Subtitles section Play video
So today it's gonna be a little bit different
because we received a random package from YouTube.
It is a giant box that says, "Open me."
We have no real context of what's going on,
but we may as well just open it.
-Okay. -Okay.
[BOTH GASPING]
[BOTH SCREAMING]
[LAUGHING]
[DISTORTED LAUGHTER]
"You've been selected to take part
"in YouTube's Great Gift Exchange."
Okay, "The Great Gift Express."
A round trip from here to there.
-This is so cool. -Oh, my gosh.
-This is exciting. This is an exciting day for us. -What's happening?
And it has a little, like, URL
that I think we need to go to, a website.
Do you want to just hit play?
That I can do.
Hey, y'all. I'm Alton DuLaney,
the world's most famous gift wrap artist,
and YouTube's wrap-resentative.
gift-lomat, present-er.
What? What's that?
You have been selected to be a part
of YouTube's Great Gift Exchange,
where you and 11 other creators
will participate in a chain of charitable gift giving.
You will each be assigned a creator,
and as a gift, each of you will make a donation
to a charity that is important to your recipient.
Cool.
And then, you will be whisked away to my magical Wrap Shop...
I bet it's in the North Pole.
Magic.
...where I'll teach you how to gift wrap the creator's donation
-in a thoughtful way. -Oh, fun.
ALTON: And now,
without further ado...
Aah!
I took years of modern dance.
-This guy's hilarious. -Yeah, he's amazing.
Who is he?
Let's find out who your lucky gift-cipient is.
What?
Oh, come on.
-Who is it? -Wow.
The lucky gift-cipient is...
The magnificent Molly Burke.
Yeah! Okay. I'm glad that we know her well, so we can...
I wanna find a way that we can engineer the perfect scientific gift for Molly.
I know.
That's the thing about us, it's gonna have to incorporate science,
especially considering we're horrible at wrapping gifts.
-Yeah. -Like, really.
See y'all at the Wrap Shop.
-On to the train. -I love lightspeed rail.
NARRATOR: A miniature train left Toronto
travelling 50 miles per hour...
I love trains.
This is bumpy.
...to a whimsical winter landscape
which was actually just flour.
It carried with it AsapSCIENCE
and their gifts for Molly Burke.
They arrived at Alton's Wrap Shop
to add their science to his work.
Whoo!
-It's freezing out there. -Ooh!
Quite the storm. Whoops!
-Slammed the door. Sorry. -That's all right.
Welcome to the Wrap Shop.
So, guys, tell me a little bit about Molly Burke.
We've come prepared,
'cause you know we love to have a good diagram.
So Molly is a fellow creator.
She loves makeup. She loves fashion.
She jumped out of a plane, which I would never do.
She also has an adorable dog named Gallop, who's so sweet and kind.
Oh, my God, he... Not!
ALTON: Mmm-hmm.
You also have an extremely calm, amazing dog,
who's also falling asleep right now, which is amazing.
And he's her guide dog, because she's blind.
Oh, okay. The art of gift wrapping is much more than visual.
It's the touch. It's the weight. It's the shape.
And even depending on what you embellish it with,
-it could be the scent of the gift. -GREGORY: Yeah.
People who are blind have other heightened senses.
So I think we wanna figure out how we can incorporate that into the gift.
MITCHELL: That's completely true.
In fact, a 2017 study found
when looking at blind people compared to those who weren't,
they used parts of their brain more significantly
related to hearing, scent and touch.
Within the blind subjects, the study found
that the plasticity of the brain leads to the brain
developing new connections as it adapts and grows.
Significant changes were not only observed in the occipital cortex,
but also areas implicated in memory,
language processing and sensorimotor functions.
In other words, when it comes to senses other than sight,
Molly kinda has superpowers.
And if Molly can learn all that, you can learn to gift wrap.
-Exactly. -Yeah, okay.
That's fair enough.
Clearly, you've given a lot of thought to this,
so what are your ideas for gifts for Molly?
So I come from a lineage of granola parents,
so I was always given around Christmas time, donations,
which was a hard thing to deal with sometimes as a kid,
I'd be like, "Thank you, I did want an action figure, but..."
So, I do... As I became an adult, realized how important this is,
so this is a donation to the Mira Foundation
which she cares deeply about,
and it provides guide dogs to people aged 11 to 16.
So that's gonna be one part of the gift.
The second part is actually a cookbook for the blind
by a really famous chef named Christine Ha, who is blind herself.
Is there anything else we need to take into consideration?
Yes, so we are always thinking about the climate crisis,
and especially around the holidays, because in fact,
the holidays can be a little trashy.
[LAUGHS] I'm a little trashy, too.
[BOTH LAUGHING]
In America, between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day,
there's a 25 percent increase in trash.
Within that timeframe, it actually means, every week
there's an extra one ton of trash produced.
A lot of people think that wrapping paper is recyclable.
But if there's ever glitter on it, or you're gonna tape on it,
it also can't be recycled.
And this is what we call "wish-cycling,"
when you just throw something in the recycling
assuming it is going to get recycled
when in fact, it can't.
So I hope this isn't too much of an issue
that you know we don't wanna create that much waste.
I don't know, is this gonna be a challenge?
I've wrapped gifts in everything, even to dollar bills,
which is kind of the ultimate recyclable material.
Whoa!
And also the best gift to get, probably.
Yeah, and then right after you can go straight to the strip club.
You ready?
So, you all wanna head over to the gift wrap studio
and do some wrapping?
With that hat on and you saying, "Y'all,"
was very exciting for me.
GREGORY: I'm genuinely, like, so scared to wrap gifts.
-Oh, my gosh. I'm so nervous. -MITCHELL: Here we are.
My fight-or-flight response is going off in my head.
And just so you know, there's actually toys in these boxes,
and these gifts will go to children in need.
So, I'm counting on you to do a good job.
Yeah, I kinda feel like I'm at a test
that I literally haven't prepared for at all,
so thank you for bringing me back to my university years of stress.
Let's do a little gift wrapping here.
Now, typically with a box, there is a top and a bottom to the gift...
Hello!
Okay, we need to move on.
ALTON: You always wrap from the bottom so you do it face down.
And now this is how I measure what I'm working with here.
I just do a little crease there.
-Wow! -So that makes a little line,
and so that's the edge of your box,
so now you just wanna cut an inch or so over that.
No. Why was I... [SPUTTERS]
I can't do anything straight.
MITCHELL: All right.
So on your little mark there, you're gonna fold that under.
And now this goes on top.
GREGORY: Oh.
Because that minimizes your seams when you're finished.
-Oh! Okay. -ALTON: Perfect.