker 04

  Not for me.

• 3:12Speaker 03

  That's a decent qualifier, though, because it's not like an average sale. And like, if you don't go to a Black Friday sale, it's, there are a pretty good reason why is because you're scared.

• 3:24Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, and I think this is one of those, a very divisive topic. You're probably either really into going, or it's the last thing on earth you would rather do. I don't know. A lot of people are like, eh, maybe I'll go check out a doorbuster at 3 a.m.

• 3:36Speaker 03

  I think there are people who do have that kind of, that idea, but maybe not at 3 a.m.

• 3:42Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  There's, it's almost like a multifaceted creature. Like it is for some people, like, just in the middle of a normal shopping day on the Friday after Thanksgiving, they'll go to a store and it's fine and there's some sales or whatever. But then, you know, hours earlier, these hardcore people, you know, who had bathed in the blood of their fellow shoppers.

• 4:03Speaker 04

  Well, sadly, yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 04

  We'll see.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Had, had already come through and gotten all the best deals.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:09Speaker 03

  But, and then there's those of us like us who are just like, going out.

• 4:13Speaker 04

  It is literal, and I'm not overstating this because people always say literally when they mean figuratively, but it's literally one of the last things I would ever, ever do in my life.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  I can't think of many. I'd rather go to the DMV than go to a doorbuster.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  The DMV?

• 4:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:28Speaker 03

  In between North Korea and South Korea?

• 4:31Speaker 04

  No, no, no, no. That's the DMZ.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  Right, okay. I always get those two confused.

• 4:36Speaker 04

  No, I'd rather go take the last ticket from the DMV and have to wait all day than go to a doorbuster sale.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I don't blame you.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Alright, so that's, we'll get to more hate spewing about this later, but...

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Right, and I should state my opinion. I feel like if this is your thing, that's awesome.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  Well, true, true. I'm not like cast dispergents on people who, disparaging remarks, is dispergents a word?

• 4:58Speaker 03

  Nope, it is now though. You're like your own like, American dictionary, the new Chuck dictionary.

• 5:04Speaker 04

  We should make that up. I like it.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 04

  We could add like five or six words already.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Chuckisms.

• 5:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, agreed. I'm not saying like poo pooing people who do it. If you're into it, great, as long as you conduct yourself in a reasonable manner and you don't turn into a monster like others do.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  Right, and but there is like, there are obvious criticisms of the day too, which we'll get into, but I, I think first Chuck, we should explain what the, as you would say, H, we're talking about to the people who listen to this podcast and don't live in the United States. Because Black Friday is pretty much a uniquely American experience.

• 5:38Speaker 04

  It is. I think most people probably know, but just very quickly, it is the day after Thanksgiving now in the United States is known as Black Friday, and we'll get into the pretty interesting history of it. But it's the biggest shopping day of the year.

• 5:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  And there are all these crazy specials that they run, and we'll get into that as well, but quite simply, it is the busiest shopping day of the year.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 5:58Speaker 04

  Day after Thanksgiving.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Right, and it's, it's origins, well, the origin of the term Black Friday goes back kind of a ways, apparently to the, the mid 20th century. But the idea of going shopping, starting your Christmas shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, actually goes back to the late 19th century, early 20th century. Thanks to department stores, like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

• 6:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 6:25Speaker 03

  And as a part of those parades, Santa Claus.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  It's no accident that it's a Macy's parade.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 6:30Speaker 04

  You know?

• 6:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's still a good parade though.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  Have you ever been?

• 6:33Speaker 03

  No, I haven't.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've never been to the parade, but a couple of times Emily and I have gone to the day before when they blow up the floats.

• 6:39Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Which is really neat.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Very cool. You mean, I have a friend who's actually holding one of the floats.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  Oh, really?

• 6:45Speaker 03

  One of the balloons.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  Oh, cool.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  This year, yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's, it's fun to do, although we did it like... Eight or nine years ago, and it was, it was really neat and sort of crowded. And then we did it a couple of years ago, and it is nuts now.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  Is it?

• 6:57Speaker 04

  It's, yeah, it's kind of gone overboard.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Gotcha.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  The word got out.

• 7:00Speaker 03

  I think I saw, yeah, I saw something last year in the news.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:05Speaker 04

  It's not a place to go if you don't like strollers, let's just say that.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah?

• 7:09Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 03

  Strollers with alternating tires?

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  So, but the, the idea of going, starting your Christmas shopping the day after Thanksgiving came from those parades. And they came from those parades because all of those parades, pretty much to a parade, featured Santa Claus.

• 7:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, and usually at the end, kind of like bringing up the rear, and that means we're kicking it off.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  That's the official start of the holiday season.

