643. Why Do Candles Still Exist?

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 (ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/architecture-design-b…), professor emeritus of sustainable design and consumption at Nottingham Trent University.
• Gökçe Günel (profiles.rice.edu/faculty/gokce-gunel), professor of anthropology at Rice University.
• Steve Horenziak (linkedin.com/in/steve-horenziak-045252), president of the National Candle Association.
• Meik Wiking (happinessresearchinstitute.com/experts/meik-wi…), Danish happiness researcher, C.E.O. of the Happiness Research Institute.

• RESOURCES:• "The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy (spectrum.ieee.org/the-great-lightbulb-conspiracy)," by Markus Krajewski (IEEE Spectrum, 2024).
• "The Obsolescence Issue (limn.press/issue/obsolescence)," edited by Townsend Middleton, Gökçe Günel, and Ashley Carse (Limn, 2024).
• More and More and More (amzn.to/41lLIz8), by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz (2024).
• "What Yankee Candle reviews can tell us about COVID (npr.org/2022/10/17/1129542486/what-yankee-cand…)," by Manuela López Restrepo, Christopher Intagliata, Ailsa Chang, and Sacha Pfeiffer (NPR, 2022).
• Spaceship in the Desert (dukeupress.edu/spaceship-in-the-desert), by Gökçe Günel (2019).
• "The Birth of Planned Obsolescence (daily.jstor.org/the-birth-of-planned-obsolesce…)," by Livia Gershon (JSTOR Daily, 2017).
• "Beeswax for the Ages (livingchurch.org/news/beeswax-ages)," by G. Jeffrey MacDonald (The Living Church, 2016).
• The Waste Makers (amzn.to/3J9CPSZ), by Vance Packard (2011).

• EXTRAS:• "Why Do People Still Hunt Whales? (freakonomics.com/podcast/why-do-people-still-h…)" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
• "How to Be Happy (freakonomics.com/podcast/how-to-be-happy-2)," by Freakonomics Radio (2018).

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