SPEAKER_06: I am so excited about this podcast, The Bright Side.You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives, shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.
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SPEAKER_02: Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff.I'm Josh.There's Chuck.Jerry's here again, sitting in for Dave.And this is Short Stuff.Come in.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, no.I was just wishing myself good luck.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, that should sound like this.
SPEAKER_03: We're talking about knocking on wood, and it's actually not for good luck.Knocking on wood is more to avoid tempting fate.
SPEAKER_02: It depends on who you're talking to.Are you an ancient Celt or a modern-day Chuck?
SPEAKER_03: I'm a modern-day Celt.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, God.
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.I'm an ancient Chuck.That's what I am.
SPEAKER_02: My brain's busted now.You're going to have to take over the rest of this episode.No.All right.So, yeah, you're right.These days we knock on wood to ward off bad luck.Usually it's when we're saying something like a boast or we're saying something that we don't want the opposite to happen.
SPEAKER_03: Things are going so great for this podcast.Nothing will ever stop it from being successful.
SPEAKER_02: Knock on wood. That's another thing you have to do, too.You're doing it too many times, by the way.You might actually be undoing the charm.I also say knock on wood when I knock on wood, I guess just to double up.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.Emily always says she's very big wood knocker.So she's always like, you better find some wood to knock.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.You can't you can't mess around with like plastic or metal.
SPEAKER_03: It has to be fake wood.Even that can't even be fake wood.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.So the there's been like this is just a whole episode on weird little luck rituals.We talked about throwing salt over your shoulder before. And I think we've talked about knocking on wood at some point before because it seems familiar that it can be traced back to the ancient Celts and essentially based on their belief that trees, particularly oak trees, harbored spirits.And that if you came in contact with the tree, you were coming in contact essentially with the spirits.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.And trees were a big deal.And, you know, if you built your house out of a tree, you may knock on that wood is sort of saying like, hey, I believe if you knocked once, it was like, hey, thanks for the good luck.And a second knock was saying like, thank you, I guess, for your wood.But all of these things are action based, though.And there's something around that, like most of these good luck things like you can't and it's not like good luck is even a real thing anyway. But in order to feel like you're achieving that desired outcome of luck, you can't just think it with kind of any of these things that we're going to be talking about.And they've even done research.There was a study, not a great one, but a study from the University of Chicago in 2013 where they would have someone say something like tempted fate, like our podcast will never, you know, go down the tubes or whatever.And then you could either knock wood or,
Throw a ball, of course, which is not part of any ritual that we that I know of or just hold on to a ball.And they found that the people who felt like, all right, I think this this worked is the ones who actually did something, whether even if it was throwing the ball.
SPEAKER_02: Right.
SPEAKER_03: Because it was an action.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they went to some effort to secure their good luck or stave off the bad luck.Yeah, exactly.Yeah.So apparently, again, people trace this back to the ancient Celts and their love of oak trees and their belief that the spirits are in the oak trees.So I think also one of the things I saw is that when you knock, you're essentially waking them up.Like, wake up, spirits.I need your help to secure this good luck.
SPEAKER_05: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty interesting.And then other people were like, no, you're knocking to basically to make a sound over your talking.So the bad spirits can't hear you.That makes a lot of sense, too.But also, isn't it a little too neat?Isn't it a little too tidy?Doesn't it seem like there would be a much more recent, much less Celtic pagan explanation than that?Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Well, there may be.And the Brits say touch wood instead of knock wood.And apparently that was a game.When was this?Like in the 19th century, so much more recent, called TIG Touch Wood.I've also seen TIGgy Touch Wood, where it's basically tag where different trees are assigned as bases.And if you are touching wood, then you are safe from being tagged it.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, a folklorist named Steve Roud traced it back to an 1891 book called The Boys' Modern Playmate.That's fun.Sure.So, yeah, he thinks that this is actually where this idea of touching wood and being safe and then eventually evolving into knocking wood for good luck came from, that it's as recent as 100 or so years ago.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.I think if you're in, there are variations.If you're in Turkey, you do the knock wood twice, but you also pull on your earlobe one time.
SPEAKER_02: I like that one.I'm going to start doing that.
SPEAKER_03: And I think in Italy, they say touch iron.
SPEAKER_02: And people say, why?
SPEAKER_03: I have no comeback for that.I was trying to think of something Italian.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing to say other than because there's no good answer.They're supposed to be touching wood.They just have it wrong, essentially.Sorry, Italy.I say we take a break and come back and talk about some other lucky practices around the world.How about that?Sure.No.
SPEAKER_04: Stuff you should know.Stuff you should know.No.
