Lies We Bought

Why is paper the first anniversary gift, and who wrote the anniversary gifts by year list?

In this one-year anniversary episode, Emily Rask traces the traditional anniversary gift list back to a 1922 meeting of the American National Retail Jewelers Association, where a jeweler complained that a happy marriage didn’t pay off until year 50.

From German silver wreaths and the 1859 Farmer’s Almanac to Hallmark, De Beers and the diamond eternity ring, she shows how a sales list turned into a tradition. Then she puts the idea that a pricier gift means more love to the test with Stanford research on what actually makes a gift meaningful.

Plus, a look back at year one of Lies We Bought and a final exam for longtime Birdies.

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Why do we work 8 hours a day? The 8-hour workday wasn’t backed by science or chosen for workers’ health. It started as a slogan, and it only took hold in America once it made Henry Ford money.

In this episode of Lies We Bought, the Signal Award-winning marketing history podcast, Emily Rask uncovers the real history of the 9 to 5. She follows the 8-hour day from a Welsh mill owner’s 1817 slogan to the 1886 Chicago strike that gave the world May Day, Ford’s famous $5 day, Kellogg’s forgotten 6-hour shifts and the law that set the 40-hour work week. Then she breaks down the marketing behind it: how a raise got branded as a gift, why 9 to 5 feels like the default, and whether school trains kids for the time clock. Finally, she puts the biggest 4-day workweek study yet to the test to see if 8 hours was ever the magic number.

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For a generation of kids, stranger danger was the first safety rule we ever learned. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t take the candy. Don’t get in the van. But the panic behind it was built on statistics that didn’t hold up, and the people who spread them had more than safety on the line.

In this episode, I follow stranger danger from 1950s classroom films to the milk carton kids of the 1980s, the reporting that exposed the numbers, the tracking apps that turned the fear into a business, and the true story of one boy who did everything he was taught. It’s a story about grief, media, and how a slogan can outlive the facts it was built on.

Content warning: This episode discusses child abduction, the deaths of children, and child abuse.

If you have information about a missing or exploited child, contact the CyberTipline at 1-800-843-5678 or report.cybertip.org.

 

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Buy one, get one free sounds like the store is handing you a gift, but the second item has been tucked inside the price of the first one for over a century, and the Supreme Court said so in 1965. Emily Rask follows the word free from Coca-Cola’s first coupon and a paint company’s day in court to the SNL sketch that roasted Jos. A. Bank’s buy one, get three free suits, JCPenney’s failed attempt to take sales away from shoppers, and the MyPillow deal that never ended.

Along the way she looks at the chocolate study that shows why free hits our brains harder than any discount, and she shares the pillow department where a dollar deal cost shoppers more than the Wednesday sale.

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In 1949, a man demonstrating a blender on Cleveland TV got more than 400 phone orders in one day, and As Seen on TV was born.

This episode of Lies We Bought follows the infomercial from that live demo to the Ginsu knife, Billy Mays, the Snuggie, and the FTC cases that finally caught up with the biggest claims. Then we follow the pitch to where it lives now. QVC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2026 as shoppers moved to TikTok Shop, and the urgency of late-night TV followed them into the feed. Plus the trade court case that had to decide whether a Snuggie is a blanket or a robe.

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