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These L.A. musicians investigated a medical mystery. What they discovered launched a new skincare line

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These L.A. musicians investigated a medical mystery. What they discovered launched a new skincare line

The love story of musicians Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and Mike Einziger was fortified in a lab.

After meeting through a mutual colleague in 2010, the Santa Monica-based couple’s courtship began the following year, as they were collaborating with Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer on a series of film scores. Einziger is best known as the founding guitarist of California-based rock band Incubus. His wife is a renowned composer and violinist for artists including Jethro Tull, Ringo Starr, Dave Matthews Band and Stevie Nicks.

The couple had been seeing one another for only about a year when together they stumbled upon a medical mystery. It resulted in a thrilling scientific discovery, the founding of a biotech beauty company called Mother Science — and their own unique happily-ever-after.

“It was an unexpected journey,” said Simpson-Einziger.

“We were simply trying to answer a series of unanswered scientific questions,” her husband added.

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It all began in 2012 when Simpson-Einziger developed a fungal infection while traveling abroad. A classically trained violinist by trade, she was performing with composer A.R. Rahman in India when she noticed lightened patches of skin on her back and under her bra line. They resembled “loosely drawn flower blooms, with rounded edges,” she said.

After consulting her dermatologist, Simpson-Einziger was diagnosed with a temporary fungal infection called Tinea versicolor, which can lighten or darken skin pigmentation as a result of humidity.

“It’s an imbalance of the microbiome,” Simpson-Einziger said. “The condition was harmless, it resolves on its own and [I was told] that the lightened patches of skin would all go back to normal. But I got so curious.”

“We learned pretty quickly that there were no real hypotheses about how this was happening.”

— Mike Einziger, co-founder of Mother Science and Incubus guitarist

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Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and Mike Einziger both have science backgrounds, which is what inspired their initial curiosity. She majored in biology at UVA and later taught physics and chemistry between music gigs. He studied at Harvard.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

Armed with an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Virginia, the former physics and chemistry teacher pored through science journals like Pigment International and Chembiochem to find articles that better explained the science behind her skin condition. She then began to wonder if whatever had caused it could also be used as a skincare aid that reduced dark spots.

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She enlisted the help of her then-fiancé, Einziger, who also happened to have a background in science. He had recently completed the two-year Special Student program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he studied cosmology and evolutionary biology. He still had access to the university’s considerable research databases, which meant he could help her look up articles on Tinea versicolor. Soon, he joined her obsession.

“There was tons of literature to research, but nothing coming at it from our perspective,” said Einziger. “We learned pretty quickly that there were no real hypotheses about how this was happening.”

Though they still couldn’t prove it, Simpson-Einziger’s theory that her skin condition could be of use in the beauty world kept them both up at night.

“I actually had a nightmare that somebody took her idea,” he said.

It was then, in 2015, that he called Dr. Jonathan Sackier, a family friend and biotech and medical entrepreneur, who co-invented robotic surgery.

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Four silver bottles labeled Mother Science

In 2023 Mother Science launched its first product, the Molecular Hero Serum ($89). The product is meant to reduce hyperpigmentation and brighten skin.

(Al Seib / For The Times)

“I taught his daughter violin lessons when I was a recent college graduate living in Virginia,” Simpson-Einziger said.

“We went to [him] fully prepared that we were going to get laughed out of the room,” Einziger added.

Sackier remembers the couple’s uncertainty during the phone call. “Ann-Marie was in the background, whispering, ‘He’s going to think we’re idiots,’” he said. “[Mike] asked if I could identify what it was about the fungal infection that was causing depigmentation and having identified it, could I synthesize or somehow isolate the chemical so that we could do something to impact pigmentation disorders.”

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A surgeon by specialty, Sackier connected them with his colleague, Timothy Macdonald, a scientist and professor emeritus of chemistry and pharmacology at the University of Virginia.

