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Short Stuff: Evil Eye · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, giving us the evil
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: eye for all the trash we've ever talked about her.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: And frankly, it's working because I just blew a tire
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: on the way here to work.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Is that a euphemism?
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: No, a blue attire? And I lost my check book.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: M you were at the grocery store, they rang everything up.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: You're standing there looking and they were and they said
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: you have to pay now, and you went, oh, and
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: you reached in your purse to get your check book out.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I reached in my front pocket, in my shirt.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: And then you're like, does anyone have a pen? And
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: twelve people under the age of seventy five behind you
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: rolled their eyes inside.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And they had a pen, but it leaked all over
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: my hand.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: They gave you the evil eye. Big thanks to our
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: pal Dave Brus and the old folks at houstuffworks dot
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: com for this bit on the evil eye what we
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: in our house call the stink eye.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Yes. Also thanks to Antonio Peglia Rulo, who is the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: author of a book on the evil Eye. The Evil
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Eye colin the History Mystery and Magic of the Quiet Curse.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Dave talked to a lot about this, because not only
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: did Antonio write that book, his grandmother was an evil
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: eye do her away with practitioner when he's growing up.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: That's right. If you don't know what we're talking about,
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: we're talking about what turns out to be a very
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: very old I don't know what you call a tradition.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: What isrus some super tradition. Yeah, all those things where
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: someone will give you the evil eye, someone will shoot
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: you a glance. We call it the stink eye again,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and it's it's wordless. You don't have to say a thing,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: You don't have to have a what a the little
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: a voodoo doll all I Usually.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: There's a big there's a quick cello sting going on
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: in the background while it's happening.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: You got to take that small string section around with you.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: It means basically, well, originally I think it was sort
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: of came from jealousy or envy, but can also be
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: just someone's angry or they resent you, or maybe they're
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: being greedy or something. And it's generally always intentional. But
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I was surprised to learn from our friend here who
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: wrote that book that it can be unintentional.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize that, but I mean, I guess, I
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: guess if you're coveting something, or you're jealous of somebody
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: to the left of the person, you accidentally look at
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: and give the evil eye. That's the best I can
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: come up with for unintentional evil eye.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: This goes all the way back to the Greeks and
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: possibly before right.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, long before the Greeks. But Plutarch was maybe
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: the first person to actually write about it. He was
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: a lost for a historian, as everybody knows, and he
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: wrote some essays that were collected into something called Moraleia,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and he talked about the evil eye in that. His
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: whole jam was that your eyes are a source of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: energy that shoot out, that shoot the energy out into
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: the world around you. And that reminded me, Chuck of
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: our stereoscopic episode where that one of those ancient physicians
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: had their Their theory was that we see by shooting
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: beams out at stuff, and that's how we see. And
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: I guess that's kind of what it was based on.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Basically, the body fills up with that jealousy
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: or rage or whatever, and it clouds the mind and
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: then the eyeballs are right there in front of the
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: mind to sort of display for the world whatever the
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: mind is thinking, and in this case it's evil.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he goes bby boo when you shoot the
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: evil eye out of your eyes. That was Plutarch's take,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: and apparently that was the popular take of it. Yeah.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: And depending on what culture you are from and your
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: your ancestry is sort of about, you might have a long,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: rich tradition of evil eye shooters or blaming everything that
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: happens to you that's bad on an evil eye that
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: was shot your way.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Because it's not just stuff that happens to you directly,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: like injury or an illness. It can also be things
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: that happen to the things you depend on, like your
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: smartphone exploding in your pocket. You remember what that used
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: to happen? Yeah, they are blowing attire smartphones?
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Did They didn't catch on fire?
