Halloween

Flightless Bird

David Farrier

Comedy, Flightless Bird, Documentary, Society & Culture, David Farrier

5 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2022

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this week’s Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets to understand where the heck Halloween came from, a holiday which generates over $10 billion in retails sales in the US each year. Why does an average American spend $60 on the scary day, and is it more tied in with paganism, Christianity, or scary monsters? David meets with Regina Hansen - a writer and scholar who teaches at Boston University - to talk about why we used to carve turnips instead of pumpkins, before calling up professor of philosophy and religion Justin Sledge to talk horror movies. Finally, David decides to use the spooky season to try and communicate with a ghost that’s been waking him up every morning at 3am.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm David Ferrier, a New Zealand are accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick.
0:07.0	Now if it's one thing Americans love doing it celebrating things by making a day out of it.
0:12.0	Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day,
0:15.0	these are all distinctly American things
0:17.0	that have spread their tendrils across the ocean
0:19.0	to places like New Zealand.
0:21.0	Sure, America didn't invent invent them but they made these celebrations
0:24.8	into what they are today. Sometimes Americans are less interested in the day and
0:29.9	more interested in the night which is where this week's episode comes in.
0:35.2	Halloween may have started thousands of years ago as a Celtic festival, but today is dominated by America.
0:42.1	From its obsession with pumpkins and trick-or-treating, to massive pop culture
0:46.2	monsters like Michael Myers from, well, Halloween, and ghost face from Scream.
0:52.2	America shapes what modern Halloween looks like.
0:54.7	Now he's taken his love of fear.
0:58.0	Hello?
0:59.0	Hello, Sydney.
1:01.0	One step too far.
1:03.0	Do you like scary movies?
1:05.0	America dominates when it comes to October 31st.
1:09.0	I mean we have Halloween in New Zealand, but it's pathetic.
1:12.0	New Zealand gets about as excited for Halloween
1:15.1	as America gets for Canada Day. Halloween generates over 10 billion in retail sales here in America
	...

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