“I have taken many projects to him over the years,” Sackier said. “I call him ‘Dr. No,’ because he always says, ‘No, that doesn’t make sense. No, that won’t work.’ When I told him this, he went, ‘Holy moly, that’s impressive.’”

Macdonald began advising the couple and helped connect them with a North Carolina-based research organization called PharmaDirections. The drug development company helped design a scientific program to explore various compounds that had caught the Einzigers’ attention while researching.

After countless studies, they discovered that a naturally occurring molecule that had co-evolved with the human microbiome, Malassezin (pronounced mal-uh-say-zin), could be beneficial for sun spots. While the molecule was identified and named in 2001, the Einzigers were the first to recognize that Malassezin could be valuable in the context of skincare.

“Malassezin is made from a yeast,” said New York-based dermatologist Dr. Amy Wechsler. “When someone has the yeast infection on their skin, the skin often bleaches temporarily.”

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The couple filed an application to patent the discovery in 2016. (It was officially granted in 2018.) They then worked with a team of scientists including cosmetic chemist Susan Goldsberry and beauty innovation entrepreneur Tim McCraw to develop Malassezin into a topical serum after previously manufacturing it through a separate process called chemical synthesis.

They began testing to see if it could benefit melanocytes, the skin cells that produce melanin, the dark pigment in question. The couple used their personal savings to fund the initial research.

“I justified it as, ‘How much would I pay for an education where experts in the field teach me how to characterize a molecule and then commercialize it?’” Simpson-Einziger said. “That one-on-one education was worth what we put into investigating this molecule.”

They brought on beauty industry veteran Edna Coryell, McCraw’s daughter, as co-founder and CEO of Mother Science in August 2017 to oversee further research and development, which involved in vitro studies, 3D cell cultures, ex vivo skin testing and genetic analysis. Coryell had never brought a new ingredient to the market until Malassezin.

“It is very rare,” said Coryell. “Truly, as we were going through [the process], it was writing the playbook for this.’”

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The Einzigers also collaborated with Dr. Pearl Grimes, director of the Vitiligo & Pigmentation Institute of Southern California, who specializes in vitiligo and pigmentation disorders.

“This is somebody who’s been looking at Tinea versicolor for decades,” Einziger said. “Her first reaction was, ‘How did you guys figure this out?’”

“I was 100% fascinated,” Grimes said of reviewing their initial in vitro studies. “The science [and] the concept was disruptive.”

Grimes assembled a clinical program, which led to proof-of-concept data that’s since been published in peer-reviewed journals including the American Academy of Dermatology and Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.

She went so far as to take a skin biopsy from her own elbow for lab testing. Using VISIA skin analysis technology, she found that the serum helped fade hyperpigmentation on the sample.

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“That’s when I really knew that it worked,” Grimes said. “I used it in a stubborn area, and I could clearly see via photographic documentation that it was responding.”

“Having holes punched in my face was an ultimate act of belief in what we’ve made.”

— Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger, co-founder of Mother Science and violinist

A couple walking and holding hands

“We had a lot of people who said, ‘You don’t want to do this. This is too hard. It’s going to take years.’” Simpson-Einziger said. “I remember thinking, ‘Years don’t scare me.’”

(Al Seib / For The Times)

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Einziger also biopsied a patch on his arm for Grimes to analyze. “We felt responsible,” he said. “Mine was done before we even did the human clinical study.”

Simpson-Einziger joked that she too “put real skin in the game” after she said she had her face punch-biopsied — a procedure in which an instrument is used to remove a deeper skin sample — three times.

“Having holes punched in my face was an ultimate act of belief in what we’ve made,” Simpson-Einziger said.

Once the Einzigers confirmed that the data supported their initial hypothesis in a human clinical study, they moved forward with a business plan for what eventually became Mother Science. (It joins the couple’s two other co-founded businesses, including Mixhalo, a networking technology company for live events.)

