Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Why Spilling Salt is Unlucky

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Face it, when you spill salt your life goes totally off the rails, maybe even forever. Fortunately, we humans stumbled upon the one reliable way to counteract that bad luck by tossing some over our left shoulder.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Sometimes the pop culture we love just teens hits differently in retrospect. Maybe it's a tabloid story we couldn't get enough of or an illicit student teacher relationship on our favorite show. We're Suzy Bannock-A-Rum and Jessica Bennett, posts of the new podcast in retrospect, where each week we'll revisit a cultural moment from the past that shaped us and probably you to try to understand what it taught us about the world and our place in it. You're the first person that I've talked to about this for years and years. Listen to InRetrospect on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey, I'm open to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck in. We're doing it by ourselves,

doing it in the park, doing it after dark. It's short stuff. Yeah, and you know what? This was a little treat for me because this is one of the old Hal Sufferks articles written by Debbie Ronca, my good friend. Yeah, yeah, I saw that when I picked out, I was like Chuck's gonna love this. Yeah, that was the time when we were writing there where I ended up getting quite a few of my friends, freelance jobs, and Debbie was one of them

and we just saw Deb at our show in Boston. Yeah, hey Debbie. So it was good to catch up with her. Yeah, and she did a great job with this because it's not easy to talk about superstitions and keep your wits about you. You can get so scared that you are just gonna get off track. You might stop writing altogether,

but she should plowed through and came up with a great article that you are just going to get off track, you might stop writing all together, but you should have plowed through and came up with a great article from House Stuff Works about why it's bad luck to spill salt. Because everybody knows it's bad luck to spill salt. But why? And then on top of that, have you ever noticed some people throw salt over their left shoulder when they spill it? I do.

Why would we do that too? Here's the thing. I know that superstitions can be regional. And I'm not saying people themselves don't do this, but I've never seen anyone do this. I know it's a thing. I've heard of it, but I never did it. I don't maybe have never spilled salt. I don't know, but I've never known people who did it. So it just wasn't a popular thing for me, as you're like growing up, or now. It's just throwing it over your shoulder. Yeah, I've never seen anyone do this stuff. So yeah, I do it every time, but it's possible though

that's, I guess I want to establish, you've known forever that spilling salt is bad luck at least, right? No, oh, okay. I mean, I've heard about it and like, seen it in movies, but it wasn't like a superstition that was prominent for me for some reason. Okay, but you had heard of it.

Like, this isn't like news to you. No, no, no, it wasn't news. I was just like, who does this? And why is everyone spilling salt? So yeah, the thing about spilling salt and it being a superstition is it seems to be a really, really old superstition that's been passed down through millennia essentially and is still around today, which is kind of funny,

because I don't actually consider myself superstitious, but yeah, I still throw salt over my left shoulder every time I spill it. Now, I spill a lot of salt. What does spilling salt mean? Like, you reach for the shaker and you tip it over by accident? I do it anytime the salt touches the counter or anything aside from the salt box that I use. So like if you're shaking a little salt on food and some like jumps off onto the counter, that's considered spilling it?

No, I don't actually know that you mentioned that. This is more, I'll grab a pinch out of the salt box and be salting stuff and if that gets messy, then yeah. It's almost like if I see it and notice it, then I will throw it over my shoulder. All right, I love it. I'm certainly not, I mean, I'm the weirdo that steps on a crack with their left foot

and then has to step on a crack with their right foot. Right. So there's one thing we need to dispense with right out of the gate because there's a well-known fact that the word salary is derived from salt, saldare, which means give salt in, I think, Latin. And that is how Roman soldiers used to be paid. That is not entirely correct,

but it doesn't seem to be fully ameth. Either Roman soldiers were partially paid in salt, like they got a salt ration every day, or part of their money, their pay, the actual coinage they were given, was given to them to buy salt in part to buy salt. Now, we did a great episode on salt. I'm sure we talked about that. Do you remember what we said then? I think we said it was maybe even a myth altogether. I'm not sure, but it's just, ambiguous enough that you can't say,

it's fully a myth or it's fully true. Right, but the idea then in terms of this episode is because salt was valuable, that could be one of the reasons or one of the origins of it being bad luck because you've just essentially spilled some money. Yeah, exactly. That's the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the a few years to Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the last supper. I think that was in the 16th century that he did that. And if you look very closely, one Judas Iscariot has spilled the salt. I didn't ever notice that. I didn't either, but I haven't seen it that many times. I haven't either. Now that I think about it, but it was a growth in the church, so it was a prominent painting. But if you mentioned Judas and salt in the same breath, they probably would have been

like, yeah, Judas is terrible with salt, and that's why he was such a terrible person. All right, fair enough. That could be another religious connotation for the bad luck. Well also though, I thought this is pretty interesting. In Christianity, it's also seen as a symbol of holiness and purity, which is not just symbolic. It actually does keep food pure. It's one of the things that salt has always been used for is preservation.

