Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Crossing Your Fingers

Episode Date: January 26, 2026

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why "fingers crossed" is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Visit http://sifpod.store/ to get shirts and posters celebrating the show.

Crossing Your Fingers, known for being lucky. Famous for being also lying jokes. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why crossing your fingers is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Cephalopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting that people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden.

Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of crossing your fingers or doing like a fingers crossed gesture? I'm familiar with it. I can do it. Like, check it out. Look at that.

Whoa. Look at the technique. Wow. I've never actually like crossed my fingers in a sincere way of trying to either ward off the bad karma from lying or trying to get luck. Cool, yeah. Which is not, it's not that I'm not, like, superstitious. I have a little bit of superstition.

So, like, you know, like, I don't like, I don't like jinxing things. But I think, like, the fingers crossed thing has never been, you know, I don't know. I think same here. It's never been, like, a dominant luck thing or game thing for me. It's never been my go-to. Yeah. And good, you mentioned the two meanings that also I've known of where there's like separate purposes of everything I'm saying doesn't count and I'm wishing for positive luck. Right.

I've never really done either that much. I've done it theatrically like someone says something and I'm like, oh, good luck. And it's like a gesture to say I want you to have good luck. I've never done it privately. And then when they turn around mocking gestures, you didn't mean it at all. Right. I just switch which fingers are engaged as soon as the backs are turned. Yeah.

It's not because I have zero sort of like superstitious nature. For me, I think it's like some of the superstition like ties into my OCD a little bit. So if there's like a thing or it's like, oh, I got to like avoid this kind of bad luck thing. Or if I if I spill some salts, like maybe I'll sprinkle a little bit. I don't believe in it. But it's like, you know, again, like I think because my. OCD puts its weight on the scale there, I'll sometimes engage in, like, minor acts of superstition.

But, you know. Yeah. Oh, knocking on wood for me, I kind of still do that. And I don't, yeah. I'm not totally into it. But I think, especially among my relatives, they're so into it. I want to do it, you know? I want to, like, participate.

Yeah, because, like, yeah, for me, the knocking on wood doesn't, you know. Okay. I put out coasters, though. I respect, I respect wood. You respect wood, yeah. I respect wood. I put coasters out. I hope that's enough to please.

Like if there is like a fortune wood type situation where the wood will understand, I care about it and I don't want it to get a ring on it. So then it'll bring me fortune. Wood cosmology. Yeah, sure. I think in general to me, the crossover between like superstition and luck kind of thing, like luck charms like crossing your fingers, rabbits,

rabbits, foots, et cetera. And OCD, there's a very similar sort of. of psychology to it, which is really interesting. Right. And like kind of vague about a thing, yeah. Right. And this topic, I'm so glad folks suggested and voted for it, especially thank you to CTC Saw on the Discord.

Thank you CTC Saw. Because this is so famous and underthought about. It's very sift. Yeah. And let's get into stance and numbers about it first, because that's what we always lead with on every episode. This week that's in a segment called do do do do thank you for being a stat do do do subtract a number and that again your logic is true you compute and are logical

wonderful that was submitted by impossib eel on the discord impassib eel we have an name for this segment every week please make a miscellian wagging bay as possible submit yours through discord or to siphot at gmail.com thank you impossibil the super general first number that we kind of already covered. It's two topics because a sift about crossing your fingers, it's really two separate meanings of one gesture in most countries where this show is popular. It either means wishing for good luck or it means creating a loophole, usually negating what's being said. And people just figure out which it is through context. So it's not complicated, but I do like that this is an episode about basically two separate things.

Right, right, right. There's two entire separate. gestures going on here. Yeah, I mean, it's like it's the same thing that you're doing with your fingers, but the context matters. And also there's a passive about sign languages. We're not going to address any individual symbols or meanings in sign languages that involve crossing fingers, because that's distinct and separate. Right. And then the next number here is at least one. Because it turns out there's at least one culture in the world where the crossed fingers gesture is an insults. Ah, okay.

And not either of those meetings we talked about. That's good to know. I'm always afraid I'm going to be somewhere and I'm going to like scratch my cheek and then now I'm in prison because I insulted literally everyone in that society. This is one of those things that it's hard to source in like an academic or journalistic way, but across the internet and Reddit I found a consensus in particular warning travelers, basically, that if you do what's a relatively typical crossed index and middle finger in a country like the United States, that is an insult in Vietnam.

Okay. And, you know, globalization could be changing this, right? Maybe people are picking up that it's not the same outside of Vietnam. But the explanation is that in Viet culture, people cross their middle and index finger to visually represent a vulva or vagina. Oh, interesting. Yeah. For reasons that probably either have misogynist roots or don't bring sex into my daily life roots, that's insulting.

Right. I mean, yeah, like we do use genitals a lot as like an insult. Like if you call someone a weiner or a peepie head, which is not usually what the words that people use, I just don't want to make Alex bleep me out. It's not necessarily saying that in general we don't like wee-wees, but it is. It's like an insult. Yeah. But yeah. Yeah, and they came up on the past stuff about the middle finger gesture that probably has a lot of penis roots.

Right. And it's just that it's like considered rude to bring visual representations of genitals made out of your fingers into life. Right. Unless it's like a really sick sort of shadow, like, you know, shadow play. Like if you do like some really cool sort of like anatomical. stuff with your hands when you're doing shadow puppets. I think people might not, I think they might enjoy that actually. That's art, folks. That's art. One of the blogs I'm linking, they have a picture of a cyclist doing it in a way that's very flipping the bird to a fellow driver kind of thing. I don't

know how they got this picture. Maybe they gave the gesture to him first because he looks pretty mad. And also his cross fingers are pointed kind of down into the side rather than pointing. up like a lot of Western middle finger type gestures. Right. But either way, it's that shape. And so apparently it gets the message across. I mean, he looks a little mad. But the lady in the, the lady that is in the cart being driven looks just even more.

