Wonderly Plus subscribers can listen to Business Wars daily ad-free right now.

Join Wonderly Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

If you or someone you care about has cancer,

Macmillan Cancer Support's online community is here to help from day one.

Macmillan's free online forum provides a safe space to get support from both experts and others who've been

there. Members support each other anonymously, sharing what's helped them on a range of subjects,

from dealing with side effects such as hair loss and fatigue, to money worries and managing work,

or talking with children about a diagnosis. There are different forums on cancer types or experiences,

opportunities to ask an expert, and blog posts.

Find support 24-7 from people who get what it's like to have cancer.

To join Search McMillan online community.

Hey listeners, David here.

For this holiday week, we're looking back at some of our favorite stories.

We'll be back next week with brand new episodes.

Enjoy.

From Wondery, I'm David Brown, and this is Business Wars Daily on this Wednesday, September 20th.

In a world, where there's an app for, well, almost everything, it can seem that old-school writing tools like lead pencils are going the way of the dinosaur.

After all, why go through the hassle of sharpening one of those yellow wooden writing things, only to have the tip break off a few minutes into your writing?

And if you can type 40 words a minute with your thumbs, come on, why not?

Well, apparently quite a few of us are stuck to our old ways because about 14 billion pencils are sold worldwide every year. Pencils, as we know them today, got their start

in the mid-16th century. A Swiss naturalist named Conrad Gessner published a drawing of graphite

inside of a wood tube, NPR reports. Oh, as an aside, while we call the material inside of pencils

...