May 14, 2025 • 72 mins
Life has been lifing the past few weeks, including a death in the family, so Rachel is taking the lead this week. She is telling us all about former psychic, Miss Cleo. There is no missing person again, but as always, we chat about what we've been reading, watching, and listening to.
Our next book is Deborah Blum's "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York." We will be discussing it in the next episode.
Sources:
Please see our Instagram for now (probably posted 5/14). They will be listed here soon.
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Facebook: Details Are Sketchy - @details.are.sketchy.2023
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Instagram: Rachel - @eeniemanimeenienailz
Email: details.are.sketchy.pod@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How do I start?
Oh, that's right, I'm Kiki andI'm Rachel, and this is Details
Are Sketchy, a true crimepodcast, and Rachel and I are
both sick today.
Yep, primarily because mygrandmother passed away this
(00:23):
past week and I was also gettingwork done on the house and so I
just didn't have the um abilityreally to one million research.
Understandable, yeah, um, so weapologize for that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Rachel's turn is also again because, no, we don't
apologize for that.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
No need to apologize okay, well, I'm not sorry then,
uh, but no, I we do.
We haven't been keeping up withwhat we say we're going?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
no, it's.
It's not because we stoppedcaring about missing persons.
No, it's for other reasons.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, life just keeps life.
In this past year especially,since.
September.
Yeah, yeah, anyway, so nomissing person.
Rachel is also going to do themain one today.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'm gonna do the main one and I decided that I didn't
feel very murdery this timearound.
So I have picked aviolence-free well 99.99%
violence-free crime and it'skind of a story, if you will, I
(01:43):
guess.
And we're going to do Miss Cleo, the TV psychic.
Nice yeah.
So what do you remember aboutMiss Cleo Katie?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
What do I remember about Miss Cleo?
Well, I remember thecommercials Not very well, but I
do remember her, but I thinkmostly because my dog's name was
Cleo.
So, I remember that.
Yeah, I remember she was apsychic.
I asked you to call her andshe'll tell you about your
future.
I think, specifically lovewould be the main one, right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, that was a big one for her, yeah, yeah, she had
like that classic catchphrasecall me now.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah With her, oh, that's right, she did have an
accent.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Accent yeah, yeah, and she had, like usually, like
a little headband.
Right and some like cowryjewelry, yeah, and some colorful
outfit.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, she looked like the stereotype of a psychic.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Now would you be surprised if Itold you that Ms Clear was not?
Jamaican.
Well, no, yeah, I don't know ifI still want to do this part,
but I was going to ask you to.
I guess I am doing it, but moremore, a little bit more caution
(03:05):
on it.
I guess it doesn't.
You're like, what are youtalking about, rachel?
Like if you think you could dolike a fake accent and like keep
it up, like, and if so, I know,and if so, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
No, I couldn't do an accent at all.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I can do some accents , but don't think I can keep
them up, and you have to getinto that mindset.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, you'd have to be a really good actress or
actor.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
This is my accent that I'm doing now.
Now imagine doing that accentthe rest of your life.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And yeah, that's Miss Cleo.
Um, it's oversimplifying somethings, so we're gonna talk
about that.
So everybody remembers the adsalmost all of us, if you're a
millennial yeah, or a gen z.
Uh, maybe you remember yeahwell gen X would probably
remember Gen.
X.
(04:03):
Yeah For sure, baby boomers.
A woman with a thick Caribbeanaccent, promising to tell us our
future, if only we call.
She's wearing a turban and inthe background of the ad it's
like a blur of like pinks andpurples and shit like that yeah.
And she tells us we will beamazed, if only we call.
(04:26):
And it cuts to shots of herturning over a tarot deck,
accurately predicting the fatherof someone's baby or who
cheated on who.
She was like the Maury ofpsychics.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Basically.
That's funny right, took me asecond to get the reference, but
yeah, yeah uh.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
so what we may not know is that miss cleo was, or
became, the figurehead of abillion dollar psychic phone
network, a network like apyramid scheme made up of
hundreds of telephone psychics.
But of course, the scheme cameto an abrupt dissolution.
(05:19):
And I was thinking, well, Idon't know if I want to talk
about that now, but I mean thething that hit me.
They're like, oh course they'refake psychics, yeah, yeah,
because I mean, but that's me,you know, like I don't believe
in psychics, right some peopledo some people, do I?
scientific studies have notshown that humans have any
(05:42):
psychic abilities or telepathicabilities.
And we've certainly tried yeah,we certainly like in the 70s
and stuff went through a phasewhere the government really
wanted to tap into likepotential, like espn even the
1900s they were.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
There were scientists who dedicated their careers to
trying to find out stuff likethat, and also ghosts.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Because it would be like a powerful espionage tool
and shit.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Like there's so much you could do with it if it was
real.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
It's just not there, Sorry folks.
However, I'm sorry.
If you believe that, then I'mnot trying to shit on your stuff
.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I also shit on religion, so Rachel shits on
anything that's notscientifically based.
