Hey everyone, it's Mary. Today is Turkey Day, and the What Next Crew is taking a little break to do all the things you do on this day, like see your family, eat a giant bird, you know the drill.

But in honor of the holiday, we are leaving you with something a little sweet. Some might even say pumpkin spiced.

Our friends over the Great Dakota Ring podcast just cooked up a batch

of the biggest fall mysteries and is serving them hot. For instance, who invented the pumpkin

spice latte? Why do leaves turn red? And how come Malamars are only available once a year? This is

one I'm really curious about. For the answers, I turn you over to host Willa Paskin.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

We tend to think of seasonal traditions as old, established.

They're off-repeated and so presumably something we've done before. And yet,

all traditions have to start somewhere. Santa Claus was not always a fat, rosy-cheeked man with a

white beard and a red suit until he showed up in a Coca-Cola ad in the early 1930s. The same

decade, kids started trick-or-treating. Old Langxin didn't become the New Year's

song until Guy Lombardo's band played it on the radio in 1929. And Mariah Carey's All I Want

for Christmas couldn't top the charts every December until it was actually released in 1994.

And one of the fall seasons, most sippable autumnal traditions did not become established until 2003.

Could you have ever imagined the cultural shift that happened when Starbucks debuted the pumpkin spice latte?

Like just the obsession. Wow.

Don Martin is a writer and podcaster who has thought a lot

about the Starbucks pumpkin spice line since he started ordering Frapuccino's in college.

Back then, I was all about, like, give me a big, frothy pumpkin spice flavored, basically milkshake

that, like, somebody had whispered the word coffee next to.

I think I have a photo with me with some terrible hair of like French, of like French kissing

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