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Mother Science — named as a nod to French physicist and chemist Marie Curie — was born as a result of raising an initial round of approximately $3.2 million in seed funding from a small group of venture capitalists and angel investors, including Hawktail’s Michael Polansky and Drew Houston, the co-founder of Dropbox. After more than six years of research, Malassezin became the DNA of Mother Science, which officially launched in 2023 with its first product, Molecular Hero Serum ($89). The product is meant to reduce hyperpigmentation and brighten skin.

“It’s a powerful antioxidant,” Simpson-Einziger said. “When we started testing, we learned that Malassezin happens to offer superior protection against hydroxyl and peroxyl free radicals, which are [some of] the most damaging. We had this molecule that was going to do something marvelous in protecting the skin.”

A second product, Retinol Synergist ($96), was released earlier this year. And Molecular Genesis Barrier Repair Moisturizer ($68), featuring Malassezin, will be released on Jan. 7.

“Malassezin is really versatile, as it’s able to target hyperpigmentation, improve the skin’s moisture barrier and provide potent antioxidant protection without any irritation,” said Connecticut-based dermatologist Dr. Mona Gohara, who is also an associate clinical professor at Yale University. “The beauty of it is it’s gentle but also highly efficacious.”

In 2016, the same year the Einzigers filed a patent for their scientific discovery, the couple married. They are now parents to four children including a nearly one-year-old son. Because their courtship intersected with their scientific passion project, they consider Mother Science their fifth child.

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“We had a lot of people who said, ‘You don’t want to do this. This is too hard. It’s going to take years.’” Simpson-Einziger said, pausing. “I remember thinking, ‘Years don’t scare me. I have a baby. I’m going to have to take care of a human for 18 years.’ There are no guarantees when you have a child how they’re going to turn out, but you do it out of love, out of passion, and it makes your life richer.”

While the couple continues to grow Mother Science’s product lineup, Simpson-Einziger is most proud of their process of discovery itself.

“We’re excited about contributing to science, and having that legacy as part of our brand,” she said.

She hopes Malassezin will one day be as universally known as Vitamin C and hyaluronic acid.

“I want people talking about Malassezin, not even about our brand, just about Malassezin,” she said.

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In other words, she and her husband hope the ingredients of their products will be front and center — not themselves.

“Nobody is excited about coming to me for their skincare needs,” Einziger, who still regularly sells out stadiums with Incubus, said with a laugh. “I’m just a person who plays music who happens to be curious about the skin microbiome.”

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How does a holiday tradition shine for 104 years? Meet Altadena's village of volunteers

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How does a holiday tradition shine for 104 years? Meet Altadena's village of volunteers

• Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena is a neighborhood holiday lights extravaganza that’s taken place nearly every year since 1920.
• 135 deodar cedars stretching nearly a mile along Santa Rosa Avenue are strung with lights by volunteers each year for the event.
• This year’s lighting ceremony and winter festival takes place from 3 to 9 p.m. — the lights turn on at 6 p.m. — on Dec. 7.

If Santa were skinny and endlessly energetic, he’d be a dead ringer for Scott Wardlaw, president and chief cheerleader of Altadena’s 104-year holiday tradition known as Christmas Tree Lane.

But Wardlaw’s domain is nowhere near the North Pole. Since late September, sometimes in triple-digit heat, he’s been wrangling 20 to 30 volunteers every Saturday and Sunday to get the lane’s 135 massive deodar cedars strung with lights in time for the holidays.

His crew is mostly high school students collecting community service hours along with old hands who have been using wobbly ladders, ropes and pulleys for years to string long strands of lights from the cedars’ graceful branches.

Once the lights are pulled as high as the pulleys will allow, the volunteers whip and flip the strands of lights as best they can from the ground to cover the canopy of bristly branches that stretch nearly a mile along Santa Rosa Avenue (the real name of Christmas Tree Lane) from Woodbury Road to East Mariposa Street.

