Episode 20 - Halloween 2 - Superstitions

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd

it's time for halloween part two and

we went through halloween and we decided

you know what

we left some kind of crazy things at

halloween and now that

you know this time of the year is

halloween we thought we would

actually focus a little more on

superstitions

you know what do you

actually sit out there and believe that

you

do that really has no basis and where

did those come from so

we're we're going to take an absolutely

fact check deep dive into superstitions

today

i'm not superstitious now now on that on

that note

um i just want to announce that

the wolf and the shepherd are going to

do a

subsection of our regular podcasts

alongside

the sunday sevens of the wolf and the

shepherds sing the classics

so if you value your eardrums and your

sanity i would actually suggest you

avoid listening to those

absolutely parts of the podcast but i

just wanted to announce those because

they will be coming pretty soon

um but that was just really an excuse

for me to sing at the start of stuff

so anyway yeah halloween um when we did

the first part of the halloween podcast

a lot of the stuff we talked about you

know involves superstitions surrounding

halloween especially

given the background of halloween so we

decided to look into

you know superstitions around the world

not necessarily directly connected with

halloween but maybe

year-round superstitions but around

halloween and certain holidays during

the year these superstitions become

you know taken a little bit more

seriously and so we looked at

you know five different countries just

random countries really and

kind of look to you know maybe some kind

of quirky superstitions which we could

discuss

yeah and we always have those normal

superstitions that

everybody holds and we're definitely

not talking about those we we are

talking about those

off the wall superstitions that

when the wolf and i kind of looked at

these we said

are these are these real and so when we

came up with this idea we actually had

to divide this out

and we had to say okay well here's our

five countries

and and the wolf took three i took two

and

were compiling our notes right now

and i don't know any of the three

countries he picked he doesn't know the

two countries i picked

and we don't know the superstitions that

we picked

so it's going to be a little bit of fun

so i'm going to

turn this over to the wolf for the uh

the first country that we're gonna look

at so uh

what's the first country we're gonna

look at um i actually came up with india

okay originally i was gonna say indian

superstitions but i figured we might get

you know the council culture get on our

back thinking we meant native americans

and

sure the podcast would be bad yeah we

yeah we don't want to go down that

yeah so anyway um there seems to be a

general

theme in indian superstitions about not

doing

stuff after the sun goes down okay i

found a website which listed

29 common indian

superstitions and over half of them were

related to when the sun goes down

wow one of the most common ones is do

not sweep

after sunset now this is a good rule if

you don't have electricity

well now wait do not sweep is in get

your brain out

indirectly before okay i think i think

this might go back to when you know they

didn't have electricity and stuff so

it's a waste of time because you can't

see what you're sweeping

do they have electricity now uh some

places i'm sure

oh okay yeah i'm just checking sorry

india we're just kind of knocked out

back checking we didn't we any research

behind that

um and also do not cut your nails after

sunset again i think this comes down to

it there's no sunlight and you don't

have light in

then it's probably a bad choice because

you can't see really what you're cutting

or even if you need to cut it so so

going back to that do they have

electricity because if they can't see to

cut their nails then maybe that makes

sense

well it's considered bad luck it didn't

say

you know in the article you know don't

cut it because you can't see

you know because your government didn't

provide you know electrical grid

it's you know bad luck so but no there's

a lot of um

there's a lot of those indian

superstitions related

you know to when the sun goes down don't

do certain things after the sun goes

down

right um but you know they also have

some weird ones like meat

should not be you know eaten on certain

days of the year

like i mean if it's going along what we

were kind of uh

you know mocking the first few it's

probably you know maybe on the days you

can't afford to eat me i don't know

but yeah meat should not be consumed on

certain days of the year

yeah so if you look at those indian

grocery stores they're saying okay

so on the days that they're not supposed

to eat yeah

we make it really expensive and then on

the days that they

want to eat meat we'll make it cheap so

we sell a lot of meat

or conversely they could actually say

stock up on meat if they're not eating

on the day that they can't eat meat

meat's cheap

but on the days they do eat meat it's

really expensive

yeah that makes more sense how are they

gonna do that maybe they play in that

superstition

