12.25.19 | Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah from The Focus Group. Tim and John share some holiday traditions that they like, then share gift ideas for one another and others in their life.

12.24.19 | Uber and Lyft drivers say they can tell within seconds whether you are a good passenger or not. Something to think about this holiday season when we tend to use a lot of car sharing services. But first, Old Navy wants to concentrate on brand building versus discounting, and schools rethink the demise of teaching cursive in grammar school.

12.18.19 | Sunning the perineum is now a thing, and there was a cluster of deaths in the Star Trek franchise. There is still time to get that special man tailored bathroom products from Hawthorne. Use the code FOCUS for 10% off your first order. Steven Spielberg is our Business Birthday, and Shop Talk looks at the effort going into creating a documentary called “All Men” about the ubiquitous International Male Catalog from back in the day.

12.17.19 | A vegan has a beef with Burger King’s Impossible Burger, and some legal minds agree. Advertised as vegan with 0% beef, the lawsuit claims it’s cooked on the same grill as the beef products—so not 100% free of beef. The bigger question we have is, if you do not like meat, why are you buying products that taste like meat? Then Hallmark reverses a decision to pull an ad from Zola featuring lesbian nuptials and a kiss. Gay Beer is trying to get a foothold in the minds of the LGBTQ consumer. Very tough category and some of the big brands like Miller Lite and Bud have been in the space for a long time-not just Pride.

12.11.19 | Todd Evans introduces Tim and John to The Vibe Spray. The Vibe rids space of negative heaviness, replacing it with lighter, positive energy; all wrapped in a lovely top-note of Rose essential oil. Get yourself some! But first, Walmart in Canada pulls a sweater with Santa allegedly doing lines of cocaine and Peloton pulls their now controversial holiday ad which is partly blamed for their stock dropping 10%. James Kraft, the inventor of processed cheese is our Business Birthday.

12.10.19 | Unicorn, an e-scooter start-up, claims to have spent all of its funding on Facebook and Google ads leaving many who ordered the scooters for holiday gifts with no scooter and no $700 refund. But first, a conservative Utah Senator submits the Fair for All Act as a compromise to the more inclusive Equality Act and neither side seems happy. Then, women in New Hampshire had their day in court about going topless and said not allowing them to show their breast was gender discrimination. The courts disagreed so it is shirts on ladies for the time-being.

12.04.19 | A listener letter from Don G. leads Tim and John to differ in a discussion regarding thin light type versus big bold type. Robert Adler, inventor of the TV wireless remote is our Business Birthday.  Hawthorne men’s grooming products continue to keep Tim and John looking neat and clean. MarketWatch has a calculator to input the cost of your streaming services and detail what the money could do over time having been spent differently.

12.03.19 | One Japanese company is offering its non-smokers an extra six days of vacation annually to account for those who take smoking breaks. We like it. UPS employees go undetected for a decade smuggling drugs and a Catholic priest in Michigan not only denied communion to a legally married 62-year member of the church, but apparently has the support of the Bishop. Oh yeah, it’s because of her legal marriage to a woman.

11.27.19 | A trend in the UK is finding more people foregoing giving things for Christmas and switching to baked goods and experiences instead. While we thought it was about commercialization, the reason these people site is the huge amount of waste that goes into the holiday such as paper, cardboard, and plastic. Then gender reveal parties gone wrong and Timex brings back the digital watch, and Deep Discount features “All About Eve” and “Now Voyager” from the Criterion Collection—two movies you need in your library.