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).

643. Why Do Candles Still Exist?