How Ouija Boards Work

Although most people who've used Ouija boards don't think they're communicating with the beyond, there is something mysterious about how it works. Learn the ins and outs of the popular parlor game that sprang directly from the 19th-century spiritualism movement in this episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant, Jerry's kind of here, uh, and this is

(00:22):
Stuff you Should Know. Yeah, this is the last podcast
these two today that we're recording in the infamous murder room.
Oh yeah, it's right, yeah, murder room. Yeah, we're moving offices,
and what better thing to do than to have a seance,
which we're going to conduct after this episode records. You

(00:45):
don't worry about this first. Yeah, we're having a seance, buddy,
I don't know about that. We're gonna get down, We're
gonna get down to brass tacks and answer all the
unknown questions. Well, you know, I'll tell you what. I
will have a seance with you using a Wuiji board,
because now I know how they work and I'm not
quite as scared of them as I used to be
saying after I saw The Exorcist. Yeah, I say Wegi, Yeah,

(01:08):
I kind of do too, although I think it's probably
Wegia right not to be confused with the crimes photographer
Weig we're talking about the board. Although yeah, I think
some people say we ja. Yeah. I just think it's interesting.
I said WEGI since I was a kid. Yeah, I
mean too, But I also say reci cup instead of Reese's.
Umi does too? You mean do yeah? And I'm like, no,
it's Reese's. They're like, no, it's Recy's. Yeah. Well I

(01:31):
don't even say Reese's. I'd just say a reci cup.
I think they think they need too people in their quirks. Yeah, foibles,
I say foibles. Uh yeah. You should hear him sing
that potato potato song everybody Yeah, which apparently I got
snookered on that. By the way. That's an old, an

(01:52):
old bit. So I was snookered by an urban legend.
What the whole potato Potato song? Where I say, like, yeah,
a friend of mine's friend Audish end with this piece
and sang it wrong. You thought it was for real? Yeah,
of course I did. I've never heard that before. It's
very funny. Had you heard that, um now, because you
would have stopped me. I know I have heard it before,

(02:13):
but it wasn't too long ago. Was it from my mouth? Maybe?
But I didn't think like that. It was it actually happened.
I think anyway, we gig board um, and I mentioned
exorcists already saw that, right, of course a bunch of times. Enough,

(02:34):
here's the trivia question for you. What is the name
of the spirit Reagan communicates with. I didn't even have
to look this up? Uh through her Wegi board? Geez,
I don't remember Captain Howdy? Shut up? No, do you remember? Now?
Captain Howdy was who she's talking with? Who is the devil?

(02:54):
I guess that was one of his aliases. I wonder
if he has like a double passport that says Captain
Howdy on the whole Satan Lucifer. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah,
it's true. That makes it a little less frightening. So um,
what was that the early seventies that exercise came out right,
I think? Um? And the Wigi board, the one she

(03:16):
was playing with, I believe was a Parker Brothers Buigi board.
Was it now has bro Um and that was this
mass manufactured, mass marketed toy game. But it was actually
based on like a real phenomenon that we've talked about
here on this show. Before the spiritualism movement of the

(03:38):
nineteenth century, the Luigi board first made its appearance around then.
Supposedly they claimed providence for this way further back than that,
but there's no real evidence that the Luigi board itself
is any older than the mid nineteenth century and that
it's American in origin. Yeah, the actual Wijia brand board

(03:58):
is what you're talking about, right, right, or talking boards
in general, which is another name for like a Wuiji
board as a talking board, but not all talking boards
are Wigi boards, that's right. So you're saying there's no
evidence that they existed before, like in the eight hundreds
before that. Before that, No, there there people did use divination.
There is a pretty good source a fourth century BC

(04:21):
Greek scholar who wrote a history um who talks about
a pair of men who were killed for dividor for
using divination. But they used a pendulum and a disc
with the alphabet around it to spell out a message.
So there were divinations. People did use um like alpha style. Yeah,

(04:43):
I don't know if they use a plan chet. But
the Wigi board itself, despite being marketed for many years,
is something from Egyptian antiquity, is probably something no or
that was created no earlier in the mid nineteenth century
in the States. Well and is Uh an attorney name
Alijaban patented what was called the Uijia Egyptian luck board. Um.

(05:08):
And it's important to point out when when these things
are marketed, they when you read the fine print, they
never claim to be able to, you know, talk with
the spirits. It's like just sort of it's a game, right,
It's a game now, And it was once it became
mass marketed, they they started the Yeah, but in one
it was part of this larger offshoot of spiritualism. Yeah.

