Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Evil Eye

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

You've seen the evil eye. Many Middle Eastern cultures have a long history with it. Learn how to thwart this curse today. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcasts. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every weekday on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and start your morning with me. Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here to giving us the evil eye. For all the trash we've ever talked about her. And frankly, it's working because I just blew a tire on the way here to work.

Is that a euphemism or? No, a blew a tire. And I lost my checkbook. You were at the grocery store, they rang everything up. You're standing there looking and they said, you have to pay it now. And you went, oh, and you reached in your purse to get your checkbook out. I reached in my front pocket in my shirt.

And then you're like, does anyone have a pen? And 12 people under the age of 75 behind you rolled their eyes inside. And they had a pen, but it leaked all over my hand. They gave you the evil eye. Big thanks to our pal Dave Ruse and the old folks at HouseofWorks.com for this bit on the evil eye, what we in our house called the stink eye. Yes, also thanks to Antonio Paglia Rulo, who is the author of a book on the evil eye, the evil eye, Colin, the history, mystery, and magic of the quiet curse. Dave talked to a lot about this because not only

Antonio write that book, his grandmother was an evil eye, doer away with practitioner when he was growing up. That's right. If you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about what turns out to be a very, very old, I don't know what you call a tradition. What do you, what is it? Custom superstition? Yeah, all those things where someone will give you the evil eye. Someone will shoot you with glance. We call it the stink eye again. Yeah. And it's, it's wordless. You don't have to say a thing. You don't have to have a, what a little voodoo doll.

All you have to do is a big, there's a quick cello sting going on in the background that was happening. 100%. You got to take that small string section around with you. It means basically, well, originally, I think it was sort of, came from jealousy or envy, but can also be just someone's angry or they resent you, or maybe they're being greedy or something. And it's generally always intentional, but I was surprised to learn

from our friend here who wrote that book that it can be unintentional. I didn't realize that but I mean, I guess I Guess if you're coveting Something or you jealous of somebody to the left of the person you accidentally look at and give the evil eye That's the best I can come up with for unintentional evil eye This goes all the way back to the Greeks and possibly before right? Oh, yeah before the Greeks, but Plutarch was maybe the first person to actually write about it. He was a philosopher and historian, as everybody knows, and he wrote some essays that were collected into something called Moralia.

And he talked about the evil eye in that. His whole jam was that your eyes are a source of energy that shoot out, that shoot the energy out into the world around you. And that reminded me of our stereoscopic episode where that one of those ancient physicians their theory was that we see by shooting beams out at stuff. And that's how we see, and I guess it's kind of what it was based on. Yeah, totally. Basically, the body fills up with that jealousy or rage or whatever, and it clouds the mind, and then the eyeballs are right there in front of the mind to sort of display for the world whatever the mind is thinking, and in this case, it's evil. Yeah, and it goes, beep, beep, when you shoot the evil eye out of your eyes.

That was Plutarch's take. And apparently that was the popular take of it. Yeah. And depending on what culture you are from and your ancestry is sort of about, you might have a long-rich tradition of evil eye shooters or blaming everything that happens to you that's bad on an evil eye that was shot your way. Yeah, because it's not just stuff that happens to you directly like injury or illness, it

can also be things that happen to the things you depend on like your smartphone exploding in your pocket. You do what that used to happen? Yeah. They are blowing a tire. Uh, smartphones did. They didn't catch on fire, right? Am I making that up? There were like mild explosions with sound.

I mean, I want to say an Android at some point in time. Yeah. Blowing up in people's pockets. And everyone's like, oh boy, remember when that was a thing? Yeah. And now they're right back in her pockets again. Back in the aughts. Yeah, everybody's like, I don't care.

I love smartphones so much. I'll just take the risk. That's right. So back to Antonio who wrote the book, The Evil Eye, he is Catholic and Italian and he said, you know, we don't even have like baby showers over here. Like that's considered bad luck to have a baby shower like you're tempting fate or something like that. So it's a, you know, sort of a superstitious danger.

