Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Curse of Broken Mirrors

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

It's seven years' bad luck for you if you break a mirror, buddy, sorry. But have you ever wondered why? People have come up with all sorts of great reasons since time immemorial.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Josh, Chuck, Jerry, not Dave, but still Dave, let's go. Didn't we do a whole episode on Mirrors and maybe talk about breaking mirrors? There's no way we didn't talk about that, But this is definitely an exploded, expanded, really balloony version of that. Yeah, because we're talking about the idea that if you break a mirror, if you are superstitious, a lot of people would say that brings you seven years of bad luck. And we're going to dig into why that might be. People have been superstitious ever since there have been people about different things.

And way before the mirror. And apparently the Greeks were the first people to sort of just start talking about a reality. reflection because the story of Narcissus falls in love with his image in the stream and drowns and dies. So because of that, the Greeks are like, maybe seeing yourself isn't such a great thing to do. No. And that was Narcissus who had a tattoo, by the way. That's right. So, yeah, it was bad luck to see your reflection in water. And that was pretty much the only place you could see your reflection if you were in ancient Greek. Because it wasn't a time. until the ancient Romans came along, and they said, yeah, we basically believe the same thing,

but we're also incredibly vain. So we're going to invent mirrors, and eventually the mirrors that they came up with at the beginning were highly polished metal surfaces. So if you had like an old shield sitting around, don't throw it away. You can upcycle it and do a terrific mirror. Yeah. Or I guess look at the reflection to see Medusa, if you're a Clash of the Titans, Wasn't that a shield? Yeah. How would you say the name of the person who looked at their reflection in the water? Oh, I've always heard it as Narcissus, but I like how you said it.

I'm not mocking you at all here, okay? I didn't think you were. Okay, good. I think I might be getting that pronunciation from the song from Indigo Girls. Did they say Narcissus? Yeah, I look a lot like Narcissus. I'm quite sure that at least one or both of them studied Greek mythology at U.G. at some point.

Oh, maybe so. And by the way, our good friend Lucy Wainwright just got off of tour with Indigo Girls. Oh, congratulations, Lucy. That's awesome. I think you told me that.

Yeah, she had the road with him for a while, and her beautiful little cute daughter was able to go on to a lot of these shows, which is always fun. That's really cool. Yeah, little girl on tour. That's what can be more fun than that.

For sure, and to keep everybody grounded, you know? Yeah, like, Indigo girls aren't doing all those nasty drugs in front of that girl. No. No, they're very well known for trashing hotel rooms, too. And I bet that they did not trash any of them because Lucy Wainwright Roach's kid.

No, not one TV was thrown over a balcony. Nope. Where were we? We were talking about shields as mirrors. Those were the first mirrors. That's right. That led to, you know, the idea that gods might observe their souls through these shiny reflective devices. So, you know, that means it has important.

So to damage something like that, something like that to be broken, would at first they thought of it as like just disrespectful. And then they said, but also maybe it would anger the gods and they would rain bad luck down upon their heads. Yeah. And if you believe that the reflection in the mirror, your reflection is actually you're seeing your soul. If you break a mirror, you're breaking your soul too.

And so there's a couple of ways that that could bring about misfortune, apparently. one is that your soul couldn't protect your body any longer. That's why all sorts of bad stuff befalls you for seven years. And then also, in some traditions, your soul is rather upset at having been broken, and now it's looking for revenge on you. And sometimes it does that in the form of killing one of your loved ones. Yeah. It's not what you want.

I mean, you're already broke your very nice mirror, and now your grandma died. Come on. Yeah. And the whole seven years thing came about apparently because the Romans believed that life changes happen in seven-year cycles. So that's where that idea comes from. Or another explanation that, I'm not sure about this one, but apparently mirrors, you know, they were pretty expensive early on. And the cost of a mirror would equal seven years work from a servant. I like both of those.

Yeah. They could maybe both are accurate. So as far as the English language goes, Chuck, the first time anyone mentions breaking a mirror being bad luck was from 1777, where the author mentions that breaking a mirror is a very unlucky accident because mirrors were part of an ancient kind of divination formerly used by magicians and their superstitious and diabolical operations. That's right. And because it became a thing in print, it became a thing in British culture. and yeah, so all of a sudden people all over the world are not wanting to break their mirrors anymore. Okay, so let's take a little break, as it were,

and come back, try to put everything together by explaining what you can do to mitigate your bad luck if you do break a mirror. Okay, friends, real talk. You are worth the wait. We've all been there, giving our energy to connections that didn't honor ours, and watching friends do the same. And honestly, we all deserve better. That's why Bumble is built for intentional dating. Safety is such a big deal for us all, especially when meeting new people. And Bumble gives you the peace of mind with options like photo and ID verification. That little extra step means you know the person you're talking to. to is who they say they are, with their real photos, and they are ready to show up authentically. And once you feel safe, you can actually focus on what matters, finding someone who gets you. With shared interests, it's easy to see right away who vibes with your passions, whether that's true crime podcasts, yoga mornings, or weekend hikes. So take a pause, affirm your worth, and protect your