• 7:34Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Santa Claus has made his first public appearance. So, um, from the association of those two came going holiday shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Uh, that was in the late 19th century. In the 50s, they think, or early 60s, uh, well, the 50s calling the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday came about, but it didn't necessarily have anything to do with shopping by then. It was, um, from factory owners who apparently coined the term.

• 8:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, and there's also the, uh, the other competing theory that it was the day that, uh, stores would go into the black, meaning start to show profit.

• 8:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 8:09Speaker 04

  But, um, that's not quite right, is it?

• 8:11Speaker 03

  No, so that's-

• 8:12Speaker 04

  It's a fallacy.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  That's actually a, well, it's a made up fallacy-

• 8:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 03

  To gloss over the original meaning of Black Friday. Um, and it came out of Philadelphia in the 60s, and the cops and the bus drivers and the city workers who worked downtown came up with calling that day Black Friday because apparently tons of out of towners would leave their homes on Thanksgiving-

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  Converge on Philadelphia to watch the Army Navy game-

• 8:38Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  On the Saturday after Thanksgiving. But they had a day to kill, so they all started doing their Christmas shopping because there were sales in downtown Philly every year. And the place would be nuts. Uh, and this was where Black Friday came from. Apparently, the police department wanted to basically keep people away. So they'd be like, "Well, you don't want to go to downtown Philly, it's Black Friday."

• 8:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  And, uh, that was the original, um, reason or origin of the term.

• 9:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I see you saw in here, uh, article from the AP in 1975, a sales manager at Gimbel's- Was quoted as saying, that's why bus drivers and cab drivers call today Black Friday.

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  They think in terms of the headaches that it gives them. So I learned something new when I read this.

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then

• 9:23Speaker 04

  I had no idea.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  It spread out of Philly, and then years later, the retail lobbies and retailers themselves said, we've got to come up with a better, a better origin story for this, because we want this to be a day that people want to get out of their house and go shopping, you know?

• 9:38Speaker 04

  But we should point out, even though it is not the day that companies go into the black, as it were, which, by the way, comes from when they did Accounting by Hand, you would write in red ink or black ink, depending on if you were ahead with money or behind.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  Red ink meant you were in the hole.

• 9:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 03

  Black meant everything's good.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Exactly. Even though it does not mean that, the holiday shopping season is when stores make up between 20 and 40% of their retail profits, so.

• 10:04Speaker 03

  That's a lot.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, even Emily's small business, like, the, I don't know about majority, but a large percentage of her yearly sales are, you know, the couple of months.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 04

  You know?

• 10:14Speaker 03

  And it's not just her. Apparently, in 2013, the National Retail Federation is predicting that Americans, in, just in November and December, Chuck, are you ready for this?

• 10:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  Americans are going to spend $602 billion in November and December.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  That's cray.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  That's a lot of cash.

• 10:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  In two months.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't spend like I used to on Christmas.

• 10:43Speaker 04

  Emily and I, sometimes we'll spend on gifts on each other, or do that, like, couple thing where you, like, go in and just do something nice for your house. And then, like, the adults on my side of the family, we don't exchange gifts anymore.

• 10:58Speaker 03

  Just dirty looks?

• 10:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  You exchange dirty looks?

• 11:01Speaker 04

  No, like, my brother and my sister will chip in usually and get my mom something kind of nice. Or give her, offer her a service, like, last year, we replaced her fireplace with, like, a gas fireplace.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  Or build her a garden fence, or tile her kitchen, like, something like that.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  Wow, your mom's got a,

• 11:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  She's on Easy Street, is what you'd call that.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  Yeah. But Emily's family, they all still exchange gifts, so I still have my Christmas gift-swapping Joan satisfied.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  You know?

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yes. You get your Christmas present on.

• 11:32Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Okay Chuck, so um, the, the idea of shopping after Thanksgiving and then Black Friday, that day being called Black Friday, it's been around for a while. And it's a really valuable day.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  The, you know, it kicks off that two-month period where $602 billion is going to be spent on stuff.

• 11:53Speaker 04

  But it was created, like Valentine's Day, it was literally created and then the myth kind of became reality.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:00Speaker 04

  Just because they said, everyone's gonna shop today, it's the busiest day, and it became that.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, it wasn't until, uh, 2004.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 03

  Usually, the Saturday before Christmas was actually the busiest shopping day of the year.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  Thanks to me.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  But the retail federation and all of the retailers were like, well, we can't just, we can't tout that as the, the busiest shopping day of the year. We want to like, get people spending over the course of a couple of months, not the Saturday before Christmas. So, they basically said, Black Friday's the day.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  And it, like you said, it just kind of became true just from people saying it over time.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  I'm surprised that they haven't come up with a catchy name for, like, Procrastinators' Day or something, to like, pump up that last Saturday again or something.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  Or to keep you from it, so they call it like, Shame of the Nation Day. Something like that, to make you like, go, go do Black Friday and not wait until the Saturday. Yeah. So, and there's this website called, um, BlackFridayArchive.com. It's actually like, kind of cool if you like nostalgic ads or whatever. Nostalgia going back to 2007, I should say, but it's just like, scans of Black Friday print ads from those years, which are kind of neat. Uh, if you're totally bored out of your mind, go check out BlackFridayArchive.com.

