Imagine you're opening an encyclopedia, right?
Because you want to learn about advanced quantum
physics. As one does. Yeah, exactly. And you
flip to the right section. You run your finger
down the page. And instead of, I don't know,
a bunch of equations, the book hands you a 1990s
indie film and a trick -taking card game. aggressive
grunge parody song about a feline. It's just
total information whiplash. It really is. That
is the exact whiplash we are looking at today.
Welcome to this deep dive custom tailored just
for you. We've got a stack of your sources here
and our mission today is to, well, basically
extract the signal from the noise of one very
specific seemingly simple phrase. And that phrase
is cat in the box. Yes. Cat in a box. Because
if you look at the Wikipedia disambiguation page
for this phrase, you don't get a clean definition
at all. Not even close. You go in looking for
a singular objective truth, and you find absolute
cultural chaos. It's just a wildly fractured
map of human curiosity. So we're going to explore
how one single scientific thought experiment
managed to mutate into vastly different cultural
artifacts. across science, media, and everyday
language. And what's really fascinating about
looking at a disambiguation page this way is
that it acts as this unintentional historical
record. Right. Like it doesn't just tell you
what a phrase means. It shows you exactly how
a concept escapes the... the sterile environment
of a laboratory and just gets completely digested
by popular culture. Completely digested. So to
understand the branches of this very weird tree,
we really have to start at the root. We do. The
source notes that the primary definition of cat
in a box, the anchor that shadows everything
else on this list, is Schrodinger's cat. Yes,
the classic. Which is described as a thought
experiment concerning quantum superposition.
Right. Which, I mean... It sounds incredibly
dense when you say it like that. Oh, for sure.
It sounds terrifying. But the core mechanism
is actually quite elegant. So quantum superposition
is a fundamental principle in quantum mechanics.
It basically suggests that a physical system,
like a subatomic particle, it doesn't just exist
in one state. OK. Until you measure it or observe
it. It exists in all of its theoretically possible
states simultaneously. All of them at the same
time. Exactly. And the act of observation is
what forces it to collapse into one single definite
reality. So until you actually look at the thing,
it is basically doing everything at once. Right.
It's the ultimate hidden uncertainty. I always
try to ground this in reality for myself. So
imagine you get a text message from your boss.
Oh, no. Right. It's like 8 .0 p .m. on a Friday.
And all the text says is, We need to talk on
Monday. Oh, that is a deeply uncomfortable superposition.
It totally is. Because until you actually walk
into that office on Monday morning and have the
meeting, that text message is simultaneously
a promotion and a firing. Yeah, you spend the
entire weekend existing in a state of dual reality.
Exactly. The uncertainty is the entire point.
That's a really great way to physicalize the
anxiety of the unknown. And that is actually
very close to why the physicist Erwin Schrödinger
devised his famous thought experiment back in
1935. Wait, really? To physicalize anxiety? Well,
no, not exactly anxiety, but he wanted to point
out how utterly absurd the physics theories of
his time were when you applied them to the macro
world. You know, the everyday world we live in.
Wait, he was making fun of it? Essentially, yes.
He was illustrating a massive flaw. He proposed
placing a cat in a sealed box with a mechanism
like... a vial of poison that has a 50 % chance
of being triggered by a random subatomic event.
OK, poor cat. Right, poor cat. But because the
subatomic event is in a superposition of states,
so it's both happening and not happening, the
strict mathematical interpretation suggests that
until you open the box to check, the cat itself
must be simultaneously alive and dead. both alive
and dead. Right. He was using the absurdity of
a zombie cat to say, look how ridiculous this
sounds if we scale it up to normal sized objects.
OK, hold on. I need to stop you there. Because
if he was essentially trolling his colleagues,
showing how absurd their math was when applied
to the real world, why did this specific imagery
become the defining cultural touchstone? Well,
I mean, we're talking about subatomic particles
and probability waves here. Is it the underlying
science that's sticky to the human brain, or
is it just the imagery of a cat in a container?
I would argue it's almost entirely the imagery,
largely because of what a sealed box represents
psychologically. Right. Think about it. A box
is a universal symbol for a boundary. It's the
physical barrier between the known and the unknown.
Oh, that's true. And human beings are hardwired
to solve puzzles. When you put something inside
a closed container, you are practically demanding
that the brain engage with the mystery. And throwing
a live animal in there just adds, you know, literal
life or death stakes to the puzzle. Precisely.
You take this high level, mathematically exhausting
quantum debate, you strip away all the equations,
and what are you left with? A mystery box. Pure,
visceral narrative tension. What is inside the
box? And that narrative tension... completely
hijacked pop culture. Which, I mean, it makes
perfect sense when we look at the next set of
sources you provided. We're moving away from
science and into film and television. Right.
