Yule Cats, KFC, and Students Incorporated's Secret Santa

Episode 112 is the one recording all year where Students Incorporated doesn't book a guest. It's the last episode of 2025, the studio is packed with the entire Season 4 team, and instead of the show's usual sit-down interview, host Mr. Jason hands the hour over to headline news, a tour of the world's stranger Christmas customs, and, for the first time in the show's run, a full team Secret Santa gift exchange.

A Giant Cat, a Bucket of Fried Chicken, and a City on Roller Skates

Proud opens the segment with Iceland's Yule Cat, and the name undersells it. It's a giant, vicious cat said to prowl the snowy countryside at Christmastime, and legend has it that anyone who doesn't get new clothes before Christmas Eve becomes its meal. The story traces back to a labor incentive: Icelandic farm workers who finished processing the season's wool in time got new clothes as a reward, and the ones who fell behind were warned about what the Yule Cat might do instead.

BJ follows with something considerably more edible. In Japan, where Christmas isn't a national holiday, the dominant Christmas-dinner tradition is a bucket of KFC. It started with a 1974 marketing campaign called "Kentucky for Christmas," took off, and never stopped. Families now order their party barrels months in advance, and an estimated 3.6 million Japanese households eat fried chicken on December 25th.

James takes the segment to Caracas, Venezuela, where the tradition isn't just going to church on Christmas morning. It's roller-skating there. The city closes its streets to car traffic until 8 a.m. so the whole neighborhood can skate to mass together, with kids reportedly woken up by strings tied to their toes and threaded out apartment windows for early risers to tug on the way past.

Yein closes the segment in Germany with something quieter: families building their own advent calendars instead of buying the chocolate kind, opening a little door or packet each day from December 1st through the 24th to find a small toy, a verse, or a note with an act of kindness to perform that day. The point isn't the calendar. It's spreading small moments of joy across the whole month instead of saving everything for one morning.

The Heart of Christmas Isn't the What

Between the trivia and the gift exchange, the episode pauses for something more reflective. Mr. Jason acknowledges that not everyone listening celebrates Christmas or shares the same faith, then makes the case for why the season still carries weight beyond any one tradition: people have paused in December for centuries to light a candle, long before shopping malls and reindeer entered the picture.

The heart of Christmas isn't about what, it's about who.

For Christians specifically, that's the marker of Christ's birth, described in the episode as "a quiet moment that changed history." But the invitation the show extends is wider than that: whether or not you observe the holiday religiously, the message is one of peace, hope, and a love meant to be shared with everyone.

Clues, Guesses, and a Room Full of Wrapped Boxes

The Secret Santa exchange is a first for the show, run with a simple format: each team member steps to the mic, introduces themselves, describes the gift they opened, reads a one-word clue about the giver, and guesses who it's from, confirmed or denied on the spot by the room.

Some of the guesses lean on the clue as a genuine hint. Sin Sin opens a stuffed sloth with a photo of a crescent moon as her clue and correctly traces it back to Dorcas, who goes by Midnight on the team. Vijay opens a travel mug with the one-word clue "Instagram" and reasons his way to Sin Sin, correctly betting that whoever runs the show's Instagram account is the one who gave it.

Other clues are pure wordplay on the giver's own name. James opens a bottle of Bath and Body Works hand soap with the clue "joke," guesses Robin, and is wrong: the gift turns out to be from a team member actually named Pun. Later, when Mr. Jason opens his own gift at the end of the game (a Lilo & Stitch charm meant for a bag), his two clues are "car" and "tall." He guesses Porsche, and he's right: the giver shares a name with the car brand.

By the time the last gift is opened, close to twenty students have taken the mic, and Mr. Jason, who both received a gift and secretly gave one himself, to the show's graphic designer, closes out the game guessing there's already some quiet trading going on behind the scenes.

Signing Off Until January

The episode's headline news segment stays in the season without straying from real news. Reuters reports Dublin has cancelled its Christmas market for both 2025 and 2026 to free up the venue for events tied to Ireland's upcoming EU presidency. The Associated Press covers seafarer welfare organizations expanding their Christmas outreach at ports worldwide, as shipping delays keep more crews at sea through the holidays. And the Guardian reports a record number of climate and Gaza-related protesters spending Christmas in UK prisons this year, which rights groups tie to a stricter government response to civil disobedience.

It's the show's last recording of 2025. Students Incorporated breaks for winter recess here and returns with a new season episode on Thursday, January 29th, 2026.