Why Do Candles Still Exist?

DUBNER: 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?

Steve HORENZIAK: 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 like 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.

DUBNER: This might be a little clay lamp with oil in it, and a wick or something? 

HORENZIAK: The earliest records that we know about would be in ancient Egypt, a pithy reed just dipped in some animal fat. 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. And then the other jobs of home fragrancing or self-care indulgence — I think all those things together with that primal light experience is just something that really speaks to a lot of people. I personally feel sort of drawn to the light like I’m a primitive bug. 

That was Steve Horenziak; he’s president of the National Candle Association. The candle industry does about $10 billion a year in global sales, and that number has been rising fast. A lot of this increase is driven by scented candles. But there are also tapers, pillars, tea lights, votives, and more. I don’t know about you, but to me this candle boom is somewhat surprising, and slightly weird. The vast majority of the world has access to electricity, and one of the many advantages of electricity is that it eliminates the need for a live flame in your house, a flame that can burn down your house. And yet, for some reason, we still want that portable fire in our homes. Why? One theory involves a word that is spelled h-y-g-g-e.

Meik WIKING: It’s pronounced “hooguh.” 

That’s Meik Wiking; he’s a Danish happiness researcher. You probably know that Denmark is, on average, a very happy place.

WIKING: I think the best explanation of what hygge is, is the art of creating a nice atmosphere. It’s about togetherness. It’s about pleasure. It’s about warmth. It’s about relaxation. And that is a key cornerstone of Danish culture. To Danes, hygge is what freedom perhaps is to the Americans.

But Americans these days also seem to want their hygge. Around half of those 10 billion global candle dollars are spent in the U.S. So, today on Freakonomics Radio: why do candles still exist? What other nostalgic technologies do we cling to? What role does planned obsolescence play in all this? And why do we stuff our closets full of antiquated things?

Gökçe GÜNEL: It almost is like a process of psychoanalysis. 

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DUBNER: What is the most unusual candle scent you’ve ever encountered? 

HORENZIAK: I’ve seen a lot of things like bacon and beer. Some of those are just, you know, interesting but not appealing to me. 

That, again, is Steve Horenziak of the National Candle Association, or N.C.A.

HORENZIAK: The N.C.A. was founded in 1974. We act as the collective voice of the candle industry whenever that’s needed. We promote candle safety, we are an authority on candle manufacturing and science, we support scientific research into candles.

DUBNER: When our daughter was younger, my wife and I forbade her from burning candles in her bedroom because a couple of times she almost burned down the house. Isn’t it just a little bit strange that we are all allowed and even encouraged to use open flames in our homes? 

HORENZIAK: Yeah, so there is a responsibility of the user to use the candle safely. So, if I can, I want to tell you the big three, and make sure that all the listeners are aware of them. 

DUBNER: Please.

HORENZIAK: First of all, when you burn a candle, always keep it within sight. Number two, keep it away from anything that can catch fire. That especially means bedding, but also things like curtains. And number three, keep them away from children and pets. If you do those three things, then the chances of starting a candle fire in your home are greatly reduced.

But not everyone is so careful. According to the non-profit National Fire Protection Agency, candles are responsible for about 6,000 home fires a year in the U.S., resulting in an average of 74 civilian deaths and a quarter of a billion dollars in property damage. By the way, serving as president of the National Candle Association is not Steve Horenziak’s only job. In fact, the reason he has that job is because of his other job.

HORENZIAK: Yeah, my main job is that I am a research fellow at Procter & Gamble. I work in research and development, focused mainly on our air-care business — so, brands like Febreze.

DUBNER: Steve, What does it mean to be a “research fellow” at P&G?

HORENZIAK: The full title is senior director, research fellow. What it means is that I am in charge of research programs to improve our products and develop new products. Unlike an academic where the end goal is just the pursuit of knowledge, our end goal is to make money, to make superior products and create superior experiences for people.

Horenziak has degrees from Michigan Tech and Georgia Tech, in chemical engineering and in pulp and paper science, respectively. He has worked at Procter & Gamble for more than 20 years. P&G is one of the biggest consumer-goods companies in the world; they make Tide laundry detergent, Pampers diapers, Gillette razors, and many other brands you know. Their headquarters are in Cincinnati, where the company was founded in the 1830s as a maker of soap and candles. James Gamble was an Irish-born soap-maker; William Procter was an English-born candle-maker. This was a good time to be a candlemaker.