Like, she's, that is the most withering stare. I blame, the cameraman must have done something horrid because she's not having any of it. But yeah, so he's kind of, it's not, it's interesting because there is kind of like a gap there, which kind of fits with the thing of it being representative of genitalia, right? Because it's not like a really tight finger crossing. It's like, yeah, it's like a, it's a looser thing. Exactly. Yeah. And I found Redators specifically saying that, that Vietnamese people will know the thing that's being represented and leave a little bit of space between their two fingers.

So that's distinct from Western crossing. fingers. But there's enough similarity that you'll probably be mistaken for doing the Vietnamese insult. Sure, yeah. Like, you don't want to mess around with it. Like, I think there's a similar thing. So the peace sign, you know, in the U.S., if you kind of like do it wrong, like the wrong way around in Italy, you're being insulting to someone. If I remember correctly, it's because it's like devil horns, but also the implication is that the other person engages in homosexual acts that at the time I assume that this gesture was invented were considered, you know, satanic, I suppose, or devilish, you know, all the fun stuff.

Yeah, yeah. There is a weird global consensus around insulting gestures that are either based on doodles of fictional demons or very real elements of sex and procreation. Like those two categories. But then the two fingers can also be a peace sign and it can also be a positive thing. Yeah. Where it's like warding off the evil eyes. So just keep your hands in your pockets at all times when you're traveling.

That's right. In your pockets or grasping a Rick Steve's physical guide to the location. That's it. Rick Steves is kind of like he would ward off any sort of like. like bad interpretation. They're like, oh, you're with Rick Steves. So that's, that's fine then. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, you're fine. And the other gesture I'm thinking of here is also, it's like you described of being both a ward off evil eye, but also genital insult. There's another gesture called the fig that sort of plays into this. The fig is apparently rude in Greece and Turkey and

parts of France. And the fig is where you basically make a fist, but also push your thumb between your index and middle finger sticking out a bit. Right. And that is supposed to also have origins in probably the ancient Roman Empire and relate to resemblance to a vulva being a highest rude. Interesting. Like the thumb is sort of clitoral.

I see. Yeah. That's like kind of nice of them do acknowledge. Yeah, all right. You know what I mean? Like it feels like that doesn't always happen, right? It's just like... It's true.

The Romans knew how to romance. That's why that's called that way that it is. That's why the romance is up fire. It's why the words are the way the words are. And in some places the gesture is considered rude. And then also I found a few online examples of not only, the gesture being considered a protective good luck charm, but also people making little amulets where it's a small figurine of a hand doing the fig or doing a similar thing where the thumbs

just above the index finger. Couldn't find whether it's like an ancient idea or more of a modern witchy and feminist idea, but either way that gesture, it's got rich and contradictory meanings kind of like crossed fingers do. Also like fallacies, right? Because like again, it's like, yeah, you can call someone a wiener head. But also fallacies were seen as good luck symbols too. And you can still see, like now you go as a tourist to like southern Italy or in the Mediterranean and Greece. You'll find like you go to these tourist shops and they have a bunch of wood carved penises with like usually fun. They're painted in fun ways and it's like a, you know, it's meant to be like a good luck charm.

I think also because tourists are like, wow, I'm not used to buying a penis. So the tourist traps know that the people want. I don't know how common it is for locals to go out and buy a wooden penis for luck. Absolutely every American's first thought is, my grocery store doesn't carry that. Right. And then they buy it. I can't get a wooden penis at Ralph's. Yes.

Vons. Kroger fill in the locals chain, yeah. Whole foods. But yeah, that's interesting to me. So this gesture for the vulva can be like either good luck or an insult kind of depending on the context. Yeah, and it seems like crossed fingers are one of a range of gestures like this where it's hard to pin down any of the origins of any gestures, which we'll talk about more later. But yeah, people will just apply really contradictory sets of. meanings to these things. Yeah, makes sense. It's complicated. It's very contradictory that

cross fingers are wishing luck or publicly lying or privately lying. It's a strange combo. Right. It's a world of contradictions, Alex. And yeah, also with those penis figurines, it's been brought up to me because of the title of our show that in ancient Rome, they would do little figurines of a penis with wings. Oh, yeah, that's fun. Apparently one name of that was the fastenum, and it's part of the war. origin of fascination, fascinating, etc. I saw some of those in the museum actually in Naples where they had a display of this private collection of the Pope at the time, which was like many years ago.

And he had a private collection of these winged penises because it's like, this is too scandalous for the public, but I can handle it because I'm the Pope or Cardinal. I don't remember. But yeah, the point being some of them had paws like little cats is cute. They're really cute. I also, I know they're inanimate and have been collected, but I like to imagine that they flew in, like when a bird gets in an airport terminal, you know? Like they're like, oh, another one got it, get a broom. Yeah, it's like fluttering around trying to swat at it.

Yeah. The other number before we get into a bunch of takeaways, the number is 2016, the year 2016. That's the year when Unicode added the crossed fingers emoji to the emoji to the emoji. to the emoji keyboard. Hey, you know what? It wasn't one of the first ones. I would imagine that the thumbs up was like the first one. Right.

The very first emoji were stuff like they had like a thumbs up or a basic smiley face. And one great source for emoji stuff is emojipedia.org. It's a handy website. Crossed fingers joined in the Unicode 9.0 update. And they also archived the proposals. And if folks want to know more about proposing emoji, Listen to the podcast miniseriesies I made about proposing the bison emoji. Katie is a guest on it.

