0:04

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and there's

0:06

Chuck and we're doing it by ourselves,

0:09

doing it in the park, doing it after dark.

0:11

It's short stuff.

0:13

Yeah. And you know what, this was a little

0:16

treat for me because this is one of the old House Stuff

0:18

Works articles written by Debbie

0:21

Ronkham, my good friend.

0:22

Yeah, yep, I saw that. When I picked that, I was

0:24

like, Chuck's gonna love this. Yeah.

0:26

That was a time when we were writing there where I

0:28

ended up getting quite a few of my friends freelance

0:31

jobs, and Debbie was one of

0:33

them. And we just saw deb at our show

0:35

in Boston.

0:37

Yeah, Hey, Debbie, so it's good

0:39

to catch up with her. Yeah. And she did a great job

0:41

with this because it's not easy

0:43

to talk about superstitions and

0:46

keep your wits about you. You can get so

0:48

scared, yeah, that you are

0:50

just going to get off track. You might stop writing altogether.

0:53

But she cloud through and

0:55

came up with a great article from How Stuff

0:57

Works about why it's bad luck to spill

1:00

Because everybody knows it's bad luck to spill salt,

1:03

but why And then on top of that, have

1:05

you ever noticed some people throw salt over their left

1:07

shoulder when they spill it. I do. Why

1:11

would we do that too.

1:13

Here's the thing. I

1:15

know that superstitions

1:17

can be regional, and I'm not

1:19

seeing people in the South don't do this. But I've

1:22

never seen anyone do

1:24

this. I know it's a thing. I've heard of it, but

1:27

I never did it. I don't. Maybe I've never

1:29

spilled salt. I don't know, but

1:31

I've never known people who did

1:33

it, So it just wasn't a popular thing for

1:35

me as like growing.

1:37

Up or now, thrown it over your shoulder.

1:39

Yeah, I've never seen anyone do this stuff.

1:41

So, yeah, I do it every time. But it's

1:43

possible though. That's I

1:46

guess I want to establish. You've known forever

1:48

that spilling salt is bad luck at least, right

1:51

No?

1:52

Oh, okay, I mean I've heard about it and seen

1:54

it in movies, but it wasn't. It wasn't like a

1:56

superstition that was prominent for me for

1:58

some reason.

1:59

Okay, but you i'd heard of it, like, this isn't

2:01

like news to you?

2:02

No, no, no, it wasn't news. I was just like,

2:05

who does this? And why is everyone spilling salt?

2:07

So, yeah, the thing about spilling salt in it

2:09

being a superstition? Is it seems to be a really

2:12

really old superstition that's

2:14

been passed down through millennia

2:18

essentially, and it's still around today,

2:20

which is kind of funny because I

2:22

don't actually consider myself superstitious,

2:25

but yet I still throw salt over my left shoulder

2:27

every time I spill it. And I spill a lot of salt.

2:30

What does spilling salt mean? Like you reach for

2:32

the shaker and you tip it over by accident.

2:34

I do it anytime the salt touches

2:36

the counter or anything aside

2:39

from the salt box that

2:41

I use.

2:42

So like, if you're shaking a little salt

2:44

on food and some like jumps off onto

2:46

the counter, that you will that's considered spilling

2:48

it.

2:48

No, I don't actually know that you mentioned

2:51

that. This is more I'll

2:53

grab a pinch out of the salt box and be salting stuff

2:56

and if that gets messy then yeah, okay.

2:58

It's almost like if I see it and notice it,

3:00

then I will I will throw it over my shoulder,

3:04

all right.

3:04

I love it. I'm certainly not. I mean, I'm the weirdo

3:06

that steps on a crack with their

3:09

left foot. Then has to step on a crack with their right

3:11

flet.

3:12

So there's one thing we need to dispense

3:15

with right out of the gate, because there's it's

3:17

a well known fact that the

3:20

word salary is derived from

3:22

salt sal dare, which

3:24

means give salt in I think Latin, and

3:27

that that is how Roman soldiers used to be paid.

