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New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.

As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.

So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.

Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.

Hey, it's Guy here. Just a quick note before we start the show.

We have one week left in our annual public radio fundraiser, and we're asking you to show your support for how I built this, and for your local public radio station.

Now you've heard me say it all month, so please just take a moment to give your gift before the end of the year.

Just go to donate.npr.org slash built to support your local NPR station. And thanks.

Okay, a little bit about today's episode. So right around this time of year, I can pretty much guarantee you're gonna be out in the world at a restaurant, at a mall, wherever, and suddenly out of some distant speaker.

And I imagine some of you might really love this song, and others, maybe not so much.

But either way, it was the very first time that chipmunks appeared on the scene as a singing trio. This was 60 years ago.

And now, well, we can't imagine our childhoods without them, and the massive brand they built. And that's pretty much what this episode is about.

It first ran in the fall of last year, and it's super fun episode. Enjoy.

We are told by the record executive, Ross Janice, I want you guys to take the chipmunks on the road. We want you to take them. These are the seven cities we want you to go to, and make this album a hit in these seven cities. And if you do that, we will give you a big national promotion.

We hit the road, we in fact make the album a hit in each one of the seven cities. We come back to the record executive, the record executive tells Janice and me, well, we're not actually going to do the national release and the big marketing.

I said, well, wait, I said, you told us that if you don't have it in writing, you don't have it.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Ross, and I today show how a husband and wife team built a billion dollar brand around three singing chipmunks.

If you were to build, say, a pantheon or a Mount Rushmore of Saturday morning cartoons of the 1980s, a statue to Alvin and the chipmunks would be right there alongside the smurfs, the gummy bears, inspector gadget.

It was one of NBC's biggest hits, three singing rodents, Alvin, Simon, Theodore, and their exasperated but kind manager slash foster dad Dave Seville.

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