Podcast · Business

Lies We Bought

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 21 min
Latest: 6 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

6 Oct 2026 · 18 min

Laughter Is the Best Medicine: The Science, the Myth, the Markup

Is laughter really the best medicine? In 1964, Norman Cousins checked out of the hospital, moved into a hotel room with a projector and a stack of Marx Brothers films, and became the man who laughed himself well. His story is still repeated everywhere, minus one detail that was in the room the whole time. In this episode, I follow the phrase from a biblical proverb about grief to a medieval surgeon's bedside orders, a Reader's Digest joke column, Patch Adams, and the rise of Laughter Yoga, paid certifications, humor consultants, and wellness apps. Along the way, I look at how toxic…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E34 · 29 Sep 2026 · 21 min

The Five Love Languages: The Dark Side of Love Advice

The Five Love Languages has sold millions of copies and shows up everywhere from first dates to therapists' offices, yet Gary Chapman built the framework from his own notes as a Baptist pastor counseling couples. This episode traces how the book became relationship gospel and what Focus on the Family has said about it. It also looks at why critics warn that treating a struggling relationship as a love problem can be dangerous for people in abusive situations, and where the framework can still help couples. 📱 Follow along on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LiesWeBought/ Instagram:…
E33 · 22 Sep 2026 · 21 min

Smokey Bear: The Wartime Ad That Became a Government Icon

Smokey Bear has been telling America it's your fault since 1944. This episode traces the real story behind the mascot: a wartime scare on the California coast, an ad campaign built to control public behavior, and a real orphaned bear cub who nearly didn't survive the fire that gave him his name. We dig into the Disney licensing deal for Bambi that almost didn't happen, the FDNY captain whose nickname got repurposed for a federal PSA, and how "only you can prevent wildfires" became one of the longest-running and most quietly manipulative campaigns the U.S. government has ever run. Along the…
E32 · 15 Sep 2026 · 20 min

Made in USA: Only 11% of What You Buy Actually Is

The "Made in USA" label feels like a promise. Legally, it's a lot looser than you think, and the amount of stuff that can actually earn it has been shrinking for decades. This episode traces the label from an 1887 British shame tactic to a company that invented its own percentage, to Walmart's founder writing a memoir called "Made in America" while his own company helped build the overseas supply chain the label exists to warn you about. 📩 Sign up for exclusive emails and behind-the-scenes context: https://www.lieswebought.com/ 📱 Follow along on: Patreon:…
E31 · 8 Sep 2026 · 17 min

Extended Warranty: The Fine Print Industry Built on Fear

Extended warranties aren't insurance. Legally, they can't even use the word. They're "service contracts," a separate category with none of the payout rules that protect you when real insurance is on the line, and that one distinction explains almost the entire industry. This episode traces how a fringe product from the 1950s turned into the reason a TV or a refrigerator costs the same everywhere you shop, why the pitch always lands at the very end of checkout and never before, and why the industry keeps growing every year no matter how many times consumer advocates warn people off it. 📱…
E30 · 1 Sep 2026 · 19 min

Guess What Day Is It?: The Line That Took Over Wednesdays

Every Wednesday, GEICO's camel asks what day it is. The original ad that made that question famous racked up more than 16 million views on YouTube and then disappeared, with no explanation ever given. This episode debunks the corporate mythology built up around hump day, including a water-cooler legend at DuPont that's been misdated for years, and traces the phrase back through a 1959 dictionary citation to a 2011 psychology study showing motivation doesn't actually peak in the middle of the week the way the phrase assumes. **Show notes on Patreon** 📱 Follow along on Patreon:…
E29 · 25 Aug 2026 · 17 min

Social Comparison: The Joneses Were Never Real

The phrase "keeping up with the Joneses" comes from a 1913 comic strip drawn by a cartoonist who nearly went broke trying to match his wealthy neighbors and the Joneses themselves never once appeared in it. This episode covers where the phrase came from, how mid-century advertisers like Chevrolet used it directly in ad copy, how the same mechanism scaled into influencer marketing and social media, and what the psychological research says about what constant comparison actually costs people. 📱 Follow along on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LiesWeBought/ Instagram:…
E28 · 18 Aug 2026 · 22 min