(05:33):
And we talked a bit about egythology, and it's sort
of all ties in seances were big. Do you remember
they cracked the hieroglyphic code from the Rosetta Stone just
a couple of decades before. So Egypt was like this
weird place with all sorts of strange cults and rituals. Yeah.
And it's just it's strange to me that something like
the occult, even on a minor level, sort of took

(05:54):
hold in the United States at one point. Uh. And
I don't know how if it was except to buy
the masses, but like you know, regular people and noteworthy
people would hold seances and try to communicate with their
dead relatives, usually through a medium who was usually female.
You're right, you know there weren't a lot of dudes
doing it. Uh No, there are a lot of dudes

(06:15):
who were involved in it, but the mediums were typically female,
and a lot of them used things that were like
the Luigi board talking boards. Yeah, like they you mentioned
the dial plate, which was a spinning wheel with letters
and numbers, and the alphabet board, which was sort of
like a Weigia board, but um, you just pointed to

(06:35):
different letters and waited for a response from the great beyond.
Some had a little pencil that would like actually write
things out right. That used the plan chet, which is
French for a little plank, which is a little uh,
a little board or something maybe like a circular disc
on three legs, and then one of the legs for
a writing plan chet. Um was basically a whole with

(06:58):
a pencil going through it, so that when the planet
moved using the medium's hands, but the spirit was really
in control, the pencil would write something hopefully. Uh So
back to the Wiji board, the official game version. Over
about seventy years, it changed ownership a few times, eventually

(07:18):
landing at Parker Brothers, which is now has Bro. Like
you pointed out right, Elijah Bon, the guy who, um,
he didn't come up with the first Ouiji board, but
he was the first one to make an improvement on
an existing patent and um, the Wuiji board, as we
understand it, that was his how we see it now,
and he actually went off after he sold the rights
to it to a guy named um Charles Nard. Uh,

(07:42):
Elijah Bon went off and created a rival version that
had a huge swastika on. It didn't perform so well.
Uh no, it did at first, because we're talking, I
could have that association was still like a mystical symbol.
But it was made by the Swastika Novelty Company in
West Virginia that he founded to produce this rival board,
and it's considered his other Wigi board. That's pretty funny,

(08:06):
isn't that weird? Yeah? My friend, my friend Jesse char
the other day tweeted something funny about design. I think
it was something like, of design is trying to make
something not look like a swastika or a penis. Al
thought that was pretty good. Did she make that up
or have you heard that? I have not heard of
that alright, so I'm giving credit to Jesse char So,

(08:27):
um check. The point is that Weiji board took this,
this thing that was being used by mediums as part
of a very serious spiritualism movement and said, hey, you
don't need um this crazy old lady to contact your
dead uncle. Now you can buy one and do it

(08:47):
in your own home over cocktails, exactly. Um. And a
lot of people took it like that from the get go.
I think some people probably purchased Wiji boards seriously, but
I think from from the outset it was a part
of a party. It was a conversation starter. Yeah, yeah,
something that that you just did socially too, for fun,

(09:07):
for sure. I think that there was always a large
segment of the Wegi board buying population that just took
it as as entertainment. Yeah, exactly, which it's probably how
you should take it. Uh. From Kennard, he had an
employee named William fold f U l D who uh
who basically took it over to the point where he

(09:28):
even stamped his name inventor on the back of it,
even though he wasn't. And he's credited as being sort
of the father of the Wigia board because he's the
one that really ran with it in a marketing sense
and brought it to the masses, and UH would do
all the press for it. Um He claimed that the
French and German words for yes, we and yah is

(09:48):
where the name comes from, even though that's not true. Well,
even before that, Charles Kinnard said that Um he came
up with the name by asking the board itself what
it was called, and it's spelled out O U I J,
And he asked it what it meant, and the board
told him it was Egyptian for good luck. So that
was the story. And then yeah, I guess Fold was
like it means yes and yes, yes and yes pretty

(10:12):
much in French and German. It's pretty good. So, like
we said, um, Fold sold it to Parker Brothers, who
turned into Hasbro, and now when you buy a Wigi
brand Wigi board, it's from Hasbro. Yeah. And the article
here makes a point to U two call out the
Catholics for um, basically saying that it could be an