HORENZIAK: You see the development of automated candle production, and molded candles, and things like that, in 1830 or so. And then you have the discovery of paraffin wax about 1850. Paraffin wax is the solid component of crude oil. And then in 1880 or so, the electric light bulb comes, right? And there was a little bit of a decline. Once we get into the 20th century, the materials that make candles became a lot more widely available, as they were byproducts of that increased demand for oil and stearin from increased meat-packing activity. And candles became a little bit more popular again, but they’re sold more for ceremonies, for traditions like birthdays, novelty candles for holidays. The market stayed pretty steady until the late ‘70s and early 1980s. That’s when you started seeing this shift in the job of candles to more home decor and ambiance, and the introduction of scented candles. That necessitated some innovation, as there really wasn’t enough paraffin wax to make up that demand. So, you see the invention of vegetable waxes, from soy and from palm.

DUBNER: When I think about the boom in scented candles, I’m wondering if you were involved in the controversy over Yankee Candles during COVID? Could you walk us through that?

HORENZIAK: I am sorry. I really don’t know very much about that.

DUBNER: Are you aware of it though? People were writing reviews on Amazon and other places saying that the candles that they were buying from the Yankee Candle Company were defective because they were unscented when they were supposed to be scented. But what it turns out was a lot of people who had gotten COVID had lost their sense of smell. 

HORENZIAK: Now that you say it, I think I do remember something about that. One of the things that I study and am curious about is just the sense of olfaction in general. It’s really one of the least understood senses from a biological standpoint, like all the mechanisms that are involved in actually smelling. It’s, in my opinion, been a little bit overlooked in the medical community, but it is a big, big hit on your quality of life.

DUBNER: I have a slightly different take on that because two members of my immediate family have not had a sense of smell. One was born without — which is apparently not, you know, wildly rare. And one lost it later. I mean, yes, my first reaction was like yours, like, it’s a great loss. On the other hand, you know, we live in New York City, and there are a lot of days when I kind of wish I couldn’t smell. But that got me to wondering on the flip side — because I know that you, as a scientist, have done a lot of research on odors — can you talk about how the world smells on average today compared to the past? I would assume we are in a relatively wonderful-smelling era. 

HORENZIAK: We certainly have a lot of products to keep things smelling better. But overall, in terms of how the world smells, I think it actually smells worse. 

DUBNER: You do?

HORENZIAK: It really has to do with just a lot of crowding. You think about a lot of small apartments, and your neighbor’s cooking, and you’re in there with your pet in a small space. But, yeah, certainly candles and a lot of other air-care products are there to help us with that problem. 

I’m going to interrupt here to say that, while I like and trust Steve Horenziak, I’m not sure I believe that the world smells worse today than it used to. Of course it depends where you were and when, but think about how many seriously stinky things there used to be: raw sewage dumped into rivers; horse manure piled up on city streets; factories and refineries spitting smoke and ash into the air — and then there’s body odor, bad breath, I could go on, but you get the idea. So I would think that the present, on average, smells better than the past. But I do appreciate Horenziak’s point about our olfactory system being underappreciated, and important. Just as a bad smell can ruin your day, a good one can elevate it. Which gets us back to the candle craze. Yankee Candle, one of the biggest candlemakers in the U.S., has more than 600 fragrances. Their candles typically sell for $30 to $40, which puts them in the mid-price range. You can spend much more than that at Diptyque or Jo Malone. Trader Joe’s, meanwhile, sells candles for about $4; some of their recent fragrances are grapefruit and peach black tea.

HORENZIAK: Our industry is pretty accessible, in that almost anyone can start a candle company without a lot of barriers to entry, a lot of big capital needs. As a result, our industry is pretty vibrant and pretty inclusive. Lots of companies are selling candles. We think that there are about 10,000 different fragrances that you can get in a candle.

DUBNER: Can you just give me a few of your favorites over the years, or maybe most memorable

HORENZIAK: For me personally, it really depends on what I’m doing. If it’s the holidays, then maybe I want to get into a holiday mood. Sometimes it can be pine, like trying to say I’m out cutting down a Christmas tree or, you know, maybe it’s more of a baking, a vanilla kind of scent. 