that that might be interesting so what's

what's the next one

uh an itchy left palm means money is

coming to you which is

well i mean the itchy palm thing

absolutely old superstar yeah but

multiple countries have different

meanings that itchy palm like in england

it means you're a wanker

in romania it means you're a werewolf

especially if you itch your palm when

it's getting close to a full moon

okay but yeah in india it just means

money is coming to you if you get an

itchy palm it means your

hands are going to be filled with money

okay

yeah and i can go with that one yeah um

the next one they have lemons and

chilies can ward off evil

oh lemons and chillies i don't know it's

a combination or one kind of

you know it does set up in the other one

yeah but could this come from

something you know like in the european

tradition with garlic

boarding up vampires

well no because i know the exact reason

why why

garlic's supposed to ward off vampires

because garlic purifies the blood

i thought it made things not sparkle no

too much twilight son no no twilight

i've never seen that movie yeah whatever

i'm sure your daughter made you watch it

no no i was thinking like

because i know that like lemon and

chilies when it comes to mexican food

that certainly wards off evil because

it's warded off an evil

stomach issue for me before well and it

also wards off anybody in your house

right i smell what you do in the

bathroom i always add lemons and

chillies let's give them a wide birth

yeah absolutely

yeah so i don't know if it wards off

evil as opposed to just people you just

want to

avoid no well you know

india is kind of surprising there

you know compared to some of my research

that i did because

let's talk about turkey i mean first of

all

one it is coming up thanksgiving so this

is right

in and first of all i love the country

of turkey

i love turkey more than the country of

turkey i mean

yeah but i love the country of turkey

just based off the fact that they're

called turkey

yeah i mean who doesn't like turkey yeah

right so when

when you said hey you need to look up

some superstitions

i i went through some of the turkish

superstitions and it's beyond

you know the movie airplane where they

talk about turkish prisons and things

like that

i i went beyond that and

to my surprise there were only three

superstitions that really jumped out at

me

the first one is when

someone is leaving on a journey

you pour a glass of water over a mirror

or on the road behind them

what is that supposed to do you know

first of all they're very specific you

got a poor glass of water right

and then it they say on the road behind

them it's like okay

you know you're pouring one out for the

home yes right

but they add the over a mirror

that that one kind of hit me a little

bizarre

why over a mirror well i mean i know

mirrors are

you know heavily involved in a lot of

superstitions around the world you know

in terms of covering up mirrors to make

sure it doesn't have your reflection

or the broken mirror yeah seven years

ago

you know that kind of stuff but yeah

pouring water over i guess

yeah no i can't really come to any kind

of yeah just

kind of theory why that just really

weird but

even on the road behind you i mean what

what's that's supposed to do

yeah i don't know but that's one of

their deals uh

kind of like do not hand someone

a sharp object with the pointed end

towards them

especially with acceleration because

otherwise it's known as shanking or

stabbing

that makes more sense on the turkish

prisons

yeah that's kind of a safety thing but

apparently that's a superstition

i i can't picture me

wanting to hand anybody that uh is

trying to receive a knife or

or something from me pointing the sharp

in

but that is a superstition over there

that you can't do that seems more common

sense to me that's more one of those

do not punch your mother in the face why

because it's unkind

yeah you know step on a crack break your

mother's back

well no i mean that's obviously a little

bit different but you know i think

that's more of a common sense thing

because

you know if you hand somebody a sharp

knife you don't want to grab the knife

by the that's common sense that's

stupid yeah i mean that that's one of

those common sense things but the next

one

if your ears are ringing

someone is talking about you

know i i've used this before and i've

said hey

were yours ringing were your ears

burning yeah yeah

you know that kind of thing so so that

actually

is an old turkish superstition which i

was surprised about

i think that's a common worldwide one no

and and

maybe it is but i'm disappointed in

turkey overall with that

yeah that's a lackluster attempt at

superstition

it is basically all they're known for is

uh thanksgiving dinner and prisons right

yeah and the first one's not even true

where they go out to the country

no yeah now a good a good

country in terms of superstitions and

some of our favoritest people here in

texas especially

the mexicans oh absolutely they have

they have some absolute gems of

superstitions

i'm sure that i actually i actually have

so so you have to rescue

my turkish uh

you know research yeah now i mean and i

think you can do it

with mexico we could have we could have