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• 16:38Speaker 03

  So Black Friday became a smashing success, like 2004, 2005. It's a relatively recent thing that it became what it is today here in the States, which is an out-of-control juggernaut of shopping and consumeristic frenzy. Right? But so it was so successful overnight that the retailer said, well, let's figure out ways to extend this whole week.

• 17:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  So they came up with Cyber Monday in 2005.

• 17:06Speaker 04

  Yep, that's pretty recent. And it is the online shopping version of Black Friday, the Monday after Thanksgiving.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  And that was another thing they just made up, another self-fulfilling myth that they said that's the, the workers go back to their computer after Thanksgiving on Monday and they do all their online shopping. Well, that wasn't really true, but now it is because the retailer said it was and the media reported it.

• 17:32Speaker 04

  And not to be outdone, in 2010, American Express invented Small Business Saturday, which is when you go out and support small businesses with your money.

• 17:41Speaker 03

  Especially ones that take American Express.

• 17:43Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 17:46Speaker 04

  So there's, it's interesting. They're literally creating days to tell people, basically, if you're not shopping today, you're missing out on really good deals.

• 17:55Speaker 03

  Right, exactly. And the more days, the better. As far as retailers are concerned, um, but there's only so many days after Thanksgiving. So they started to think recently like, well, what if we pushed in the other direction rather from Friday on? What's behind Friday? Oh yeah, Thanksgiving. We can't touch that.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  For shame.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  Well, uh, starting in 2012, they started touching it. Walmart actually, um, opened at 8:00 PM on Thanksgiving. Uh, in 2012, um, and there was, there was a, a general strike called that we'll talk about later.

• 18:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Because of that, because these stores are not supposed to be open on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is its own day. It's a day of being with family.

• 18:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 03

  And celebrating and, you know. Up until 2012, it was sacrosanct.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. Uh, this year Macy's and JCPenney for the first time are opening on Thanksgiving. And Sears and Toys R Us as well on Thanksgiving evening. Uh, and Kmart is opening at 6:00 AM on Thanksgiving. Basically extending Black Friday through the weekend.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Forty-one hours.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  That's not a day.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  That's how long Kmart is going to be open. Black Friday at Kmart lasts forty-one hours.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 03

  That's pretty crazy.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  Uh, and at shopping malls, um, you're going to have some smaller stores doing the same thing. An estimated twenty to twenty-five percent will be open at 8:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day. And two-thirds will open at midnight. So essentially what's happening is Thanksgiving evening is being ruined. By retail.

• 19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 04

  You know?

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the retailers would say, well, you know.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  You don't have to go.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  We've seen that people, right, we've seen that people start lining up Thanksgiving afternoon, Thanksgiving evening. To wait for us to open like that, you know, the next morning. So why don't we just open? So I, I mean, I think it's kind of, um, it goes both ways, but I, I, I pretty much see where you're coming from.

• 19:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, this year it's a little trickier too, because Thanksgiving comes on, uh, November 28th, which is the latest suspend in eleven years.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:04Speaker 04

  Is that right?

• 20:05Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Two thousand and two?

• 20:06Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 20:07Speaker 04

  So. Weirdly, because they still sort of have to enforce Black Friday, they're actually shortening their own shopping season a little bit this year.

• 20:16Speaker 03

  Right.

• 20:16Speaker 04

  Which is probably why some of them are opening on Thanksgiving.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  That's exactly why. It's six days shorter than usual this year. So, just by the very existence, by making up Black Friday.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  They've screwed themselves this year a little bit.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  They have.

• 20:29Speaker 04

  By a week.

• 20:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, because there's, in other countries like Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, countries that observe the Christmas holidays like we do in America, meaning everybody gives everybody else presents and things like that, and they spend money.

• 20:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  But those countries don't have a Black Friday, a day that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season.

• 20:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  Those countries spend more over the course of the holiday season because they have a longer period of time to shop.