DUBNER: How do you feel about cranberry? 

HORENZIAK: Oh, I personally don’t really like cranberry scent. 

DUBNER: How do you feel about eucalyptus? 

HORENZIAK: I do like eucalyptus. That is a scent that actually has some cooling properties, sort of like menthol, and it gives you that fresh air feel. 

Some candlemakers enlist social-media influencers to promote their products. Here’s Sir Candle Man, who, between Instagram and TikTok, has more than 400,000 followers.

SIR CANDLE MAN: NEST has some gorgeous new candles, but are they good? They sent me one, so let’s try it and rate it. It’s Sarahan Oud and Labdanum. Ooohh … So you know what I say, a good candle has three things: scent, style, and strength. That smells good, y’all.

That good-smelling candle from NEST New York costs $195, plus shipping. If you go to a friend’s housewarming party and give them a candle like that, you are making a statement. Here’s Steve Horenziak again:

HORENZIAK: They come at all price points. You can find scented candles in the $5 to $10 range all the way up to $100 or more.

DUBNER: I have seen those $100 and more candles, and I’m just curious how that market came about. I think a lot of consumers are pretty savvy about how much it costs to manufacture something versus how much it sells for. But I think many consumers are also savvy about — well, once something becomes a kind of object that is beautiful, I understand that that drives prices up. Was that high end of the candle market created by a particular entrepreneur or company? Did it come about more grassroots than that? Tell me what you can.

HORENZIAK: I would say it mirrors some other industries where you’re seeing consumers want more exclusivity, more unique things. And that’s part of what drives prices higher. If you think about a candle on the lower end of the market, you’re probably talking about something which is more mass-produced, using modern manufacturing methods with automation, maybe uses more common fragrance ingredients, whereas on the upper end, you’re talking about more custom-made, custom fragrances, fragrances that maybe are in touch with the latest fragrance trends today, maybe that are associated with luxury brands or celebrity spokespeople, and those kind of things. 

There is one inescapable and slightly uncomfortable fact about a candle: the more you use it, the faster you lose it.

Tim COOPER: To understand product lifetimes, you have to understand the reasons why people buy products. 

That’s Tim Cooper, from Nottingham Trent University, in the north of England.

He is an emeritus professor of sustainable design and consumption, with a background in economics. Cooper has found that more and more people — producers and consumers — are thinking about the lifespan of products.

COOPER: A lot of the interest has come from the electronic sector, not least because that’s an area where products have been criticized by many consumers for not lasting long enough, but also an area where there’s a natural tendency for products to change over time as technology advances. There’s also been interest from the clothing sector because clothing, technically, is what they call a semi-durable product. They can last for a long period of time, but obviously in the fashion sector, clothing doesn’t last very long. There’s also been interest in other areas as well — the car industry, for example, furniture.

And how does Tim Cooper think about the candle industry?

COOPER: We rarely need a candle for light, but there’s a large industry in the use of candles for decorative purposes. And this raises interesting questions: to what extent are products merely functional, or in the case of candles, functioning as they used to in the past? Or are there other reasons why people buy products? In the case of candles, they don’t need them for light, they need them for emotional satisfaction. That explains why we buy so much stuff. It’s not just because we have to have it, or we won’t survive. It’s because we want to have it because it’s doing different things for us. 

What are those different things? For that, I think we may need an anthropologist.

GÜNEL: Whenever the weather gets cold, I feel like I have to buy more candles. 

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The candle — an antiquated mode of lighting technology — is still used in an estimated 70 percent of American households. And we’re trying to figure out why.

GÜNEL: My name is Gökçe Günel, and I’m an anthropologist. 

DUBNER: Hi, Gökçe. Nice to meet you.

GÜNEL: Nice to meet you, too.

DUBNER: Do you personally burn candles.

GÜNEL: Of course. I live in Houston, Texas, where we experience power cuts very often.

Gökçe Günel grew up in Turkey, and is now a professor of anthropology at Rice University. Among her research interests are urban design and energy infrastructure.

GÜNEL: My first book was about the construction of renewable energy and clean technology infrastructure in Abu Dhabi, and it studied the construction of an eco-city called Masdar City. 

DUBNER: What was the intention of Masdar City? 

