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Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.

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Speaker 1: Jerry's here sitting in for Dave and this short stuff.

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Speaker 1: Getty up, tally ho, let's go. Let's make sure this

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Speaker 1: one doesn't blow. Oh, say thank you, A curse, a

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Speaker 1: curse upon your house, a pox upon you, then jerk.

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Speaker 1: I would never write a curse tablet for you, my friend. No,

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Speaker 1: nor would I. I mean, like I I would even

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Speaker 1: think that would go without saying, because it's just such

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Speaker 1: a jerk move to write a cursed habilely against somebody,

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Speaker 1: if you think about it. Yeah, I never had heard

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Speaker 1: of these before. Uh. These are what kind of what

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Speaker 1: it sounds like. It's a tablet? Uh. This is generally

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Speaker 1: ancient rome or grease with a curse inscribed upon it. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And you would generally inscribe this curse um after somebody's death, right,

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Speaker 1: not neces necessarily, not necessarily though there's one, a famous

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Speaker 1: one in POMPEII that somebody affixed to a tomb so

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Speaker 1: you could do it after death. And what you were

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Speaker 1: essentially saying, do you want to read that one? Sure

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Speaker 1: you ready? I'm ready? And this comes to our friends

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Speaker 1: from house stuffworks Dot com in Ancient Roman, ancient Greece. Stranger,

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Speaker 1: stay a short while if it is not too troublesome,

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Speaker 1: and learn what to avoid. This man, who I hoped

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Speaker 1: was a friend of mine, brought prosecutors to me, a

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Speaker 1: k A. Persecutors sort of, I think the literal pink

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Speaker 1: you suit him? Okay, prosecutors to me, and oh yeah sure,

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Speaker 1: and instigated proceedings. I am grateful to the gods and

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Speaker 1: my innocence, colon. I am free from all trouble. He

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Speaker 1: who deceived us, may he not receive the pennates, which

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Speaker 1: are the household gods, nor the underworld. So what this

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Speaker 1: guy who cursed this this other person's tomb was saying,

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Speaker 1: is this guy's a jerk. I hope that his his

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Speaker 1: soul basically doesn't even make it to the afterlife. That

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Speaker 1: essentially he's just doomed to wander aimlessly for eternity because

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Speaker 1: he sued me once. That's right. And this is a

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Speaker 1: great example of a sort of a standard issue cursed tablet,

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Speaker 1: also known at times as a uh here we go

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Speaker 1: the fixione. Wow nice, I was gonna say the E

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Speaker 1: on the end and pinch my four finger and thumb together.

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Speaker 1: The fixion. Yeah, I think that's that's it. You might

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Speaker 1: be right, but this was a common practice at various

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Speaker 1: times through the ancient times. And uh, they were not

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Speaker 1: necessarily always written on the same thing. Sometimes it was papyrus.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes I believe they found lamps and pieces of clay

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Speaker 1: and things like that. It kind of depends on how

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Speaker 1: much money you had. Um, but there was a lot

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Speaker 1: of lead because of the silver mining operations, especially near Athens,

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Speaker 1: and so lead turned out to be a really great

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Speaker 1: sort of permanent thing that you could carve something on

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Speaker 1: and apparently looks really cool when carved upon. Yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: somebody interviewed in the House Stuff Works article that said,

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Speaker 1: you know when you when you write on it, when

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Speaker 1: you carve it, it has like this kind of like

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Speaker 1: a silvery line that really kind of pops I guess

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Speaker 1: against like the dull the dullness of the oxidized lead.

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Speaker 1: And then also it's just easy to write and let

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Speaker 1: you can carve in it pretty easily. You don't have

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Speaker 1: to be like a silver smith of any sort to

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Speaker 1: do that. You can just be an average smoke with

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Speaker 1: something sharp. That's right. Uh, there was a historian too.

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Speaker 1: They talked to that said that it kind of came

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Speaker 1: and went throughout history. But it, interestingly, it was like

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Speaker 1: a real fad and then went a way really quickly.

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Speaker 1: Each time that happened. It wasn't like a gradual rise

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Speaker 1: and fall. They described it as sharp spikes and popularity. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I saw that it was. Um, it was a

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Speaker 1: The time that it popped up was somewhere around like

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Speaker 1: five hundred BC too, maybe three fifty BC is when

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Speaker 1: it first starts. And um, if you'll remember Chuck from

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Speaker 1: our bicameralism episode, that's about the time people got their

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Speaker 1: their brain their consciousness in order and started to get

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Speaker 1: the superstitious because the gods had abandoned them. Interesting, I

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Speaker 1: think so too. I wonder if this has anything to

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Speaker 1: do with that. Yeah, I mean sure, it might have

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Speaker 1: just been part of that time. You know, why not

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Speaker 1: Julian James hypothesis wasn't scientific. I can add to it anyway.