Because what happens when you take that pure
narrative tension, that feeling of the boss's
unread text message, and you put it on a screen?
Well, creators immediately start using the phrase
to explore unseen or compartmentalized narratives.
Visual media is fundamentally a game of showing
versus hiding. Showing versus hiding, yeah. A
director's entire job is deciding what stays
in the frame and what gets left out. So naming
a project Cat in the Box is doing a massive amount
of thematic heavy lifting before the viewer even
presses play. Oh, absolutely. It sets a tone
immediately. But what I just cannot get over
is the sheer whiplash inducing range of screens.
This phrase targets on our list. It's pretty
broad. Broad is an understatement. Our source
lists an episode of a television series called
You Me Her. Right. Which is an adult relational
comedy drama that deals with complex polyamorous
dynamics. So a setting where hidden information,
secrets, and emotional boundaries are basically
the entire driving force of the plot. Exactly.
Very adult themes. But right below that on the
disambiguation page, it lists Cat in the Box
as an episode of Super Wings. Super Wings. Yes.
Which, if you aren't familiar, is a children's
animated series about transforming airplanes
that deliver That is quite the jump. Right. We
are jumping from complex adult polyamory straight
to animated airplanes for preschoolers and they
are using the exact same metaphor. I'm really
struggling to see how a preschool show is utilizing
high -level quantum mechanics. Isn't it just
a cute name for a literal package? I mean, I
definitely wouldn't call it high -level quantum
mechanics at that point, no. But the underlying
function is identical. How so? For the adults
watching You Me Her, the box represents emotional
entrapment or hidden relational dynamics. For
the toddlers watching Super Wings, the box is
a literal cardboard package holding a physical
mystery. Okay, yeah. But in both cases... The
title signals to the audience that there is a
hidden state waiting to be revealed. It proves
that the tension of the unknown is this universal
storytelling trope, whether you are 3 years old
or 30. That makes a lot of sense, but I have
to say, the best entry in the film section isn't
a TV episode at all. Oh. No, it's a film from
1993, directed by the actress Valeria Galino,
titled Cat in the Box. Ah, yes. And the Wikipedia
page includes one very specific, incredible adjective
to describe this movie. It is an unreleased film.
The irony there is almost too perfect to be real.
Right. Isn't an unreleased film called Cat in
the Box the ultimate real -world Schrodinger's
cat? It absolutely is. Think about it. The public
has never seen it. Does the movie even really
exist? It is permanently suspended in a state
of potential. Yeah, it could be anything. It
could be a cinematic masterpiece, or it could
be an absolute disaster. But because nobody has
ever opened the box to observe it... It remains
both simultaneously. That's a brilliant observation.
And it really highlights how the digital age
catalogs information. Wikipedia dutifully records
the existence of this 1993 film, effectively
putting a permanent label on a metadata box that
none of us can ever open. Exactly. We just have
the label. It preserves the superposition indefinitely.
The film only exists to us as the idea of a film.
It's poetic in a weird, bureaucratic internet
way. It really is. But visual media is only half
the story here. We've talked about passively
watching this tension on a screen, but the metaphor
shifts completely when we move into the literature
and music sections of our sources. Right. We
transition from visual mystery to tonal expression.
And we also get a very condensed, fascinating
timeline here. I do. The entries span primarily
from 2008 to 2019, and they demonstrate just
how elastic the phrase has become. Yeah. In literature,
for instance, there's a short story titled Cat
in a Box by Gareth L. Powell, and that's found
in his 2008 collection called The Last Reef and
Other Stories. Which, just based on a title like
The Last Roof, it sounds like speculative fiction
or hard sci -fi. Right, which makes total sense.
Sci -fi regularly borrows from and explores quantum
physics. It's a natural fit. But then you jump
to 2019, and you have a book simply titled The
Cat in the Box by Chris Ferry. And when we look
at the music entries... The tonal whiplash strikes
again. Oh big time you have a 2009 song by the
band morning wood from their album diamonds and
studs and then a 2015 parody song by Chris Center.
Yes a parody of the heavy sludgy Allison Chains
grunge song man in the box, which is such a specific
choice It creates the most chaotic mental image
for me. Just picture this. Imagine trying to
consume all of this media at the exact same time.
Oh, no. You are sitting in a room blasting a
pop rock track for Morningwood, trying to read
a 2019 book by Chris Ferry. And in the background,
someone is aggressively singing a 90s grunge
parody song about a cat. It's total sensory overload.