It's a great time. He did it. By the way, spoiler. I did it. He did it. You can type a bison, yeah. And Crossfingers was proposed in sort of a group of almost housekeeping type suggestions of just this is a bunch of stuff we should add to have a basic emoji keyboard. Right.

In 2014, two guys named Mark Davis and Peter Edberg proposed a set of more than 80 different ideas. ideas, all in one batch. And Davis was an Apple employee. Edberg was a Google employee. They were the co-leaders of the volunteer group for the emoji subcommittee of Unicode. Unicode is a bunch of volunteers from the big tech companies. Like Romeo and Googliette. Two houses alike in technology. Yeah. They just made a big list of, hey, we should just fill out this. keyboard now that more people are using it.

And the subcommittee didn't use all their ideas. They boiled that more than 80 ideas down to a final 38 to take seriously. And I like this as sort of a, it's not quite a data set in a super scientific sense, but it's almost like a comparative, this is about how popular crossing your fingers is to like other concepts and things in society. Yeah, it's an interesting proxy for that, right? Like the emoji priority gives you a sense of what is culturally important. Yeah.

Yeah. And crossing your fingers is very in the middle. It's not as dominant as smiley face thumbs up. But it made the cut alongside a few other gestures, including both the left side and the right side of a fist bump, like a fist going sideways. Also, the single emoji for a handshake was in this group. The emoji pantomiming a phone handset with one hand,

like call me. Hmm. And then this also joined along with the nauseated face, the man dancing disco. Apparently it joined after Santa Claus's emoji, but joined with the Mrs. Claus emoji. When they got around to that. Yeah. The candy cane ceiling in full effect there, folks. Yeah.

Yeah. And then several foods were in the group, including croissants, carrots, and potatoes. I guess more common and universal foods we're already in. And then they've always been kind of behind on animals, I feel, which is part of how I could propose a bison. So this joined with six animals. Those animals are the owl, shark, eagle, bat, duck, and then the fox, which is for some reason specifically a fox's face. Well, the face is the most endearing part of the fox. Sure. I like it.

Yeah. I like emoji as fun data for this being definitely universal thing. Also, not our most famous move or gesture. It's not load-bearing for society, I don't think. Unlike the thing you do where when you make it seem like you're pulling part of your finger off with like your thumb with your other hand or like got your nose. If we lost those, we lose our society and our culture. The cities would be burning and the whole sky is yellow for some reason, all the stuff. Yeah.

Exactly, exactly. On to takeaways about this topic, the first takeaway might be one of the bigger research dead ends I've ever run into in a way that I found fascinating. Oh, boy. Okay. Because takeaway number one, there is a long-running claim about crossing our fingers originating in pagan magical handshakes or in Christian secret handshakes. Ooh. And there's no way to prove or verify any. of that.

Oh, come on. This kind of topic, I really want to have an origin for folks. And it's one of the least verifiable origins of any topic we've ever done on the show. This is why we need the, we need to bring back the Spanish Inquisition so they can grab a pagan and like, you know, make them listen to, you know, baby shark on repeat until they like, devourable. their secret rituals. The idea of them hunting pagans and using baby shark as so much more fun than the reality. I love it. Yeah.

Repetitive music is seriously actually a war crime. I don't want to like, I don't want people to think it's not actually torture. But yeah, that would be definitely the method that the Spanish Inquisition would use if they were around. Like, you know, thumb screws. Come on. Just like put on cocoa mill in full. blast at a pagan and they'll they'll fold. Just ominously saying, Tiburon de Bebe, and then it begins baby shark from like chanting

people, you know? All right. So there was this notion that crossed fingers with some kind of like either pagan or religious meaningful gesture. Yeah. Basically as I dug into it, I found across the internet and a. A set of published books that I tracked down and got like old weird copies of out-of-print stuff.

I've held this topic for a while so I could get more material. And everybody seems to be repeating a pair of plausible sounding legends. And to be clear, that all could be true. And there just seems to be no way to pin it down because gestures are one of the least recorded and tracked things in human society. I mean, tell an Italian that and they'll make a few gestures at you. Surely approving gestures, right? Great.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. When they flick their fingers under their chin, it means that they definitely like what you have to say. Very respectful. Yeah, so there's like sort of the opposite of key sources here. But the laundry list of things I looked at online are basically copy pasting the same two things. One of them is a claim about pagans, which is basically that pagan Europeans, which is, of course, an incredibly vague group, that they believed if you overlap two lines that hold some kind of supernatural power.

And in particular, the point where two perpendicular lines meet is where good energies will sort of concentrate and collect. Hmm. You know. They really like a, what is that called in geometry? Oh, like right angles. Yeah. I guess so. The description is basically that crossed fingers, if it originated from this pagan idea,

it originated from two people coming together to at right angles overlap their index fingers, like meet in the middle of the index fingers. Wait, sorry, I'm a little slow. So they're like doing an ET at each other and then crossing them? Yeah, it's like an ET of a. sort of a middle or knuckle of the finger meeting on each finger. And then that forms a little X shape. And then the middle of the X is where good energies will concentrate for both people.

So then, so like I approach a person with my index finger extended. They approached me with their index finger extended. We cross the beams and we like hook them together or we like bump them. Yeah, you cross the beams and you probably don't hook together. And I also found kind of random claims about pinky swearing. originating in this move, but then you wrap the fingers together. Yeah, I was scared of the commitment of pinky swearing when I was a kid. And people like, you got a pinky swear.