• 21:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  So, without Black Friday, in America, the retailers would possibly make more money. So, they've definitely painted themselves into a corner by making Black Friday such a thing. And this year, it's really kind of pointing out like, oh, we may be shooting ourselves in the foot here. So, what can we do? Well, their solution has been, oh, we'll just take over Thanksgiving, too. But that's not necessarily sustainable, and there's a lot of people who are saying, Black Friday's going to go the way of the dinosaur.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  Yeah, I read an interesting article in The New Yorker this morning, a finance article. I think it was New Yorker. It might have been New York Times. But this financial analyst was basically analyzing how the sales go and sort of saying that it's really not financially the smartest approach to take.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  For the shoppers or the retailers?

• 21:46Speaker 04

  For the retailers to offer these huge, deep discounts and sort of blow it out in one day. A better, smarter financial approach would be to elongate the shopping season and not even discount things, maybe even raise prices. And his contention is that they're shooting themselves in the foot.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  Right.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  But...

• 22:05Speaker 03

  I think he's right.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, he probably is.

• 22:08Speaker 03

  But at the same time, if you're one of those people, like... Like me, frankly, who went to the mall the day after Halloween.

• 22:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 03

  And saw that the lights were up, the garland was out, Santa's workshop was ready to go.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  After Halloween?

• 22:22Speaker 03

  The November 1st.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 22:24Speaker 03

  The place was totally decked out for Christmas with Christmas carols piping through.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, see, that's, that's ridiculous.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  But see, without, but that was the great thing about Black Friday. It's like you, you know, you had a month of just kind of chilling out, everything.

• 22:37Speaker 04

  Right.

• 22:37Speaker 03

  Getting ready between, between Halloween and Thanksgiving. Then you had Thanksgiving and then the holiday season started. Without Black Friday, it's kind of like this, um, this dam that's holding back the holiday season.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 03

  From spilling into basically October. But with retailers figuring out that it's an impedance to them making money. It, it, it probably won't start the official season any longer. It'll probably be further back from now on.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, I think we're in, I don't know about, well, technically slightly in the minority. Um, in 2013, 53% of the population of American adults said they will shop on Black Friday. So.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  53%?

• 23:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, that puts us in the minority by a bit.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:20Speaker 04

  And 2011, 152 Americans, uh.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  152 million.

• 23:25Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  Just 150. But they spent $500 billion.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, 152 really rich Americans. Uh, 152 million shopped on that day for an average of three hours at a time, which is, uh,

• 23:41Speaker 04

  not too long, but that's.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  I mean, three hours is like, they'll.

• 23:44Speaker 04

  It's longer than I want to shop ever, but, uh.

• 23:46Speaker 03

  I saw a woman who did 16 though, like a 16 hour stretch of shopping.

• 23:51Speaker 04

  She better have gotten it all done at least.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  I hope so.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  You know?

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 04

  Like if she shopped for 16 hours and only got like three gifts.

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:59Speaker 04

  It's not time well spent.

• 24:00Speaker 03

  Um, there's also evidence, uh, that the internet is basically knocking on Black Friday's door. Uh, Thanksgiving Day is the fastest growing online shopping day.

• 24:10Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Um, and I think like, uh, 70% of the people who said that they're going to shop on Black Friday said they'll do some or most of it online.

• 24:17Speaker 04

  Right.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Um, so the, the internet's still there for retailers to make money. But the idea of Black Friday in-store sales going extinct is probably not.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Going to happen because it's its own thing. Like, there's this one consumer psychologist or consumer analyst, I think, pointed out that it's a tradition.

• 24:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Number one.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  Now it is.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  And number two, there's a certain element of like, sport to it. It's more than just getting a good deal. It's like, you know, throwing a fist at somebody while you get a good deal. There's something to it that transcends the whole thing.

• 24:56Speaker 04

  So, we mentioned doorbusters. It's a central part of the cog that is Black Friday. And it goes back in print, believe it or not, to the year 1917. And anecdotally, to 1895, wherein a retailer will basically say, you know what? We have one item, or usually it's a few now, but some really deep, deep, and really super great deals on just a few select items.

• 25:21Speaker 03

  So like, for example, a good laptop for $180.

• 25:25Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  And like, deals like that. iPods for half off, or a TV for like 200. Like, really, really, like you said, very good discounts.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  But, here's the deal. It's a scam, people.

• 25:38Speaker 03

  It's a bait and switch scheme.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  It's a bait and switch. They've only got a very limited amount of these select items, which is why the violence happens, which we'll get to in a minute. And then after that, they're hoping you get in there. You don't get that laptop, but you're like, screw it. I'm at Walmart at 5:00 a.m. I might as well buy some stuff, regular priced.