done three hours on mexico alone

and that's if we just kind of kept it

down to several specific regions

right but um you know one

i think maybe the most important one

is that you can't make tamales while

you're angry

you can't make tamales while you're

angry

why well apparently the tamales will not

fluff up properly if you're hungry

it's the same thing like if i try and

make toast i can't make toast when i'm

angry yeah but if

if you look at tamales you can almost

see and maybe this makes a lot of sense

right

that uh certain tamales look

like they're made better than other ones

yeah so

are the ones that you say i don't know

why this isn't

so good people were waiting was it was

it made because they were angry that

could be it

because at some point there has to be a

certain amount of predestination where

if these

superstitions are passed down generation

to generation

that if you know you're already angry

before you start making them

you know you're almost pretty much

predestined to mess up these tamales

sure just because of the superstition

and of course i'm i'm

i don't know i i i don't want to

presuppose this but

i've made tamales before yeah uh

my my in-laws are

of course hispanic and they're mexican

descent

and i have sat in the kitchen and

made tamales and you have to kind of be

happy

when you're doing this i mean i mean

it's tedious work it

sucks and you're sitting there and you

get all excited about yeah i want to

make tamales and then when you start

making them

like ah man this sucks i don't want to

do this anymore

maybe i was angry when i made tamales i

don't even like him so

i mean if somebody's angry when they

make him it gives them an even more of

an excuse not to eat them makes sense

yeah

now um here's a good one and i think

this might actually be related to an

exact science i mean i can

probably imagine in scientific america

and all these other kind of uh

normal well-respected publications

there's probably been a good deal of

empirical research into this one

which is why i don't know this is

necessarily a superstition

rather than an actual fact right but

more empirical research than we do in

our podcast

yeah yeah yeah well anyway so um

this is actually now i'm going to go

ahead and state this is a fact and not a

superstition oh

that's a bold statement well it is but i

read it enough times that i actually

believe it's a fact

okay that chicken poop in your hair will

stop it falling out or

if you're already bored it will help you

regain hair

okay so knowing the fact that you're

bald and you shave your head

i'm gonna rub chicken poop all over your

head at the end of this podcast well i

don't want hair because it's easier just

to shave my head and be better oh but i

want you to have a luscious head of hair

so i'm gonna say i'm gonna have to buy

shampoo

and i haven't bought shampoo in like 20

years i don't want to go down that head

and shoulders around but

so maybe with the podcast we could have

somebody sponsor us with shampoo just

for you just try and regrow the wolf

hair

right and i'm going to rub chicken poop

all over your hair

until you grow that hair out and then

some company is going to come along and

provide you

shampoo to grow the hair from the

chicken poop on your head

all right let's do that tomorrow okay

okay sounds good uh if a child passes

under your legs in one direction

they have to pass again in the opposite

direction or they won't grow to their

full height now this sounds like some

type of excuse joe biden would come up

with

but actually it sounds kind of like

chinese freeze tag

yeah yeah yeah oh yeah yeah and stuck in

the mud or whatever they call it

yeah yeah that was always what we called

it was chinese freezing

and i'm sure that's racially insensitive

now but

uh you know once you were tagged

somebody had to

go between your legs to go ahead and

unfreeze you

right yeah um

is one which again i think is pretty

much based on an exact science because i

think

you know they probably did a

questionnaire and said if this happens

what was the result cause and effect so

i think

again this is pretty much science right

same scientist that did the chicken poop

on the hair

uh yeah probably they've probably got a

grant from the university to follow up

with a similarly

respected yeah similarly respected uh

thing like if a large black moth enters

the house you have to sweep it out or

someone will die

shortly afterwards hopefully not the

person doing the sweeping but

how ironic would that be well how's it

ironic

no i mean that the person you're trying

to sweep the black

moth out there they're the one that dies

yeah they should get some kudos and

yeah there's somebody else trying to die

yeah they're the one trying to defend

yeah if you put in the work you

shouldn't get the punishment for it yes

because i mean if the superstition went

that the black moth comes

in your house and somebody's gonna die

and you're trying to get it out of the

house

you should get a pass kind of sucks if

you live in line though

oh yeah that's a double-edged sword but

you know

someone dies soon after i mean people

die all the time so obviously it means

somebody very specific or close to so

yeah if you live alone this is