GÜNEL: The intention was to think about if we could build a city that is zero carbon, If there could be a way to power a city only relying on renewable energy technologies. There was a strong emphasis on the idea of energy transition, that oil would eventually disappear and renewables would replace oil. A lot of people called Masdar City a utopian project.

But the Masdar City project was a failure; after the 2008 financial crisis, the master plan was canceled. This is a common theme in Günel’s research: how utopian ideas often fail in the face of reality.

GÜNEL: For instance, now I’m writing a book about electricity infrastructure in Ghana. There’s all these power plants that are being brought into the electric grid there. Gas-powered power plants mostly, or heavy fuel-oil-powered power plants. When these power plants come on to the grid, the people who build them, they always say, “But don’t worry, they’ll become obsolete soon, and you’ll be able to build renewable energy, clean technology.”

DUBNER: You sound like you don’t like that idea.

GÜNEL: It doesn’t necessarily pan out in that way, because all of those people who are producing electricity by relying on heavy fuel oil or natural gas have an interest in extending that period further. And so all the resources of the country are actually there to maintain that period into the future. 

What Günel is describing here is a blend of two powerful forces: incumbency, and what social scientists call “path dependency.” Both ideas are fascinating, and we could talk about them for hours. But that’s not why we’re here today.

DUBNER: So, the reason I wanted to speak with you is I had this — it’s not quite an idea, just something popped into my mind that struck me as odd, which is that even though we’re well over 100 years past the popularization of electricity, candles are everywhere. I see candles being used by many different types of people for many different types of things, and it kind of astonishes me on the surface because it is an open flame, and there’s some danger, I guess there’s some pollution, and it just feels so outdated. And yet when I looked at the size of the global candle industry — it’s not huge, but it’s significant. It’s a $10 billion industry, and they’re relatively cheap to make, so that’s a lot of candles. And I just got to thinking that this was a technology, if you want to call it that — a lighting technology — that I might have thought would disappear. And yet, it didn’t disappear. I think of it as like a nostalgic technology or some kind of obsolescence that we still love. So, I wanted to talk to you about obsolescence, and technologies that get “replaced,” but the old one doesn’t go away. 

GÜNEL: One reason why we think that things go away is because so much of our understanding of technology is filtered through innovation. There’s so much emphasis on innovation around us, and on invention. And newness kind of clouds our vision, I think. Whereas if we thought about technology through use, then commodities like candles would become so much more significant to us because they’re so broadly used for, as you said, so many different kinds of things. They might not seem inventive to us today, but actually they’ve gone through cycles of innovation themselves.

DUBNER: I’m curious how you would describe the appeal of a candle as an anthropologist. I think all of us can imagine that long, long ago campfire in a cave with our, you know, ancestors sitting around doing whatever they do — eating some meat, playing some games, making some art on the walls, whatever. And it’s lit by a flickering flame. We lived under those conditions for a long, long time. What kind of draw do you think a candle still represents?

GÜNEL: I think the biggest draw is the separation of the fuel from the site of combustion. Once you have the wick and separate the light from the fuel, then there is, I think, a kind of transformation in the mood somehow. Think about the light bulb. The fuel source is somewhere far away. It’s the result of a massive network of people and things. Whereas with a candle, you can hold that supply chain in your hand, almost.

DUBNER: How about ceremonial or religious purposes?

GÜNEL: In the Catholic Church, you have to use beeswax candles still for ceremonial reasons. The Catholic Church would like to believe that human society parallels a bee colony. Because of this relationship to the bee as the producer of a proper society. And so human society, if it wants to model bee society, maybe needs that link.

DUBNER: I looked it up now. I see, of course, you’re right. I did not know that. Yes, “the Catholic Church has historically compared itself to a beehive.”

GÜNEL: There’s something about beeswax candles meeting two needs at once: the need for light and the need for social organization. 

DUBNER: What other functions do you see candles serving? 

GÜNEL: I think maybe having a candle at home makes you feel like you’re still going to be okay, even when the lights go off or if there’s a power cut. You think, you know what? I’m not dependent on the grid operator of Texas for my lighting needs. I can actually maybe just use this candle to read my paper book. 

DUBNER: Now, why a candle versus a kerosene lantern or some battery-powered something or other?

