Small talk: Fast-food eaters, Occupy Harvard, 11/11/11

Kai Ryssdal: This final note this Friday — the news that didn’t make the front page this week — courtesy of Rico Gagliano, Brendan Francis Newnam and the rest of the Marketplace staff.

Brendan Newnam: John Haas, editor of Marketplace, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

John Haas: The conventional wisdom would say that people who make less money go to fast-food places more, but actually a new study out shows that it’s the higher-income earners who tend to go the fast-food joints — people making as much as $80,000-90,000 a year.

Newnam: Is that because they work longer, so they need the convenience?

Haas: I think it’s just because they have health insurance.

Rico Gagliano: Rod Abid, senior producer of the Marketplace Morning Report, what story are you going to be talking about this weekend?

Rod Abid: I’m going to be talking about the most exclusive Occupy Wall Street protest in the country. It is — guess where — Harvard University.

Gagliano: Really? What happened?

Abid: Well, before a big general assembly at Occupy Harvard, the campus cops closed the gates and wouldn’t let any outsiders/riffraff into the protest.

Gagliano: So this isn’t the students, this is the school.

Abid: The school is keeping it as exclusive as the school itself, yes.

Gagliano: You may be part of the 99 percent, but we don’t want you to mingle with them.

Abid: Yes, and now it will cost $60,000 a year to camp in their tent city.

Newnam: Adriene Hill, reporter for Marketplace, what are you going to be talking about?

Adriene Hill: I’m going to be talking about all of the really bizarre things the date 11/11/11 is inspiring people to do.

Newnam: Like?

Hill: Well, there are a ton of marriages going on all over the world today. People are buying lottery tickets with the numbers 111111.

Newnam: That makes no sense to me because if they win that means they have to split it between all these people.

Hill: Exactly. And then I’m kind of embarrassed to admit I bought into one of these bizarre behaviors, which is corduroy day.

Newnam: What does corduroy have to do with this?

Hill: Well what number could possibly look more like corduroy than 111111?

Newnam: 1970.

Hill: Thank you, Brendan.

Ryssdal: The radio show Rico and Brendan do is called The Dinner Party.