Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio HII brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren boglebamb and today's episode is another classic from
Speaker 1: the archives. We humans are a superstitious lot. Heck, even
Speaker 1: our distant cousins monkeys have been shown to have superstitious biases,
Speaker 1: But in humans, those biases tend to be around certain
Speaker 1: numbers or objects, which got us wondering are those objects
Speaker 1: ever the same across cultures?
Speaker 2: Hey, brain Stuff, I'm Lauren boglebomb And even if you
Speaker 2: don't believe in the power of superstition, you may sometimes
Speaker 2: find yourself knocking on wood, crossing your fingers, or wearing
Speaker 2: your lucky baseball cap during the World Series. Although we
Speaker 2: know scientifically that these things don't actually affect the outcome
Speaker 2: of anything, we still find them comforting. A twenty fourteen
Speaker 2: study by behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago suggested
Speaker 2: that when people perform a physical action to avoid bad
Speaker 2: luck or harm the ritual their mind. Superstitions span cultures, countries,
Speaker 2: and centuries. Every culture has its own unique set of superstitions. However,
Speaker 2: this raises an interesting question, are any superstitions common across cultures?
Speaker 2: Superstitions revolving around numbers are abundant worldwide, the specific numbers
Speaker 2: may vary. For example, the number thirteen is widely regarded
Speaker 2: to bring bad luck in Western cultures. There's even a
Speaker 2: name for this fear, Triskai decophobia. Other cultures have superstitions
Speaker 2: about different numbers. In China and Japan, it's the number
Speaker 2: four because the pronunciation is similar to words for death.
Speaker 2: The number nine in Japan is feared because its pronunciation
Speaker 2: sounds like a word for torture. Some Italians consider Friday
Speaker 2: the seventeenth to be bad luck because the Roman numeral
Speaker 2: for seventeen x VIII can be rearranged to VIXI. A vixi,
Speaker 2: translated from Latin, means my life is over. In many
Speaker 2: parts of the world, the appearance of a black cat
Speaker 2: is considered bad luck. Although this isn't true across all cultures,
Speaker 2: black cats still hold a place in global superstitions. In
Speaker 2: ancient Egypt, cats were worshiped as gods and kept in
Speaker 2: homes to bring prosperity. In Italy, if your cat sneezes,
Speaker 2: good luck is on the way. In some parts of Europe,
Speaker 2: a black cat crossing your path is good luck. However,
Speaker 2: in the New World, Puritans believed black cats were related
Speaker 2: to witches and therefore were considered a bad omen. The
Speaker 2: action of knocking on wood or touching wood for good
Speaker 2: luck goes back millennia and exists across the world. Some
Speaker 2: people's believed fairies or spirits lived inside trees, and they
Speaker 2: would knock on or touch the tree once to request
Speaker 2: a wish and one more time to express thanks, or
Speaker 2: they believed that the knocking would distract any evil spirits
Speaker 2: living there. Similar expressions to knock on wood exist today
Speaker 2: in Arabic, Brazilian, Finnish, German, Czechoslovakian, English, Greek, and Finnish.
Speaker 2: Other superstitions across cultures include crossing your fingers for good luck,
Speaker 2: four leaf clovers as lucky charms, and sneeze is causing
Speaker 2: some change in luck, it good or bad. As human beings.
Speaker 1: In an often chaotic world, we all try to control
Speaker 1: our destinies one knock, number or bless you at a time.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article are any superstition's
Speaker 1: universal across cultures? On how Stuff Works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Deborah Rnca. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how stuff works dot com and is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.