I'm an equal opportunityshitter.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So I don't have a problem with like a fake psychic
, because I'm like, of courseit's fake yeah.
You know, and I think peoplewant to buy into that in new
ways.
You know Mm-hmm, and I feellike I'm used.
Yeah, like you said, somepeople do, but a lot of people
probably have like a little partof them in their mind that
(07:02):
they're like this might not bereal Sometimes it's just fun,
like I went to.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
There's a psychic down Solano that I, my friend
and I went to when we were, Idon't know, 18, 19.
Right, I didn't believe it, Ididn't think she was predicting
the future or anything like that, but it was kind of fun to head
, just you know, spend like 10bucks.
It was 10 bucks at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
It does seem like it would be fun, although I feel
like I would ruin the fun, sodon't bring it to the surface.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I would not take you with me to get a
psychic reading or a tarotreading.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, but I do think that there are people, and many
people, who excel at beingpsychics or in the role of
psychics who are great atextrapolating information out of
a person without them knowingabout it, and they are really
(07:54):
good at reading body language.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
They're good at reading the nuances of someone's
voice and reading between thelines of what people say, in
order to draw out informationfrom people that you may not
know that you're giving them andfeed it back to them, and so I
think I think, um, most of usare actually really good at
(08:17):
reading people and if weactually spent time to yeah, you
know, really think about whatsomebody is conveying in terms
of body, you could easily readthem, yeah, easily maybe not I
don't know if I could, maybe, orwhat they want.
You know, like, yeah, somebodywho's I hate the term desperate,
(08:40):
but desperate for love, right,yeah, they kind of exude it.
You know, yeah, um, someonewho's down on their luck, kind
of they have it, they exude thatas well, right, you know, like
there's just certain or maybethey don't even need to exude it
, because they might evenstraight up tell yeah, that too,
(09:01):
yeah, um, but yeah, but I justmean.
Just mean in everyday life, likewhen you go into a restaurant.
If you really look at peopleyou can kind of see what their
problems are.
If you really give it like twoseconds.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I don't think I can do that, no, but that's pretty
cool.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You can.
Well, I'm not saying I do itwith any amount of accuracy, but
I think now, I think the onesthat give off the strong vibes
you can tell Next time we're ina restaurant you have to do it,
be like a psych.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You know the guy from psych.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I'm not that good.
I'm not that good.
That was a bit of anexaggeration.
But I mean, like the what, theones that give off the strong I
don't want to say vibes, butthey just there's just an air
about them.
If you look for just a fewseconds, you can kind of see
that, because they sit a certainway and they have a certain
facial expressions and it's hardfor them to especially the eyes
(09:56):
.
It's really hard for you tohide your emotions in your eyes.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Maybe Katie should have been a cop you could
interrogate.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
I'm way too gullible.
I'd be like, oh yeah, thatmakes sense.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Maybe Miss Cleo should have been a cop.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Maybe Maybe, maybe I should have been a psychic Right
.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Very true.
Well, we can start now.
Call our psychic line First.
Three minutes free no, I wouldfeel minutes.
No, I would feel terrible, Iwould feel terrible yeah, a lot
of people did um okay, so we'regonna get into that as well.
And also the reason that I'mlike I don't really have
(10:37):
problems is, I mean, like it isexploitive right, certainly to a
degree, and the way that thisnetwork did it was quite
exploitive right, um.
But I'm like this is really notdifferent from like
televangelism and stuff likethat and they like exploit
people out of their money andthey're flying around in lear
(11:00):
jets and shit yeah there'speople out there who's like, oh
you know, whatever, joel austinis like so close to christ or
whatever, yeah, uh.
So anyway, that's the otherthing that I was like.
You know, I don't think thatthis is worse than any other
thing but, um, but yeah, the waythat they did it was exploitive
(11:22):
.
And the third thing that Ithought is I wonder if this
would have been an issue likenow, because I feel like so many
business models are based onscamming.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, well, also, it would be different.
It wouldn't be on TV, it'd beonline.
I mean, there are so manypeople on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
That's true.
They might not even be talkingto people.
They might be talking to AI orsomething.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Some of them are definitely AI, for sure, but
don't ask me how I know I findsome of their voices really
soothing, that's why I listen tothem.
The AI voices, like real peopledo Tarot readings and psychic
stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Oh yeah, I remember.
I know you watch those videos.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Not all of them, but there there are a few that just
they have a wonderful voice.
I wish they did something elsewith it and I just find it
soothing.
So when I'm anxious I'll put onone of their videos.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
So, uh, ms Cleo was born You're Ray Dell Harris on
August 12, 1965 in Los Angeles,california.
Her parents were Elisa TeresaHopus and David Harris.
We know that she attended aCatholic boarding school, like
(12:38):
an all-girls school, in Alhambra, california, and although she
would later claim to haveattended the University of
Southern California, there is norecord of her enrollment there
under her birth name or any ofher aliases, which she had a few
.
