0:04

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's

0:06

Chuck. Jerry's here sitting in for Dave and this short

0:08

stuff. Getty up, tally ho, let's

0:11

go. Let's make

0:13

sure this one doesn't blow. Oh,

0:16

say thank you, A curse,

0:19

a curse upon your house, a pox upon

0:21

you, then jerk. I

0:24

would never write a curse tablet for you,

0:27

my friend. No, nor

0:29

would I. I mean, like I I would even

0:31

think that would go without saying, because it's

0:33

just such a jerk move

0:36

to write a cursed habilely against somebody,

0:38

if you think about it. Yeah, I

0:40

never had heard of these before. Uh.

0:43

These are what kind of what it sounds

0:45

like. It's a tablet? Uh.

0:47

This is generally ancient rome or grease with

0:50

a curse inscribed upon it. Uh.

0:53

And you would generally inscribe this

0:55

curse um after

0:57

somebody's death, right, not neces

1:00

necessarily, not necessarily though there's

1:02

one, a famous one in POMPEII that somebody

1:05

affixed to a tomb so

1:07

you could do it after death. And what you were

1:09

essentially saying, do you want to read that one? Sure

1:14

you ready? I'm ready? And this

1:16

comes to our friends from house stuffworks Dot com

1:18

in Ancient Roman, ancient Greece. Stranger,

1:22

stay a short while if it is not

1:24

too troublesome, and learn what to avoid.

1:26

This man, who I hoped was a friend of mine,

1:29

brought prosecutors to me, a

1:32

k A. Persecutors sort of, I

1:34

think the literal pink you suit him?

1:36

Okay, prosecutors to me, and

1:38

oh yeah sure, and instigated

1:41

proceedings. I am grateful to the gods

1:43

and my innocence, colon. I

1:46

am free from all trouble. He

1:48

who deceived us, may he

1:50

not receive the pennates,

1:53

which are the household gods, nor

1:55

the underworld. So

1:57

what this guy who cursed this

2:00

this other person's tomb was saying,

2:02

is this guy's a jerk. I hope

2:04

that his his soul basically doesn't

2:07

even make it to the afterlife. That essentially

2:09

he's just doomed to wander aimlessly

2:12

for eternity because he sued

2:14

me once. That's right. And

2:16

this is a great example of a sort of a

2:18

standard issue cursed tablet,

2:20

also known at times as a

2:24

uh here we go the fixione.

2:27

Wow nice, I was gonna say the E on the end

2:29

and pinch my four finger and thumb

2:31

together. The fixion. Yeah,

2:33

I think that's that's it. You

2:36

might be right, but this was a common

2:38

practice at various times through

2:40

the ancient times. And

2:43

uh, they were not necessarily

2:45

always written on the same thing. Sometimes

2:47

it was papyrus. Sometimes

2:49

I believe they found lamps and pieces of clay

2:52

and things like that. It kind of

2:54

depends on how much money you had. Um,

2:56

but there was a lot of lead because

2:58

of the silver mining operations, especially

3:00

near Athens, and so

3:02

lead turned out to be a really great

3:05

sort of permanent thing that

3:07

you could carve something on and apparently looks

3:10

really cool when carved upon. Yeah, there's somebody

3:12

interviewed in the House Stuff Works article that

3:14

said, you know when you when you write

3:16

on it, when you carve it, it has

3:19

like this kind of like a silvery

3:21

line that really kind of pops

3:24

I guess against like the dull

3:26

the dullness of the oxidized lead. And

3:28

then also it's just easy to write and

3:31

let you can carve in it pretty easily. You don't

3:33

have to be like a silver smith of any

3:35

sort to do that. You can just be an average

3:37

smoke with something sharp. That's

3:40

right. Uh, there was a historian

3:43

too. They talked to that said that it kind of

3:45

came and went throughout history.

3:47

But it, interestingly, it

3:49

was like a real fad and then went a

3:51

way really quickly. Each time that happened. It

3:53

wasn't like a gradual rise and fall.

3:56

They described it as sharp spikes

3:58

and popularity. Yeah, and I saw that it was.

4:00

Um, it was a The

4:02

time that it popped up was somewhere around

4:04

like five hundred BC too,

4:07

maybe three fifty BC is

4:09

when it first starts. And

4:11

um, if you'll remember Chuck from

4:13

our bicameralism episode, that's

4:15

about the time people got

4:18

their their brain their consciousness

4:20

in order and started to get

4:22

the superstitious because the gods had abandoned

4:25

them. Interesting, I think

4:27

so too. I wonder if this has anything to do with

4:29

that. Yeah, I mean sure, it might

4:31

have just been part of that time. You know, why not

4:33

Julian James hypothesis wasn't

4:35

scientific. I can add to it anyway.