I was like, well, jeez, I don't know what the future holds. Like, I know I'm honest and I know I like to keep my word, but like a binding of the pinky swear seems irresponsible. I, you know, like, if you ask me to do something, I will try to do it. I don't know, though. I can't say I will be at your birthday with 100%. Who knows what will happen? I'll try.

But to make me swear it upon my pinky feels like we're now involving some greater, older things that we should not. We should humble ourselves before fate. That's what I would say. And for weird reasons, I didn't get in bed to a lot of birthday parties. No joke. the same as like this is heavy. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who am I to say that I can I can swear upon a piece of my body that this,

that I will be able to pull off whatever I'm doing, right? Like, I don't know. Yeah. I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm a pretty not flaky person. I like to keep my word, but, you know, Jesus. I also, I think I also had an extra physical cowardice thing of our pinkies are delicate and one if you pull hard or something. And I broke my right pinky in third grade, too. So then I was like cautious, you know. Well, that makes sense. I was going to make fun of you for that.

But you did break your pinky. So like that's, I guess you were right about that. And I broke it jamming it on a basketball. It wasn't from a bad swearing, but still, yeah. Oh, no, I hate that. The finger getting telescoped in or out is bad. And I don't like it. It's bad times.

Yeah, yeah. Bad. So that's one claim is that pagans obsessed over lines crossing. And then also they'll like unspool it to work in basically any world belief where there was a symbol that's even kind of cross shaped outside of the Christians is how this is written up. I see. And then the other claim is about the Christians. And it's that they brought their hands together almost more to do like a secret handshake to indicate to each other that we're both Christian without. say the Roman authorities knowing kind of thing. Oh, I see. So it's like we're forming a cross

with our fingers. Yeah, it's told two ways this story. It's either the cross where the middle of the index fingers join or they do that and additionally touch the tips of their thumbs. Fish are a real longtime icon in Christian faith, partly because Jesus is called a fisher of men. And then also in ancient Greek, you could do wordplay where the word for a fish relates to a Greek title for Jesus. But the upshot of this legend is that people either honored Jesus or did a secret handshake among Christians while Romans persecuted them. Right. He also taught a man to fish. He taught a fish to man.

Yeah, like it is real that fish are a longtime symbol in the faith. And then I think people spun that out into gesture, Lord. I'm going to link off to at least five different websites that claim this, but they're all at best wobbly sources such as the Mental Floss website. They either directly or indirectly linked to one book over and over again. The book is called Panatti's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things. The author is Charles Panatti, who is a trained physicist. He then found a career writing nonfiction fact books. He's not trained in history or linguistics.

or theology or any of the stuff that would verse you in this. Yeah, but he understands how fingers can go together because of physics. Right. The Internet Archive has a scanned copy of his book. You can see the pages where he claims this. So those websites are just going off him. But I said, does he have any sources? And then his book has a detailed bibliography, which cites just one other book for this story.

It's a book by an anthropologist named Claudia Delis. So then I got a copy of her out of print book because it's not scanned on the internet. I got a physical copy from a used bookstore in Idaho. Oh, wow. And then that book cites nothing in the text for this story. Oh. And it has a small and unspecific bibliography. And the five or six books in it I checked either don't tell this story or don't have any sources.

I also found another bloggy source citing another book called Christianity or Superstasy. by an author named Paul Bauer. And whether that book's accurate or not, it doesn't matter because I tracked down a copy of that, and it doesn't include crossed fingers stories at all. Okay. I've spent like on and off about a month chasing this, and there's no sourcing. This is like a way more honest, but unsatisfying version of the Da Vinci Code. Like this is, like, when you're like, in reality, this would be what the Da Vinci Code is.

And like if Alex ran into a mysterious monk, they'd probably just be like, would you like to buy some used books? And also like, you know, did Jesus have a wife? Well, there's not really any sources for that. So, you know. And it's like, oh, but it's in Michelangelo's painting. And it's like, okay, did Michelangelo have a source? No.

Well, then all right. Thank you. Yeah, I think my maybe curse is to be this skeptical or careful about things and then never make money like Dan Brown does. That's just the path I'm on because I have to live with myself. I mean, I didn't really read or watch the Da Vinci Code, but I never quite understood like the, it's like, oh, a painter did this painting. It's like, all right. So now that's just like, that's like historical fact. Like what? The other thing about the Da Vinci Code is I'm a lapsed Catholic and I still think it's the most. anti-Catholic thing I've ever read or seen. It's like basically anti-Catholic propaganda in a way that I'm not comfortable with, even though I'm no longer part of the faith. It's not great. Yeah. Well, I haven't watched it. I know that they like, it also seems like anti-albino, right? Because isn't there like a monk with albinism? Yeah, that monk guy. You know that like people with

albinism are actually sometimes persecuted for like religious reasons. Like, it's, It's kind of weird to be like, oh, look at this guy fighting against religion. Anyways, look at this creepy guy because he doesn't have the gene to produce melanin. We should just turn the rest of this episode into a Dan Brown hate fest. Also, I liked how, like, I did not read the books, but apparently there's parts of the book where he just, like, writes about how sexy students find. Oh, sure. Langdon. Robert Langdon. Yeah, Langdon, the history professor, whatever he is.