The Salt Conspiracy: From Ancient Currency to the Himalayan Pink Marketing Trap

Morton Salt's slogan started as a promise about clumping, not a warning about bad luck, and somehow it became both. This episode traces salt from ancient currency and empire-building to the umbrella girl on your kitchen shelf, then follows the same trick a hundred years forward into the pink Himalayan salt aisle. 📱 Follow along on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LiesWeBought/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lieswebought/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lieswebought Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lieswebought/
E27 · 11 Aug 2026 · 17 min

Expiration Dates: The Corporate Strategy Forcing You to Waste Money

Most of the dates on your food aren't required by any law and weren't checked by anyone. This episode follows the story from a persistent Al Capone myth about spoiled milk, through the shoppers who cracked grocery stores' secret shelf codes in the 1970s, to the one government study that found the whole dating system doesn't reliably measure freshness at all. Plus the single food category where an expiration date actually is required, and the on-air moment I learned all of this the hard way. 📩 Sign up for exclusive emails and behind-the-scenes context: https://www.lieswebought.com/ 📱 Follow…
E26 · 4 Aug 2026 · 22 min

An Apple a Day: How a Dying Industry Invented a Health Myth

An apple a day keeps the doctor away sounds like grandmother's wisdom, but it was a 1904 marketing rescue plan for an industry that had just lost its actual product: booze. Lies We Bought traces the apple from Prohibition-era cider crop to manufactured health symbol, tests the slogan against the 2015 study that actually measured it, and asks why we needed a doctor's approval to eat fruit in the first place. 📱 Follow along on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LiesWeBought/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lieswebought/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lieswebought LinkedIn:…
E25 · 28 Jul 2026 · 23 min

War on Drugs: The Famous TV Ad That Lied to America

The fried-egg ad that defined the War on Drugs was built by a marketing firm, not a doctor, and the science behind it was thinner than the slogan. Lies We Bought traces how a single 1987 commercial turned drug fear into federal policy, who kept the budget flowing for a decade, and why the campaign worked long after the data stopped backing it up. It's a story about advertising as propaganda, and about a slogan so effective nobody thought to ask if it was true. 📱 Follow along on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LiesWeBought/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lieswebought/ TikTok:…
E24 · 21 Jul 2026 · 22 min

Maxwell House: The Presidential Endorsement That Was Total Fiction

I grew up Mormon, which meant coffee was never allowed in my house, so it's a little ironic that this week's coffee myth isn't really about coffee at all, it's about five words Theodore Roosevelt almost certainly never said. By the 1930s, Maxwell House was telling everyone that Roosevelt coined "good to the last drop" over a cup of coffee at Nashville's Hermitage Hotel in 1907. There was just one problem - he'd been dead for over a decade by the time the company started saying it, and the slogan itself had shown up nearly word for word on a Coca-Cola ad years before Maxwell House ever used…
E23 · 14 Jul 2026 · 30 min

The Fake Chocolate Scandal: Hershey's, M&M's, and More

Advertising lies, branding history, marketing deception: Lies We Bought is a weekly deep dive into the hidden origins of the slogans and campaigns that shaped what you buy. This week, the chocolate industry. "Melts in your mouth, not in your hand" traces back to a WWII battlefield discovery and a secret deal that made M&M's and Hershey's family from day one. Then, the current cocoa crisis, the legal "chocolatey" loophole candy companies are using to quietly downgrade your favorite bars, the Hershey's scandal and the grandson who called it out, and the neuroscience proving your brain tastes…
E22 · 7 Jul 2026 · 28 min

The Customer Is Always Right: Ex-Bartender Confession

"The customer is always right" wasn't a rule, it was consumer deception dressed up as a promise. In this episode, I go back to 1905 and the two department store men who invented the phrase to get you through their doors, then trace how it slowly stopped being a marketing promise and became something customers use against the workers who once benefited from it. Along the way: a call center study on what absorbing customer aggression actually does to a person, the year Selfridge's own store publicly walked the phrase back, and the piece of corporate mythology the internet invented to give a…
E21 · 30 Jun 2026 · 23 min

Cash for Clunkers: How America Paid to Crush 700,000 Cars

The slogan that sold America on crushing 700,000 working cars, and the people who quietly paid for it.
E20 · 23 Jun 2026 · 24 min

