#47: The Telepathy Tapes isn’t even one of the better scams
Death By Consumption
3/25/25 - 3/31/25
My Cali journey has unexpectedly continued into a second week, as I had to last-minute cancel a planned weekend in Montreal and instead stuck around in San Diego, where I enjoyed the classic California experience of feeling like shit in absolutely stunning weather. Here’s something strange I experienced in San Diego, though: I was driving along, enjoying the warm weather, listening to tunes, and then BAM, Kristi Noem is on the radio with a 30-second “PSA” issuing psychotic threats to immigrants over the airwaves. I’m sorry, we have ads that are just threats now? Before I had a chance to recover from that harrowing experience, the very next radio ad was from a local business offering “pre-tariff discounts” on all their merchandise. The word “dystopia” has been beaten to death but I think it might apply in this instance!
In another sign of America turning even more into Scam Nation by the day, we booked a last-minute AirBnB in LA, despite the fact that we all know how this goes by now, and when we arrived — yep, flophouse. No real windows, a door that doesn’t lock, horrific synthetic smells covering up horrific biological smells. By the time we discovered the black mold, it almost came as a relief — finally, a violation so egregious it might just be our ticket out of here! I sent photos of the mold to the host, who called me within, no exaggeration, 90 seconds, and offered to refund our stay if I didn’t write him a review. And, you know what? I am not ashamed to report that I let him purchase my silence. I got my refund and we got our asses to a hotel, where at least some regulations still exist.
This week is a short one, as I’ve mostly been lounging. The things I’ve been consuming lately have been fresh air and sunshine. You should, too, it’s very nice! :) Other than that, I read a big, silly 90s book, listened to a psychotically stupid podcast that went viral, and wore a new shirt.
The Gold Coast, by Nelson DeMille (1990) — library ebook
My friend Hattie demanded I read this book, and it turned out to be the perfect beach book, “90s cunty,” as she described it. Described as The Great Gatsby meets The Godfather, it’s set on the Gold Coast of Long Island, amongst the ultra-wealthy WASPs, whose world is shaken up by the new neighbors moving in, a notorious mob boss and his wife. It’s all written in a very dry manner, in the style of a classic noir or detective novel, which also happens to be a tone that perfectly suits the vibe of bored rich people. The narrator, a wealthy lawyer grown disillusioned with his very nice life, says stuff like, “I shouldn’t have had the fourth or fifth martinis. Actually, the fifth was okay. It was the fourth I shouldn’t have had.”
The plot itself is fun, but the snipes at how rich people think are what really keep you going, like when the narrator explains that he never asks his wife what she got up to today, because then she’d ask what he did today. “What could be more lower-middle-class than asking your spouse to account for his or her day?” he sneers. Everyone is so thrillingly snobby, like a proto-White Lotus. It also must be said that the book contains a surprising amount of kinky sex, as the narrator and his wife indulge themselves in a wide variety of roleplay scenarios, the kinds of sex scenes that would possibly kill a Gen Z puritan if TikTok ever discovered this book.
It’s a perfect beach read, the literary equivalent of, say, Analyze This, a 90s popcorn comedy that’s obsessed with the mafia in a way you just don’t hear about anymore. Remember the mafia, you guys? The only dark spots were when I would snap out of the 90s and realize that the people in the book — the wealthy people with too much time and money, and the gangsters who can easily manipulate them — are no longer silly sideshow characters but are, in fact, running pretty much everything now. As the mafia don muses at one point, “There’re no real men left anymore, no heroes, no stand-up guys, not on either side of the law,” which in the book is meant to be just the cynical way one man sees the world, but, 30 years later, is more or less a cold, hard fact.
The Telepathy Tapes, episode 1 — on Apple Podcasts
Everyone has been talking about this podcast series, in which a “journalist” “investigates” and “reveals” that there are thousands of non-verbal autistic kids around the world who can communicate telepathically. Look, I love some paranormal wacko shit, so listening to the first episode on the train from San Diego to Los Angeles, while watching the coast pass by, was pretty much an ideal hour of my life. But — and I’m sorry to say this if you’re one of the people who have loved this podcast — I have to ask: what the fuck is wrong with people?
The host presents as a skeptic initially, which is pretty quickly exposed as a ruse, a way to try to coax you into believing what she’s selling, since she knows most people will start as a skeptic, so she wants you to feel like she’s on the journey with you. But she gives up the game too quickly, overeager to tell us how any and every instance of a kid “knowing” the number their parent is thinking simply has to be explained by telepathy. This woman is so clearly not a skeptic, she’s practically an evangelist. (For those who have listened to this poorly produced slop podcast, this is a good breakdown of not only the pseudoscience used, but also a nice takedown of how offensive this is to many autistic people.)
As the host takes you into these “revelations,” it’s truly wild to hear this full-grown woman explaining the “experiments” that have “proved” telepathy, at first telling us that these tests were conducted with the parents and kids completely separated and unable to see each other, only to, 5 minutes later, tell us that they were only separated at the start, and then the parents were allowed to not only communicate with but physically touch their kids as they typed out the number their parent was supposedly thinking of. (If you want to see the video “evidence” of these sessions for yourself, you have to get your credit card out to get behind her paywall. Convenient!)
At the end of the first episode, I listened in disbelief as the host finds herself brought to tears the first time she’s in the room with one of these “telepaths,” flipping that easily from supposed skeptic to nearly religious fervor in a matter of seconds. I swear, give me 20 minutes with this woman and a Ouija board, and I could convince her to hand me all her life savings. There are so many RFK Jrs out there, huh!
Relaxed fit cabana polo — by Todd Snyder
Long-time readers know I rarely buy new clothes. My sense of style has been described as “bad” and “no.” So, when the weather started turning and I had to dust off my non-sweater options, I realized I was possibly in need of a new warm-weather shirt or two. Before leaving for California, I strolled into Todd Snyder, where one of the 5,000 employees (and, tragically, the only one in a fedora) stuck to me like a burr. I hate shopping in general, but can’t stand shopping with an audience, so I grabbed two shirts off the racks, nearly at random, and followed my new shadow to the dressing rooms. Twelve seconds after I had closed the curtain, before I even had time to take my shirt off, the guy was asking how I felt about the shirts. “I’ll tell you in a minute!” I said through gritted teeth. I did like one of the shirts, a knit cabana shirt, but I had grabbed the brown one, and I thought I had noticed a different-color version as I was frog-marched to the dressing rooms. So after I had gotten dressed again, I emerged from the dressing room, where I was greeted by the employee like a neglected foster dog at the window when you come home from work.
“Everything fit okay?!” he asked, and I know this isn’t how it happened but in my memory he was literally drooling with excitement.
“Yeah, but I think I want this one in blue instead of brown?” I said, showing him the knit polo.
“Blue…” he muttered, thinking as we walked back to the clothing racks. “Oh, this?” he said, pointing at the shirt I remembered passing. “This is green,” he said, in the same tone that clothing store woman talked to Julia Roberts in that one scene in Pretty Woman. For the record, the shirt is described on their website as “dark alpine,” and, I’m sorry, is this not a slightly blueish shade of green?
Whether it was blue or green, there was absolutely no way I was going to let a man in a fedora shame me about anything, let alone fashion, so without hesitation I lied straight to his face: “Oh, sorry, I’m color blind.” (Apologies to any color blind readers, but I hope you’ll forgive this instance of stolen valor. I had to!)
Having humiliated him with my lie, we enjoyed a painfully silent 5 minutes as he rang me up and wrapped my new blue/green shirt. Anyway, I’ve worn it a couple times and gotten compliments from people on it, which is really the most you can ask from a new shirt.