In the past few years, we've become familiar with terms like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But today might turn out to be one of the biggest days of this holiday season. It's a day off for many workers. So shoppers are expected to flood stores in a frenzy of last-day buying. The National Retail Federation predicts sales up 3.3% this season over last. Total retail sales are over $450 million. If stores do just a tiny bit better than that, it will be a record. Is the consumer staging a comeback? Here to give us his take, the iconoclastic retail analyst, Howard Davidowitz.
We pause on Christmas Eve to recognize a phenomenon that plagues readers and broadcasters alike, the slow news day. Forget events far and near for a moment. We pay tribute not to the fast and breaking, but to slowness - in baseball, food, dancing and more. Listen in, at your leisure.
New York Jets coach Rex Ryan had to give a press conference explaining an embarrassing foot fetish sex video. Will Julie Taymor's Spider-man ever fly safely? Then, which was sold in stores first: Post-It notes or the Walkman? Luke Burbank is here with the Awesome/Not Awesome news of the week. Usually Luke joins us from Seattle to share a week's worth of awesome happenings in news and pop culture. As a special holiday gift, he joins us now in studio.
For many families, Christmas Eve means a trip to church. Two in five Americans say they regularly attend religious services. At least, that's what they say when asked by pollsters. What they actually do, however, may be quite different. Are Americans any more religious than people in other Western countries? We turn to Shankar Vendantam, author of The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save our Lives.
New Year's resolutions are often made and often broken. But Janice Whaley took hers very seriously. She decided to record an acapella version of every song written by the British pop band, The Smiths.