GÜNEL: Hmm, that’s a good question. I guess I’d never thought about all the others. But having a candle maybe has a nicer ambiance. And they’re broadly available. They’re easy to keep around. You don’t have to worry about having a battery. So, there’s a real practicality to it. I think candles satisfy an urge to access good smells easily. During the pandemic, candle sales in North America increased drastically because everyone thought candles are going to make them feel better as they’re facing this world of uncertainty. 

That makes sense, doesn’t it? When the future is uncertain — which, let’s be honest, it always is; no one really knows the future — but especially when the future is unsettling, or scary, you might want to reach back in time for something familiar, for something you can hold onto, for something you understand better than you understand the future. And since 70 percent of American households are still using candles, I figured a lot of people are probably using other older technologies. So we asked you, our listeners, for examples. Here’s what you had to say:

Patrice RICHMAN: An obsolete technology that I cannot live without is my clothesline. I have used a clothesline all my life. I do own a dryer, but I rarely use it.

Corey TRENDA: I have just not been able to give up handkerchiefs. I know that’s kind of a throwback thing. 

Zach SORROW: I cannot live without my typewriter. 

SARAH: When it comes to actually writing down events, I still go to a paper diary with a pencil and an eraser.

Rich LEONARS: I still have an original iPod. 

Mark FRANKEL: I am actually a business owner for the last 25 years online selling mechanical and automatic wristwatches. It still makes a very good business. 

Those listeners were Patrice, Cory, Zach, Sarah, Rich, and Mark. And here again is the anthropologist Gökçe Günel.

GÜNEL: Cassettes are going to make a comeback. I can tell you that.

DUBNER: Seriously?

GÜNEL: I was just in a bookstore in Austin yesterday, and all they had on their shelves were cassettes. They were importing them from all these places that are not necessarily the main centers of the recording industry. A lot of people thought books would be obsolete. I still buy paper copies of books as much as I can. And I love having them. I think I remember things better if I read them in paper. 

DUBNER: Whenever I get a prep for an interview or a script for an episode, the first thing I do is format it the way I want to and then print it, only because I — like you — feel like I have a different relationship to the material when it’s on paper. I also find it easier to organize a long document in my head when it’s on paper because I can remember where things came. I don’t know if you feel the same when you’re reading something, that you have a better sense of where something lies within the full stream of it. 

GÜNEL: Definitely. And actually, when I was writing my first book, I did this exercise where I printed out the manuscript and then cut it into paragraphs. And then I kind of made a jigsaw puzzle for myself, like moving the paragraphs from one side of the book to the other and trying to see how they would sound.

DUBNER: Did it get better? 

GÜNEL: I’d like to think so, yeah.

There is another reason we sometimes cling to the old. Can you say: “planned obsolescence”?

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COOPER: The definition of the term “planned obsolescence” is the deliberate curtailment of the lifespan of a product.

That, again, is Tim Cooper, and he is something of an expert on planned obsolescence. His research started in the early 1990s, when he noticed there was a lot of research being done on recycling — which made sense, because the recycling boom was underway. But he didn’t see anyone looking at planned obsolescence. And that didn’t make sense to him, since if it weren’t for planned obsolescence, there would be a lot less stuff that needed to be recycled. Cooper tells us that it was the journalist Vance Packard who helped popularize the term.

COOPER: He realized there was a growing interest in just how the consumer society was leading to an economy in which things were thrown away and replaced, and the things that were being thrown away firstly could have been designed to last longer but, secondly and crucially, were often thrown away before the end of their useful life.

Among those who study planned obsolescence, there is one foundational story, about what came to be called the Phoebus Cartel.

COOPER: The Phoebus Cartel was an infamous agreement between manufacturers of incandescent light bulbs in the mid-1920s. 

In Greek, Phoebus means “bright” or “radiant,” and it was often applied to the god Apollo. And how did this light-bulb cartel work?

COOPER: Several international companies got together and made an agreement to manufacture bulbs in a particular way.

The problem was that light-bulb technology had, essentially, gotten too good.

COOPER: The manufacturers were concerned that they were lasting so long that sales would decline, as indeed they did in one or two of the countries. And so they came to an agreement that they would fix a time threshold, which was to be 1,000 hours for that to last. And they will monitor each other’s light bulbs. They were required to send light bulbs to a place where they would be checked, and if they were going to last too long they’d pay a fine. So, it was a way of manufacturers agreeing to deliberately curtail the lifespan of light bulbs in their interest. 