It's the disambiguation page come to life. But
look at how the mechanism of the metaphor changes
when you strip away the visual element. Like
in a movie, you can literally show a closed door
or a hidden compartment. But in music, you only
have audio and tone. Right. You can't show the
box. So how does that work? Do you think these
authors and musicians are actively trying to
make a highbrow reference to quantum mechanics?
Like, is someone recording a parody of a grunge
song genuinely thinking about Erwin Schrödinger's
critique of subatomic probability? Yeah. Or has
the phrase just become a convenient, catchy shorthand
for feeling trapped? It's almost entirely the
latter, and it happens through a process linguists
actually call semantic bleaching. Semantic bleaching?
I don't think I've heard that term. Yeah. Over
time, when a highly complex or technical term
enters the mainstream vocabulary, its original
rigorous meaning gets bleached out. Ah, OK. So
the complex math of quantum superposition fades
away, and what is left behind is just the raw
emotional core. Which in this case is? Isolation.
hidden states, or the feeling of being trapped.
Morningwood probably wasn't writing a dissertation
on particle physics, right? Definitely not. They
were tapping into the emotional resonance of
confinement. The actual science dissolves, leaving
behind a purely emotional metaphor. Semantic
bleaching, that makes total sense. The math bleaches
out, the feeling remains. Exactly. But there
is a limit to how much tension you can build
when you are just reading about a character in
a box. or listening to a singer feeling trapped.
You are still just an observer. Right. Which
brings us to the games section of the page. And
this is where the dynamic fundamentally fractures.
Because in games, we aren't observing the box.
We are interacting with it. Yes. This section
is arguably where the media most closely aligns
with the actual mechanics of the original thought
experiment. Really? Oh, absolutely. And the sources
point to a remarkable convergence point around
interactivity. Look at the timeline for these
game releases. Let's look. So we have Cat in
a Box Games, a Canadian video game developer
that published a game called Blue Defense. Right.
Then in the year 2020 alone, we get two completely
separate entries. There is Cat in the Box, a
2020 RPG maker video game developed by Gustav
and published by Psychoflux Entertainment. And
the other one? There is also a 2020 trick -taking
card game, also called Cat in the Box. Games
are a medium that fundamentally rely on the management
of hidden states. and revealed information. This
is why the title is so mechanically perfect for
them. I want to really unpack the mechanics of
that because it's brilliant. Think about the
last time you played a trick -taking card game,
something like hearts or spades. Sure. That entire
genre of game is built around hitting information.
The cards you hold in your hand are essentially
in a closed box. Nobody else at the table knows
what you have. Exactly. Your hand of cards is
in a state of superposition from the perspective
of your opponents. You could have the winning
card, or you could have nothing. Right. And the
reality doesn't collapse until you actually play
a card onto the table. You are forcing the wave
function to collapse every single turn. That's
a great analogy. And in a role playing game,
like the 2020 video game developed by Gustav,
the hidden information is the code of the game
itself. You are constantly opening metaphorical
boxes, exploring new rooms, uncovering plot twists,
testing the boundaries of the digital world to
see how it reacts. The code is a a hidden state
that only reveals its rules as you interact with
it. Which makes me wonder, between a Canadian
video game developer for Blue Defense, an RPG
horror -style game, and a physical tabletop card
game, is a game essentially just an elaborate
box we willingly put ourselves into to see what
happens? I actually pushed that further. A game
doesn't just put you in the box, it makes you
the mechanism. Oh, wow. Does that interactivity
ruin the nature of the thought experiment, though?
What do you mean? Well, think about Schrödinger's
original setup. The scientist, the observer,
is standing safely outside the box, completely
removed from the system. But in a game, you are
inside the system. You are opening the box, but
you are also subject to its rules. I don't think
it ruins it at all. I think it evolves it. It
changes the experience from a passive observation
of uncertainty to an active manipulation of probability.
Active manipulation? Yeah. When you play that
trick, take card game. You aren't just sitting
there waiting to see if the cat is alive or dead.
You are actively using your hidden information
to try and influence the outcome. Interactivity
turns the observer into a participant. It's no
longer just about witnessing the collapse of
the quantum state. It's about trying to control
the collapse. The illusion of control. We want
to believe that if we just play our cards right
or input the right commands, we can guarantee
a favorable outcome. But the uncertainty is always
baked in. Always. Which is why we keep returning
to the metaphor. This is why I love digging into
these sources with you. We've mapped out unreleased
90s movies, grunge parodies, and card game mechanics.
But the Wikipedia page gives us one final crucial
clue. The see also section. Yes. At the very
bottom in the see also section, there is a link
that connects this entire modern pop culture
phenomenon to a much much older linguistic impulse.