you've got to get that thing out even if

it takes you five hours oh absolutely

yeah you got to make that happen yeah um

but again just like uh when we started

off with the uh

indians the dots not the feathers uh

you know they have a lot of sweeping

superstitions in mexico yeah

and one of them is if you sweep over

your feet you're destined to marrow a

widow

now don't get me wrong sweep over your

feet you're destined to marry me yes we

don't need to marry a widow

okay yeah now i don't know if they use

the same kind of um

pronouns we use in the united states but

we call a widow kind of like you know a

woman as opposed to a widower or

whatever

right right widow and widower yeah so so

i would figure that given i think mexico

follow more domestic

kind of household roles that most women

would be doing the sweeping so does that

mean that if they swoop

over their own feet they're going to

marry another woman and become a lesbian

oh one that's a heck of a superstition

oh

hats don't sweep it over your own feet

or you're going to become a lesbian yeah

well right not only are you a bitter

lesbian as well

as a sad lesbian you're going to marry

mary another

woman that has lost her husband now does

she turn into a lesbian after you marry

or before

it probably depends on the

position of the moon okay i mean that

makes sense i didn't mention that but

that's a good point

um always add spices to your dish

in the form of a crust which if you're

adding too much spices and some of the

mexican spices are pretty harsh

you know you probably do want to bless

you do want to bless the amount of spice

you're putting in there

well absolutely i mean you know when

you're making an

enchilada casserole jesus would come

down and say

you know yeah you gotta have the spices

a certain way

so make sure you don't put too much on

there and sprinkle them the right way

yeah

i totally get that i won't even count

that one

as a superstition i i think that's the

way we should cook everything

i mean you just put son of cross over on

the spices

we're all safe yeah now i'm mexican's

very

superstitious about water whether it be

rivers and all this other stuff

okay and um when you talk about water

you're talking about bodies of water

you're not talking about bottled water

yeah rivers yeah yeah right yeah um

but if you take a child to swim in a

river

you've got to place uh your hand on

their head and yell

their name three times now i don't know

how loudly or what the definition of

yell is

all the river spirits will take the

child from me

i don't know how many times this has

happened before somebody actually wrote

this down but

yeah but does that count if they're

swimming across a rio grande

well because that might cause a little

bit of

attention well you see that's probably

going to happen at the border anyway

if they come over illegally the two of

them are going to get taken away from

this i can understand that

it makes sense yeah but yeah i i don't

know how many times that happened that

they had to place the hand on their head

and say the name three times and the

river spirits took them before

somebody decided to write it down as a

guide

yeah yeah yeah some somebody had to

write that down

because you know because you know like

you know there's got to be a point where

somebody kind of misheard it and it's

like you've got to do it twice

you've got to do it four times you know

i think it must have happened a certain

number of times before they came to this

exact match

and of course you got somebody out there

saying well wait i think

the magic number is three here right i i

think that's what we gotta do

when you do it four you're drowning the

kid yeah and when you do it two times

bad stuff happens yeah so it's a very

curious the magic yeah i mean it's a

very common number

used in you know mexican superstitions

simply because you know the

country is predominantly catholic and

three has a very you know

high religious significance in terms of

trinity and everything else i think

if you had to guess you know if like

something was written in a language you

can understand or handwriting you

couldn't read like

yours um you know if you're gonna have

to guess on the number three is probably

a safe guess

yeah yeah i agree yeah now um before i

go on to this next one do you know what

sprite

like means and i don't mean the drink i

don't mean a kind of lemony

carbonated okay i was about to answer

your question

but then you threw that caveat in there

and now i don't know

yeah well apparently small

sprite-like creatures and i don't mean

those kind of fun-sized kind of

sprite carbonated sodas yeah not not the

eight ounce cans

no not those ones yeah two mouthfuls and

it's gone yeah so we're

still not talking about sprites damaging

the environment

yeah small sprite-like creatures called

shenequer or something like that i think

i'm pronouncing that kind of i'm trying

this rather oh my god i'm sure that is

perfect pronunciation

uh shanaku whatever c-h-a-n-e-q-u-e

of any of our spanish

shanaki yeah

i don't know if it's like beyonce's

cousin i don't know

they're the keepers of the forests in

mexico

and uh you know if you if you aren't

careful they'll kind of steal your soul

and stuff so okay