These manufacturers included General Electric of the U.S., Osram of Germany, and Philips of the Netherlands. And their collusion was successful: the average lifetime of the bulbs produced by cartel members dropped by a third. But World War II intruded, and the cartel broke up. The idea of planned obsolescence, however — that stuck. This can be a delicate balance for manufacturers: you don’t want your product to wear out so fast that it’s seen as cheap; but, you do want to sell more stuff. And so, a lot of companies in a lot of industries did embrace planned obsolescence — in automobiles, consumer electronics, home appliances, the list goes on.

COOPER: The lifetime of the product only really began to be addressed in the past 10 or 20 years. Governments are still not as engaged as they might be, but there are signs of change. The French government in particular, has taken a lead in this. It’s almost 10 years now since they introduced the legislation banning planned obsolescence by French manufacturers, and not long after that, were the first country to introduce a repairability label for products. 

A “repairability label” tells the consumer how easy or hard it will be to fix the product they may want to buy. This runs into the “right to repair” movement — that’s a push to allow consumers or independent repair shops to fix a product without the original manufacturer’s permission, or parts. Many manufacturers essentially prohibit self-repair. When you take that prohibition and add some planned obsolescence, you’ve got a nice recipe for how to sell more and more new stuff.

GÜNEL: I think planned obsolescence is such a fascinating thing. 

That, again, is the Rice University anthropologist Gökçe Günel.

GÜNEL: I like thinking about planned obsolescence so much because it tells me that obsolescence doesn’t happen unless you plan it.

DUBNER: Do you think that’s really true?

GÜNEL: Yeah, I’d like to make an argument for it.

DUBNER: Okay, let’s have your argument. Because I could imagine that there are things that are perfectly useful, and then something else comes along that’s better, and there was no intention for replacement necessarily, but there’s just a substitute. And then the other one goes away without a plan. But, yeah, I want to hear your argument that all obsolescence is planned obsolescence.

GÜNEL: Looking at the history of planned obsolescence, you know, we talk about it so often with tech companies, right? There’s a lot of activism against planned obsolescence, to say, don’t change this charger or don’t change this cable. Don’t make me keep all of these other cables in my house, and take up so much more space. They want to make sure that their products are constantly circulating, that they’re producing new products that will lead to new revenue streams without necessarily thinking as much about how people’s consumption patterns are affected by that, or how —

DUBNER: Well, is it that they don’t think about it, or they do think about it?

GÜNEL: Or they do think about it. Yeah, you’re right, you’re right. They think about it too much. Exactly, exactly. I think obsolescence, as we understand it, happens through explicit transformations in policy. One of the most recent examples of this has been through product repairing. Let’s say you have a computer, and your screen broke, and you take it to a repair shop, and they have a screen there that would fit your computer, and you mount that screen. But it doesn’t work because there’s software in your computer that prevents salvaged parts from working on your computer. And so then you are forced to go and buy the part that the company now sells to you. A few years ago, I published a piece in an edited volume on obsolescence, and they asked me to select an object and write about it. So, I selected the paper airplane ticket. And I started looking into how it ended. It actually didn’t end because we all switched to electronic tickets. It actually ended because the International Aviation Authorities came up with a policy to say, We’re no longer accepting paper airline tickets. 

DUBNER: Yeah, I haven’t seen a paper ticket in a while — but I still do get a paper boarding pass — if I have to check a bag. I try to avoid checking bags whenever I can, but if I can’t, and then they give you the stickers that represent your suitcase, and you have to keep them somewhere. And it seems to me like the best place to keep them is on a paper boarding pass, just so it’s all together. So, they haven’t actually gone away. And I wonder if that’s maybe a more typical path of a so-called obsolete item. You know, candles are still here. Paper boarding passes are still here. Some people still use fax machines and pagers. We used to rely on horses for all kinds of things: transportation, manufacturing, war, etc. We don’t use them for anything there, but there are so many horses. We don’t sail around the world anymore, but there are still sailboats in the Olympics, and all kinds of pleasure sailors. So, am I thinking about obsolescence just kind of stupidly and wrong? Or at least narrowly maybe?

