Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, giving us the evil
Speaker 1: eye for all the trash we've ever talked about her.
Speaker 1: And frankly, it's working because I just blew a tire
Speaker 1: on the way here to work.
Speaker 2: Is that a euphemism?
Speaker 1: No, a blue attire? And I lost my check book.
Speaker 2: M you were at the grocery store, they rang everything up.
Speaker 2: You're standing there looking and they were and they said
Speaker 2: you have to pay now, and you went, oh, and
Speaker 2: you reached in your purse to get your check book out.
Speaker 1: I reached in my front pocket, in my shirt.
Speaker 2: And then you're like, does anyone have a pen? And
Speaker 2: twelve people under the age of seventy five behind you
Speaker 2: rolled their eyes inside.
Speaker 1: And they had a pen, but it leaked all over
Speaker 1: my hand.
Speaker 2: They gave you the evil eye. Big thanks to our
Speaker 2: pal Dave Brus and the old folks at houstuffworks dot
Speaker 2: com for this bit on the evil eye what we
Speaker 2: in our house call the stink eye.
Speaker 1: Yes. Also thanks to Antonio Peglia Rulo, who is the
Speaker 1: author of a book on the evil Eye. The Evil
Speaker 1: Eye colin the History Mystery and Magic of the Quiet Curse.
Speaker 1: Dave talked to a lot about this, because not only
Speaker 1: did Antonio write that book, his grandmother was an evil
Speaker 1: eye do her away with practitioner when he's growing up.
Speaker 2: That's right. If you don't know what we're talking about,
Speaker 2: we're talking about what turns out to be a very
Speaker 2: very old I don't know what you call a tradition.
Speaker 2: What isrus some super tradition. Yeah, all those things where
Speaker 2: someone will give you the evil eye, someone will shoot
Speaker 2: you a glance. We call it the stink eye again,
Speaker 2: and it's it's wordless. You don't have to say a thing,
Speaker 2: You don't have to have a what a the little
Speaker 2: a voodoo doll all I Usually.
Speaker 1: There's a big there's a quick cello sting going on
Speaker 1: in the background while it's happening.
Speaker 2: You got to take that small string section around with you.
Speaker 2: It means basically, well, originally I think it was sort
Speaker 2: of came from jealousy or envy, but can also be
Speaker 2: just someone's angry or they resent you, or maybe they're
Speaker 2: being greedy or something. And it's generally always intentional. But
Speaker 2: I was surprised to learn from our friend here who
Speaker 2: wrote that book that it can be unintentional.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, but I mean, I guess, I
Speaker 1: guess if you're coveting something, or you're jealous of somebody
Speaker 1: to the left of the person, you accidentally look at
Speaker 1: and give the evil eye. That's the best I can
Speaker 1: come up with for unintentional evil eye.
Speaker 2: This goes all the way back to the Greeks and
Speaker 2: possibly before right.
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, long before the Greeks. But Plutarch was maybe
Speaker 1: the first person to actually write about it. He was
Speaker 1: a lost for a historian, as everybody knows, and he
Speaker 1: wrote some essays that were collected into something called Moraleia,
Speaker 1: and he talked about the evil eye in that. His
Speaker 1: whole jam was that your eyes are a source of
Speaker 1: energy that shoot out, that shoot the energy out into
Speaker 1: the world around you. And that reminded me, Chuck of
Speaker 1: our stereoscopic episode where that one of those ancient physicians
Speaker 1: had their Their theory was that we see by shooting
Speaker 1: beams out at stuff, and that's how we see. And
Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of what it was based on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Basically, the body fills up with that jealousy
Speaker 2: or rage or whatever, and it clouds the mind and
Speaker 2: then the eyeballs are right there in front of the
Speaker 2: mind to sort of display for the world whatever the
Speaker 2: mind is thinking, and in this case it's evil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he goes bby boo when you shoot the
Speaker 1: evil eye out of your eyes. That was Plutarch's take,
Speaker 1: and apparently that was the popular take of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And depending on what culture you are from and your
Speaker 2: your ancestry is sort of about, you might have a long,
Speaker 2: rich tradition of evil eye shooters or blaming everything that
Speaker 2: happens to you that's bad on an evil eye that
Speaker 2: was shot your way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because it's not just stuff that happens to you directly,
Speaker 1: like injury or an illness. It can also be things
Speaker 1: that happen to the things you depend on, like your
Speaker 1: smartphone exploding in your pocket. You remember what that used
Speaker 1: to happen? Yeah, they are blowing attire smartphones?
Speaker 2: Did They didn't catch on fire?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Am I making that up?
Speaker 1: There were like mild explosions with some I want to
Speaker 1: say an android at some point in time, Yeah, blowing
Speaker 1: up in people's pockets.
Speaker 2: And everyone's like, ah, boy, remember when that was the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And now they're right back in our pockets again.
Speaker 1: Back in the oughts. Yeah, everybody's like, I don't care.
Speaker 1: I love smartphones so much, I'll just take the risk. Right.
Speaker 2: So back to Antonio who wrote the book The Evil Eye.
Speaker 2: He is Catholic and Italian, and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: we don't even have like baby showers over here, like
Speaker 2: that's considered bad luck to have a baby shower, like
Speaker 2: you're tempting fate or something like that. Yes, so it's
Speaker 2: a you know, sort of a superstitious danger and over there.