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Josh laid down a series of puns about mirror breakage apparently there's some things you can do if you break your mirror apparently one of the things you can do is you got to get rid of those pieces you don't want to leave a broken mirror lying around obviously it's not a great thing

just to have in your house with broken glass but I think it has more to do with like let's just wash ourselves of this and get it out of here as quickly as possible. Yeah, so this is based on a House Stuff Works article. I love how they actually are serious about telling you how to throw away a broken mirror. You dispose of the pieces in the trash by wrapping them in paper or placing them in a cardboard box. Yeah. Because sharp mirror pieces can cut through a plastic bag.

That has nothing to do with superstition. That's just good household advice. That's right. Good old-fashioned House Stuff Works. advice. Another one, this automatically makes it ancient to me is that you take the mirror pieces and you bury them. And then what makes

it even more ancient is that you're better off if you bury them in the light of a full moon. Creepy. But it seems to me you'd have to do a little weighing of cost benefit of keeping the mirror pieces around until a full moon. You know, especially if you broke your mirror

on the new moon, then you're keeping these unlucky pieces around for a month. I don't know man. I don't know if the full moon would mitigate that bad luck that you accrued over the month. Yeah, agreed. I'd just get rid of it unless you were pretty close. Maybe two days within a full moon. That's my rule. I think I would go two days max, too. Yeah. All right, I'm glad we agree on that in case we ever break a mirror together. You can also grind that stuff into powder if you want to. Take it to a party. Yeah, take it to a party. And then the old throw salt over your shoulder, over your left shoulder is a great way to get rid of any bad luck if you believe in that.

kind of thing. Works for everything. Yeah. So we're talking mirrors, and mirrors are made from glass, but glass, non-meared glass, breaking it actually is used as good luck sometimes, although it can also be bad luck, too. Apparently, in England, breaking a glass as a death omen. Yeah. Which means people would be dropping, like, flies around me, because I break glasses a lot.

Yeah, you and Emily both. Loves the break glass. Yep. I think the Greeks, though, you know, it can be a celebratory thing, obviously, at a Greek celebration to ward off evil spirits or anyone who's ever been to a Jewish wedding stomping on that wine glass is one of the great traditions. And then there's other mirror superstitions too. Like the mirror is just a superstition factory apparently. Yeah. So there are traditions where if somebody passes away, you cover the mirrors in your house with something just to make it so no one can see

the reflection. And there's a few reasons to do this. One is the person who's died, their soul is now wandering around until they're buried. And apparently, if they see the reflection in the mirror, they get sucked into the mirror and stuck there. And you don't want that to happen to your poor grandma's soul. No. Or your poor grandma's mirror, because apparently that will cause the mirror to tarnish and maybe even turn into an image of that person who was deceased.

Now, imagine, Chuck, if you broke your mirror, it caused your grandma to die. You replaced the mirror, and your poor grandma saw her soul. saw herself in that new mirror and is trapped in it. That's a lot of bad luck. Yeah, and baggage, honestly. For sure. You know, that's shrink territory. Yeah, because also grandma always just told you you weren't doing anything, right?

Yeah, that's right. Other people thought that demons could escape through the mirror, like go from the non-living world into the living. And so covering a mirror if someone passes, like there's a lot of mirror covering happening in these situations. For sure. There's also some marriage stuff, too. In Edwardian, Britain, which took place in the first decade of the 20th century, if you wanted to know what your future husband was going to be like, or if you'd be married at all, you could sit down in front of a mirror with some candlelight. And if you saw your husband show up in the mirror, I'll get. If a grim specter appear, you would die before you got married. Yeah. That doesn't necessarily mean that you die at 20 or something like that.

It just means that you might die an old unmarried person. Yeah, that's right. But with marriage, it could also be a good thing because apparently this superstition, if you, after you get married and you say I do, if you look into a mirror in the short time after that, you will be uniting your soul and it creates apparently an alternate universe where the two souls can live forever together. Very sweet. Yeah. What's sweeter?

I don't know. There's not much sweeter. So I guess this Halloween season, we would say go out, kiss your mirror, and take very good care of it. Don't you think that's good advice? That's right. Or just cover that thing up if you don't want to take your chances. Yeah. And, of course, obviously, that means that the spooky short stuff is out.

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