(10:33):
evil thing and not to use it. But as a
little Baptist boy, we were very much told not to
use a Weigia board. I remember specifically, um my uncle
like burning his Wigia board. Yeah, did he go out
and buy it just so he could burn it? Now

(10:53):
we got a party going in my house. Yeah, it's
prettyunny to look back. When I was a kid, I
was like, yes, get rid of that evil thing. Were
you there when he burned it? No? I wasn't there,
but I heard about it, and that was just good
for him. That's cool throwing candy Land while you're at it,
because that game stinks? What it was? The Shoots and Ladders?
I never played that? Sorry? Remember that one? Yeah? That

(11:14):
one made you like hate the other people you played
with though, right, didn't couldn't you like get ahead by
screwing over your fellow players? That's I think that's why
it was called Sorry. Yeah, I think like if you
landed on someone, you sent him back at the beginning.
And yeah, yeah, maybe I just played with Jerk soon knows.
Maybe so? Um so chuck the Buigi board um From

(11:37):
the original Bond creation to the one you get today
from Parker Brothers, the design of it has changed very little. Yeah,
I guess we should describe it. I mean, I assume
most people have seen one, although you know I've never
used one. Have you? Oh? Yeah, when I was younger,
I'd totally be into trying it out. It's neat for fun,
you know, it's very neat, because I mean the thing

(11:59):
is just moving around the board by itself. All right.
So we will describe the board if you have not
seen it. Um. It has the alphabet and two different arcs,
has numbers below the alphabets. It has a yes in
one corner with I think a moon, and a no
in one corner with the sun. And therein lie the answers.

(12:20):
My friend, Oh, don't forget the most important part, basically
what amounts to the off button. It's goodbye written at
the bottom number. So yeah, it's sort of like a
satanic magic eight ball kind of, except this really works
and it's not satanic, right. Um. So the way that
you use um this talking board um, which again, if

(12:44):
you're interested in this and you want to see some
pretty cool old Buiji boards and the Swastika board as well, UM,
and another one called the Sphinx board, which I think
is the coolest one. It's from like the forties. Um.
There's this awesome online museum called the Museum of Talking Boards,
and they have histories of all this, the history of
Luigi Board History of Talking Boards. UM. Just some really

(13:06):
great articles and images on there, So go check that
out because it's a pretty cool website. UM. But when
you're when you're using this, um, well, the instructions have
stayed the same too, not only the design but the
gameplay itself. It's just about the same as it was
way back in the nineteenth century, right. And when you
use this, they say you want to have two or

(13:28):
more people UM with their fingers lightly resting, just your
fingertips lightly resting on the plant chet. And we should
say the plant chet um like the other plant chet
that used a pencil to write. It's just a little
um plastic heart shape board, I guess, with three small
legs and then a circular um plastic covered disc in

(13:51):
the middle, clear plastic disc that you look through, and
the disc shows you the letter number or word that
the spirit is community hating. That's right. When you look
down through the plane chet, that's the letter word in question.
That's right. So you sit there, you ask a question aloud.
Everyone concentrates, no no joking around going on, no even

(14:12):
Fold himself said, do you want to make sure that
the people who are at the table are taking this
seriously or else second or words right? Well, even though
it was advertised for mirthmaking, you gotta cut the mirth
down when you're actually operating the board. Take the guy
who has the lampshade on his head, He's got to
get out of that room. Uh So, then you ask
the question, and then everyone watches, and the plan chet

(14:37):
as if by magic or Satan's dark powers, moves along
in either answers yes or no questions, or spells things out. Um,
you want somebody to jot down yeah, sure, the letters
or numbers as they are read out, and and in
the article it says ideally they spell out words or

(14:57):
sentences they can the players can understand, right, Um, Like
it would if it's spelled out a nonsense word like wegia,
you would probably just say it's it's malfunctioning, or you
would say what does that mean, and then it would
spell out it's Egyptian for good luck, or German and
French free. Yes. I wonder if Weji boards always answer
the same when you ask them what wegia means. I

(15:18):
don't know. I started saying it differently all of a sudden, Sidewigi,
I just said wegia a couple of times. Interesting, how
do you pronounce the thing that you clean your windshield with?
That a squiga or a squeegee? Yeah, but that's s
q u E g e E. There's three ees. No,
I'm just kidding. Um. And uh, evidently it can take

(15:41):
up to five minutes for the plan chet to start moving,
which I don't know if I would have the patience
for that, I know I might start moving it on
my own. Oh yeah, you know, well then you would
be the life of the party, especially if you said,
like I'm being contacted by the spirits. Right. If after
five minutes you don't get any movement from the plane chet,