Which is funny because Dan Brown is that. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I know all my female students are having sexual fantasies about me as I'm lecturing about freaking frescoes. Yeah, the movie is one of those works where they did a good job kind of softening some of that. Like, that's the one good thing about the movie. Right, because you can't make Tom Hanks. Sex pest. You can't do that. My guess is Tom Hanks would have refused if they tried to. He would have been like,

Come on. Like, what? Right. Right. If Tom, if in the script, Tom Hanks gets with a, you know, like an 18 year old college student, I don't think Tom Hanks is, that's just not in Tom Hanks's wheelhouse. He's too self-aware to be like filming that. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So anyway. Yeah. I find myself hoping that you all are. satisfied with the best explanation we can give you, which is that this gesture just got common over time. Yeah. If people are in a hurry to tell you some kind of mystical or magical or specific origin, they're probably just in a hurry to make a buck. It's very plausible that there were like a lot of gestures around that would like morph, you know. The last thing I want to cite

about this kind of unsightable thing is a different book about world superstitions. It's by guy named Max Cryer who wrote superstitions and why we have them. He says, quote, pinning down the origins of superstitions can be baffling.

Unlike epigrams, quotations, proverbs, and literary allusions. Superstitions often grow without visible ancestry, end quote. And I both like that take and feel like it even fits into this, because he's also not a real expert in any of this.

Max Cryer wrote dozens of nonfiction books that he was able to sell because he was a New Zealand-based television presenter and game show host. Like just his name could move a book of facts. And basically only book of facts people are covering this topic. And we're just short on scholarship. We just don't have a lot to lean on. Yeah, that's always frustrating. I feel like there's a lot of like truism type things that gain prominence.

And it's like, you're a guy with a name I recognize. And now I think that there's like this secret hand gesture thing. But, you know, I mean, it's like in this case, it's like benign. Probably I can't really think of a dangerous way in which believing this about. I mean, maybe like right, like the idea of like in some religious propaganda or something. I don't know. But yeah, it's frustrating. I agree.

The not just a silver lining. the good news is that it's harmless if you think specific lore about where cross fingers come from. Like you say, I think it would be hard for that to grow and metastasize, I guess, into something really bad. Like, yeah, sure, whatever. Yeah. You can think it's pagans in the woods in Germany putting their fingers together. It's fine. Frolicing around, wearing mushrooms as hats.

Yeah, yeah. Folks that being cautious and also some numbers, that kind of wraps up our first half. We're going to take a quick break, then come back with a few more fast takeaways about actual scholarship of crossing your fingers. All right. I'm ready. I'm ready for the facts, Alex. Ungarnished. No, sorry, unvarnished truth.

I don't mind a little garnish. I don't want to twist a lemon with my truth. That's fine. But no varnish. But also protect wood, which we're on record in this episode as being very important. It belongs. Varnish belongs on wood, not in your drink. Let's cut to commercials.

We're back, and these next couple takeaways are fast because they are the extremely limited amount of scholarship that I could find involving crossing your fingers. There's not a lot. Starting with takeaway number two. One scientific study suggests crossing your fingers could be a minor source of pain relief. Huh. Okay.

It's just one study, but it's all. It's also peer-reviewed and done by an actual team at University College London, and it suggests that maybe crossing your fingers could help distract you from pain, like an extra stimulus that keeps your mind off it. Okay. I mean, maybe. Exactly. This is a very maybe thing because nobody really studies this intensively. And this is published in the journal Current Biology in 2015. And they also, I think, confounded it a bit in terms of its practical usefulness because they opted to use the illusion of pain rather than hurting their subjects, which is nice to do, but also means I take this less seriously as life advice. Right. I mean, the IRB is pretty fussy.

They don't like you torturing patients, especially in the field of psychology when we had all those cases where essentially, you know, back in like the 60s and 70s. Or you're just like psychologically torment patients or subjects. You know, not great. Yeah, like if this was done by an 1800s German prince, they would have tortured kids or something. But this was done in a valid way for human rights. So that's good. Yeah, which is nice. You know, can't be too mad at them for that.

Yeah, so they used something called the Thermal Grill illusion to make subjects experience. pain without actual tissue damage and harm. Okay, so like it's psychological pain but not physical pain? How does that work? Yeah, it's very strange and apparently it's pretty well documented. It was first recorded in the 1890s. I've never like tried it and I guess I wouldn't recommend trying it because it feels like it hurts. But what happens is you set up an alternating set of hot bars and cold bars,

like sort of like a grill, like lines of things that get hot or cold. You don't make them super hot or super cold, but those alternating temperatures, if you put your hand across it, you will experience, like, strong pain in your minds, even though it's just hot or cold in a way that's not damaging your tissue. And even though if you just touch one kind of bar or the other kind of bar, you get the normal stimulation. Yeah. So that's an interesting thing because, like, hot and cold, like with the extremes, it can get maybe more. muddled of like whether you're getting burned or whether it's like really, really cold. So I can see how that would maybe overstimulate those nerves and think that maybe you're being hurt when you're not.

Yeah, that seems to be how this works. And it's like a documented illusion. It's a real fake phenomenon, if that makes sense. Right, right. Yeah, I get that. Like you say the IRB, if people don't know what that is, that's a board that reviews your plan study to see if it's humane and ethical. Some version of the IRB said go ahead and do thermal grill allusion to subjects.

And then the researchers had the subjects cross their index and middle finger while this was happening. And the subjects reported less feeling of pain when they made that change. Right. And according to author Patrick Haggard, quote, it raises the interesting possibility that pain levels could be manipulated by applying additional stimuli and by moving one part of the body relative to others, changing the spatial pattern of interacting inputs could have an effect on the brain pathways that underlie perception, end quote.

There is this concept of gating in terms of pain where it's like your brain can only focus on so much in terms of body sensation at once. Cool. I don't know when we're going to release this, but I've been like, I am going to spawn a baby. Did we already, this is after we, we, we. revealed our baby news, right? I should have said at the top. So this is our only taping between taping the episode where we share our baby news and that episode releasing.

So we haven't received people's reactions to the baby news, but it's out there. Okay. Okay. So I can. You and me don't know what people said, but it will be out there. We don't know the, they're like, oh, no. Like you guys, you should not have airs. Not more of you.