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Wardlaw is 76 and walks with a limp, but on a Saturday in late October, it doesn’t stop him from striding up and down the block repeatedly, answering questions, encouraging newcomers and demonstrating how to muscle a stubborn string of lights up and over an uncooperative branch.

1

2 A volunteer carries a basket of colorful light bulbs that will be used on Christmas Tree Lane.

3 Clyde Haslett, a teenage volunteer, clutches a handful of orange holiday light bulbs.

4 Young hands screw a red faceted holiday bulb into a string of lights.

1. Scott Wardlaw, 76, president of the Altadena Christmas Tree Lane Assn., pulls on a string of lights while hanging lights on the massive deodar cedars on Santa Rosa Avenue. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 2. A volunteer carries a basket of LED light bulbs that will be used on Christmas Tree Lane. 3. Volunteer Clyde Haslett, 13, clutches a handful of lights to replace burned-out bulbs. 4. Volunteer Clyde Haslett tackles the tedious but necessary job of replacing burned-out lights. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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It takes nearly 10 weekends to get the lights in place in time for the annual Christmas Tree Lane Lighting Ceremony and Winter Festival, which this year is from 3 to 9 p.m. Saturday and includes vendors and speakers outside the Altadena Public Library. The lights come on at 6 p.m., and visitors will be able to walk the lane until 9 p.m. to admire the display, which is then open to vehicles until the lights go out on Jan. 5.

After all that, the volunteers turn out again for another eight to 10 weekends — depending on the weather — to take the lights back down. It’s not possible to leave the lights up during the year, Wardlaw said. High winds and/or heavy rains can damage the strings, and the trees grow so rapidly that lights quickly become unreachable and can’t be removed for maintenance.

Santa Rosa Avenue has no sidewalks or street lights, so for safety’s sake, once it reopens to traffic, Wardlaw recommends that visitors drive the route. And many thousands do every year, despite the old-school, low-tech display: basically long strands of multicolored lights hoisted a good 30 feet high on the cedars’ stately branches, creating a quiet canopy of sparkly colors for the slow-moving cars lined up underneath.

A teenager in a gray hoodie gathers up a long string of lights.

Temple City High School student Desmond Xie, 14, left, gathers a string of lights to be pulled up into one of the 135 deodar cedar trees that are decorated each year on Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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“A lot of people are looking for flashy, blinky lights and the sound of music, but that’s not really what we’re about here,” said volunteer foreman Derek Nowak, a 22-year-old urban planning student at Cal Poly Pomona who began helping with the lights when he was 8.

“We’ve had people ask us, ‘Can’t you at least sync it to some music?’ And we have to say, ‘Well, no, unless you want to sit out here every night and flip the switch,” Nowak said, rolling his eyes.

Nowak is a steady, unflappable volunteer who shows up every Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to noon to make sure the work is completed properly. He grew up around the corner from Christmas Tree Lane, and during the holidays, he’s the one who comes out at night, during wind and rainstorms, to fix lights that aren’t working.

He’s been replacing bulbs and rewiring these light strands since he was a teen under the tutelage of his predecessor, longtime volunteer Tony Ward, and he probably knows the ropes almost as well as Wardlaw, who’s been a volunteer since 2008. But he’s taken aback when he’s asked to explain why such an old-fashioned tradition persists.

“What we’re doing is more for the history,” he said finally. “This is something special for the identity of the community. It makes us unique, in a way.”

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Two volunteers pull on a string of light bulbs as other volunteers look on.

Volunteers Casty Fortich, from left, and Temple City High School student Patience Cam, 14, pull on a string of light bulbs as Scott Wardlaw and Feli Hernandez, right, look on.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Sisters Tessa and Hannah Skidmore seem just as flummoxed by the question about why Christmas Tree Lane has been a hit for generations. Tessa, a junior at John Muir High School, followed the lead of Hannah, a senior, who joined the crew as a freshman to collect community service hours. Students need 40 hours of community service to graduate. Hannah, after some prodding from Wardlaw, admits she has 400 community service hours, many from her years of volunteering at Christmas Tree Lane.