(16:01):
you want to either ask the question again or ask
another question. Um. And there's some there's some tips for
using your jiboard to maximum capacity. Um. One of them
is concentration. Again, the dude with the lampshade needs to
go sit in the living room watch TV or something
while everybody else is doing this. Um, you want to

(16:22):
turn down the lights, maybe, burn some candles, burn some
in incense, turn off that smartphone and the TV. Maybe. Yeah,
And uh, you really want to concentrate and when you
ask questions, you want to ask them slowly, clearly simple questions. Um.
And you want to ask them one at a time
and wait for the answer the response before you ask

(16:44):
the next question. Yeah. And they also recommend that you
avoid um scary questions because that could lead you down
a dark path, my friend, and always above all else
in the game by saying goodbye, because if you leave
that portal open to the great beyond, the bad people

(17:04):
might come in through that portal and find you and
kill you. Ask Reagan from the Exorcists, right, things can
go pretty badly. So you want to end each session
with the planchet over goodbye and then breathe a sigh
of relief exactly um. And apparently if this doesn't work
the first time you do it, you shouldn't be frustrated.
In fact, the Museum of Talking Boards has a regiment

(17:27):
that they prescribe um thirty minutes of practice every day
for two weeks, and apparently you'll open your chakras or something,
and all of a sudden you will be speaking through
the Wigi board, or the spirits will be speaking through
you go through the Weigi board. Is that before after

(17:47):
the opium regimen that they advise, I think the Museum
of Talking Boards is Um, they're more historical, they're more
interested in the history background of the whole thing. So
let's talk about this for a minute. People sit down,
they put their fingertips on this thing. The plan Chett moves.

(18:09):
I mean it moves like we're not making this up.
Like if you've never messed with a wigi board before,
like give it a shot with another friend, and like
the chances are the things going to just start moving
by itself. It's eerie, especially when you're younger. Now see,
I've never done it. I explained this to me. What
do you mean? I will show you so, um, I
get it. But the thing, this, this plan Chett, is

(18:32):
very light plastic. The feet might even have felt on
them or something like that. It's designed to move very
easily forward. No I think original Planchet's headcast Um. But
you're just basically you're you're being pulled around the table.
So you actually want to be in a comfortable position
because your fingertips are just sitting on this thing. And

(18:55):
then when you ask a question after a while, it'll move.
I've never seen one move fast, but it just moves
kind of slow. But I mean there's no question about
you're not thinking. Isn't moving like it's moving over to
a letter and then it's moving over to another letter
and then it's spelling something out. But you are moving it. No,
you're not in your head. Here here's the thing, like,

(19:17):
let's get to the science of this. You are in
fact moving it and there, but you are not conscious
of moving it, which is the awesome part of it.
It's this thing called idio motion, Yeah, which is the
IDEO and I didn't know if they were just being
fancy or not. It can go either way ideo ideo motion,
but the the it is an actual involuntary motion. It's

(19:41):
one of the types of involuntary motion of which human
beings are capable thanks to our muscles and neurons. Yeah.
It was coined by do named William Carpenter in to
explain dawsing rods, which is the same kind of you
know thing basically, yeah, dawsing rods pendulums um. Idio motion
is where thought proceeds precedes movement, and the other part

(20:06):
of it is that we're unaware of that movement. Yeah,
it's movement without owning that basically, So when you apply
that to we ji boards, you have what's called the
ideo motor effect, where you your thought is placed in
the form of a question to Theuiji board, and then
the movement, the unconscious movement. You're not aware that you're moving,

(20:27):
UM moves to answer that question. So if you're thinking yes,
like right, am I speaking with uh, you know, great
uncle Charlie, and you really want to and you're you're thinking, yeah, man,
I hope he's there. So you're unconscious or subconscious? Which
is it? I would guess unconscious. I think it's unfashionable
to these subconsciousness. UM it would move it to the yes,

(20:52):
but you wouldn't realize. You would think it was just moving.
And and that that's where the Weji board fund comes from. Chuck,
like you don't realize you're moving it like you you
have no sensation of movement. And like you said, this
is this idea. Emotion is a UM, it's it's we've
understood it for a while since early eighteen hundreds, and

(21:12):
even Fold himself in one of his patents said, and
I think explained that it was moved by unconscious muscular
movement of the briers. And back in the eighteen hundreds,
this guy named Anton chevrel chevrole chavrell he Um basically
proved this using a pendulum on a string. Yeah, and