GÜNEL: No, I think you’re seeing it really accurately, because you’re looking at how there are still all these people using these technologies. They’re not necessarily things that disappear. So, my specialization is in energy. The biggest example that people discuss when they discuss obsolescence in energy infrastructure is whale oil. People say, you know, fossil fuels came around, and they saved the whales. This has become such a strong talking point for thinking about energy transition, to say that renewable energies could come around and replace fossil fuels. But when you actually look at the history of whale oil, you see that we start using oil in the mid-19th century, fossil fuels become more and more pervasive into the 20th, 21th century. And whale oil, the killing of the whales actually intensified the most in the 1960s. The introduction of fossil fuels actually led to the killing of more whales.

DUBNER: Why was that? 

GÜNEL: Because fossil-fuel-powered ships could go around the world and kill whales in a much more effective way. It’s fascinating because, for instance, whale oil became its most expensive in the 1970s, because people who used it as a lubricant for jet engines realized that, Oh, it’s going to be banned soon. So, they started buying it en masse. I think that example really shows me that obsolescence is not just something that happens when one product appears, and one invention just replaces the other, and we all switch from one thing to the next. Actually, products and raw materials are always in symbiosis with one another, and they support each other’s consumption somehow.

COOPER: If you take the issue of planned obsolescence, there are people I’ve worked with who would just regard all industry as evil, as only focused on cutting the lifetimes of products for their own interests. I don’t tend to see it in that way. 

That, again, is the sustainable-design scholar Tim Cooper.

COOPER: I’ve met people in the fashion industry, for example, who are very radical in their thinking. They just need to find solutions. And the solutions they’re looking at in the clothing sector is, how can we retain a profit by making things that last longer? They don’t want to lose market share. If they lose market share, eventually they risk becoming bankrupt. So, the issue for me is how can we help you to do the right thing, to make it commercially beneficial to do the right thing environmentally? Similarly with the consumer, there are people who might argue that the consumer is always right. No, they’re not. Consumers are themselves facing conflicts in the same way that manufacturers and retailers are. What should I do? As an academic, I’m not at the top of the income scale, so I actually can’t afford the best of everything. What I do do is try and minimize any consumption of items that I think aren’t designed to last, even though they might be very cheap, I can afford them, and they might serve a short-term function. It’s not always easy to be a conscientious consumer.

But even if you try, like Tim Cooper tries, to not acquire a lot of cheap, disposable stuff, you can still wind up with a lot of things in your drawers and closets. I went back to Gökçe Günel to talk about this problem.

DUBNER: If you were to come and look in the closet at my office, you would find a small museum of obsolescence, of equipment mostly, that I used heavily for years as a reporter, and as a writer, and as a musician. And, honestly, I have a very hard time throwing it away, in part because I have an emotional attachment to it. You know, this is the laptop on which I wrote that book or whatnot. This is the recording deck I recorded these songs on. And they’re also beautiful often, to me at least. I’m curious if we were to open up your closets, what we’d find.

GÜNEL: Well, I moved around a lot, which means that my closets went through, you know, processes of elimination. But I definitely have all the cables, and all the charging devices, and all the different forms of batteries from the last two decades.

DUBNER: Why?

GÜNEL: I’m not sure. I don’t know what to do with them, I think. Somehow you imagine that maybe they’ll be used for something else.

DUBNER: Do you ever think that some future being will come down and really want to listen to the cassette tapes or watch the DVDs that you left behind, and that they’ll need the cables to do so? Is that why you leave them there? That’s why I leave mine there. 

GÜNEL: I think, that might be the reason. 

DUBNER: Maybe you and I should get together, and you take your closet full of cables and batteries and see how they match up with my closet full of computers and recording decks. 

GÜNEL: I think we can make a collage out of all of that for sure. 

DUBNER: So, the most practical output, you’re saying, is an art project? 

GÜNEL: For now. 

DUBNER: Do you consider yourself a nostalgic person, or no?

GÜNEL: Hm, that’s a good question. I don’t consider myself a nostalgic person, no.

DUBNER: I know a lot of people who are nostalgic and who love keeping things. And I know some people who hate nostalgia and don’t keep anything. Does anthropology have much to say about that split, or that spectrum?