well we gotta watch well i don't know

what careful means i don't know what it

means kind of like you're wearing a

warm enough vest or yeah so so you do

not want to

drink a clear liquid from the coca-cola

company

because they will steal your soul well

not only if you're in the forest

only if you're in the forest yeah okay

yeah so all right

so shenequa so what about the rivers in

the forest

if you're drinking sprite trying to swim

across a river

and you're getting somebody putting

their

hand on your head yelling your name

three times

you're pretty much screwed well yeah and

if you've

if you were angry earlier during the day

when you made the tamales you might as

well just give it up

and especially if you're female and you

ran a broom across your feet i mean

you're done for

yeah i mean you you might as well just

say

i give up i think basically like i said

that was just a snapshot of a few

mexican superstitions

basically living in mexico is like

walking over broken glass

it sounds you're gonna get you're gonna

get screwed sooner or later during the

morning

just breaking one of these rules i i i

think

we're gonna have to dig more into

mexican superstitions in a future

yeah maybe we should get a natural

mexican in

to actually discuss them

especially that lady who works in the

office exactly next door to us yeah

yeah let's bring her in because now i'm

intrigued but yeah

let's move on to another country okay uh

so the other country you gave me was

romania yeah the wolf has just now made

the sign of the cross

yeah romania yeah so uh i know i

disappointed with turkey

yeah but romania it's rich oh

oh it's fast in superstition it's not

rich as a country as a very poor genie

yeah

yeah absolutely but but romania has some

great ones and

honestly it was very difficult for me to

kind of

narrow down the list to keep it kind of

short but

let's just hit a few of the highlights

here i i think i've got like six of them

that i nailed down we avoided vampires

right

we did this this is zero vampire which

was

which was amazing to be honest with you

because you have the whole transylvania

thing but

none of this has to do with vampires so

the first one is if you play with

fire you'll pee the bed

to put the fire out no just if you play

with

fire like literally you will pee the bed

what is it

i mean does it cause you nope just if

you play with fire

you will pee the bed that's fair enough

i suppose but

i guess the good thing is that you

generally know

whether you've played with fire so you

can put down one of those kind of like

wet sheets or something so it's not a

huge deal

you know i remember i i was a little bit

of a pyromaniac when i was younger and

i accidentally almost set the garage on

fire because i was playing with fire

but i probably would not have played

with fire if i would have known that

nine i would have peed the bed

right i never peed the bed yeah so

i mean how do you top that one right

i mean number one you play with fire you

pee to bed but

if you give someone your last cigarette

you give away your wife which in 52

of the cases in the united states is

probably uh well maybe maybe that is

part of the lobbies of trying to

get rid of cigarettes because maybe that

is what is contributing to so many

divorces well where are you giving your

wife away too i mean like what are you

giving them to oh it just said you're

giving away your wife right

so to walk to work at qt for a week but

i like it it's hard telling it

it's truly hard telling that that one

that one piqued my interest because

you know i used to smoke cigarettes

years ago

and i'm glad i quit but

i never had an issue giving away my last

cigarette i'd

always say well you know i'll go buy

another pack but

apparently that's something that's big

in romania you never give away your last

cigarette

but for those that

are not supposed to smoke pregnant women

one of the superstitions there in

romania is if you were pregnant

don't tie a scarf around you

or your baby will be born with the

umbilical cord

wrapped around its neck do you think

this is

another one of those empirical studies

where

oh i i think there probably is a a lot

of well well i think it's an after the

event thing

where they try and figure out why some

baby is born with the umbilical cord

around the neck

and they fill out a questionnaire did

you do any of these things

while pregnant right and one of them was

probably did you tie a scarf around your

neck

and it came out the most yeah 99.9

of women who delivered babies in the

wintertime said

yeah i tied a score but i thought it was

as cold as crap in romania so i figured

the number of women who actually put

scars around their neck would be pretty

high

yeah it makes sense yeah but

so thinking about that same

pregnant woman you know that didn't give

her

last cigarette away or her husband

didn't give the last cigarette away

and they walk into a party

there's a superstition in romania that

says

never leave a house from a different

door

than the one you entered in yeah so so

you go in

one door into somebody's house you have

to leave the house

out of that same door that's an easy

rule if you live in an apartment

well yeah that's true yeah and i guess

that's someone

