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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from How StuffWorks.com.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

And I'm Julie Douglas.

Julie, here we are in the holidays, in the midst of it. They're piping the music in to the Mata station. It's some sort of vaccine that's going to protect us. Simply having a wonderful Christmas time. Yeah, that one that makes me suicidal. You know, you're trying to listen to your own music or get stuck in your own book.

At any rate, it's not even December yet. I'm, you know, I'm already a little... Well, I understand the train station is killing your air drums with Christmas music. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, the big thing about Christmas, of course, is the gift giving, right? Christmas, the holidays, the whole whatever you're calling your winter gift-giving shenanigans.

It generally... the gift giving, right? Christmas, holidays, the whole whatever you're calling your winter gift

giving shenanigans, it generally relates to taking something in a box, wrapping it up,

sticking in a bag, creating this air of mystery, right? What's inside it? What could it be? And people

get excited about it, right? Right. So in this podcast, we're basically advocating give the gift of an empty box.

Well, okay, not necessarily an empty box.

And we'll talk about this because maybe you could fill this box with ideas, thoughts, and present it as a present.

I'm sure that will go over really well. Especially with the kids. I mean, they're so cheap. I drew my uncle Craig in the gift raffle this year, so I think I'm going to give him some, like, a box of ideas, and we'll see how that plays out. I think he's going to love it. And I think that you should, if he doesn't understand it, he's going to have to listen to this podcast.

So he can really appreciate that sometimes one of the biggest gifts is a mystery, right?

Right.

And we can't help but get really excited about a mystery, about what might be inside of a box.

And sometimes we approach it, we unwrap it with gusto, and sometimes we shy away. And so we're going to talk about that in various forms today. Right, because that is what is always fascinating about a gift box or a mystery box. It's the mystery. It's not, oh, I want to tear into that thing and get what's in it. And granted, we sort of lose track of that, I think, sometimes with our gift giving, with the, with the use of, say, like, an Amazon gift list and all this, because it's like, it's so regimented. It's like, these are the things I want. These are the things you may give me. Please check them off. And then, you know, people are cheating anyway and seeing. There's no mystery there. Yeah, seeing what they're going to get ahead of time. But, yeah, mystery boxes in general. We were chatting about this. We each have, like, a few different stories that relate to mystery boxes in our own life. Will you talk a little about the art in your house and at your desk? Yeah, yeah. We have... In our house, we have a giant painting, and it's an abstract, and it sort of

looks like it could be maybe like an advertising, like a pole or something that is, that is,

has like a little advertisement on it.

And on top of that is an envelope that has been attached to this painting,

and it is sealed. And there's no way you could remove it without absolutely destroying the

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