GÜNEL: Anthropology has things to say about hoarding, for sure, and for exchange relations more broadly. I don’t know if anthropologists would qualify people as being on one side of that spectrum or the other. But maybe an anthropologist might ask what is worth keeping for you and what’s not worth keeping for you. 

DUBNER: I mean, I literally ask myself that question about 10 times a day when I’m surrounded by my archives, notes, and drafts of books, yada yada, then all the recording stuff, and equipment. I ask myself that all the time, like what it means to me, what’s it worth to me? And I can’t get to an answer. Can you help me?

GÜNEL: I think it almost is like a process of psychoanalysis, right?

DUBNER: Not almost.

GÜNEL: People don’t keep things only for themselves. You know, I’m originally from Turkey, and when I was visiting my parents this past winter break, they showed me this chest that my great-grandmother had used when she moved from Greece to Turkey. They’ve always had it in the house for, now, more than 100 years. There is a piece of newspaper stuck onto this chest. Until now — I mean, no one in my family now reads Greek, and no one paid attention to what it said, or no one tried to decipher it.

DUBNER: Did you whip out your phone and put Google Translate on?

GÜNEL: Exactly, exactly. And it’s a newspaper article that announces the end of the First World War. And so all of a sudden, that chest has new meaning for everyone in the family. So, anyway, I mean, I think we also keep things for others, that’s what I was trying to say. It’s like there’s an imagination that someone else in the family, or maybe, you know, a friend, or someone else in need might also appreciate whatever object that you kept.

DUBNER: What will happen to that chest eventually when your parents pass? Will you inherit it?

GÜNEL: I think the reason why it was being presented to me this past winter break was to say, here is your responsibility.

DUBNER: And did you accept that responsibility? 

GÜNEL: I didn’t say anything about it, but I think I implicitly accepted it, yes. I prepared myself for it. 

DUBNER: If your parents happen to be listening now, do you want to explicitly state your preference?

GÜNEL: I don’t want to take it away from my sister, though. I mean maybe my sister will want to keep it. If she doesn’t want to keep it, I’m happy to keep it.

DUBNER: There weren’t any candles in that chest, were there?

GÜNEL: I’m sure there were candles when it was first being moved in the early 20th century from Crete to Turkey. I’m sure there were. But now, in its current iteration, there are no candles in it, unfortunately.

DUBNER: Your story reminded me of something that I hadn’t thought about in years, which is: I come from a big family, many siblings. Both our parents are dead. They’ve been dead for a while. And I don’t have many physical possessions of either of theirs. They could all fit in a big shoe box, basically. But one of the things I have is a box of Sabbath candles from my mother, from when she was a child or a young person. And I’m hoarding them, along with all my recording equipment. 

GÜNEL: Have you ever burned them?

DUBNER: No. Uh-uhn, uh-uhn. No, I consider them, — I think “sacred” is not too strong a word, honestly. I realize that’s kind of idiotic. Like, I should burn them. Candles are meant to be burned, and the fact that they represent some emotional memory or nostalgia makes it all the more meaningful to burn them, I would think. Okay, how about this? You and I get together. Next time you’re in New York or next time I’m in Texas, one of us will bring the contents of our obsolescence closet. And I’ll bring those old candles, and we’ll burn the candles and try to make a collage of the old equipment. How’s that sound?

GÜNEL: That sounds great to me. Yeah. That sounds great to me. 

I have to say, this episode didn’t go exactly where I thought it would go when I first started wondering about why there are still so many candles in the world. But I’m grateful it went where it did. My thanks to the anthropologist Gökçe Günel, the obsolescence scholar Tim Cooper, Steve Horenziak of the National Candle Association; and thanks to all the listeners who sent us voice memos about their obsolete obsessions. Take care of yourself — and, if you can, someone else too.

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Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Zack Lapinski; it was mixed by Eleanor Osborne, with help from Jasmin Klinger. The Freakonomics Radio Network staff also includes Alina Kulman, Augusta Chapman, Dalvin Aboagye, Ellen Frankman, Elsa Hernandez, Jeremy Johnston, Gabriel Roth, Greg Rippin, Morgan Levey, Sarah Lilley, and Theo Jacobs. Our theme song is “Mr. Fortune,” by the Hitchhikers; and our composer is Luis Guerra.