Pizza Hut's Book It!: The Genius Marketing Trap Behind Childhood Reading

For forty years, Pizza Hut's Book It program gave kids a free personal pan pizza for reading. More than seventy million children went through it. This is the story of what that pizza was actually buying. I trace Book It! from the 1984 education panic that opened the door, through the loss-leader economics that made giving away pizza profitable, to the developmental psychology that explains why a brand wants you at age six. We cover the overjustification effect, the 1973 Stanford reward study, and James McNeal's research on lifelong brand loyalty, plus why Pizza Hut just relaunched the whole…
E19 · 16 Jun 2026 · 26 min

Listerine: How the "Always a Bridesmaid" Ad Invented a Fake Disease

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. The phrase sounds like it has been around forever, but it traces back to a 1925 Listerine ad built around a fictional woman named Edna and a manufactured condition called halitosis. This week I follow the phrase back to its real origin, a 1917 British music hall comedy song, and then into the hands of Gerard Lambert, the mouthwash heir who found an obscure word in a medical textbook and used it to make America afraid of its own breath. We cover Listerine's bizarre early years as a floor cleaner and surgical antiseptic, the fear formula behind the Edna…
E18 · 9 Jun 2026 · 26 min

Seatbelt Laws: The Hidden Financial Motives Behind Car Safety

In 1993, North Carolina wrote four words on a sign and accidentally handed the federal government one of its most effective behavioral control tools in history. "Click It or Ticket" didn't try to convince you seatbelts were a good idea. It just changed the math. In this episode, we follow the full story: the 1959 invention of the three-point seatbelt by Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin, the patent Volvo gave away for free, Ralph Nader's 1965 book that forced the government to act, and the spectacular 1974 interlock failure that taught Washington that Americans would rather cut a seatbelt out of a…
E17 · 2 Jun 2026 · 29 min

"Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner": The Slogan That Sparked a Federal Lawsuit

You've had that slogan in your head for thirty years. "Beef. It's What's For Dinner." Someone built it. Someone paid for it. And the story of who, and why, is way stranger than the commercials ever let on. In Episode 17, Emily traces how a mandatory dollar-per-head tax on every cattle sale in America built one of the most psychologically sophisticated ad campaigns in history, why small ranchers were legally forced to fund a message that undercut their own businesses, and how the U.S. Supreme Court eventually declared the whole thing was never an ad at all. It was government speech. We also…
E16 · 26 May 2026 · 20 min

Vitamins & Supplements: Why They Don’t Need FDA Approval

People take supplements for energy, immunity, or because someone on TikTok said magnesium changed their life. The U.S. supplement industry is worth billions, yet many products reach store shelves without ever proving they actually work. This episode of Lies We Bought explores the legal loopholes that reshaped supplement regulation, and how marketing turned everyday pills into expensive wellness rituals. Take Your Supplements: • The 1994 law (DSHEA) that protected supplement companies • Major retailers caught selling fake vitamins and fillers • The truth about wellness trends like collagen…
E15 · 19 May 2026 · 23 min

Firefighter Gear & Lululemon: The Same Poison Hiding in Our Clothes

PFAS, or "forever chemicals," have been hiding in plain sight for 80 years: in nonstick pans, fast food wrappers, stain-resistant furniture, and the turnout gear worn by first responders. Now they're under investigation in Lululemon clothing, and new research shows they may be slowing firefighters' cognitive function in real time. Host Emily Rask takes this one personally. Her husband Travis is a 20-year firefighter, and in this episode she traces the full story: from a 1938 DuPont lab to a $15 billion legal reckoning, from a West Virginia farmer's dying cattle to the Texas AG's 2026 civil…
E14 · 12 May 2026 · 20 min

Wheaties: How Sports Marketing Invented a Healthy Illusion

For nearly a century, Wheaties convinced America that greatness could start with a bowl of cereal. This week on Lies We Bought, I open the cereal box on how “The Breakfast of Champions” became one of the most successful identity-marketing campaigns created. From accidental kitchen discoveries and failing sales to celebrity athletes, psychological conditioning, and the rise of sports endorsements, the orange box transformed itself into a cultural symbol of achievement. But behind the slogan was a much stranger story involving propaganda-level advertising tactics, celebrity influence, radio…
5 May 2026 · 1 min

Controversy Sells | One-Minute What

P.T. Barnum knew people would pay to see something questionable before they would ignore it completely. This One Minute What breaks down how controversy, curiosity, and the sunk cost fallacy work together to pull you in, and why once you have paid attention, your brain starts looking for ways to justify it. Because they do not need you to like it. They just need you to look.
E13 · 28 Apr 2026 · 19 min