(21:34):
it's um. You've probably long heard about the the Old
wives tale. If you want to find out what your
baby's gender, you hold um like a ring on a
string over the ballet and wait for it to move.
And if it moves back and forth, it's a boy.
That's circular, it's a girl. Um, And it's the same
basic thing. Is this the chevrol pendulum? Basically, it's just

(21:56):
idea emotion. In effect, you are unconsciously swinging the string. Yeah,
and whichever way you probably desire exactly. That's what makes
it so fascinating, is what you're really seeing is the
unconscious telegraphing supposedly of the mother's wishes of what gender
she would like, because she's in fact controlling it, but

(22:18):
she's her muscles are moving so minutely that she's not
aware of the movement. But since the pendulum is on
the string, it really kind of really telegraphs these very
very tiny movements, and then inertia takes over and it
really starts going. So it just seems amazing because the
hands not moving, but the ring is going crazy. It's

(22:40):
going crazy. Uh, this is the same. If you ever
heard of facilitated communication, it's pretty controversial. Um, you've probably
seen it on the news. It's when basically a caregiver
will guide the fingers of someone who's severely disabled over
a typewriter, typewriter, a typing machine, over a keyboard to

(23:00):
a computer. Uh, to supposedly get answers or communicate. Um.
And it's very controversial. Uh. It started out in nineteen
seven in Australia, this lady named Rosemary Crossley. Um. But
the American Psychology Association basically says it's not scientifically valid.

(23:21):
These are people that are just what facilitated communication. Yeah,
that they're the caregiver is really guiding this conversation and
it's really not coming from the person that's disabled. Right.
The thing is is what makes this so tragic and
sad is that the caregiver isn't aware that they're actually
making these movements. Again, all of this is unconscious. You

(23:42):
can't tell you're making this movement. And so since the
profoundly handicapped person is moving their hand, the caregiver thinks
that it's them. It's the it's the handicapped persons, not
like they're trying to snow somebody. They and they may
even really really want this person to communicate and say
the things. Yeah, they're still studying at Syracuse University actually

(24:03):
has UM since nineteen ninety two. It was the FC
Institute now it's the Institute on Communication and Inclusion. Are
still studying it. And you know the controversy as usuals
between the skeptics and the believers. Oh well, that's that's
the thing. If you want to see who who believes
in the idea motor effect, type that into Google. It's

(24:24):
all like skeptics dictionary, skeptics, skeptic, Like every entry is skeptic.
But if you type in IDEO emotion you get UM.
You know, peer reviewed scientific literature on that. It's just
the IDEO motor effect is basically taking the proven idea
emotion and applying it to debunk things like Buiji boards. Uh.

(24:45):
They did a study in the University of British Columbia
just last year and UM basically they said it's strongest
when there are multiple people on the plan chet And
they tested this by blindfold thing people saying you've got
someone else on the board with you, and when in
fact there was no one else on the board, the

(25:07):
person would still say it was the other person moving it.
They would say there was no other person, right, and
then they say, well, then it was the spirits moving in.
I guess that's funny that no one says it's the
spirits moving into. That's always the other person who's moving in.
That's a pretty, um, pretty common trade of any Wiji
board game. That you're sitting there going like, you're moving it. No,

(25:29):
you're moving it. No, I'm really not moving it. That's
that's how it comes. And then uh, with two people
working in tandem, you have two sets of muscles moving
unconsciously but you know, making a movement. Um. You have
one person relinquishing responsibility because they think it's the other person,

(25:51):
which they think freeze the muscles to move even more
strongly because you're saying it's not me, it's the other person. Um.
And if they both have a common goal, then the
planchet will move even more um briskly. I guess like,

(26:11):
if both girls are like, it's gonna move to be
R A D, then you know that planchet is gonna
move to those letters in that order. But they're both
going to be like I'm not moving. Uh, well, hold on,
before we get into any real life stories, we want
to do a message break and we're back. So should

(26:35):
we talk about a couple of these stories, umluigia, Are
they real? Are they not stories? Sure? The Herds of
Kansas City, Yeah, this is pretty crazy. Herbert heard killed
his wife Nellie, shot her in the back four times. Um,

(26:55):
and you would think what a jerk. But what happened
was there they were elderly, they were in their set
and these um they played with the Wigia board one
night and um, Nellie claimed that she received a message
saying her husband was stepping out on her. So ar
gave like fi dollars to the other lady. Even that's