4:38

I like, all right, so

4:40

let's it's

4:42

very smugged the way he said that, I liked it. Uh,

4:45

You're that always reminds me and somebody hear the word

4:47

smug when Tom Cruise talked to Matt

4:49

Lower about being smug. Oh, yeah,

4:51

no, I never saw that. Oh, it's one of the

4:53

great Of course, Matt Lower ended up being a

4:56

creepy, so I'm not defending

4:58

him, but I think he was talking about scientology and he

5:00

just kept I don't know, he's talking about glib Sorry,

5:03

Yeah, that's right, I have seen that. Yeah,

5:06

good clip. All right, let's take a

5:08

break and ponder tom cruisiness and

5:11

uh, we'll be back to talk about curse

5:13

tablets right after this. That's

5:16

y s game that you should know

5:23

that we should know that knows. But

5:27

Josh Clark,

5:47

so one of the things that people seem to do,

5:49

and this was like when when they were in

5:51

fashion, when curse tablets were in fashion,

5:53

um, everybody was into him. But

5:56

it seems like one of the things that you would

5:58

do was like curse your rivals. Um,

6:01

sometimes your rival in politics, your rival

6:03

in business. I think some people cursed the

6:06

rival chariot teams to their

6:09

favorite chariot teams, which is really

6:11

lunkheaded, but it like it just goes to

6:13

show people have been lungheaded for thousands

6:16

of years, right, there's always been

6:18

lucks. Yeah, your neighbors, especially if you have some

6:20

sort of dispute, anyone who takes you to court.

6:23

Um. And then also people

6:25

um, who are romantic rivals

6:27

to somebody you like. I saw one

6:29

that basically said, may

6:32

I think Helen be

6:34

bound when she tries to flirt with or

6:37

have sex with you know, the

6:40

dude that I like, whatever his name was, I don't remember,

6:42

um, And that basically she was saying, like, please,

6:45

God's intervene and keep her from

6:48

being able to perform

6:52

in the sack with um,

6:54

Aristophanes, Let's say,

6:57

who I'm neverking was a man or

7:00

Romulus, by the way, smells

7:03

bad and has a small pep. Yeah. But

7:05

the whole thing was, um, The

7:07

whole thing was that you were basically calling

7:09

upon the gods. You were invoking the gods to to

7:12

do something bad to this person that

7:14

you did not like. Yeah.

7:16

And uh So, as you would imagine, if you

7:18

had a lot of money, you were probably more educated.

7:21

You could probably spell and write these

7:23

things yourself. But if you were wealthy, you probably paid

7:25

someone to do it, maybe beautifully.

7:28

Um, But like you said, all stripes

7:30

did it. So if you didn't have a lot of money,

7:32

that may have been one like on a shard of clay,

7:35

and you would go to you may not be able to

7:37

read or write, so you would go to a

7:39

magician, and these magician

7:42

how is described in this House of Works article,

7:44

where like contract attorneys, and they

7:46

would kind of give you a template

7:49

and have blanks, and you know, say,

7:51

fill in the blanks with like who's your grievance?

7:55

Uh? What's his name? Uh?

7:57

And what was the grievance? And then they would sort

7:59

of fill this thing in and Fred Flintstone style.

8:01

And apparently there were times even where they found

8:04

some examples of these square that the

8:06

name or the grievance was so long that they

8:08

had to kind of squish it in and on

8:10

these template forms, which is really funny

8:13

that if you think about it. Yeah, and also it sounds

8:15

like an ancient mad lib, but magic

8:17

mad lib basically, yeah, exactly.

8:19

So um, these things got so popular

8:22

and so widespread that in some

8:24

of the Cursed tablets they'll

8:26

find like clauses that

8:28

say, and if the other person

8:30

finds out that I've cursed them and

8:33

they try to reverse curse me, then

8:35

I am rubber in their

8:37

glue in that case, and their

8:39

curse will bounce off of me and stick to them

8:41

instead, right, And they would say, what

8:44

is rubber. I mean, let's let's just step

8:46

back for a second. Took or essentially talking about the

8:48

same thing, a cursed

8:50

tablet and saying I'm rubber in your

8:53

glue is basically the same thing.

8:55

I just think we should point that out. Yeah,

8:58

and it's funny. I do need to poke a little

9:00

fun in this article because I didn't include it

9:02

for your I should have included so you could have a laugh.

9:05

Year deleted it at

9:07

the end. It was talking about

9:09

where these things kind of when they fell out of popularity.

9:12

It's like, well, some argue that even though

9:14

they don't do anymore, our society is still very

9:16

much like this, and just take a look at Twitter,

9:19

a sort of modern version of a curse stuff.

9:22

I gotta laugh. Yeah,

9:25

yeah, I guess I kind of yeah,

9:29

yeah, I think they were cursing Twitter. Just then.

9:32

Another thing too, is there was a person interviewed

9:34

that said that they were like a magical arms race

9:36

because there'd be curses counter curses,

9:39

amulets like the evil Eye,

9:41

you know, or the eye of Osiris,

9:43

maybe the very famous like amulet

9:46

or symbol that was worn

9:48

to ward off curses. Like I think that

9:50

was the rubber that you would wear so that the curses

9:52

would bounce off of you like I'm

9:55

looking at you, buddy,

9:57

basically, and then

9:59

that's it is. Tablets gone

10:02

for the better, short stuff

10:05

out. Stuff

10:09

you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.

10:12

For more podcasts My heart Radio, visit

10:14

the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

10:16

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H