• 25:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:59Speaker 04

  Or slightly discounted items. And, you know, that's how they get you in the store. That's how they get you.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  It is. And it is, it's true, that these items do exist, and they are for that deal. They're for that price, I should say. But there's only like 10. And in the fine print, it's like, one per person. And that deal is for in-stock only. Like, you can't get a rain check or anything like that.

• 26:25Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  But the concept that these deals do exist, for those items that are in the store, coupled with whoever physically gets their hands on that item first, gets that deal.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 03

  Leads to doors actually being busted.

• 26:42Speaker 04

  It's called recipe for disaster.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  All right, so before we get to the dark days, and the bad stuff that can happen, truly, let's do a little message break.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 27:00Josh Clark?

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• 27:09Speaker 05

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• 27:22Josh Clark?

  Or discover Toyota's off-road lineup, including the iconic 4Runner and Land Cruiser, designed to go beyond the everyday. And with Toyota's proven reputation for quality and reliability, plus hybrid power on many models, you can get more for every mile and drive for less along the way.

• 27:38Speaker 05

  That's right. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with great resale value. So you could trade in for more when you're ready for your next Toyota. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places.

• 28:03Speaker 05

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• 28:09Josh Clark?

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• 28:24Speaker 05

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• 28:29Josh Clark?

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• 28:51Speaker 05

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• 29:10Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off, because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 29:25Speaker 05

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• 29:53Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 30:16Speaker 04

  All right, let's go back a little bit to 2008. And probably the, well, I was gonna say the darkest incident, but I think the Toys R Us may be darker.

• 30:25Josh Clark?

  I think this one's darker because so many people were involved.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's true. All right, 2008 in Valley Stream, Long Island. It was at a Walmart, and it was 5:00 PM on Thanksgiving.

• 30:38Speaker 04

  So basically, people there the day before, it wasn't one of those days where it was open on Thanksgiving. So they're there to wait till 5:00 AM, so at least 12 hours ahead of time. There were about 1,000 people already set up there. Some people are camping out in tents. They're waiting, they got their coffee, they're probably slugging some Jim Beam to warm the belly. And so the police came out and said, you know what? Let's set up a buffer zone, a barricade, which worked till about 2:00 AM, when that was breached. And the cops basically said, we're out of here. This isn't part of our job.

• 31:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, the crowd had turned angry a little bit after that.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  So, one of the store employees had some family members come and like, they took them out of the line and took them in the store.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Not a good idea.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, but even, even if, even if everyone in the crowd would have been cool with it, I don't think everybody in the crowd realized that they were family members of an employee.

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 31:32Speaker 03

  So, the crowd actually turned, like, ugly.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, they, they broke through the barricade, uh, and were squeezed against, you know how the stores have the entrance and then that little glassed-in vestibule area before, and then usually a second entrance.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  Right.

• 31:47Speaker 04

  To get into the store itself.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  So, there was about, um, by this time, there was about 2,000 people waiting for the store to open. It was 4:00 a.m., the store's gonna open at 5:00, and a couple hundred were in between this little buffer zone and those, uh, front exterior doors.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  And being pressed up, literally crushed to death. Uh, and there's this fascinating article in The New Yorker by a guy named John Seabrook called Crush Point, and it's about not just this incident, but, um, uh, just crushings in general where

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, we did something on that.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  A crowd can crush somebody.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, we covered that, like, years ago.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  It seems like it.

• 32:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, totally.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  But anyway, you should check out that article.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, people literally yelling, "Push the doors in," chanting this, and just before 5:00, it's, it's a pretty bad scene, and, uh, workers in that vestibule area realized that there was a pregnant lady named, uh, Leanna Lockley, being crushed against the doors, and so they were like, "We gotta get this lady in here."

• 32:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 04

  Opened the doors enough to squeeze her through. She got in, um, and then the crowd surged forward, and it just kinda went downhill from there, and they still did the 10, 9, 8 countdown.

• 32:55Speaker 03

  Isn't that mind-boggling?

• 32:56Speaker 04

  It's mind-boggling that they didn't, well, first of all, that the cops left.

• 32:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, they said, they said apparently in a court deposition that the cops, when they left, said, "Controlling this crowd's not in our job description. Good luck." Walmart had hired a security force of two for the event. One person hadn't shown up, the other one was inside the store, not helping. So, they got a bunch of their stock guys, their, their biggest dudes that they could find.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  And said, "Come stand in this vestibule and help anybody who, like, falls down," or if there's a

• 33:24Speaker 04

  That's when I would have been like, "Dude, that's not in my job description."

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Exactly. Well, they, they didn't say that. Um, and when the doors finally opened after the festive countdown, while these people were being crushed against the front.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Unbelievable.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  The doors started to open, and right when they opened, they actually gave way and were literally busted by this wave of humanity.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, and at that point, the employees, um, their little red Rover line was completely ineffective.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  People are getting knocked down. Some of the workers are getting blown out of the way. Some are jumping on vending machines. It's ridiculous.