SPEAKER_06: Bring a little optimism into your life with The Bright Side, a new kind of daily podcast from Hello Sunshine.Hosted by me, Danielle Robay.And me, Simone Boyce.
SPEAKER_07: Every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for taking the light and you're going to shine it all over the world and it makes me really happy.
SPEAKER_07: I never imagined that I would get the chance to carry this honor and help be a part of this legacy.
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SPEAKER_02: Okay, Chuck, let's say that we're in Greece and I've seen you across the street and I'm like, that guy looks really good in those pants.I'm jealous of him.You might look over and see me go and like kind of wave my hand at you.And what I've just done is basically given you the evil eye of envy.And so to erase that, I've spat three times and waved off my envy.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.What culture is that?Greece?
SPEAKER_02: Greece, but spitting, it's also big in Jewish culture.I think three times usually is the way you do it for good luck or to ward off bad luck more usually.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.I've also seen spitting over your shoulder, which... That's hard.That is hard.I mean, you can sort of spit... Just spit right on your shoulders what I do.I got one.Denmark.This is very interesting.They save their broken dishes.I like sort of elaborate ones like these.
So if you break a dish in Denmark, you just save it all year long and you collect it, I guess, in your little broken dish bin. and you save it until New Year's Eve, and they will chuck their broken plates toward people that they want to have good luck, toward their houses, like a friend or a family or whatever, to wish them good luck.And I think the children can even just leave a little pile on their friend's doorstep if they want them to, like instead of throwing it, they can just say like, I don't even know how to do a Danish accent, but here's a little pile of broken dishes.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Do it like Bjork, even though she's Icelandic.I think it'll cover.
SPEAKER_03: Oh, man.I wish I could do Bjork.
SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I like that.I also like leaving it as a pile rather than throwing your broken dishes at someone's house because somebody's got to clean that up.Yeah.One of my favorites is crossing fingers.Like, not only do I like to cross fingers myself, I like using the emoji.Crossing fingers is huge with me.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: You would think that it probably dates back quite a ways.And there's a story that it actually was originated by the early Christians who were persecuted by the Romans at the time.So they would cross fingers to basically signify to one another to make a symbol of the cross almost.Like, hey, I'm with you, buddy.I'm a Christian.And I read, I think, in an Oxford explanatory article on that, that basically this is how they put it. So they found that they can only date it back to 1912 and said, given its late appearance, restricted distribution, most of the UK and colonies, and the fact that crossed fingers bear no relation to the shape of a cross, this explanation is completely unfounded.
SPEAKER_03: My buddy Brett and I have always done, we go double hope, hope, and we each cross both of our fingers.I go and kiss each one, not each other's.
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
SPEAKER_03: Although we probably should.
SPEAKER_02: That's got to work really well.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'm not – I mean I think we got that from – why do I want to say we got that from a movie like True Romance or something?I have no idea.
SPEAKER_02: I don't – it doesn't ring a bell.
SPEAKER_03: We've always done it.So I have no idea where it came from.I know in China what they do is they believe that your good luck comes through the front of the house.Yes. And so before Chinese New Year, which is not the same as our New Year, they clean their houses, but they don't they don't sweep out the dirt or the quote unquote bad.They sweep it all in and a little pile and they collect it because they have to put it out the back door.You never want to if you want to bring in good luck, you don't want to sweep that stuff out of the front door.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then you don't do any cleaning at all the first couple of days after Chinese New Year because you're letting that good luck accumulate, you know?Yeah, I actually adopted that one for our New Year, Western New Year.Oh, yeah?Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Nice.
SPEAKER_02: Out the back door? I just don't clean for a couple of days.I clean first.And I don't think I was taking out the back door.The side door, I guess, counts.It's not the front door.All right.So New Year's Eve, you can do that.But on New Year's Day, there's no cleaning or anything like that.
SPEAKER_03: Well, what about Thailand?This is interesting.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, why don't you take it?
SPEAKER_03: All right.Little boys and men in Thailand think that if you wear – I'm not sure how it's pronounced.Palad Kik is how I would say it.P-A-L-A-D-K-H-I-K, which is a penis amulet.If you wear that in your pants, then that's going to bring you luck.And this is just a – If you look them up, they look very ornate of different design, but they're all different versions of little carved penises.They're usually pretty small, a couple of inches.And they think that that will bring you good luck and lessen the severity of an injury maybe.And I think just overall good luck.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.Pretty great, huh?
SPEAKER_03: Sure.Why not?
SPEAKER_02: I don't have anything else.Do you have anything else?No. Well, Chuck, I wish you the best of luck in all of your endeavors.
SPEAKER_03: Right back at you.I hold my penis amulet up in your honor.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.Same to you.That means, of course, short stuff.Is that?
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