I'm sorry.
What was her birth name?
Again, uri Del Harris.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Okay, I thought it was like Sheila.
For some reason I was like youcan't have a second Sheila.
No wonder she changed it, yuri.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Well, and I can understand too, because, like
right, cleo rolls off the tonguea lot easier than Yuri yeah,
and I think that it's somethingthat might stick in somebody's
mind.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, because it's a name people know, but it's also
got a little bit of thatmystique still Because there
aren't that many Cleos out there.
It's a name people know, butit's also got a little bit of
that mystique.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, Because there aren't that many Cleos out there
.
Yeah, very true.
So she was known under severalaliases, including Reep Harris
and Cleo Millie Harris.
In the early 90s, Uri gotinvolved in a black arts
movement in Seattle and she wentto work at the Langston Hughes
Performing Arts Center there.
(13:49):
During her short time there,she produced and performed in a
few plays.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
All that kind of black arts.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Not like black magic.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
That's what I thought , because we were talking about
psychics and shit.
So I was like, aren't thatblack people?
Yes, I get that now I get thatnow.
Well, I mean again, we weretalking about psychics.
It's kind of a natural leap Iget it, I get it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Where was I?
One of the plays was called ForWomen Only and it featured Uri
playing a Jamaican woman namedCleo Um.
Uri's colleagues who had knownher at the time said she did not
naturally have a Jamaicanaccent, nor did she ever claim
(14:38):
to be Jamaican.
The other plays she producedthere were titled Summer
Rhapsody and Supper Club Cafe.
After the last play, supperClub Cafe, was a flop, she
abruptly left Seattle, leavingdebts that she accumulated from
the play and the cast and crewunpaid.
(14:59):
She apparently wrote letters toall of the cast and crew, um
like, basically ious, anddetailing the amount she owed
each one.
Uh, but she claimed at thattime that she had bone cancer
and that she would be unable tomake good because of medical
bills and she basically skippedout now.
I mean it's up for debate, butlike I feel like maybe she
(15:23):
didn't intend to like scam themyou know what I mean?
like seemed like she planned topay them out of the profits of
the play.
That didn't happen, right?
She didn't have it and she waslike, how do I get out of this?
Mm-hmm, Because I feel likethere's not other instances
where it's like, oh, she'sscamming people over and over
(15:44):
again, Right, We'll see.
We'll see that, even though, ofcourse, we think of the psychic
knife order thing as a scam.
But we're going to come to findout that Ms Cleo is basically
just a spokesperson for thecompany.
Okay, so there were multiplephone and psychic networks
floating around in the 90s andearly 2000s, but the one Ms Cleo
(16:09):
would go to work for was thePsychic Advisors Network, also
known as the Psychic ReadersNetwork.
This network was started in1993 by owners Stephen Fadere
and Peter Stolz.
In 1997, Uri Harris popped upin Florida working for the
Psychic Readers Network.
(16:30):
According to an interviewconducted in 2012, it was her
sister who encouraged her to gointo the business.
At that time, Harris adopted aJamaican accent and utilized
this persona for her telephoneand tarot card readings.
And so I read some articles andI watched a documentary about
(16:52):
it, and there is an articlethat's called from the New York
Times, like I worked for thepsychic hotline that Miss Cleo,
that's a better name than that,but basically that's the gist of
it and I think that one of thethe person who authored that was
also popped up in thedocumentary a few times.
But, he said that he worked forit for them for like just like a
(17:20):
month or so and, uh, that he heworked some people worked in a
call center, but he worked fromhome and he said the interview
was just really easy, reallybrief, and other people worked
for them, so that too.
They were basically like hereis a warm body, here's a phone,
and basically they gave themlike a little handbook, they
gave them a tarot deck and theybasically implied like you're
(17:44):
faking it yeah, right there isnever any kind of analysis of
like determined whether or notthe person had real psychic
abilities.
Right um, the name of the gamewas let's keep these people on
the phone as long as possible.
Right, because you make yourmoney.
Yeah, exactly.
And so, uh, he said he woulddial in from home, from his
(18:05):
landline, like you dial in towhatever the network, and then,
like you, hang up your phone,basically, and wait for calls to
come in.
And he liked it because you canwork whatever hours, he would
like, work at night and like ontop of his other jobs that he
had.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It was a 90s early-aught side hustle.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And so that's what Ms Cleo was doing at first as well
, and he also said that when youdo it, that most people adopt a
persona.
Yeah, he said that he oftenadopted like a southern lady
persona.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
He said people liked.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
like responded better to women and they responded
better if he had an accent.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, I see that on YouTube.
Yeah, there aren't that manymale tarot readers.
Why am?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I admitting this one go for it um, that is an.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It's just an interesting point, like why
would we believe women over metI the way I just answered my own
question?
Never mind, I'm just thinkingabout it.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Where was I?
