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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio HII brain Stuff.

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Speaker 1: I'm Lauren boglebamb and today's episode is another classic from

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Speaker 1: the archives. We humans are a superstitious lot. Heck, even

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Speaker 1: our distant cousins monkeys have been shown to have superstitious biases,

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Speaker 1: But in humans, those biases tend to be around certain

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Speaker 1: numbers or objects, which got us wondering are those objects

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Speaker 1: ever the same across cultures?

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Speaker 2: Hey, brain Stuff, I'm Lauren boglebomb And even if you

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Speaker 2: don't believe in the power of superstition, you may sometimes

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Speaker 2: find yourself knocking on wood, crossing your fingers, or wearing

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Speaker 2: your lucky baseball cap during the World Series. Although we

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Speaker 2: know scientifically that these things don't actually affect the outcome

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Speaker 2: of anything, we still find them comforting. A twenty fourteen

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Speaker 2: study by behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago suggested

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Speaker 2: that when people perform a physical action to avoid bad

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Speaker 2: luck or harm the ritual their mind. Superstitions span cultures, countries,

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Speaker 2: and centuries. Every culture has its own unique set of superstitions. However,

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Speaker 2: this raises an interesting question, are any superstitions common across cultures?

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Speaker 2: Superstitions revolving around numbers are abundant worldwide, the specific numbers

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Speaker 2: may vary. For example, the number thirteen is widely regarded

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Speaker 2: to bring bad luck in Western cultures. There's even a

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Speaker 2: name for this fear, Triskai decophobia. Other cultures have superstitions

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Speaker 2: about different numbers. In China and Japan, it's the number

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Speaker 2: four because the pronunciation is similar to words for death.

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Speaker 2: The number nine in Japan is feared because its pronunciation

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Speaker 2: sounds like a word for torture. Some Italians consider Friday

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Speaker 2: the seventeenth to be bad luck because the Roman numeral

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Speaker 2: for seventeen x VIII can be rearranged to VIXI. A vixi,

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Speaker 2: translated from Latin, means my life is over. In many

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Speaker 2: parts of the world, the appearance of a black cat

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Speaker 2: is considered bad luck. Although this isn't true across all cultures,

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Speaker 2: black cats still hold a place in global superstitions. In

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Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, cats were worshiped as gods and kept in

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Speaker 2: homes to bring prosperity. In Italy, if your cat sneezes,

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Speaker 2: good luck is on the way. In some parts of Europe,

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Speaker 2: a black cat crossing your path is good luck. However,

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Speaker 2: in the New World, Puritans believed black cats were related

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Speaker 2: to witches and therefore were considered a bad omen. The

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Speaker 2: action of knocking on wood or touching wood for good

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Speaker 2: luck goes back millennia and exists across the world. Some

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Speaker 2: people's believed fairies or spirits lived inside trees, and they

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Speaker 2: would knock on or touch the tree once to request

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Speaker 2: a wish and one more time to express thanks, or

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Speaker 2: they believed that the knocking would distract any evil spirits

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Speaker 2: living there. Similar expressions to knock on wood exist today

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Speaker 2: in Arabic, Brazilian, Finnish, German, Czechoslovakian, English, Greek, and Finnish.

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Speaker 2: Other superstitions across cultures include crossing your fingers for good luck,

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Speaker 2: four leaf clovers as lucky charms, and sneeze is causing

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Speaker 2: some change in luck, it good or bad. As human beings.

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Speaker 1: In an often chaotic world, we all try to control

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Speaker 1: our destinies one knock, number or bless you at a time.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article are any superstition's

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Speaker 1: universal across cultures? On how Stuff Works dot com, written

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Speaker 1: by Deborah Rnca. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership

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Speaker 1: with how stuff works dot com and is produced by

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Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the

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Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

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Speaker 1: favorite shows.