(27:17):
probably like their life savings, um. And so what happened
was Nellie tortured him, tied them to a bed post,
whipped him with a knotted rope, burned him with a
red hot poker, stabbed a knife into his shins, and
forced a confession by holding a gun to his head.
And eventually she left the the gun on the bedside

(27:38):
table there Herbert got ahold of it and killed her.
And UM, can't really blame Herbert and apparently the courts
did not what else you got any other ones? Uh? Yeah,
there's a m It was called an Italian enclave in
El Cerrito, California. The Italian community there apparently experienced a
wave of mass hysteria that landed several people in uh

(28:01):
an asylum because of Wiji board use. When the town
went crazy. Yeah, one policeman like tore off his clothes
and ran into a bank. And um, there's a lot
of craziness that happened. It was just massisteria, I guess.
And the town was like, you know what, no more
Weiji boards. And finally, in British authors sax Rohmer supposedly

(28:27):
came up with his villain Dr Fu Manchu when his
Wiji board spelled out Chinaman. So, um, his Wigi board
was racist. M yeah, and uh you know he says,
that's where it came from. So here's the thing. If
you ever want to test whether Wiji boards are the

(28:48):
result of idea motion and the players actually moving it
or not, to the Goodwill and buy one for three
dollars and then and then do this very very simple test.
You blindfold the yours, you turn the board ninety degrees,
so that anybody who's memorized the layout of Aligi board
can't cheat it right, And then ask them some questions

(29:10):
and you're not going to get any kind of sensible answer.
And if you do, then you need to trade carefully
because you just unlike the gate to the spirit world,
don't forget to tell it goodbye, to seal off that gate.
I always remember put it on goodbye folks. So uh
you here anything else? I've got nothing else. I feel
like here in my forties, after knowing now that they're

(29:33):
not evil tools of Satan, then I would like to
try it out sometime on a on a Friday night
with good friends. Yeah, we'll play little cards against humanity.
We'll play some wegia and then risk and risk to
wind it all out with the big bang. Um, invite
me over. So if you want to learn more about wegia,

(29:58):
weigi that kind the thing, you can again go check
out the Museum of Talking Boards. Pretty sweet. And also
you should read this article on how stuff works dot com.
Type oh U I j A into the handy search
bar and it will bring up this article. And since
I said, um search bar in there somewhere, I think
it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this crack baby. Jeez.

(30:25):
We we got some good response on the old crack episode,
which was a good one. I think kill lately. Hey, guys,
just finished listening to the story on crack cocaine. It
reminded me of a story of a crack baby from
many years ago. It's round two thousand one. I was
doing volunteer work at the local children's hospital in the
neonatal I see you holding babies, um. I came in

(30:46):
one day and one of the nurses told me to
go hold this one particular baby. She told me it
was a crack baby that had been crying NonStop for
three days and hadn't slept. So I washed up. I
went to go hold this baby, held the baby in
my arms and just look that the baby, and the
baby was crying, eyes closed NonStop, just crying, crying, crying, crying.
After several minutes, the baby's eyes opened a little bit

(31:08):
and then closed again, would keep crying, tears or flowing
the whole time. After several minutes of that, her eyes
would remain open longer and longer, but the baby was
still crying and the tears were still flowing. After several
more minutes, the baby's eyes stayed open, looking at me,
crying a little bit less. The baby started crying less

(31:29):
and less and less, then after several minutes, was smiling,
giggling and cooing and making all those nice happy baby noises.
After several more minutes of that, the baby's eyes started
to close, and soon she was asleep, sleeping for the
first time in three days. It was a wonderful experience
that I will remember forever. Jim from Austin, Texas, that's

(31:52):
pretty cool. He cooed a crack baby to sleep sooth.
He's a sooth sayer. That's soothe coore you go, Jim,
Yeah uh, And now he brings it Christmas presents every year.
That would be a great story. Do it, Jim. Uh.
If you have something to tell us that you've done

(32:15):
based on something we talked about, I would say that's
that Jim story falls under that umbrella, wouldn't you We
want to hear about it. Basically, just let us have
it on Twitter at s y s K podcast on
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know via email
at Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com, and like we

(32:35):
said at the beginning, hang out with us at our
home on the web. Bring a smoking jacket and some slippers,
and we'll chill out at Stuff you Should Know dot
com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
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(33:01):
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