Letting the cat out of the bag. Exactly. The
source defines this as a colloquial that means
to reveal facts previously hidden. It's a brilliant
piece of curation by the Wikipedia editors to
link these two concepts, honestly, because it
perfectly illustrates the thematic bridge we've
been walking this entire time. You really do.
Both cat in a box and letting the cat out of
the bag rely on three identical elements. You
have a feline, a container, and hidden information.
But they represent two completely opposite halves
of the exact same experience. Yes. Cat in a box
represents the tension of the unknown state.
It is the suspense before the collapse. Right.
The mystery is fully intact, the box is sealed,
and the potential is limitless. But letting the
cat out of the bag represents the irreversible
consequence of revelation. The wave function
has collapsed. Exactly. The action has been taken,
the boundary has been breached, and the hidden
facts are now out in the open. You cannot put
the cat back in the bag, just as you cannot un
-collapse a quantum state once it has been measured.
Okay, I absolutely love this framing. So, if
Cat in a Box is the suspenseful, nail -biting
build -up in a thriller movie, letting the cat
out of the bag is the spoiler alert posted on
the internet the day after the premiere. That
is a perfect modern translation. One is the intoxicating
anticipation of discovery. The other is the irreversible
aftermath of the truth. But I have to ask the
obvious question here. Go for it. Why is it always
cats? Think about it. If the core meaning across
all of these decades, across science, film, and
games, is just about revealing hidden facts or
dealing with uncertainty, why not a dog in a
box or a bird in a bag? Why did human language
and advanced physics collectively decide that
the feline is the ultimate avatar for hidden
information? Well, while our source text doesn't
explicitly detail the etymological origin of
the phrase, we can synthesize a pretty robust
theory based on the behavioral themes we've discussed.
Okay, I'm listening. Think about the nature of
cats. They are notoriously independent, highly
unpredictable, and fiercely curious. They do
whatever they want, whenever they want. Right.
They navigate the world entirely on their own
terms. They constantly slip into hidden spaces,
they deliberately hide in cardboard boxes, and
they behave in ways that seem entirely inscrutable
to human logic. They really are just walking
superpositions. You never know if they want to
be pet or if they want to bite you until you
reach your hand out to measure the state. That
is exactly it. The pairing of a notoriously unpredictable
curious animal with a sealed hidden container
perfectly mirrors human curiosity. The cat represents
the chaotic, uncontainable, hidden nature of
reality. And the box? The box, or the bag, represents
our futile human attempt to put a lid on it,
to categorize it, and to control it. Wow. Okay,
this has been an incredibly fun journey. We took
a single concept from 1930s quantum mechanics,
a thought experiment designed to mock the absurdity
of subatomic math, and we watched that one idea
ripple outward through the decades. It's been
quite a ride. It morphed into Valeria Gallino's
unreleased 1993 film, a movie that perfectly
embodies the thought experiment by remaining
permanently unseen. It scaled up and down the
television dial, finding a home in both the adult,
secretive drama of You -Me -Her and the preschool,
package -delivering animation of Super Wings.
And we saw it linguistically adapt across mediums,
giving a title to Gareth L. Powell's 2008 sci
-fi short story, Morningwood's 2009 album track,
Chris Center's 2015 grunge parody song and Chris
Ferry's 2019 book. The semantic bleaching. The
signs bleached away, but the emotional resonance
of the boundary remained. Exactly. And then it
collided in the interactive space, becoming the
namesake for Canadian video game developers,
an RPG maker game, and a trick -taking card game.
Proving that we don't just want to passively
look at the box on a screen, we want to manipulate
the hidden information inside it. We want to
be the mechanism. Right. Finally connecting all
the way back to the ancient colloquialism of
letting the cat out of the bag. It really serves
as a comprehensive map of how we process the
unknown. And that leaves us with a final thought
to ponder as we wrap up today. Well, let's hear
it. If a simple Wikipedia disambiguation page
acts as a catalog of all these different cultural
boxes we put this phrase into, what does it say
about human nature? We are utterly obsessed with
containers we cannot see inside. We really are.
We just can't stand not knowing. Or perhaps it's
the exact opposite. Perhaps we genuinely love
not knowing. Next time you encounter a metaphorical
closed box in your life, or your work, an unread
email from your boss, a difficult conversation
you've been putting off, or a creative project
with a totally unknown outcome, ask yourself
a question. What's the question? Is it the actual
contents of the box you are drawn to, or is it
simply the intoxicating thrill of the mystery
itself? Because as long as the box remains closed,
Anything is possible. Just don't let the cat
out of the bag before you're ready. Thanks for
joining us on this deep dive. We'll catch you
next time.