She adopted that persona in thelate 1990s and the Psychic
Readers Network was desperatefor anything to make their
agency stand out from the crowd.
Uri Harris first appeared on alate-night infomercial in her
Miss Cleo persona and what shesaid is that in an interview,
like at first, like she wasseeing the ads and the ads were
(19:41):
not very good.
They had like a blonde, whitelady doing them and it was just
kind of stale.
And you know, she like knewsome people like in the network
and she was like this is notvery good.
Oh, what she was like in thenetwork and she was like this is
not very good.
Oh, what she said was not verygood is like they were doing
like the tarot readings, but itwas all wrong.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And since she actually knew how to read the
tarot yeah.
She at first, like, was justadvising them on, like, how to
do it, right, right.
And then on one of the nightsthey had her appear Mm-hmm, and
she was a massive hit.
Yeah, she claimed to be ajamaican shaman and at that time
(20:21):
the network's website had herbio listed that she was born and
had grown up in trelawney,jamaica.
When miss cleo basically wentviral before viral was a thing
um, the psychic readers networkadopted her as the face of their
organization.
Uh, they started.
She started appearing inmultiple commercials uh,
(20:44):
basically all their commercialsand you know she was.
She went on talk shows, the.
They started using her face asthe face of their organization,
sending advertisements andemails in her name, using her
face.
Some of the advertisements sentby email.
(21:04):
Also, some of the TV spots MsCleo used would advertise a
quote-unquote free tarot readingOkay, wait, hold on, let's play
one of these commercials.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I just looked it up.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Go for it If you've never had a reading from a real
psychic.
Try us right now for free.
Your father had a stroke at ayoung age did he not Right.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Right, right.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yep.
So yeah, people love her andthe thing is too that she did do
like those readings and stuff,live, yeah on tv, um, and
everybody who knew her said thatshe was a very talented psychic
or whatever some of thembelieve that she was a genuine
(21:54):
psychic.
Uh, other people seem tobelieve that she.
You know, like I said, justread people really well but
whatever it was, she had a giftfor it.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, um, or those people were also hired to no.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
No, because these were people who were, who were
in her life after after words no, I mean the reader, the people
she was reading live, that'salso possibly true, that's.
But people.
But what?
I'm uh?
But people who knew her saidyeah, she read for them, or read
(22:31):
for people that they knew aswell said that she was really
good at it.
Yeah, and it was like uncannyher ability.
Customers who believe they werecalling in wait where was I?
Oh, yeah, Okay.
So the advertisements theywould often advertise a free
(22:51):
tarot reading like call now foryour free reading.
Customers believe they werecalling in and they were going
to speak to miss cleo herselfand, of course, they end up
speaking with one of the manypeople who were working for this
network, not miss cleo, right?
one of them said that.
Like that, one of the other uhemployees for the network said
(23:15):
that like, sometimes they wouldbe like be like where's Miss
Cleo, is Miss Cleo here?
And they would like put thephone down and like pretend to
be like looking for Miss Cleoand, like you know, they said
that throughout the time a lotas well.
And they'd be like, oh, lookslike she just stepped out for
lunch or something like that.
They would get one of the manyemployees of the Psychic Readers
(23:42):
Network who worked either froma call center or from home
utilizing a script, script, likeI said, a strip, utilizing a
script and instructions to keepthe callers on the phone for as
long as possible.
What the callers didn't know isthat it was only the first
three minutes of the call thatwere quote-unquote free.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Well, why would they think that the whole thing would
be?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
free.
Well, because it didn'texplicitly state that.
I know, but wouldn't you thinkyou would think?
Speaker 1 (24:12):
You would think, but I mean, I was a teenager and
even I knew.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Many people did not think.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, and time was spent collecting that free time
was spent with them collectingthe caller's information.
So they were trained to use upthat free amount of time.
Yeah, and then they would sendthe callers more ads.
After the first three minutes,callers were charged $4.99 a
(24:42):
minute.
Jesus Christ, yeah, a fortunefor the time.
A fortune now.
Yeah, it is a fortune.
Now, too, you could watch awhole-ass movie for that on
Prime or whatever.
That's true, you could watchlike a newer movie for that.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Not in the theaters, but like, no like on Prime or
something.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I knew what you meant .
I just wanted to clarify forour listeners in case they're
like no way you can.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, no, not in the theaters.
Those days are long gone,indeed.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Not only was it expensive, but many of the
callers were lonely, scared ordesperate.
They probably needed some moresubstantive help, such as
therapy, legal advice orfinancial advice, and were
instead scammed out of up tohundreds of dollars, dollars.
(25:39):
Yeah, miss cleo herselfremained a viral sensation, with
just about every tv owninghousehold knowing her name.
She made appearances, like Isaid, on talk shows.
She was parodied by so manydifferent comedians and comedy
skit shows, including thechapelle show sn Mad TV.
Well, of course, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Is Mad TV still on?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Great question.
