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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 my name is Julie Douglas.

Julie, do you have any magical objects with you today? Any good luck charms? Any personal items of importance? Nope. I was thinking about this. I'm not really into the sort of magical thinking lucky items, I have to say. Yeah? Yeah. Wait, hold up your hands. Do you have any rings on? Oh, you don't have any rings on? Oh, look. Nothing. Huh. Okay. Yeah. I mean, maybe I have my lucky underwear on. Maybe I don't. You? I mean, not underwear. No, well, I mean, nothing. Let's see, what do I have on me? Right now, I just have my wedding ring, and I do, so there's a certain amount of magical thinking involved in that. Do I have any, no, I don't have any amulets on me right now. But I, in the past, I've certainly fallen in the habit of using them. I think I've talked about this before.

I previously had a ganisha.

Remover of obstacles.

Remover of obstacles.

The Hindu god that has the elephant appearance.

Also featured on The Simpsons in a hilarious episode.

Yes, yes. Also made fun of there. But I would carry it around because, you know, remover of obstacles and, you know, all this various ties into, ties into creativity and all. And so I would carry that in my pocket. And then eventually I lost it, like it crawled out in the washing machine or something and left me. And so I've always felt, I felt kind of bad. I'm like, where did Ganesha go? Did Ganesha abandon me? And then I found Ganesha, put him back in, and then he disappeared again and has it come back. And also in the past, I'll occasionally, like, pick up a rock, like, if I'm at a beach and I'm having a particularly good day. I'll pick up that rock and take it with me and that'll end up in my

pocket for maybe a year or so, you know, because that kind of comes to symbolize like a nice

memory and so I can take it out and I can sort of think back to that time.

So what I'm hearing is that you have various kinds of woobies. Woobies? Woobies, yeah. Security blankets. Oh, yes. Yeah, I guess they are, to a certain extent, security blankets. I mean, they're not, you know, apples to apples, but there is this sort of warm and fuzzy thing that you're trying to evoke with an object, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, it's weird for me because, like, when I'm, if I'm

holding a Ganesha, I don't actually think that I'm using this as a totem to get in touch with

some sort of a god. You know, like, it's not like a literal interpretation of the amulet, but

there is a certain amount of positive thinking that comes with having it.

And I've also wondered a lot of times when I'm passing by my own desk or co-worker's desk

or seeing somebody's desk on TV where they have action figures,

typically like a dude's desk, you know, have various action figures.

And I wondered to what extent are modern action figures kind of akin to the amulets of old.

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