It’s amazing how long certain traditions can last.
Here in Malta, there are a pair of eyes that have been watching over these people
for over four thousand years.
They watched as the pharaohs rose and fell.
They watched as the Phoenicians conquered the Mediterranean.
They watched as the Italians fought the Ottomans and the Maltese were bombed by the Germans.
They've been watching over these lands for as long as the Pyramids have stood.
But it's only because we keep applying them.
Superstition.
It’s more than just a song by Stevie Wonder.
It’s human nature.
Our brains are habitual.
And we are always looking for patterns.
And just because there aren't any patterns to find doesn’t mean we won’t find any.
Chances are you're acting in superstitious ways, right now,
even if you don’t believe that your actions actually have purpose.
Take sports for example.
Every true fan knows that if you're team is doing well, you don't say it out loud.
That’s how you jinx it.
Especially if you’re a Canadian team playing Boston.
Where I grew up, people believed in the lucky power of rabbit’s feet.
Which is such a weird and obviously ancient idea.
You’re telling me if I carry around a lobbed off limb of an animal
that it's so me how going to keep me safe from harm?
It certainly didn’t keep the rabbit safe.
I have its foot.
Superstitions are usually quite strange, but even knowing that,
it doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll stop doing them.
Because they’re generally intended as a public display just as much as a private concern.
Even though I don’t know anybody who actually believes that saying bless you
will stop demons from entering your nose, I do know a lot of people
who would be very uncomfortable not saying it.
And it isn’t like this is just an act of the uneducated.
Many astronauts are highly superstitious, and I think we can all agree
that the job self-selects for fairly rational and educated people.
Everyone who has ever flown Soyuz has stopped to pee on the right rear tire of the van
that drove them out to the rocket.
Even the women.
Yuri Gagarin did it, and he survived, so they do it to survive, too.
By this point, it’s just as much tradition as it is superstition.
It's ritual.
Routine.
But my point is to say that no matter how aloofly you present your intelligence,
superstition is a part of all of us.
It permeates through the religious and atheistic alike.
There is no corner of our globe that it doesn’t touch.
No person it doesn’t affect.
And here in Malta, they’re hanging on to a superstition that is thousands of years old.
In the town of Marsaxlokk, on the southern tip of this island,
there’s a famously unique fishing fleet.
An entire harbour of small, sturdy-hulled wooden boats painted in bright colours.
They’re called Luzzu, and the superstitions associated with them are some of the strongest
and oldest on the island.
You don’t change the colours of a Luzzu.
That’s bad luck, and you may drown and die.
You don’t change the design, either.
That’s also bad luck and you may drown and die.
But most important of all, you absolutely must paint a pair of eyes on the bow.
Because if you don’t.
Yep, you guessed it.
Drown and die.
Those eyes transcend language and culture.
They transcend religion and race.
When we began painting these eyes on this type of boat, the alphabet was a new idea.
The pyramids of Giza were fresh on the landscape.
For over a hundred generations across thousands of miles, their unblinking gaze has watched
entire civilizations rise and fall.
They saw the Colossus of Rhodes fall into the sea.
They watched helplessly as Rome razed Carthage to the dust.
They represent, at least in theory, the eye of Horus and the eye of Ra,
the sun and the moon of Egypt’s mythology.
Together they promised protection from fear and healing from pain.
Safety from death and drowning.
They promised comfort in the afterlife.
They promised everything that a sailor needed to hear.
If the eyes were watching over you, you were safe.
But the Egyptians weren’t the only ones who believed.
The idea of an eye containing power is prevalent in almost every society throughout history.
In many ways, we still believe it today.
In fact, if you've ever heard someone say that eyes are the gateways to the soul,
they're really just repeating an ancient superstition.
It just happens to be one that we all innately understand.
Stare into someone’s eyes and tell me you don’t feel something.
Whether or not there’s actually power there, we certainly sense one.
Eyes have a certain energy that we can feel.
Even animals do.
Try looking a dog in the eyes when they’ve done something wrong.
They feel our gaze just as much as we do.
And when it comes to living life, and even more so surviving death,
feeling is just as important to us as fact.
It may be mythology, but its rooted in feeling.
And the most effective lie is always rooted in something you can feel.
Malta is a nation living off the sea, and the sea has always been unpredictable.
But it doesn’t matter how the weather looks, a fishermen still needs his catch.
It’s never been a job where everybody comes home at the end of the day, and they all know it.
Some people die with their lungs full of water, and that’s a terrible way to go.
And if you know that’s a possibility every time you head out from shore,
you do everything in your power to stop it.
The greatest sailors you’d ever known had painted the eyes.
So you did it too.
Even if you didn't really know why.
In the harbour of Marsaxlokk today, the eyes of dozens of Luzzu stare back at the shore.
They’re painted by modern men with modern educations.
Men with iPhones and Netflix accounts.
I really doubt that any of them are truly believing that these are what's keeping them safe from harm.
But they’re all still painting them.
Because at the end of the day, nobody wants to be the guy who jinxed it.
This is Rare Earth.
In the harbour of Marsaxlokk today...
'Marsashlock', 'marsashlock'...
It's a hard town name.
In the harbour of Marshashlokk.
Aah.
That's gonna be trouble...