Yeah, no, but like, because like, and I don't know, full disclosure, because I'm an oversharer, but like I'm going to, I'm going to try for the epidural. But I feel like there's so many unknowns with like giving birth that I wanted to have other sort of pain management techniques. Because it's like, yeah, I would like the epidural, but if it's not as effective as I would like or for whatever reason, like, you know, can't get it or early labor is. really tough. Like I want to learn about how to manage pain. It's not like an easy thing to just like, kind of like, I just think through the pain, right? Because it's, you know, pretty, pretty intense. I'm very much in favor of getting the epidural and hopefully that works out for me. But, you know, I just wanted to be prepared. Yeah. I think there is research into it. I don't know that it is like a settled science at all. But like if you are experiencing some pain, if you kind of introduce physical

sensation in another part of your body, even a painful sensation in another part of your body that will potentially draw your attention away from the pain happening. It's not that the pain magically goes away. It's that your brain can only focus so much on so many things. So the idea is to kind of like you reduce the attention that you're giving some pain that you're having like a muscle cramp. Sort of your your brain resources, right? Like the... Yeah, yeah. And then so like I could see a similar thing happening with the crossing your fingers, right? Like you're experiencing some pain, but when you're crossing your fingers, it's not that it's painful, but it's like a physical sensation.

And maybe that is like drawing your attention away somewhat from the other physical sensation. That's right. And they think that maybe crossing your fingers is sort of the simplest, fastest way to cross any part of your body over itself. Most people's index and middle are flexible enough to easily. cross. And so if that kind of physical shifting helps at all, crossing fingers is one of the best ways to do it. So it's an interesting idea. Yeah. It's cool. And it's, of course, minor pain relief. You're not invincible all of a sudden or something. Yeah. And this study is about the most interesting science or history of any kind I could pin down about crossing your fingers. The next takeaway here is a

stranger study that I'm even more skeptical of. Because takeaway number three, One study suggested simply believing in good luck could improve our success in tasks. Huh. Okay. Tell me more. I'm a little skeptical, but keep going. Yeah, for a set of reasons, especially this having a tiny sample size. It's only 28 subjects.

Okay. Sorry, I don't mean to be so mean. But that's not very good. Oh, I'm already being mean. I think they did a bad job. But it's a published study in the journal Psychological Science in 2010 was run by a team at the University of Cologne in Germany. They tried to see if either telling people they have a lucky ball or telling people they are crossing their fingers for them improves their success rate at a task. And I think they're really just checking if people benefit from confidence or not.

But it's like vaguely a study of whether luck exists. This isn't this isn't like the secret where it's like if you put out good thoughts somehow you're going to magically draw good investments towards you. This is more like does feeling lucky make you do better on tasks? Yeah. Also opposite of a shout out to Dan Brown, whose new book is called The Secret of Secrets, which feels like he's just trying to tag onto the other person's book The Secret or something. Like he's just all in on lying at this point. So that's cool. Right.

Wait, is it a fiction book or is it like a self-help book? It is a Robert Langdon novel. It has another adventure. Oh, okay. So, you know, it is different. How many more secrets is this freaking Robert Langdon uncover? He's like, it's not just Christ who has a wife. God also is a wife guy.

A. I know. Some religions think that Christ is the same as God. What? Like, what, like how many wives? is this guy discovering. Yeah, Robert Langdon is apparently in Prague because he's got to be running around Continental Europe.

And he's with his girlfriend who is a noetic scientist as a form of parapsychology. And then has to save her beautiful life, you know? And so it's what you think. Yeah, he probably met her at one of his lectures when she was like a student or something. It's probably a. Dan Brown, freaking. Dan Brown. He's such an art.

pervert. So getting into this study here, total of 28 people, they had the participants try to sink golf putts, and they only told some of the participants that their ball is lucky, by the way, late before they started. And people sank a few more puts if they thought the ball was lucky. And then the other task they did, which is most relevant to this sift topic, is they, I couldn't find a diagram. They had the participants put balls into slats as fast as possible.

Balls into slats. I'm always doing that. Right. And as fast as possible, by the way. It's hard. And then some of the participants were told a German phrase beforehand, like from the researcher. The researcher said a phrase. It literally translates to, I press my thumbs for you.

But it's the German and cultural language version of I'm crossing my fingers for you. I pressed my thumbs for you. Yeah. That's cool. And then a couple people did the balls a little faster. That's it. Yeah, that's it. Okay.

This is also like 28 people? Yeah, the same group did a series of tasks. So also I feel like they were like conditioning them to get speedier at focus tasks. It's, I don't know. It's stupid. Whatever. Yeah, I mean, like maybe saying I pressed my thumbs for you gave them a leg up. We don't know.

This doesn't sound particularly. significantly statistically significant. Yeah, as folks in here, I have no respect for this study. And it's about the level of science that's being done about crossing one's fingers. We should write a whole book about it, though, and use this as the premise for like, oh, man, it's got to be like a self-help book where it's like, oh, we title the book, Are You Feeling Lucky? And then the whole point of the book is that if you feel lucky, you'll be successful in business. Right.

And then our whole thing is that we point to our own success of selling this book to show it works. And of course, like the idea being that we made money. Yeah. Giving you advice. And now you go on to make money. Who knows how? That's not the point. But are you feeling lucky?

I want to put more books in. Hurry up and get my advice because the secret agents of the anti-Pope are chasing me through Albania. And so. And these damn people without melanin are very sinister or something. My students think I'm hot. Yeah, that too. That too. Yeah.