3:30

That is not entirely correct,

3:32

but it doesn't seem to be fully a myth either.

3:35

Roman soldiers were partially paid

3:37

in salt, like they got a salt ration every

3:39

day, or part of

3:41

their money their pay, the

3:44

actual coinage they were given was given

3:46

to them to buy salt in part

3:49

to buy salt.

3:50

Now, we did a great episode on salt. I'm

3:53

sure we talked about that. Do you remember what we said

3:55

then.

3:55

I think we said it was maybe even a

3:57

myth altogether. I'm not sure.

4:00

I don't know.

4:00

It's just it's it's ambiguous

4:03

enough that you can't say it's fully a myth or

4:05

it's fully true.

4:06

Right. But the idea then, in

4:08

terms of this episode, is because

4:11

salt was valuable, that could be

4:13

one of the reasons or one of the origins of it being

4:15

bad luck. Because you've just essentially

4:17

spilled some money.

4:19

It's yeah, exactly. That's that's the

4:23

likeliest and widest held explanation

4:25

for why spilling salt would be considered

4:27

bad luck. All right, what else you

4:30

can kind of fast forward a few years to Leonardo

4:33

da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper.

4:35

I think that was in the sixteenth century that he did

4:37

that. And if you look very closely,

4:40

when Judas is scary out has

4:42

spilled the salt.

4:44

I didn't ever notice that.

4:45

I didn't either, but I haven't seen it that many

4:47

times.

4:48

I haven't either, now that I think about it.

4:51

But it was you know, I grew up in the church,

4:53

so it was a prominent painting.

4:54

But if you if you mentioned Judas and salt

4:57

in the same same breath,

5:00

he probably would have been like, yeah, Judas

5:02

is terrible with salt, and that's why he was such

5:04

a terrible person.

5:05

All right, fair enough, that

5:07

could be another you know, religious

5:10

connotation for the bad luck.

5:11

Well also, though I thought this is pretty interesting.

5:13

In Christianity, it's also seen as a symbol

5:16

of holiness and purity, which

5:18

is not just symbolic. It actually does

5:21

keep food pure. It's one of the things

5:23

that salt has always been used for is preservation,

5:25

so I thought that was a pretty interesting extension

5:28

or expansion or extrapolation.

5:30

Yeah, agreed. Shall

5:33

we take a break, Yeah, all right,

5:35

let's take a break. We'll talk about maybe some more background

5:38

and why we throw it over our left shoulder right after

5:40

this.

6:05

Okay, chuck. So there's been

6:07

a lot of different myths about salt that has

6:09

spread out, which kind of makes sense because salt's

6:11

been traded all over the world for a while,

6:14

and it's been valuable, or it was valuable

6:17

for a very long time. For example,

6:19

in Slavic mythology, there's

6:21

a well trod story about

6:24

a father who has three daughters and he asks

6:26

them how much they love him, and the

6:28

first one says, I love you as much as diamonds,

6:31

the second one says I love you as much as gold,

6:34

and the third one says I love you as much

6:36

as salt. And he says, begone, yeah,

6:39

get out, and she's like, why, just

6:42

stop and think about what I said, dad, And he said,

6:44

I said be gone, and she's

6:46

begone.

6:48

Yeah, she goned herself. And it

6:51

was only till later, when he's eating

6:53

something that's not salted that he

6:56

puts down his fork. The music

6:58

cue the needle drop happens, and

7:01

lone tear trickles down his face and

7:03

he goes, oh my god, she's the one who loved

7:05

me the most, because this food is garbage.

7:08

There's an alternate ending too, where the tear

7:11

strikes the bite of food he has

7:13

mid air salts it and he forgets

7:16

what he was even upset about.

