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Episode 836: The Rational Madness Of The Used Car Salesman

CBS Television

You know those local car ads? The ones with a dude standing in a parking lot, offering a bunch of special deals, shouting that he's "craaazy?" Well, there's actually a specific person who created this form of on-air hysteria, an originator of the bonkers used car ad.

Today on the show, we collaborate with Gimlet's Every Little Thing, and go in search of the patient zero of annoying car commercials. We find out who started this advertising model, how it spread, and why there may actually be a method to this madness. It sells cars and we figure out why.

Music: Original scoring by Dara Hirsch.

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Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Karen Duffin (she/her) is a co-host and reporter for Planet Money, NPR's award-winning podcast that finds creative, entertaining ways to make sense of the big, complicated forces that move our economy. She joined the team in March 2018.
Flora Lichtman