Yeah. I like Italy's. I press my thumbs together for you. better, which is... Oh, what is it? I think it's like in Bucca del Lupo, which means like in the mouth of the wolf. Oh. I don't know why it means good luck, but it's fun.

I love it. The mouth of the wolf. It feels like Romulus and Rima's stuff or something. Wow. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool as hell. I love it. That's very good.

Like, I feel motivated. When someone tells me that, I'm just like, yeah, man, that's freaking metal. I love that. That makes me feel good. Even if it's like, I don't know if I believe in luck. But now you're bringing wolves into this and you're saying like in the mouth of a wolf, that's so cool that now I do feel a little bit of that sort of like lupine power coursing through me. And let's move to a different country for one last takeaway. Oh man.

This is about an actual. What's it? He said we have to move to a new country. That's a lot of work. This is an actual. diplomatic thing about loyalty and culture. Takeaway number four. Crossed fingers are one way people are becoming members of Britain's parliament

without supporting the British monarchy. Oh, cool. Yeah, this isn't universal, but it's very public. At least two MPs have taken the oath of office to be seated in parliament while publicly crossing their fingers as an anti-monarchist statement and not swearing loyalty to the monarch with their words anymore, like the negation move, you know? So like, because they have to say, like, I bow to the queen. I kiss her tiny feet.

I don't know exactly what the process is. Almost, yeah. It's something, right? Yeah, the key sources here are reporting for BBC News by Susan Holm, also writing for The Conversation.com by Marie Coleman, who's a lecturer in modern Irish history at Queen's University, But I'm also linking just resources from Parliament because they have the text of the oath to be seated in Parliament. The oath of offices is as follows, quote, I swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.

And kiss and kiss all of their preternaturally small feet. Right? because it's like their Habsburg jar or whatever, tiny footedness. Right. Shoes have to be stuffed with newspaper. And yeah, and the weirdest thing about this oath, but it makes sense looking at, especially the last couple hundred years of British politics,

the only inflexible part is loyalty to the British monarch. The biggest surprise to me was that you don't have to swear it to God. Oh. Apparently you can do what's called a solemn affirmation without a divine, and Christian religious element. And then also you have to swear it in English, but you have the option to follow it up by swearing it in Welsh or Scottish Gaelic or Cornish.

Like it's not even the primacy of English language kind of thing. You can do it with or without your hand on a sacred text. There's actually a lot of flexibility unless you try to not swear loyalty to the crown and try to express any like Republican-democratic kind of values. In a certain kind of like way, I guess it makes sense historically, right? Because it's like you got to, I guess you got to be loyal to the crown. I mean, now like it seems that the monarchy's power has become much, much more just symbolic.

Yeah. Without much, if any, tangible power over parliament. But I don't think anyone would expect them to ever use it. The other issue is that means like the words of these sort of oaths act like it's still a monarchy dominating the government and specifically a British one, which has been a problem ever since there's been a strong move for the independence of Ireland. Right. Which led to the Republic of Ireland being most of that landmass, you know. And it went really smoothly. Yeah.

And the thing is, as early as the 1840s, Irish nationalists such as Daniel O'Connell proposed putting up candidates for the British Parliament because all of Ireland was still part of Britain, and then having them refused to take their seed on the grounds that they can't swear loyalty to the oppressive imperialist monarch of Britain. And that culminated in the 1918 elections for parliament. The political movement that's also a party and has been an army, we could do 100. episodes about Sinn Féin. But Sinn Féin won enough seats in the British Parliament to then feel confident about declaring Irish independence and forming their own legislature because they ran on a platform of specifically the oath doesn't work for us. And then to this day, if Sinn Féin candidates are elected in the constituent UK Kingdom of Northern Ireland, that Sinn Féin candidate runs on a platform of I will not take a seat and it'll just be empty. And that's what happens.

I see, okay. Because Northern Ireland is still part of the UK, whereas they don't call it Southern Ireland, just by the way. Just Ireland. That would not go over well, though. No, no, no, you should not do that. Yeah, but like, according to Marie Coleman, quote, the only obstacle to Sinn Féin MPs taking their seats in London is their opposition to the parliamentary oath, end quote. And then the oath is rigid that way because people who are pro-yne. unionist and people who are, let's say, English don't want other parts of the UK to leave or to be

able to join Parliament without loyalty. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure not all English people are lockstep on this issue. I'm sure plenty of them are like, yeah, you know, it's fine. Like, there are plenty of English who also don't support the monarchy, assume like a good number. And that brings us to crossing fingers because those kinds of Republican and non-royalist, people, some of them get elected to parliament, want to hold the seat and actually serve, and at least two of them have created a tradition of crossing their fingers while verbally saying the oath. Oh, nice.

In a way that skates through the parliamentary rules, they still get to be seated. But for their conscience, they feel they have not sworn loyalty to the crown. Right. And also probably for their constituents to be like, like wink, wink, like, see, I'm not actually. Yeah. You know. It's a political act. Yeah.

It's part of what they ran on. Yeah. That's fun. I like that for them. I think that's cheeky and fun. And the first one to do it, they did it in 1997. And this was a re-swearing in. They had already been an MP, but it's an MP named Tony Banks.

And when he was sworn in again in 1997, he crossed his fingers on his left hand in full view of everybody. He didn't put it behind his back or whatever. Right. This is not meant to be like a secret like gotcha kind of thing. This is an open act of defiance. Yeah. And then he was funny about it for the rest of his career and life too. Because obviously he's trying to invalidate loyalty to the crown.