But why? Hannah stares at her sister, who laughs and shrugs. “It’s cool to see your work on display when it’s done,” Hannah said finally. “It’s not always fun to be out here, but it’s pretty wonderful to see what the end is. You couldn’t have all this without community service. I guess it’s because it makes things better.”

Her friend Aaydan Aguilar, another John Muir senior, also started his freshman year. At first, he said, it was just for the community service hours. He learned through the school’s Interact Club that the lights he’d loved all his life weren’t put up by the city. “It was this little community organization that needed help,” he said. “And I take care of my own.”

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Learning that Christmas Tree Lane is a volunteer operation makes an impression on people, said Ward, 80, who began helping with the lights soon after he and his wife, Maureen, moved to Santa Rosa Avenue in 1971.

They started slow at first, helping to install lights on their block, but eventually their involvement grew. Both served as presidents of the organization, and all five of their children were drafted as volunteers. (“It was an expectation in the Ward household,” Maureen said, laughing.)

1 Derek Nowak, 22, prepares to plug in a string of Christmas lights

2 Tony Ward, 80, and his wife Maureen, 74, who live on Santa Rosa Avenue, stand near lights.

1. Derek Nowak, 22, volunteer foreman of the Christmas Tree Lane installations, prepares to plug a string of lights into an electrical box installed on every deodar cedar on Santa Rose Avenue. Nowak has been helping with the installations since he was 8. 2. Longtime volunteers Tony Ward, 80, and his wife Maureen, 74, have been involved with the Christmas Tree Lane Assn. since they moved to their home on Santa Rosa Avenue in 1971. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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But over their decades of service, they never really considered making any changes to the display. “We’ve had feedback,” Tony said, “that people like the small-town atmosphere of Christmas Tree Lane.”

The lane’s history (compiled in a series of short videos by Altadena Libraries, the Altadena Historical Society and Christmas Tree Lane Assn.) dates back to the community’s creation. Back in the 1880s, what is now Santa Rosa Avenue was actually built to be the grand entrance to the home of Altadena’s founder, real estate developer and rancher John Woodbury.

In 1883, Woodbury saw and fell in love with deodar cedars, which are native to the Himalayas in India. The cedars came to Altadena via Italy. After he determined the cedars could thrive in Southern California, Woodbury bought some seeds and had his brother (and partner) Frederick grow them into young trees on their ranch in Altadena. Frederick had already built his house next to the site where John planned to build his.

Two years later, the trees were planted along the long driveway leading to John Woodbury’s future home, under the supervision of ranch foreman Tom Hoag, according to the Christmas Tree Lane Assn.’s official history.

 A silhouetted person bends over a string of holiday lights laid out on the street, checking for burned-out bulbs.

A volunteer from Temple City High School makes sure there are no faulty light bulbs.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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In those days, the long driveway that would become Santa Rosa Avenue was compacted dirt, so lots of effort went into keeping the surface intact during rainstorms, when runoff from the foothills tried to wash it away, Wardlaw said. The solution was mounding the road a bit in the center and building sloping stone-lined ditches on both sides of the avenue to carry the runoff away.

Those slippery ditches still function well today, but they make working against the trees challenging. The adult volunteers have to carefully adjust their ladders to get firm purchase on the stones, so they can climb up to the power boxes installed on the trunk of each tree, a good 15 to 20 feet above the ground. The ladders look a bit precarious, and student volunteers aren’t permitted to use them. But longtime volunteers such as Tony Price and Casty Fortich climb up and down with ease, plugging each string of lights into its power box to make sure they work.

John Woodbury never built his grand house due to the real estate bust of 1887, but the stately avenue became part of his legacy, coming to be known as the Avenue of the Deodars. In 1920, Altadena resident and Pasadena department store owner Frederick C. Nash came up with the idea of stringing lights along the cedars during the holidays.