• 33:59Speaker 03

  What, yeah, a couple of them like climbed up the Coke machine to like

• 34:03Speaker 04

  Get out of the way.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  For safe harbor. One guy who was, uh, in the, in the way of the crowd when the doors gave way. Um, it, this article by John Seabrook puts it that he was blown back.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  So again, there's a vestibule. There's the outer doors. There's the vestibule and then there's inner doors and then there's the store. This guy got blown from the outer doors all the way through the vestibule, through the in, inner doors into the store by this wave of people.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  Two thousand people.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, just coming in all at once, all trying to get their hands on that doorbuster.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, like a, an iPod or something.

• 34:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 04

  So that's not the end of the story sadly. Um, people are getting crushed. This pregnant woman, uh, trips over some old woman. She's on the ground at this point, pregnant.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, Leanna Lockley, right?

• 34:48Speaker 04

  In danger of being, you know, trampled to death. Uh, and then she somehow managed to get to her knees and saw an employee. Um, do you know how to pronounce his first name?

• 34:57Speaker 03

  Uh, Jim Tay Demore.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Jim Tay Demore.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  He, uh, was assigned to help people in case anyone fell. Fell down next to her. The doors fell on top of him. And two thousand people trampled over those doors and killed him.

• 35:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was trampled to death. He died of asphyxiation being crushed under the door and he was a stock guy.

• 35:21Speaker 04

  At six AM, six oh three AM, he was pronounced dead, one hour after the festive countdown.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  To let people get in to shop.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  And that was at the hospital an hour later. So he most likely died on the scene. Um, and

• 35:34Speaker 04

  Pretty awful.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  What's crazy Chuck, if that story's not bad enough. Trampolines are actually really common.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 35:43Speaker 03

  And like, somebody might not die, you might not be asphyxiated, and he might not have died had he not gotten caught under the door. But the people getting knocked down, if you want to see this, just go onto YouTube and type in Black Friday. Not even Black Friday trampolines, just type in Black Friday, and you will see tons of compilations of store security footage of people coming in right when the store opens on a Black Friday sale, just climbing over one another, knocking each other down. Some people help other people up or drag them out of the way or whatever, but just as frequently, people just climb over the ones who are down. It, for a sale, it's, it's insane. I seriously encourage everybody to go check out some video of it.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can't believe that after this incident, that there wasn't a law passed outlawing outright Black Friday sales. You know?

• 36:36Speaker 03

  That is not happening.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  Well, but it's ridiculous because there's, it's economists and analysts have proven that you can have like even, it's not like they'd lose money, they would probably make more money if they didn't have these blockbuster sales. So it's not like they could say, well, you can't, you're keeping me from doing my business.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:54Speaker 04

  I don't know, I just can't believe they can't outlaw something like this.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  So that was, that was a pretty horrendous example of, of a crowd crush and a trampling.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  But other things do happen, you mentioned the Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California, a couple of years back, right?

• 37:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was in 2008, these two women got in a fistfight, and then their husbands got into it, and basically, first of all, these two men were carrying guns into a Toys R Us.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  For, to Christmas shop.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 04

  Which is a little weird. Uh, and they started a shootout with each other, basically.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 04

  And not a very, uh, skilled one, apparently, I read about it, like, one guy forgot to cock his gun.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  The other guy, like, his didn't work either, so they start chasing each other through the store.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  Through the store.

• 37:38Speaker 04

  Shooting at each other.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 04

  Luckily, no one else died.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  Right.

• 37:42Speaker 04

  But those two gentlemen shot each other and died.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, they-

• 37:46Speaker 04

  In a Toys R Us because of their wives got in a fistfight.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, on Black Friday at a Toys R Us during Christmas shopping.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  I'm surprised no one else, if they're running through the store shooting, uh-

• 37:56Speaker 03

  I think everybody cleared out of the, their way.

• 37:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  I, I know, I wouldn't follow them around and be like, hey, guys, what are you doing?

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Where's the doorbusters?

• 38:05Speaker 04

  In 2011, a woman at a Los Angeles Walmart pepper sprayed some people in the video games. Initially, the cops saw it, well, this, you know, lady was some Black Friday jerk.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  Which would make her a pretty awful person.

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, but apparently, the real story is, and she actually got out of it, was that her children were attacked, punched, kicked, thrown to the ground by shoppers trying to get an Xbox from these children. And so she defended her kids by pepper spraying these jerks.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  Right, and this thing still hasn't been settled. The most recent thing I saw was that a year on, so last year, the cops still hadn't filed charges, so I guess they believed her story.

