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Episode 765: The Holiday Industrial Complex : Planet Money Where do holidays like National Potato Chip Day and Argyle Day come from? We trace the roots of one made-up holiday until we find out who is running the global holiday machine.

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Episode 765: The Holiday Industrial Complex

Episode 765: The Holiday Industrial Complex

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#NationalCaramelDay AJ Mast/Invision for Werther's Original via AP hide caption

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AJ Mast/Invision for Werther's Original via AP

#NationalCaramelDay

AJ Mast/Invision for Werther's Original via AP

Today, we want to wish you a happy Pet Owners Independence Day! And, a static-free International Amateur Radio Day! Also, a calming National Stress Awareness Day. Today is all of that and more. There are too many holidays to count.

It seems like there are legions of people inventing holidays to get people to buy more things. But even more of them 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" and "Big Black Boots." Find us: Twitter / Facebook.

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