And over there, and this is kind of true anywhere in any culture that has an evil eye history, they will have protections against evil eyes like amulets and things like that. And pregnant women would wear amulets in Italy, apparently, at least in his family, and they would say these special prayers to ward off the evil eye. Yeah, and the reason why having something like a baby shower would tempt fate and maybe attract an evil eye

is that it could be taken as like a boast or something. And boasting can generate envy or jealousy and envy or jealousy can shoot out of your eyes as the evil eye and then your smartphone blows up in your hand during the baby shower. Yeah. Look at me, I made a human. And in particular, baby's children, pregnant women and animals are the most vulnerable to

the evil eye, although it can happen to anybody. But there's different traditions and customs for protecting against the evil eye, depending on where you are in the world, like you said. In Turkey, when you are a newborn baby, you're going to get what's called a nazar, which is a dark blue circle with a white circle inside it and a dark blue circle inside the white circle. And it's meant to be an eye. And Chuck, I say we take a break and we'll come back and tell everybody whose eye it is after this.

Two. Horus, it's the Eye of Horus. Oh, wow. That was quick. Yeah. Yeah. And like you said, depending on where where you are you might have different traditions for wording this thing off a lot of these countries are uh... middle eastern or somewhere around the mediterranean sea uh... believe davi even said in his own family his grandmother in the

Jewish tradition would tie ribbons on cribs and things like that toward off the evil eye or potential bad luck for newborn babies, isn't that right? Yeah, for sure. In India, they'll put some coal, a black dot on the infant's face. And all of these, the point of these, the nazar, the red ribbon, the black dot on the face, they're meant to protect, they're basically amulets or talisman that can protect against the evil eye. And one reason why they based that on the eye of Horus is because in ancient Egypt the eye of Horus was painted on homes, painted in tombs. And it offered protection from evil or malintent or all sorts of problems, even back then.

And so it kind of got, you know how they take like logos, if you look at the evolution of a logo over the course of a, you know, century, it goes from really or Nate to like really stylized and simple. That's basically what happened to the eye of Horus when it became the Nazar. Yeah, that's a good way to say it. Well, thank you. And our book author also, like you mentioned, is grandmother, Paglia Rulos. Grandma would keep a bowl of water in her kitchen and poured little drops of olive oil in there and look at the shapes and the patterns that the oil would take.

And apparently that would inform her on the evil eye. And if there was like someone in her family that was potentially in danger or a neighbor or something that possibly will be or was stricken with the evil eye. And I thought that was potentially in danger, or a neighbor or something that possibly will be or was stricken with the evil eye. And I thought that was really interesting. I don't know if it literally was like, hey, that looks like a Gary, our neighbor, or if it's just, you know, kind of reading the tea leaves.

Right, up at that olive oil was so good too. Oh boy, I love olive oil. So you said that this all kind of came out of the Mediterranean, did you not? Yes, sir. They've traced it back at least 5,000 years ago to Tel Brock, which is a city in Mesopotamia, which is, Tel Brock is a modern day Syria right now.

And they've found tiny figures that all kind of bear resemblance to one another. They call them eye idols and that they think that these offered protection as well. Did you look up the eye idols of Tel Brock? Ooh, I didn't. If ET is not based on that, I will eat my hat. Okay. It's identical to ET. It's crazy how much it looks like ET, man. There's nobody who's seen ET and would see one of those and be like, I don't know.

Like, it looks exactly like ET. All right, I'm looking it up and that is ET. Yeah, in that nuts. That is ET. I mean, that is unmistakably an ET head. Right, but also even the body resembles ET, the proportions and everything. Yeah, that's true.

I don't see any arms and legs, but it does have that big squatty body. Well, thank God I don't have to eat my hat today. Because that just pile on everything else bad that's happened. Was it like a sweaty old baseball cap? Mm-hmm, salty. You know, it's got the white salt streaks that'll never come out.

No, thanks. So, I guess that's about it, huh, for the evil eye? I got nothing else. Yeah, there's all sorts of amulets and talisman you can use to protect yourself. If you feel like somebody gave you the evil eye, you can also say, please don't look at me like that anymore. I don't know what's wrong with you.

That will also dispel the magic too. That's right. Chuck said that's right, everybody. So that means short stuff is out. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. Chuck said that's right, everybody, so that means short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. you