• 38:44Speaker 04

  But she shopped anyway after that happened and bought her items.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  So she pepper sprays a bunch of people, affects 20 people, causes a bit of a trampling pandemonium. And then two horrible things happened after that. One, like you said, the lady took her kids and her items and went to the store and checked out, bought her stuff. Second, the people outside the immediate circle where she pepper sprayed, but still in that little area, stuck around, still tried to get their hands on the sale item.

• 39:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're like checking out and their eyes and nose are watering. There's like, just ring it up, let me get home.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then, of course, Chuck, there's the workers as well.

• 39:24Speaker 04

  Well, yeah, I mean, no one wants to work on Thanksgiving. And this year, like we said, a lot of retailers are opening on Thanksgiving, and there's really not anything they can do about it if they want to keep their job.

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:36Speaker 04

  Which is really sad, and Walmart employees planned a strike, I think, last year in 2012. And it didn't work. Only 26 of the 4,200 stores reported striking employees. So for fear of losing their jobs, probably they had to come to work anyway.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  Well, Kmart in particular was criticized this year for opening at 6:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:58Speaker 03

  And Kmart said, "These people don't have to work, like, we're not forcing them to work." And their critics are saying, "Well, actually, that's not necessarily true, because you're using part-time seasonal employees, and there's no federal mandate that those people have to have holidays or time off."

• 40:12Speaker 04

  Right.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  So therefore, they're in a position where they either work, or you can fire them legally.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 03

  So they kind of do have to work. There's a lot of ugliness on Black Friday, but Chuck, if you are just the average, normal person, like my brother-in-law loves to go Black Friday shopping and he'll like go at midnight and go to the the doorbuster sales, but he's like, he's not crazy.

• 40:35Speaker 04

  Well, the majority of them don't end in violence because this happens all over the country and these are isolated incidents. So it's not like at every doorbuster sale, you're gonna get trampled, but there is a risk.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  There is, and the people you want to look out for, apparently, there was a study of consumer behavior at Black Friday sales, and it was a legitimate study.

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 40:55Speaker 03

  It said that you want to look out for the people who have done a lot of planning because they exhibit the most antisocial behavior, like shoving, pushing, yelling.

• 41:07Speaker 04

  Like they've got their plan in place and nothing's gonna alter that.

• 41:11Speaker 03

  And they feel like they've really put the time in and they're not about to lose that doorbuster item.

• 41:15Speaker 04

  To some jerk who's never done it before and just showed up.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Who just lucked into into line or whatever.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  You know, that like, remember the famous Who concert in the 70s where the people were trampled?

• 41:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's in that New Yorker article, too.

• 41:29Speaker 04

  They got rid of general admission seating after that. Like, why can't they do something about this? You know, I think the law stepped in and said, wait a minute, you can't just open the doors to a concert venue and say, first one in gets front row.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Are they still have general admission?

• 41:43Speaker 04

  Not for big arena shows.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no.

• 41:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  Well, you know that there was like, just one door open and like four others locked?

• 41:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  And people were getting crushed up against the locked doors and the people inside who are working at that concert like, just never opened the doors, even though people were dying.

• 42:01Speaker 04

  I can't remember what we covered that in, man. It's so like vivid in my mind from way early on, because we studied the the science of crowd surges.

• 42:12Speaker 03

  I don't know what it was either because this article's not that old. It's just like

• 42:16Speaker 04

  No, it definitely wasn't about this. It had to do with something else. But um, yeah, dirty, bad stuff, or you can take another approach.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is, this is a different approach, you could say.

• 42:26Speaker 04

  In the 1990s, an artist named Ted Dave gave birth to what's now called Buy Nothing Day, wherein the people are encouraged to not buy anything for 24 hours and to fight the power and consumerism by not showing up at all.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  And not just fight the power, the guy who created Ted Dave, he's a Vancouver guy who came up with it in the 90s. It was also, not just to stick it to the man, which I can only imagine if nobody bought anything in America on Black Friday, what kind of crippling effect that would have on the economy.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  But he was also saying personally, it's, that's a good day to not buy anything and be, take stock

• 43:09Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  of how much you do maybe waste or spend or whatever.

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  Just think about your consumer, your consumerism for one day.

• 43:18Speaker 04

  Dirty hippie.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  And during that time, like, don't buy anything. And don't gas up your car the night before, don't get a bunch of milk the night before, like, just

• 43:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  just be normal and on one day of the year, don't buy anything. And that's Buy Nothing Day. And it's kind of become this big thing ever since adbusters, the people who gave us Occupy Wall Street.

• 43:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  Kind of found out about it and adopted it and just took the whole thing worldwide.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  It's pretty amazing.