maybe if you're going into a like you

say an apartment where there's only

one entrance one exit but there's got to

be some bizarre stories when

somebody went into you know some kind of

big

house right and there were several

entrances slash exits

that caused this i mean yeah what

happened there

what what do you think might have caused

this superstar

that's a bit of a weird one but you know

in romania you know

going to things like you know they

consider the door

and the house almost

like an extension of your body and your

soul and everything which is why you

know you have to invite a vampire into

your house they can't

cross the threshold without your

permission maybe that's

kind of i don't

back to the the vampire thing yeah maybe

now

ironically the next one on the list here

comes the brooms again

right so so we have the the mexican

uh superstition about you know rubbing

the broom across your feet but there's a

romanian superstition about brooms

which is never bring an old broom to a

new house

well i can kind of understand that just

like in a lot of asian traditions about

you know taking your shoes off before

you enter the house so you don't bring

in

your troubles you don't bring in spirits

into the house maybe bringing in an old

broom

you know brings in your old troubles and

your old situation

into the new house so i can kind of see

that kind of correlation

yeah no that one makes sense but but my

favorite one is i was going through this

which i

firmly believe and i didn't realize this

was a

superstition it was just a

a practice of mine but it is a romanian

superstition

if you leave leftovers on your plate

your spouse will be

ugly i don't like leftovers

i eat everything on my plate and my

spouse is beautiful

so apparently i had that romanian

superstition that right

i don't leave any food on my plate i was

always taught at a young

age my dad always said

i i will i will let you

order whatever you want in a restaurant

i will give you as much food as you want

to eat but you know what

what lands on your plate you eat it yeah

and we've gotten to the point now to

where

you know we we let kids you know eat

what they want and they

say oh i'm full and you know i want to

get on my phone i want to

you know start playing games and we have

all these leftovers yeah

apparently way back in my day

i had that romanian superstition i

didn't know about

because i ended up with a good-looking

spouse

so maybe there's some truth to this one

well do you think that's another one

given

you're the only example of this and it's

a 100 success rate that we can actually

consider this science as well

oh absolutely yeah uh

should we call a university and say yeah

this is not a superstition this

is actually true well no we need to

apply for a grant

first because we want our 200 sounds

like

that sounds like a lot of work it's just

one form online you apply for it and

it's like 250 thousand dollars for us to

do this research and we're like

oh we found one person who it rang

truthful they say oh yeah this is

absolutely

true you're in charge of that okay okay

so um

so so we went through four countries do

we have

we we're supposed to have one more right

yeah we want to do five countries yeah

the last one i actually kind of chose

it's like i thought

if there's going to be some kind of

ridiculous superstitions

come from anywhere it's got to be from

here and i chose russia

oh yeah but actually um

i could kind of understand some of them

i mean again there were a lot and i just

knocked it down to five

uh because i was running out of time and

i was getting bored but

uh one of them is put empty bottles on

the floor to avoid bad luck couldn't

kind of

quite get with that one empty empty

bottles like vodka

yeah so it's almost like oh okay well

i'm gonna

leave my trash lane what if you trip

over one of them and then smash your

face on the next empty bottle on the

floor that's

kind of bad luck in there oh that's

worse

than maybe walking and putting it on the

counter right that makes sense

but it doesn't specify what type of bad

luck and whenever it says um

oh like you know you break a mirror

seven years of bad luck you know a black

cat

crosses your path it's bad luck bad luck

is always so generic

it means what do you mean bad luck

because if it means like bad luck in

terms of losing your hair

well that's okay because i'll just get

some chicken poop and rub it over my

head and that's problem solved so

i can't believe i can immediately

in in maybe you don't rub chicken poop

on your head and you just keep

shaving your head and you save money on

shampoo

but then you don't have as many empty

bottles to put on the floor so

now we have a conflict there right

that's

tough okay so as we agreed tomorrow that

you're gonna bring in some

chicken poop to rub on my head to see if

we can grow some hair

can i rub some on your back to see if

you get like a really really fairy back

is it why because it's not gonna be an

exact study if we just have one

i don't want you to touch my back well

i'll do it with a

spoon or something no no no we're not

going there all right

we're not going there all right well

that's worth a try um

yeah i know you want to touch my bag but

i i will not

[Music]