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Speaker 1: I like, all right, so let's it's very smugged the

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Speaker 1: way he said that, I liked it. Uh, You're that

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Speaker 1: always reminds me and somebody hear the word smug when

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Speaker 1: Tom Cruise talked to Matt Lower about being smug. Oh, yeah, no,

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Speaker 1: I never saw that. Oh, it's one of the great

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Speaker 1: Of course, Matt Lower ended up being a creepy, so

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Speaker 1: I'm not defending him, but I think he was talking

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Speaker 1: about scientology and he just kept I don't know, he's

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Speaker 1: talking about glib Sorry, Yeah, that's right, I have seen that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: good clip. All right, let's take a break and ponder

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Speaker 1: tom cruisiness and uh, we'll be back to talk about

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Speaker 1: curse tablets right after this. That's y s game that

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Speaker 1: you should know that we should know that knows. But

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Speaker 1: Josh Clark, so one of the things that people seem

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Speaker 1: to do, and this was like when when they were

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Speaker 1: in fashion, when curse tablets were in fashion, um, everybody

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Speaker 1: was into him. But it seems like one of the

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Speaker 1: things that you would do was like curse your rivals. Um,

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Speaker 1: sometimes your rival in politics, your rival in business. I

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Speaker 1: think some people cursed the rival chariot teams to their

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Speaker 1: favorite chariot teams, which is really lunkheaded, but it like

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Speaker 1: it just goes to show people have been lungheaded for

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Speaker 1: thousands of years, right, there's always been lucks. Yeah, your neighbors,

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Speaker 1: especially if you have some sort of dispute, anyone who

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Speaker 1: takes you to court. Um. And then also people um,

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Speaker 1: who are romantic rivals to somebody you like. I saw

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Speaker 1: one that basically said, may I think Helen be bound

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Speaker 1: when she tries to flirt with or have sex with

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Speaker 1: you know, the dude that I like, whatever his name was,

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Speaker 1: I don't remember, um, And that basically she was saying, like, please,

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Speaker 1: God's intervene and keep her from being able to perform

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Speaker 1: in the sack with um, Aristophanes, Let's say, who I'm

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Speaker 1: neverking was a man or Romulus, by the way, smells

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Speaker 1: bad and has a small pep. Yeah. But the whole

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Speaker 1: thing was, um, The whole thing was that you were

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Speaker 1: basically calling upon the gods. You were invoking the gods

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Speaker 1: to to do something bad to this person that you

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Speaker 1: did not like. Yeah. And uh So, as you would imagine,

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Speaker 1: if you had a lot of money, you were probably

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Speaker 1: more educated. You could probably spell and write these things yourself.

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Speaker 1: But if you were wealthy, you probably paid someone to

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Speaker 1: do it, maybe beautifully. Um, But like you said, all

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Speaker 1: stripes did it. So if you didn't have a lot

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Speaker 1: of money, that may have been one like on a

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Speaker 1: shard of clay, and you would go to you may

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Speaker 1: not be able to read or write, so you would

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Speaker 1: go to a magician, and these magician how is described

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Speaker 1: in this House of Works article, where like contract attorneys,

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Speaker 1: and they would kind of give you a template and

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Speaker 1: have blanks, and you know, say, fill in the blanks

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Speaker 1: with like who's your grievance? Uh? What's his name? Uh?

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Speaker 1: And what was the grievance? And then they would sort

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Speaker 1: of fill this thing in and Fred Flintstone style. And

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Speaker 1: apparently there were times even where they found some examples

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Speaker 1: of these square that the name or the grievance was

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Speaker 1: so long that they had to kind of squish it

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Speaker 1: in and on these template forms, which is really funny

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Speaker 1: that if you think about it. Yeah, and also it

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Speaker 1: sounds like an ancient mad lib, but magic mad lib basically, yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 1: So um, these things got so popular and so widespread

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Speaker 1: that in some of the Cursed tablets they'll find like

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Speaker 1: clauses that say, and if the other person finds out

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Speaker 1: that I've cursed them and they try to reverse curse me,

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Speaker 1: then I am rubber in their glue in that case,

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Speaker 1: and their curse will bounce off of me and stick

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Speaker 1: to them instead, right, And they would say, what is rubber.

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Speaker 1: I mean, let's let's just step back for a second.

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Speaker 1: Took or essentially talking about the same thing, a cursed

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Speaker 1: tablet and saying I'm rubber in your glue is basically

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Speaker 1: the same thing. I just think we should point that out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and it's funny. I do need to poke a little

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Speaker 1: fun in this article because I didn't include it for

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Speaker 1: your I should have included so you could have a laugh.

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Speaker 1: Year deleted it at the end. It was talking about

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Speaker 1: where these things kind of when they fell out of popularity.

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Speaker 1: It's like, well, some argue that even though they don't

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Speaker 1: do anymore, our society is still very much like this,

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Speaker 1: and just take a look at Twitter, a sort of

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Speaker 1: modern version of a curse stuff. I gotta laugh. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I guess I kind of yeah, yeah, I think they

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Speaker 1: were cursing Twitter. Just then. Another thing too, is there

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Speaker 1: was a person interviewed that said that they were like

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Speaker 1: a magical arms race because there'd be curses counter curses,

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Speaker 1: amulets like the evil Eye, you know, or the eye

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Speaker 1: of Osiris, maybe the very famous like amulet or symbol

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Speaker 1: that was worn to ward off curses. Like I think

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Speaker 1: that was the rubber that you would wear so that

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Speaker 1: the curses would bounce off of you like I'm looking

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Speaker 1: at you, buddy, basically, and then that's it is. Tablets

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Speaker 1: gone for the better, short stuff out. Stuff you Should

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Speaker 1: Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more

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