Miss Cleo was a pop culturesensation In 2001,.
The Psychic Readers Network putout a book titled Keeping it
Real A Practical Guide forSpiritual Living, allegedly
authored by Ms Cleo.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
No, it is funny.
And was it authored by Ms Cleo?
No, no, it was not.
So we're going to see moreabout that in a little bit.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Anybody can write that shit.
Yeah, can write that shit.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, although prosecutors and past clients and
employees of the PsychicReaders Network had been trying,
somewhat unsuccessfully, toprosecute the Psychic Readers
Network, it wasn't until aprosecutor in Texas named Ms
Cleo herself as a main party inthe case that it got enough
(26:52):
publicity and traction to reallystick.
Not Texas, sorry Florida.
I don't know why I wrote Texastraction to really stick, not
Texas, sorry Florida.
I don't know why I wrote TexasTo really stick and succeed.
That was in 2002.
So psychic readers who hadworked in the call center
previously came forward to admitlike there were no shamans
(27:13):
there, there was no like likequalified psychics there, that
all the interactions werescripted and that the hiring
managers had heavily impliedthey were to fake it as long as
they kept the clients on thephone as long as possible.
Psychic callers made onlybetween $12 and $0.24 in a
(27:35):
minute.
Yeah, so Miss Cleo herself onlymade $0.12 a minute, plus
$1,700 a commercial and nobenefits.
So I was trying to figure outhow much money that she made,
(27:57):
but I couldn't find, like theinternet doesn't know exactly
how many commercials that shemade yeah.
So I did an estimate for if shedid 30 and if she did 50.
So if she did 30 she would make51 000.
If she did 50 it would havebeen000, which today would be
about $150,000.
But not that much consideringthey were making millions off of
(28:24):
her.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, and most of that, that's from the
commercials alone.
Or is that like the 12 centsand you're just saying it
averages like eight hours a day?
No, no.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
That's the commercial money.
I didn't count the money thatshe made from being on the phone
, but that would have been amaximum amount of $15 an hour if
she was on the phone like for awhole hour.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Well, that's better than we're doing.
It is better than that.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
But not what you would expect for a celebrity.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
No, no, not at all.
She should have been making waymore than that.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
She was a salaried worker who happened to also just
be the entire face of theorganization and the individual
most responsible for thebusiness's success.
Responsible for the business'ssuccess.
The Florida prosecutor, aaronCronenberg, admitted the only
(29:24):
reason he had been able to nameMs Cleo in the lawsuit is that
the Psychic Readers Network wassending out collection, tons of
collection notices to people whosaid that they were only on the
line for a few minutes and theywere claiming a much longer
time, or some people who sworethat they had never even called
at all.
And one of those collectionnotices was signed, or more than
(29:44):
one, but one that they used wassigned Cleo, and that signature
, which would turn out to not bea real signature, allowed her
to be named.
So suddenly the case had tonsof national attention because of
how viral Cleo was.
Comedians and news anchorsalike all dropped this same joke
(30:06):
.
She didn't see that one coming.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
God, yeah, let's not do the obvious one, guys Right.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
It's very hokey and they showed like in the
documentary.
They showed clips of tons ofpeople saying basically the same
joke over and over again.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, God Cringe, as the Zoomers say, yeah you can
think it, but maybe don't let itout of your mouth.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, One talk show host who I watched her segment
as she was interviewing thedirector of the documentary and
she said that when she had toannounce that news it was put
into her script.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
That joke?
I don't doubt it.
Of course, with all theadditional publicity, it was a
perfect opportunity forjournalists to dig into her
story and her background.
And when they did, theyuncovered all the personal lies
and misinformation that Ms Cleohad spread Her past history of
defrauding the Seattle TheaterCompany, that she had a string
(31:07):
of aliases, that she lied abouther education and possibly even
her background and ethnicity.
She had told everyone adifferent story about her
background, that she had beenadopted by Jamaican adopted
parents, that she had been bornin Jamaica and that her mother
had brought her to the States,etc.
Different versions of somethinglike that.
But it turned out her parentswere not Jamaican at all and she
(31:31):
had not been adopted.
An expert on the Caribbeandiaspora who appeared on the
documentary admitted that,although she had stated earlier
that she knew, the accent wasobviously fake and she said any
Jamaican would know that it wasa fake accent, that Western law
(31:55):
and Western culture dependedheavily on legal documentation
such as birth certificates, butthat Caribbean people do see and
recognize identity in differentways.
Many other people, such asYuri's friends and her lawyers,
defended her Jamaican heritageor alleged Jamaican heritage and
(32:17):
identity.
One of her friends seemed toalso imply that Miss Cleo was
one identity that Yuri had ortook on and that perhaps she may
have had like disassociativeidentity disorder because she
said that she had a fewdifferent personalities that
(32:40):
would come out.
One of them was a malepersonality named Maxmarie who
was elegant, formal and shealways spoke in metaphor and
(33:02):
riddles, and the Max personawould come forward.