So I thought that was a pretty interesting extension or expansion or extrapolation. Yeah, agreed. Shall we take a break? Yeah. All right, let's take a break. We'll talk about maybe some more background and why we throw it over our left shoulder right after this. This is In Retrospect, a podcast about pop culture from the 80s and 90s that shaped us. I'm very much a product of the pop culture I consumed. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

I'm Jessica Bennett, a New York Times writer and bestselling author. I'm Susie Bette Karam, an award winning TV producer and filmmaker. Every week, we'll revisit a moment in cultural history that we just can't stop thinking about. From tabloid headlines to illicit student teacher relationships, and one, very memorable

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It's not a love story. It had been branded on the uterus of every single woman from C to shining sea. Listen to In Retrospect on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone in our country has a voice. It's something that says not just where you come from, but who you are. Welcome to NPR's Black Stories, Black Truths, a collection of podcasts and a celebration of the hosts and journalism who've always spoken truth to power.

Our voices are as varied, nuanced, and dynamic as the Black experience, and stories should never be about us without us. Find NPR Black Stories Black Truths on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, Chuck, so there's been a lot of different myths about salt that spread out, which kind of makes sense because salt's been treated all over the world for a while, and it's been valuable, or it was valuable for a very long time. For example, in Slavic mythology, there's a well-trade story about a father who has three daughters and he asks them how much they love him. And the first one says, I love you as much as diamonds. Second one says, I love you as much as gold.

And the third one says, I love you as much as salt. And he says, be gone. Yeah, get out. And she's like, why just stop and think about what I said, Dad, and he said, I said, be gone. And she's begun. Yeah, she gone to herself. And it was only till later when he's eating something that's not salted that he puts down his fork, the music cue, the needle drop happens and a loaned tear trickles down his face and he goes, oh my god, she's the one who love me the most because this food is garbage. There's an alternate ending to where the tear strikes the bite of food he has mid air Salted it and he forgets what he was even upset about Look, I just actually looked at the Judas thing and there it is there's a little thing assault spilled over right there It is a wrist did you think Debbie Ronka made that up? No, but I just never noticed it

That would have been so funny. I texted Debbie and she's like, hey, do you like that? I totally made that up. That was an Easter egg. There are African folk tales apparently, where salt is metaphor for wisdom or life trials, things like that. So if you would spill it,

then it could be viewed as like a misfortune or ignorance for the protagonist. Also in Japan, I can tell you firsthand, in Japanese culture, salt is considered protective, especially against from, you know, bad luck or evil spirits or whatever. And I was first introduced to this when one day Yumi had visited her family. And later on she opened up her glove compartment and found that there was a prescription bottle filled with salt that her mom had put in her glove compartment to drive around with without telling her. For just good luck. Yeah, to keep her protected while she's out driving. And that's sweet. That's great. Yeah. Or if she happened to have some french fries or a little bland. That's

right. So now we're at the point where we can talk a little bit about how to ward it off, because usually when there's any sort of a bad luck omen, there's also an antidote of sorts where you can combat that bad luck. And in this case, it is usually a toss over the left shoulder, and the reasons behind that seem to be linked to the fact that supposedly in many, many cultures, the devil sits over there on behind your left shoulder, waiting for sort of an invitation. And this salt, spilling the salt, could be that invitation, and then quickly throwing it over your left shoulder, the devil's like, ah, stings, that stings. Or if, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, And so that's why you're left in particular while the devil's on your left shoulder.

Not just in other cultures, but in cartoons throughout the world. Yeah, I never noticed left or right, but I mean, every cartoon had like the little angel and the little devil, and I'm sure that they probably put him on the left. Yes, and the brilliance of the Flintstones was that they combined both into one great gazoo.

Oh God, I love gazoo. You dumbed them. He was so good. Yeah, it was. So it's stuff. So I guess that's it, huh? Oh, wait, there's one more thing about about throwing salt over your shoulder, especially if you're a superstitious type. What it does is it relieves you of a little bit of the anxiety that you might otherwise have walking around that day the anxiety that you might otherwise have walking around that day, knowing that you spilled the salt and wondering what bad things going to happen. That just small act of throwing salt over your left shoulder allows you to just get over

it and move on with your day. And that over time, that seeing that that actually helps, that there is some benefits to doing that just kind of created a positive feedback loop where more people started throwing that seeing that that actually helps, that there is some benefit to doing that, just kind of created a positive feedback loop where more people started throwing salt over their shoulder. This is all conjecture, but it makes a lot of sense. Totally. Love it.

I'm gonna start doing it. I'm gonna spill some salt and throw it over my shoulder. Do not purposefully spill salt, that is really the end. Oh, all right. I'll just notice it then. Okay. All right. Alright, well that means everybody it's short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.