Speaker 2: And this is kind of true anywhere in any culture
Speaker 2: that has an evil eye history, they will have protections
Speaker 2: against evil eyes, like amulets and things like that, And
Speaker 2: pregnant women would wear amulets in Italy apparently at least
Speaker 2: in his family, and they would say these special prayers
Speaker 2: to ward off the evil eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason why having something like a baby
Speaker 1: shower would tempt fate and maybe attract an evil eye
Speaker 1: is that it could be taken as like a boast
Speaker 1: or something, and boasting can generate envy, your jealousy, and
Speaker 1: be your jealousy can shoot out of your eyes as
Speaker 1: the evil eye, and then your smartphone blows up in
Speaker 1: your hand during the baby shower.
Speaker 2: Look at me.
Speaker 1: I made a human and in particular, babies, children, pregnant women,
Speaker 1: and animals are the most vulnerable to the evil ey,
Speaker 1: although it can happen to anybody. But there's different traditions
Speaker 1: and customs for protecting against the evil eye depending on
Speaker 1: where you are in the world. Like you said, in Turkey,
Speaker 1: when you are a newborn baby, you're going to get
Speaker 1: what's called a nazar, which is a dark blue circle
Speaker 1: with a white circle inside it, and a dark blue
Speaker 1: circle inside the white circle, and it's meant to be
Speaker 1: an eye. And Chuck, I say, we take a break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and tell everybody whose eye it is.
Speaker 1: After this, ooh, Horace, it's the eye of Horace.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that was quick. Yeah yeah. And like you said,
Speaker 2: depending on where you are, you might have different traditions
Speaker 2: for warding this thing off. A lot of these countries
Speaker 2: are Middle Eastern or somewhere around the Mediterranean Sea. I
Speaker 2: believe Dave even said in his own family, his grandmother
Speaker 2: and the Jewish tradition would tie ribbons on cribs and
Speaker 2: things like that to ward off the evil eye or
Speaker 2: potential bad luck for newborn babies. Isn't that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. In India they'll put some coal, a
Speaker 1: black dot on the infant's face, and all of these.
Speaker 1: The point of these, the nizar, the red ribbon, the
Speaker 1: black dot on the face, they're meant to protect. They're
Speaker 1: basically amulets or talisman that can protect against the evil eye.
Speaker 1: And one reason why they based that on the Eye
Speaker 1: of Horace is because Nhi and Egypt, the Eye of
Speaker 1: Horace was painted on homes, painted in tombs, and it
Speaker 1: offered protection from evil or mal intent or all sorts
Speaker 1: of problems even back then, and so it kind of
Speaker 1: got you know how they take like logos, if you
Speaker 1: look at the evolution of a logo over the course
Speaker 1: of a century, it goes from really ornate to like
Speaker 1: really stylized and simple. That's basically what happened to the
Speaker 1: Eye of Horace when it became the nizar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good.
Speaker 1: Way to say it.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and our book author also, like you
Speaker 2: mentioned his grandmother, Paglia. Rulo's grandma would keep a bowl
Speaker 2: of water in her kitchen and pour little drops of
Speaker 2: olive oil in there and look at the shapes and
Speaker 2: the patterns that the oil would take and apparently that
Speaker 2: would inform her on the evil Eye and if there
Speaker 2: was like someone in her family that was potentially in danger,
Speaker 2: or a neighbor or something that possibly will be or
Speaker 2: was stricken with the evil Eye. And I thought that
Speaker 2: was really interesting. I don't know if it literally like, hey,
Speaker 2: that looks like Gary our neighbor, right, or if it's
Speaker 2: just you know, kind of reading the tea leaves.
Speaker 1: Right up at the olive. O is so good too,
Speaker 1: Oh boy, oil. So you said that this all kind
Speaker 1: of came out of the Mediterranean, did you not.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
Speaker 1: They've traced it back at least five thousand years ago
Speaker 1: to tell Brock, which is a city of Mesopotamia, which
Speaker 1: is Telbrock is a modern day Syria right now, and
Speaker 1: they've found tiny figures that all kind of bear a
Speaker 1: resemblance to one another. They call them ie idols, and
Speaker 1: that they think that these offered protection as well. Did
Speaker 1: you look up the eye idols of Telbrock? Oh?
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: If ET is not based on that, I will eat
Speaker 1: my hat. Okay, it's identical to eat. It's crazy how
Speaker 1: much it looks like ET. Man. There's nobody who's seen
Speaker 1: ET and would see one of those and be like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, like it looks exactly like ET.
Speaker 2: All right, I'm looking it up, and that is ET.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in that nuts, that is ET.
Speaker 2: I mean, that is unmistakably an ET head.
Speaker 1: Right. But also even the body resembles ET. The proportions
Speaker 1: and everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. I don't see any arms and legs,
Speaker 2: but it does have that big squatty body.
Speaker 1: Well, thank god I don't have to eat my hat
Speaker 1: today because that just pile on everything else bad that's happened.
Speaker 2: Was it like a sweaty old baseball cap salty?
Speaker 1: You know, it's got the white salt streaks that will
Speaker 1: never come out.
Speaker 2: No, thanks, So I guess that's about it.
Speaker 1: Huh for the evil eye, I got nothing else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all sorts of amulets and talisman you can use
Speaker 1: to protect yourself. If you feel like somebody gave you
Speaker 1: the evil eye. You can also say please don't look
Speaker 1: at me like that anymore. I don't know what's wrong
Speaker 1: with you. That will also dispel the magic too, That's right,
Speaker 1: Chuck said, that's right. Everybody. So, I mean short, stuff
Speaker 1: is out.
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