Or one of these other personaswould come forward when Cleo was
overwhelmed, or would say shewas overwhelmed by the spiritual
world or maybe by attention andshe needed a rest.
And so it's possible that ifshe did have like dissociative
(33:24):
identity disorder, that maybethe Cleo personality like just
became her dominant personality.
What did they say?
Personality, yeah.
What do they say?
Uh, they said they would.
Suddenly, when she, when shechanged to one of her other
personas, they would feel likesuddenly this is a stranger in
my home, like they would walkdifferent, they would have
(33:45):
different mannerisms, which doesto me I mean not that I'm an
expert or anything, but it doessound possibly like did, but
then again it could just bereally good acting, yeah, but
like at that point in her lifelike what's she getting out of
it?
You know what I mean?
Because she wasn't in thespotlight, this was just
something that was happeninglike privately you know, and so
(34:09):
I don't know why she would fakeit.
But I mean, I know that DIDitself is like a controversial
diagnosis, but I don't know.
I would prefer to err on theside of believing people when it
comes to talking aboutthemselves and what their, their
own, experience is.
(34:30):
One thing, however, that herfriends uh seem to agree on is
that she was a deeply spiritualperson, and many of them
genuinely believed, like I saidearlier, she had a gift or
connection to the spirit world,that she was indeed a genuine
psychic or, at the very least,that she was a highly sensitive
(34:52):
and intuitive person whobelieved that her insights were
a genuine spiritual gift.
People who received readingsfrom Ms Cleo herself were amazed
and impressed by the insightsthat she had, and some of them
believed that she gave theminsights about themselves or
their families, that they didnot know themselves and that
(35:12):
there was no way for her to haveknown, not know themselves and
that there was no way for her tohave known.
Many people in her life didbelieve that she had a very
difficult childhood, althoughshe was tight-lipped about what
may have happened to her.
One friend reported that shehad confided having considered
suicide as young as age seven,and another friend has stated
(35:37):
that she had a very challengingchildhood, which she implied may
have involved sexual assault,and I said those things could
also be lies, of course, butunfortunately this kind of thing
is so prevalent that I doubt it.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I doubt that that's a lie.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, of course.
To bring it back to thelawsuits against the Psychic
Readers Network, when Ms Cleowas deposed and her contract and
her tax returns, everything wasrevealed.
It was shown that the documentshad gone out under her name,
were forged.
Under her name were forged.
(36:19):
However, the company defendeditself, saying that Miss Cleo's
persona was their personaltrademark and property.
So not only did they ruin MissCleo's reputation and her career
, but they also robbed her ofthe ability to continue making
money using this persona thatshe was essentially living her
life as every day, not tomention her future ability to
make money.
(36:39):
As Miss Cleo, her face was onall their advertisements and
their merchandise, like MissCleo branded tarot cards and
Ouija boards and her name wentout, like I said, on their
emails, on their collections,notices and official letters,
but she never got paid royaltiesfor any of that.
(37:01):
Yeah, she was not on thecompany board.
She was never involved in anydecisions that the company made,
not even the ones involving,like I said, her own likeness.
So eventually, having uncoveredthis information, the Florida
Prosecutes and the Federal TradeCommission dropped Ms Cleo's
name altogether from the lawsuitand they only focused on the
(37:23):
heads of the company, who theinvestigation revealed to be,
like I stated earlier, two whiteguys by the names of Stephen
Fetter and Peter Stoltz.
Their operation was never ingood faith to create a genuine
psychic network, but, of course,to just make a bunch of money.
(37:43):
Now, like I said before, Idon't find this better or worse
than, say, tv evangelists orreligious networks.
They're basically doing thesame thing and don't get stopped
because they can hide under theguise, as I wrote, of the most
prolific religion.
These two declined to StephenFetter and Peter Stelz declined
(38:07):
to be interviewed for the MissCleo documentary.
It seemed they've just gone onwith their lives with little to
no impact to their careers orpersonal well-being, which
cannot be said of Ms Cleo.
The company came to a settlementwith the Federal Trade
Commission to shut down thepsychic hotline and they had to
(38:28):
pay a $50,000 fine.
They were forgiven $500 millionin debt.
They were forgiven $500 millionin debt and ultimately the
company was found to havebrought in more than a billion
dollars in profits.
So the cushy CEOs were doingjust fine.
They raked in a billion dollarsbecause of Ms Cleo and she
(38:49):
herself made less than $100,000.
Yeah, less than a hundredthousand dollars, yeah.
So after the entire fiasco.
Miss cleo kind of became arecluse for a few years oops,
hang on.
But she surrounded herself byfriends and found family and
they helped her drop her backout of her shell.
(39:11):
Unfortunately, like I said, herall her later attempts to earn
money basically off of the misscleo name, um, or appear in any
kind of semi-celebrity capacity.
Then she would get sued by thepsychic readers network, like
she tried to appear in, like alocal car commercial.
