643. Why Do Candles Still Exist?

为什么蜡烛仍然存在?

Freakonomics Radio

2025-08-01

47 分钟
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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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  • Do you find it strange at all that so many people still love candles?

  • I mean, ever since we got electricity, candles have been non-essential, let's call them, right?

  • An obsolete technology.

  • But they have not disappeared.

  • Every generation seems to rediscover them.

  • Why do you think that is?

  • Yeah, it's a very interesting question.

  • It's interesting to think about how the job that candles do has changed over time.

  • You could go back 5,000 years to the first things that were light candles,

  • and I would describe it as portable fire.

  • It's portable fire that lets you find your way or lets you do work when it's dark.

  • This might be a little clay lamp with oil in it and a wick or something.

  • The earliest records that we know about would be in ancient Egypt,

  • a pithy reed just dipped in some animal fat.

  • I see.

  • But we see wicked candles maybe 3,000 years ago.

  • A lot of records that the Romans were using them.

  • It's wick and wax and it's essentially what we still have today.

  • Especially in the last 50 years, the job is no longer utilitarian.

  • It might be decor or even if it is about light, it's about setting a mood.