• 43:43Speaker 03

  It is. So if you go to a Black Friday sale and you see a bunch of people dressed as zombies, they're making fun of you. They're making fun of zombie consumers. Same with the people who are dressed as sheep.

• 43:53Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  And then there's Zentacaws.

• 43:56Speaker 04

  Maybe I'll do that. Maybe I'll dress up as a sheep.

• 43:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, and just walk around and bah, in people's faces.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Yeah. And then if I'm there, I might, you know, pick up a laptop.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Right. There's also credit card cut-up stations.

• 44:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, where you can get rid of your credit card and shoo, cuz consumerism.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then there's the, um, my favorite, the, um,

• 44:17Speaker 03

  What is it, the whirligig conga line?

• 44:21Speaker 04

  Oh, I haven't heard of that. Is that to disrupt shoppers?

• 44:24Speaker 03

  The whole, the whole point is to just kind of, it serves as a mirror, I think, to people.

• 44:29Speaker 04

  Like, look at yourselves, you're ridiculous. You think I look stupid? You're the one that looks stupid.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  Right. We're not even buying anything. But yeah, so there's, it's kind of a twofold thing. It's one like, just kind of reflecting personally, slash sticking it to the man as an individual consumer, like realizing your power in the grand scheme of things. It all kind of hinges on you spending your money, and if you don't, then you're taking the power back. Or pointing out to other people just how ridiculous they're being at consumers, as consumers.

• 44:57Speaker 04

  People will probably be like, where'd you get that cheap costume?

• 45:00Speaker 03

  Right, exactly.

• 45:01Speaker 04

  What else was that on?

• 45:04Speaker 04

  So I've got one last thing.

• 45:08Speaker 04

  I noticed the other day, I'd never heard of this before, in China, you think we like to shop. Chinese love to shop, and they have something that they have created called Singles Day. And it is on November 11th, so 11, 11, the four 1's stand for single people. And they're basically like, hey, because in China, I think you're encouraged to marry, so this is like, hey, be single, go out and treat yourself to something online and buy something, because it's Singles Day. And you should celebrate being single.

• 45:36Speaker 03

  Really?

• 45:36Speaker 04

  And it's a huge deal. They spent, well, this e-commerce platform in China called Alibaba is the one who really got behind it recently, and they spent $5.7 billion on Singles Day this year, which dwarfs Cyber Monday by three times, almost.

• 45:54Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  And it's the biggest online shopping day in the world, and in the first six minutes this year, just a couple of weeks ago, they spent $160 million in the first six minutes.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 46:07Speaker 04

  Online, in China.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Jeez.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Just to celebrate being single. And they're encouraged to shop for themselves, which I don't think we pointed out, a lot of People on Black Friday, when, um, when asked, say that they do some of the shopping for themselves.

• 46:23Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah.

• 46:23Speaker 04

  It's not all gifts. It's like, I want that laptop.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  I think forty, forty-seven percent or forty-one percent of people who said they're gonna stop on Black Friday, said they'll do most of the shopping for themselves.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  I usually do that. Whenever I go out, like, genuinely Christmas shopping, I'll pick up something for myself.

• 46:37Speaker 03

  Well, these people are saying they're mostly shopping for themselves.

• 46:39Speaker 04

  No, I don't, mostly, but I'll just, I'll just treat myself to a little something, a little something modest.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  And I want to say, Chuck, we're not, we don't begrudge anybody going to Black Friday sales. If that's your thing.

• 46:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 03

  Enjoy it. That's fine.

• 46:51Speaker 04

  Just act like a human being.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't take anyone's life.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 46:55Speaker 03

  Don't trample over somebody who's fallen down. Uh, and, most importantly, have a very nice Thanksgiving. Enjoy the people you're with.

• 47:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  Whether they're friends, family, old acquaintances, new acquaintances. Take some time to really enjoy this Thanksgiving Day and relax and, and just be.

• 47:14Speaker 04

  I agree, my friend.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 04

  It's Thanksgiving, be with your family. Turn off your smartphone, maybe even.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 47:20Speaker 04

  Really get crazy and just be in the moment.

• 47:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 04

  How about that?

• 47:24Speaker 03

  Um, and, we give you permission to shout down anybody who says that, uh, tryptophan is what makes you sleepy.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  You go ahead and send them straight.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  Yep. So, Happy, Happy Turkey Day, Americans and, uh, and other parts of the world. Whatever you're doing, I hope you're well.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. Nice, Chuck. And, Chuck, we should say that, uh, as usual, if everyone wants to send us Happy Thanksgiving wishes, you can send us an email directly to [email protected].

• 47:54Speaker 10

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