(39:34):
Uh, she was like the face ofbenefit cosmetics, I guess for a
short time.
And uh, she also, uh, had somekind of deal that she was on
like cinnamon her face was on acinnamon toast crunch cereal but
every time that something, shewould get something like that,
she would get sued and have toend it.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So like even her, like actual face, not just the
persona, the face.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, I mean because, yeah, she, you know they would
say, yeah, they own basicallyanything right or whatever.
Like maybe she had completelychanged her look, or something
like that.
But no, Like, of course, likeshe lived the rest of her whole
life like that as Miss.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Cleo.
Okay, so wait.
So let me, because I'm confused.
So she would like appear inthese commercials with, like the
turban, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Oh, okay, I mean, that's how she dressed, that's
how she dressed like every day.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
I thought maybe she was trying to do something like
just.
I mean, I know Cleo is herself,but I mean as herself, not what
people would know her as.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well, she introduced herself at that time as
Cleomilia Harris, but apparentlythat was still like the accent,
the look, all the things theywould say.
This belongs to us.
Yeah, even though, yeah, thatwas her everyday self, and so
attempts to basically make moneyoff of her celebrity were
(41:09):
always thwarted.
Yes, well, I could see that.
Yeah, yes, well, I could seethat.
Yeah, however, she did, yeah,really find a big community.
She really made a home withinthe Florida LGBTQIA plus
community In 2006,.
She came out as a lesbian andshe became like a big advocate,
(41:34):
like an activist for queerrights in Florida.
She also, you know, I think,continued her personal, you know
readings and stuff like that.
Unfortunately, in 2016, shepassed away from colorectal
cancer at the age of only 53.
(41:54):
At the time she passed away,she was not rich.
There's no evidence of anyriches having been accumulated.
She was living with roommates.
Like I said, having struggledwith her career since her public
downfall, however, it did seemlike she had gone on to live a
happy life and had a lot offriends around her.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Well, that's good.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, what else did I want to say about that?
Yeah, I just said that, likeshe didn't really get to, I
guess, redeem her public name orpublic image during her
lifetime.
That is, I think, all I have onMiss Cleo.
(42:43):
But yeah, like I had said aboutthe scammy thing in the theater,
since it didn't really seemlike she went on to scam people
you know, and so I don't thinkthat that was like her whole
shtick was being a con artist,um, although like it seemed like
(43:05):
you know, with the psychicthing, but she was just like a
patsy in that organization.
So, yeah, it seemed likeoverall she was not a horrible
person, um, and yeah, it seemedlike she had a lot of joy in her
(43:29):
life.
So I'm glad that, yeah, I'mglad that, yeah, I'm glad that
she had people who cared abouther, and whether or not she was
really Jamaican or not, I mean,although I can't speak for
Jamaican people and how theymight feel about that but I mean
it seemed like she, thatpersona, was where she, like,
(43:54):
found her home you know, andlike it didn't seem to hurt
anybody.
Yeah, okay, that's all I got,okay interesting any thoughts?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
uh no, I think we kind of talked about them did
that-hmm, did that go short?
No One question, though.
Maybe you don't know, did thecompany have her sign papers
that say that they owned herpersona?
I don't know.
Okay, yeah, and I.
Because I would feel like thatwould be the way that they would
(44:34):
be able to sue her.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I mean, it seemed like that the courts seemed to
side with the company?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, they usually do .
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Maybe she did, or maybe it's just a case of
corporate bias, Like shewouldn't have had anybody to
really defend her or afford todefend her so well.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I imagine it's probably hard to prove too like
like baby ruth's, when you thinkof a baby ruth who do you think
of baby ruth the baseballplayer?
Yeah, he didn't have anythingto do with it.
And he sued the company forusing his name.
And the court said, uh, thecompany said no, we didn't name
it after him.
We named it after a previouspresident's daughter named Ruth,
(45:21):
his youngest, or something likethat.
So that's where we get babyRuth.
And then the courts were like,okay, yeah, which is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, it's bullshit Like nobody's going to think,
grover.
Cleveland's daughter.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
No, no.
So baby Ruth didn't get shitfrom that candy bar, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, it seems like something like that.
But yeah, I just thought it'scrazy that like she can't just
go out wearing whatever shewears and like talking however
she talks, like every day of herlife.
You know, talking however shetalks like every day of her life
.
You know, Like her friends saidthat, like there was never a
time that she wasn't using, likethe Jamaican accent and stuff,
like it was her whole self.
(46:02):
Yeah, regardless of whether ornot it was authentic.
Yeah, it became authentic toher Interesting?
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, that also is an interesting question, like if
she had gone there there, let'ssay, she didn't have the persona
of cleo, she just went on thereas what was her name?
Uri harris.
Uri harris, yeah, would theyhave owned her?
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I don't know, you know, I don't know.
But then again, if she went onas uri harris, then like nobody,
nobody would have known who shewas.