7:18

Oh look, I just actually looked up the Judas

7:21

thing and there there it is. There's a little

7:23

thing of salt spilled over right there It is a

7:26

wrist.

7:26

Did you think Debbie Ranka made that up?

7:29

No? But I just never noticed

7:32

that had been so funny. I text Debbie and she's like, age,

7:34

you like that? It totally made that up. There

7:39

are African folk tales apparently, where

7:42

salt is a metaphor for wisdom

7:44

or life trials, things like that. So if you

7:47

would spill it then it could be viewed

7:50

as a misfortune or ignorance

7:52

for the protagonist.

7:54

Also in Japan, I can tell you firsthand.

7:57

In Japanese culture, salt is considered

7:59

protect okay, especially against

8:01

from you know, bad luck or evil spirits

8:04

or whatever. And I was first introduced

8:07

to this when one day you me had

8:09

visited her family and later on

8:11

she opened up her glove compartment and found that

8:13

there was a prescription bottle

8:16

filled with salt that her mom had put in

8:18

her glove compartment to drive around with without telling.

8:20

Her, for just good luck.

8:22

Yeah, to keep her protected while she's out thriving,

8:24

and that's Sweet's.

8:25

Great, yeah, Or she happened to have some French

8:27

fries that were a little bland, that's right. So

8:31

now we're at the point where we can talk a little bit about

8:33

how to ward it off. Because usually when there's any

8:35

sort of a bad luck omen there's also

8:37

an antidote of sorts

8:41

where you can combat that bad luck, and

8:43

in this case, it is usually a

8:46

toss over the left shoulder. And

8:49

the reasons behind that seemed

8:51

to be linked to the fact that

8:54

supposedly, in many many

8:56

cultures, the devil sits

8:58

over there on behind behind your left

9:00

shoulder, waiting for sort

9:02

of an invitation, and this salt

9:06

spilling the salt could be that invitation and

9:08

then quickly throwing it over your left shoulder.

9:10

The devil's like.

9:12

That stings, yeah, or if he's small

9:14

enough, it really desiccates him.

9:17

Right, yeah, right, like a slug right.

9:19

So yeah, that's why you use your left

9:21

because sinister is Latin

9:24

for left originally, but it

9:26

came to mean sinister, and

9:29

so that's that's why you're left. In particular,

9:32

why the devil's on your left shoulder, not

9:34

just in other cultures, but in cartoons

9:36

throughout the world.

9:38

Yeah, I never noticed left or right, but I

9:40

mean every cartoon have like

9:42

the Little Angel and the Little Devil, and I'm

9:44

sure that they probably put him on the left.

9:46

Yes, And the brilliance of the

9:48

Flintstones was that they combined both into

9:51

one great kazoo. Oh

9:53

God, I love kazoo. You dumb, dumb.

9:56

He was so good. It was good

9:58

stuff.

9:59

So I guess that. Huh. Oh wait. There's

10:01

one more thing about about throwing

10:04

salt over your shoulder, especially

10:06

if you're a superstitious type. What

10:08

it does is it relieves

10:10

you of a little bit of the anxiety that

10:13

you might otherwise have walking around

10:15

that day knowing that you spill the salt

10:17

and wondering what bad thing's going to happen. That

10:20

just small act of throwing salt over your left shoulder

10:22

allows you to just get over it and move

10:25

on with your day and that over

10:27

time, that

10:29

seeing that that actually helps, that there

10:31

is some benefit to doing that just

10:34

kind of created a positive

10:36

feedback loop where more and more people started

10:38

throwing salt over their shoulder. This

10:40

is all conjecture, but it makes a lot of

10:42

sense. Totally love it.

10:45

I'm going to start doing it. I'm going to spill

10:47

some salt and throw it over my shoulder.

10:49

Do not purposefully spill salt. That

10:52

is really right, We'll just

10:54

notice it then, O good. All right, Well

10:56

that means everybody short. Stuff is out.

11:02

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