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Am I making that up?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: There were like mild explosions with some I want to
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: say an android at some point in time, Yeah, blowing
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: up in people's pockets.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: And everyone's like, ah, boy, remember when that was the thing. Yeah,
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: And now they're right back in our pockets again.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Back in the oughts. Yeah, everybody's like, I don't care.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I love smartphones so much, I'll just take the risk. Right.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: So back to Antonio who wrote the book The Evil Eye.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: He is Catholic and Italian, and he said, you know,
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: we don't even have like baby showers over here, like
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: that's considered bad luck to have a baby shower, like
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  Speaker 2: you're tempting fate or something like that. Yes, so it's
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: a you know, sort of a superstitious danger and over there.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: And this is kind of true anywhere in any culture
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: that has an evil eye history, they will have protections
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: against evil eyes, like amulets and things like that, And
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: pregnant women would wear amulets in Italy apparently at least
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: in his family, and they would say these special prayers
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: to ward off the evil eye.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the reason why having something like a baby
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: shower would tempt fate and maybe attract an evil eye
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: is that it could be taken as like a boast
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: or something, and boasting can generate envy, your jealousy, and
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: be your jealousy can shoot out of your eyes as
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: the evil eye, and then your smartphone blows up in
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: your hand during the baby shower.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: Look at me.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I made a human and in particular, babies, children, pregnant women,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and animals are the most vulnerable to the evil ey,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: although it can happen to anybody. But there's different traditions
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: and customs for protecting against the evil eye depending on
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: where you are in the world. Like you said, in Turkey,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: when you are a newborn baby, you're going to get
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: what's called a nazar, which is a dark blue circle
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: with a white circle inside it, and a dark blue
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: circle inside the white circle, and it's meant to be
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: an eye. And Chuck, I say, we take a break
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: and we'll come back and tell everybody whose eye it is.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: After this, ooh, Horace, it's the eye of Horace.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, that was quick. Yeah yeah. And like you said,
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: depending on where you are, you might have different traditions
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: for warding this thing off. A lot of these countries
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: are Middle Eastern or somewhere around the Mediterranean Sea. I
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: believe Dave even said in his own family, his grandmother
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and the Jewish tradition would tie ribbons on cribs and
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: things like that to ward off the evil eye or
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: potential bad luck for newborn babies. Isn't that right?
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. In India they'll put some coal, a
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: black dot on the infant's face, and all of these.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: The point of these, the nizar, the red ribbon, the
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: black dot on the face, they're meant to protect. They're
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: basically amulets or talisman that can protect against the evil eye.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: And one reason why they based that on the Eye
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of Horace is because Nhi and Egypt, the Eye of
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Horace was painted on homes, painted in tombs, and it
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: offered protection from evil or mal intent or all sorts
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: of problems even back then, and so it kind of
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: got you know how they take like logos, if you
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: look at the evolution of a logo over the course
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: of a century, it goes from really ornate to like
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: really stylized and simple. That's basically what happened to the
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Eye of Horace when it became the nizar.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Way to say it.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you, and our book author also, like you
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: mentioned his grandmother, Paglia. Rulo's grandma would keep a bowl
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: of water in her kitchen and pour little drops of
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: olive oil in there and look at the shapes and
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: the patterns that the oil would take and apparently that
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: would inform her on the evil Eye and if there
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: was like someone in her family that was potentially in danger,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: or a neighbor or something that possibly will be or
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: was stricken with the evil Eye. And I thought that
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: was really interesting. I don't know if it literally like, hey,
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: that looks like Gary our neighbor, right, or if it's
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: just you know, kind of reading the tea leaves.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Right up at the olive. O is so good too,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, oil. So you said that this all kind
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: of came out of the Mediterranean, did you not.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: They've traced it back at least five thousand years ago
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: to tell Brock, which is a city of Mesopotamia, which
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: is Telbrock is a modern day Syria right now, and
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: they've found tiny figures that all kind of bear a
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: resemblance to one another. They call them ie idols, and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: that they think that these offered protection as well. Did
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: you look up the eye idols of Telbrock? Oh?
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: If ET is not based on that, I will eat
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: my hat. Okay, it's identical to eat. It's crazy how
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: much it looks like ET. Man. There's nobody who's seen
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: ET and would see one of those and be like,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I don't know, like it looks exactly like ET.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm looking it up, and that is ET.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in that nuts, that is ET.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, that is unmistakably an ET head.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Right. But also even the body resembles ET. The proportions
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: and everything.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true. I don't see any arms and legs,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: but it does have that big squatty body.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Well, thank god I don't have to eat my hat
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: today because that just pile on everything else bad that's happened.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: Was it like a sweaty old baseball cap salty?
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: You know, it's got the white salt streaks that will
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: never come out.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: No, thanks, So I guess that's about it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Huh for the evil eye, I got nothing else. Yeah,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: there's all sorts of amulets and talisman you can use
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: to protect yourself. If you feel like somebody gave you
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the evil eye. You can also say please don't look
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: at me like that anymore. I don't know what's wrong
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: with you. That will also dispel the magic too, That's right,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: Chuck said, that's right. Everybody. So, I mean short, stuff
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: is out.
• 10:55
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• 10:58
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