Nike's "Just Do It": The Dark Serial Killer Origin of a Global Slogan

In 1977, a man faced a firing squad in a Utah state prison and said three words. A decade later, an ad man changed one of them and handed them to the entire world. In this episode I trace the full origin of the "Just Do It" campaign, from Phil Knight selling shoes out of a car trunk to the moment Dan Wieden pitched a line Knight famously called unnecessary. The emotional branding playbook, the Jordan deal that was three times the industry standard, the Banned campaign built around a rule Nike never actually broke, and the ecosystem trap that turns your running app into a shoe subscription…
21 Apr 2026 · 1 min

THe Ogilvy Halo Effect | One-Minute What

David Ogilvy famously said, “The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife,” and that belief shaped how modern advertising earns trust and attention. This One Minute What breaks down the halo effect and how brands use subtle signals like style, tone, and positioning to create a high class perception that makes people feel comfortable paying more. Because once something looks premium, your brain starts filling in the rest.
E12 · 14 Apr 2026 · 17 min

Low-Fat Conspiracy: The 1994 Food Industry Scam That Made America Sick

Somewhere along the way, we decided fat was the problem, and built an entire way of eating around that idea. This episode breaks down how that belief took hold, from early nutrition research to government policy to the food industry quietly reshaping what ended up on store shelves. Because what looked like a simple health shift turned into something much bigger, and a lot more profitable, than anyone realized at the time.
7 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Listerine, Halitosis, & The Fake Health Crisis | One-Minute What

Your "morning routine" isn't a health choice - it's a series of manufactured solutions.In this episode of One-Minute What, we’re exposing Albert Lasker, the "Father of Modern Advertising" who realized that the easiest way to sell a product is to invent a problem first.Lasker didn't just meet consumer demand; he created shame. From turning floor cleaner into a cure for "Halitosis" to forcing orange juice onto your breakfast table to save a surplus crop, Lasker’s "Salesmanship…
E11 · 31 Mar 2026 · 15 min

"Bigger is Better": The Secret History of the Corporate Supersize Strategy

You didn't want the Large fries. In this episode of Lies We Bought, we unpack the "Bigger is Better" business model. We explore the psychological traps that make "more" feel like the only rational choice, from fast food menus to the SUV loophole.Inside this episode:<ul><li>The Origin of "Large": How David Wallerstein invented the large fry to boost margins.</li><li>The Decoy Effect: Why pricing tiers are designed to trick your brain into spending…
E1 · 24 Mar 2026 · 1 min

Rockefeller’s Dimes & The Death of Truth | One-Minute What

"Good" companies don't exist - only very good storytellers do. In this episode of One-Minute What, we’re peeling back the curtain on the man who invented the modern "corporate soul" - Ivy Lee.Before Lee, if a monopoly did something wrong, they hid. Lee taught them to do the opposite: flood the zone. By exploiting what psychologists call the "Availability Cascade," Lee proved that if you repeat an idea enough in public discourse, our brains eventually accept it as truth.Stop falling for the story and start…
E10 · 17 Mar 2026 · 23 min

Got Milk?: The Government Deprivation Strategy and the Great Cheese Caves

It’s 1993. You’re one trivia question away from $10,000, but your mouth is full of peanut butter and the milk carton is empty. Welcome to Lies We Bought. Today, Emily unpacks the "Got Milk?" campaign—the marketing "miracle" that saved a dying industry. But the story doesn't start with celebrities and white mustaches. It starts with "swill milk," wartime price supports, and a government that accidentally produced so much dairy they had to hide it in limestone caves.We’re diving into:<ul><li>The Ghost of Aaron Burr: How…

About Lies We Bought

Lies We Bought is a podcast that traces advertising lies and marketing deception back to where they started. Host Emily Rask spent over a decade building marketing and advertising campaigns, and now she's reading the fine print out loud (think everything from "got milk?" to "clean beauty") to show how the message got made and why we believed it. Part branding history, part consumer psychology, part 1950s wink. If you love smart, myth-busting shows about advertising, branding, and the hidden tricks behind the stuff you buy, you're in the right place. Pulled fresh from the oven every Tuesday at 7 AM EST. Hit follow and start questioning the receipts.

Lies We Bought is a English business podcast from Emily Rask. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Emily Rask
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 21 min
Latest episode: 6 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1847691889
Rights: Emily Rask

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