um yeah another russian superstition and

there's

there's lots of superstitions around the

world in terms of spilled salt

and mainly because salt again is seen as

a very kind of purification

warding off evil oh yeah i mean against

evil you know

the word the word salary comes from salt

uh you know being paid in salt salt was

a big commodity you

throw salt over your left shoulder if

you knock someone you put it on wounds

it preserves me

all kinds of stuff that goes along with

salt yeah i mean that that's been a big

thing throughout

history yeah well what what is the

russian

superstition would say well spilled salt

will lead to an argument among family

members and i think this one's actually

a cop

out because family members are always

going to argue sure

you know it's like if two of your kids

argue it's like oh i guess i must have

spilled some salt or maybe

family members just argue all the time

yeah or maybe we raised them

to say chicken poop on each other's

heads it seems too safe for me

yeah yeah i agree yeah i think that

one's a coffee yeah

and there's one which i could kind of

get on the end of

uh whistling indoors is considered bad

luck

or it will lead to financial problems

which i think they could

probably put under the same umbrella

because yeah having fun bad financial

problems

is probably really bad luck sure but i

thought more along the line of like

whistling can be pretty annoying you

know i mean

especially like i mean now when somebody

whistles they tend to whistle a song

which

you know they know and people maybe

recognize it and it might be annoying

but you kind of pick up the tune

but if you think maybe centuries ago

when you know how many songs were

floating around

yeah it was probably annoying yeah like

and so people whistled it's like oh my

goodness not this dang song again so you

went over and punched him in the face

and maybe that was the bad luck

that makes sense yeah totally yeah so i

think we've nailed that one down

yep uh don't sit on cold ground unless

you

otherwise sorry you'll become infertile

and get that because your balls are

probably going to squeeze up and the

sperm are not going to be any hurry to

get out but but you know what that

might have some benefit because maybe

it is a russian you know you're like

oven drago

and you just want to spread your seed

around but you also don't want to pay a

bunch of

russian child support so are you talking

about the boxer in rocky iv

yes absolutely what part did he have to

pay child support

well no i'm saying if if you're that

boxer right yeah

and you're going to make a a

visit with a woman of the night

maybe you sit down on cold ground to

make sure that you don't have to pay

child support yeah but that i don't

think that was his problem i think his

big problem was that he didn't have the

eye of the tiger

well that's true yeah he he just

wanted to break everybody he was

he was in a a bad time

if he dies he dies he yeah if he dies he

dies

and then you know he lost in the end and

yeah and we all caught

it felt bad for drago but we were happy

that rocky won

but yeah he was constantly in a bad mood

he should

definitely never make tamales oh that is

true

yeah it is a good thing that he's on the

other side of the world because yeah

if he was making tamales and we ate

those tamales they would

not be good no actually there's a fun

fact about that movie rocky iv

with ivan drago that uh sylvester

stallone actually told

um it's dolph london right the guy

yeah don't don't pull back on your

punches and he actually punched him and

broke

sylvester stallone's ribs and yeah but

have you seen that dude i mean yeah that

guy is

big nine foot four or something yeah and

no kidding

the crazy thing is it doesn't really

look russian

yeah but if we go down that now what was

this wife's name because she was a

scariest crap as well she's a terrible

harsh looking woman who yeah but you

know what that crap i don't

i don't remember what the later rocky

movie was

but uh she was in that movie well i'm