Nash enlisted help from the city of Pasadena and fellow members of the Pasadena Kiwanis Club to light up a quarter mile of the street.

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Within a few years all the deodars were strung with lights, and ever since, people have come by the thousands to admire them. The only years the lights weren’t on was during 1943 and 1944 — not because of World War II, but because the snowpack was very low those years, causing concerns there wouldn’t be enough water to generate hydro electricity, according to the history.

1 A drawing shows Altadena's Christmas Tree Lane, and text explains the Christmastime tradition.

2 Tall evergreen trees border a residential street. A sign in the middle of the street says "Lights Out."

1. A vintage postcard bearing a 1947 postmark, from the collection of L.A. Times reporter Patt Morrison, tells the story of Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane, although the dates differ from the Christmas Tree Lane Assn.’s official history that Frederick C. Nash started the lighting in 1920. 2. From Dec. 25, 1948: “BRIGHT HIGHWAY — Lights on Altadena’s Christmas Tree Lane went on last night, and more than 1,000 cars witnessed the annual spectacle of brilliantly lighted 80-foot trees,” according to The Times. (Los Angeles Times)

Motorists cruise Santa Rosa Avenue, better known as Christmas Tree Lane, in Altadena.

Motorists cruise Santa Rosa Avenue, better known as Christmas Tree Lane in Altadena, in 2018. The holiday light tradition has continued in pretty much the same way for 100 years.

(Calvin B. Alagot / Los Angeles Times)

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In 2020 and 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic canceled the annual Christmas Tree Lane Lighting Festival, but volunteers still got together to hang the lights.

The lighting ceremony and winter festival resumed in 2022, and the display continues pretty much the same as it’s been for the last century. The Christmas Tree Lane Assn. raises money by selling merchandise during the festival and offering $35 memberships to cover power costs, replacement lights and maintenance on the aging cedars.

Many of these trees are more than 140 years old, after all, and the association is always looking ahead, Ward said. In their native Himalayas, deodar cedars reportedly live many centuries, but their lifespans are typically shorter in other parts of the world. Thus, deodar sprouts are carefully collected on the street and tended by a resident on the avenue until they’re big enough to be replanted. Volunteers fill in gaps with saplings sprouted from mature trees growing right there on the avenue.

There has been one significant modernization: The association saved a bundle on its electric bill about five years ago when it switched from incandescent, easy-to-break glass bulbs to plastic LED lights. The lights are faceted, Wardlaw said, so they give off better light and they rarely break. Best of all, the association’s power bill dropped from about $2,500 to under $500.

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Nowak, the young foreman of few words, oversees all the wiring. It’s his primary job to ensure the lights go on smoothly during the ceremony on Saturday and stay on throughout the season, and he takes his responsibility seriously. He hopes to find a job in the area after he graduates in June because he likes this community. This is his home. And he expects his work with Christmas Tree Lane to continue for as long as it can.

“I know it won’t last forever,” he said. “Eventually there will be a point where time and availability will be harder and harder, but for the time being, it’s something I will be doing.”

Traditions are important, Nowak said. Christmas Tree Lane helps define his community, and for better or worse, he has a role in keeping that tradition alive. “This started before me,” he said. “I don’t want to be the reason it stopped.”

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Jim Gaffigan talks his new special and opening for the Popemobile : Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!

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Jim Gaffigan talks his new special and opening for the Popemobile : Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!
Jim Gaffigan appears on NPR's Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me

Jim Gaffigan is one of the most successful comedians in the country, and has been for more than two decades. His latest special called The Skinny and its out on Hulu now. To celebrate the holidays, we challenge him to choose three real products from the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me Gift Guide.

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MrBeast Tom Brady Throwing Contest Winner Reveals Plan For $100K Winnings

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MrBeast Tom Brady Throwing Contest Winner Reveals Plan For 0K Winnings

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