This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

And I'm Joe McCormick.

And we have another superstition episode here for you today.

We often have a lot of fun with these sorts of episodes, digging into a superstition, trying to figure out where does it come from?

Why does it persist?

What possible, you know, science or logical or

just mere correlation may be beneath all of it. And so I was looking around for something

that might be neat to talk about on the show. And I happened upon something that I was not

familiar with before. A supposed old-timey maritime bit of folklore, much in the same

vein as, you know, some of these other prohibitions that people have heard about before, you know,

that on old-timey sailing vessels, you would say, oh, you don't let a woman come aboard, it's bad luck.

Don't let a redhead come aboard, it'll be bad luck and so forth. And, you know,

and then beyond that, there's all sorts of bits of maritime lore, such as the old,

you know, Red Sky at Morning Sailor take warning, which I think we may have discussed in the podcast

before, and various bits of good luck, you know, as well as bad luck, omens, rituals that will help ensure a safe voyage, that sort of thing.

I feel like boats are really a place where memes of dubious knowledge can take hold much for the same reasons that schools are places where that can happen.

Because, like, you you know you have a group

of people who are all under the common command of you know the same authority figures uh they're all

...