And he'd also been publicly in favor of abolishing the House of Lords and ending all the aristocratic and monarchical parts of British structures. But when he was interviewed about it, he would joke that he had crossed his fingers for luck. he would joke that he did the other main meaning. Yeah, like he's still being very coy here. Yeah, and using the real thing where this gesture is two things, and we know the context. Right, right. And then one time he joked about it, he claimed in a 1999 interview that specifically he was doing like advertising and buzz marketing for Britain's national lottery, like the main lotto in the country. Because the real logo of that lotto is an anthropomorphic hand with fingers crossed for luck.

Like it actually is that. Has he ever been like, this is a shout out to Vietnam where I'm like, I'm going to vagina or a vulva while I'm being sworn in. I'm real rude in that country, baby. Yeah. Yeah. And then Tony Banks also claimed he was not the first person to manipulate the oath and got the idea from somebody else. But apparently this isn't quite recorded or verifiable. He either thought or heard that another MP named Dennis Skinner had changed the words and said, quote,

I solemnly swear that I will bear true and faithful allegiance to the queen when she pays her income tax. That's daughter. Roasted her. Perhaps the main argument against Britain's monarchy from the public is just that they have too much money that they're not like earning and could go towards services. which for better or worse is an argument. So there was also a group of MPs in the mid-1990s that made a proposal to let MPs swear allegiance to their constituents or the crown and make that flexible. But it mostly didn't go through because of concerns about Irish independence. And then this is now continuing to be an issue, especially after Brexit, now that other parts of the UK are maybe pro-European.

And in 2019, Stephen Bonar swore his oath to join Parliament. He represents a area of Scotland and prominently crossed his fingers on his hands because he advocates for Scottish independence, which would mean no longer being under the British crown. Yeah. I mean, I want Scotland to join get unbrexited because as a European – no, I'm kidding. But, you know, I do live in Italy now. And the freedom of movement between countries being in the, like, EU is amazing. Like, it's really nice. Now it's like, like the UK is sort of like outside the Schengen zone.

So you got to get out of, got to redo security. It's a big pain in the butt. Yeah. And in 2016, the UK voted to leave by a small margin. But Scotland and Northern Ireland, if they were on their own, each voted to remain. in the EU. So it seems like Bonar is certainly representing his constituents, but probably representing that whole constituent kingdom that would like to be in the EU. And if that means leaving, great. There is the Sinn Féin approach if we won't even take our seats. And the other approach is crossing

your fingers while you say the oath. It's sort of an interesting diplomatic maneuver. And it has real political ramifications. Like then those people vote in parliament and speak in parliament. What if you just let one rip while taking the oath? Like is that also like a that could be, you know, just like let a big let one rip? I feel like the past, especially in England, everyone was living on beef and whiskey in a way where they were just ripping all the time. Like it was indistinguishable from a political act, you know? And I mean, we're talking about Ireland too. So you got a lot of like cabbage sort of like based dishes that you could utilize there, right?

Yeah. And so which are delicious, by the way. But it's good fiber is what I'm saying. So like you could potentially, I'm just saying like, has anyone just opted for the like, you know, kind of letting one rip as the message. Yeah. The first pun I could think of is fart minster, but that's not nearly good enough. It's just childish. I liked it, Alex.

I support you. And of course, nobody else did especially in Britain. But that's how goes. Sorry, folks. Too bad. Don't never apologize. Double down. Triple down.

Crossing my fingers in the Vietnamese sense at everyone. Hey, folks, that's the main episode for this week. And like I think I said in the middle of the show, I assume thank you for your well-wishes about me and Katie's news about each of us having babies soon. Because we are taping this episode right before we release the news. so we haven't heard your feedback, but I'm sure it's sweet because you're always so wonderful. And we're looking forward to that news. And if you missed last week's show about baby bottles, Katie's having a baby and also I'm having a baby.

It's all very exciting. But let's get you into fun features about this episode in its outro, such as Help Remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, there's a long-running claim about crossed fingers originating in pagan, magical handshakes or originating in Christian secret handshakes, but there's no way to prove or verify any of it. I've been digging into it on and off for more than a month, and there's just nobody's solid saying anything about that. Takeaway number two, one scientific study suggests crossing your fingers could be a minor source of pain relief. Takeaway number three, one relatively ridiculous study

suggested simply believing in good luck could improve our success in tasks. It's actually probably a confidence thing or just a small sample size. Takeaway number four, crossed fingers are one way people are becoming members of Britain's parliament without swearing a true oath to support the British monarchy. And then a few numbers at the start as well, mainly about the many meetings of crossing your fingers, the one specific culture in Vietnam or it's an insult, the emoji, the emoji history of the crossing your fingers emoji and more.

Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. Members are the reason our podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously

incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is a diplomatic scandal. It is when Samoa cross their fingers for regime change in Australia. Visit sifpod.fund.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 23 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFund bonus shows. It is special audio. It's just for members.

Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximum fun.org. Key sources this week include the limited amount of scholarship and journalism about crossing your fingers that is out there. Emojapedia.org has excellent resources about the emoji history of this item. Also, I found what seem like solid travel blogs about Vietnam. Then I leaned on British history and culture sources like BBC News and a piece for theconversation.com

by Marie Coleman, lecturer in modern Irish history at Queens University of Belfast. Also a lot of science writing from Smithsonian Magazine, the journal science, and an Atlas Obscura feature by Natalie Zarelli about superstitions around the world. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lanoppe people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skategoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my own. my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people in life. There is a link in this episode's

description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm bringing you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 31. That is about the topic of The Scream, a painting called The Scream.

You've seen it before. Fun fact there, there's a few versions of the painting, but by far the most famous one, has damage on it from candle wax, which is in a roundabout way made it basically impossible to forge. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host,

Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support.

Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then Maximum Fun

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