Inside Wirecutter's Mystery Pallet Adventure

The Wirecutter Show

The New York Times

Life Hacks, Product Recommendations, Wirecutter, Podcast, New York Times, How To, The Wirecutter Show, Leisure, Recommendations, Products, Testing, Home & Garden, Society & Culture, Education

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 14 January 2026

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever wonder what really happens to the stuff you return? We unpack the world of returns, liquidation, and how to shop smarter in the year ahead.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We waded out later.
0:05.0	It contained 26.8 pounds of plastic and 41.6 pounds of cardboard.
0:11.2	So it was about 68 pounds of trash.
0:14.3	Can we pause for a second?
0:16.0	68 pounds of trash.
0:18.0	Yeah.
0:19.0	Yeah.
0:19.3	And that's, again, with the overwhelm.
0:21.1	Like, you just start, like, everything individually feels small, and then it starts to literally
0:26.7	accumulate.
0:31.2	I'm Kyra Blackwell.
0:32.7	I'm Rosie Garron.
0:33.9	And you're listening to The Wirecutter Show.
0:48.3	Yeah. Gary, and you're listening to The Wirecutter Show. Hey y'all. It's Kyra. It's January, and that means it's maybe the season of returns.
0:54.5	Maybe you got some stuff that you didn't really want over the holidays, and it's time to send it on back.
0:59.7	So we actually recently published a really interesting article on what happens to things that are returned.
1:06.3	Our deputy editor, Anne Marie Conte, bought a huge mystery box of returns to dig into the secondary
1:12.2	market of what really happens to these things when you do send them back.
1:16.2	This episode, Rosie is going to talk with her about the world of returns, what she found
1:20.7	in this mystery palette and how listeners can become savvier in the ways they shop and the way
1:25.2	that they return products.
1:26.8	So after the break,
	...

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