guessing after rocky four it's probably

rocky five

no it wasn't rocky it was later on it

was like a recent movie and he was in

that in

in his wife in the movie and you look at

her and you're like

okay we kind of get this you know she

had really short hair and i think it was

blonde

bleached hair and she appeared in some

movies myself i

i don't want to be stereotypical

but i think you kind of get the gist of

if you kind of watch the movie you

realize they

were probably not sharing the same bed

yeah

let's go with it yeah let's go with that

yeah yeah

yeah i know where you're going with that

one um

and it's the last one for russia which

you know i think is i think

more of a capitalist comment on their

uh failure to provide a good mail system

okay a spider on the door means

mail is coming so obviously they don't

have a regular mail delivery each day

otherwise

you know i mean a spider on the door

means spider on the door

means male is coming yeah so so it's

surely got to be set before like

1990. well yeah but that could mean two

things right

so i guess in russia you could look at

it and maybe spiders are rare it's a

little bit cold over there

and so you see a spider and you're gonna

get mail i mean if you looked at it

in america you would say well i'm gonna

have spiders

all over my door because all i get is

junk mail all the time and all

kinds of advertisements so if we had

spiders all over our doors

we would probably have to call the

government and say you know what we need

to abolish the united states postal

service because we're sick of the

spiders all over the doors

so well i kind of think you know like

insurance of the united states and today

a spider on the door just means

you've probably employed the wrong pest

service yeah or or maybe

you know it just having a spider outside

doesn't necessarily

mean a bad thing right well i mean it

doesn't say whether it's indoors or

outdoors

yeah that's good because it's not like

you go outside and then then look at

your front door and it's like it's a

spider because it wouldn't bother you on

the inside it's like you're going to die

and then i'm just going to

flush you down the toilet if it's on the

outside but as long as it's not getting

inside i don't really care but just

because it's a spider doesn't mean if it

bites you you're going to die

well no i just don't really kind of like

them inside the house

well no i don't either but i also

remember having garden spiders and

what's in the garden uh it's like it's

big like black and yellow spider

i always liked them being in the

backyard they would

weave these big webs and we would catch

bugs and throw them in the spider webs

sure something poisonous if it's black

and yellow no

well this is my color blind and saying

it was black and yellow but

i don't know maybe it was but we used to

name the spiders we would feed the

spiders grasshoppers and crickets what

do you mean

like michael and samuel and absolutely

sharon yep and karen

in they were all female names by the way

so never michael or anything like that

they were always female names that we

named the spiders but

i'd always tell the kids you know hey

catch bugs and

and feed karen did karen the spider kind

of say

cut your grass otherwise i'm calling the

hoa

i never thought about it until now but

i'm pretty sure

that spider had a cell phone plan

yeah and that is why i kept getting

calls from the hoa

so maybe the russians were onto

something with the spiders outside on

the doors and

everything well i think i think we've

done a good job

covering superstitions i don't believe

there's literally

any reason for any of our listeners to

do any research of their own

ever again about superstitions because

all they need to do is come back to this

podcast

click on it and they will know

everything about superstitions

they ever need to know yep we covered it

all we covered

all of it yep and so thank you for

tuning in to

this episode of the wolf in the shepherd

and we'll catch you next time