Right, like if she just woreclothes like you or me and like
dropped the accent, like whowould know who she was?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
True, but I'm just saying in general yeah, like
anybody.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's why I was asking you about, like rock star
personas and stuff.
Right, yeah, because, like youknow, if, like whatever, richard
simmons or whatever takes offall this makeup and whatever and
walks down the street, yeah, Imean there's people who
recognize him.
But like a fraction, yeah, withthe same people, yeah, would
otherwise, yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
So no, I just meant like it may not have worked that
way if she went on that way,but if she went on that way,
yeah, as uriah harris, and let'ssay it for argument's sake, it
did work.
Yeah, they then own.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
I mean she, she didn't do an interview in 2012
and that footage was used andshe, you know, was her.
She had the accent and she, youknow, had like a head wrap and
stuff and she said like my nameis yuri cleo milia harris,
otherwise known as miss cleo.
(47:47):
Yeah, and I don't think, butthen again, that was just an
inner, like she wasn't makingmoney off of that.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
So yeah, but but I don't think that's what I mean
either.
I mean like let's forget her,Like let's say you went on as
Rachel Wilbur, no persona, justyou as you are and you became
famous and the company, whatever, would they own.
You as Rachel Wilbur, not thepersona you, Great question.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Yeah, and because Miss Cleosaid that she wasn't putting on
a persona, right, right, thatthat was her.
Yeah, so yeah, valid question.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
I guess maybe that's celebrity too right Like, do
celebrities own their own image?
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, I mean, isn't that a fight that they're having
right now with, like the AI andshit like that yeah.
Um, okay, I mean, in Back to theFuture or whatever, didn't
Crispin Glover win a lawsuitagainst the Back to the Future
people?
However, when a lawsuit againstthe Back to the Future people
because he was in the firstmovie right as Marty's dad, his
(49:00):
young dad, and then he wasn't inthe subsequent films but they
dressed up another actor to looklike him and he successfully
sued for that, oh that's cool.
Yeah, but I mean it's adifferent time.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean it's adifferent time.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah yeah, I remember around that time people would
ask me if I named Cleo afterMiss Cleo.
No, I did not.
I named her after the bandLetters to Cleo.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
That sounds like you.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Why does it sound like me?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Just you know, it would be some like obscure-ish
band or something like that, oran obscure-ish literary
reference.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Oh my god, am I that obvious?
Speaker 2 (49:54):
We hang out a lot, katie, that's true.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
I didn't think they were that obscure.
They were in.
10 Things I Hate About you.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
No, no.
But like I know, like the band,I know their music, but like I
never remember their name.
Maybe that's just me though.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
I played, I think the record was.
I forget what the record wascalled, maybe Copilot, but I
played that record over and overand over, and over and over
again.
Yeah, I don't know why I likedit so much.
It's good, yeah, okay.
So good, yeah, okay.
So no missing person, did youwant to say?
Speaker 2 (50:40):
anything else.
I think that's all I have tosay about Miss Cleo.
I probably have more thoughts,but I can't.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Think of them right now.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
I can't think of them right now.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Yeah, we're both in a cold fog.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, when I picked Miss Cleo, I thought it was
going to be a little bit sillieryeah story than it was yeah,
well, it's still kind of a sillystory yeah, yeah it is, and I
mean I mean it's lighthearted inthat, like you know, I mean
nobody really got hurt, eventhough miss cleo's reputation
was ruined and stuff, she stillhad a happy life and yeah she
(51:18):
had people who cared about her,so that made me happy.
Yeah, um, what made you think ofit?
Um, I was looking.
I I googled like silly crimesor top 10 silly crimes or things
like that.
I was looking around forsomething that that was more
lighthearted because I knew thatI wanted to do a non-murdery
(51:41):
crime and when I saw Miss Cleo Iimmediately remembered her
commercials and stuff and I waslike okay, yeah, and I remember
vaguely when she got sued yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Maybe I wasn't in the country at the time but I, I
always thought like it was heryeah thing, yeah, and even like
these show clips in the news,like they sure seem like they.
They skew the story that way.
Yeah, like they would be likeMiss Cleo's psychic network.
Yeah, it really made it seemlike she was the scammer.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
She was in charge.
Yeah, what?
Speaker 2 (52:26):
was the year 2002-ish yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
That it came tumbling down?
Yes, okay, why didn't I knowabout that Interesting Guess?
I was busy in college.
Yeah, didn't have TV.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah, I was in high school then.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, I was either in Hawaii or St John's.
Yeah, no, I didn't go to StJohn's until 2003,.
So Hawaii probably, or here injust oblivious.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah yeah, maybe it just wasn't something that, a
story that caught your attention, yeah, but yeah.
So when I saw that I that I waslike, okay, I'll do that, oh
yeah yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
See, I was gonna go the other route and go like
serial killer.
Yeah, I guess that's how I dealwith grief.
I'm like let's see the worst inpeople.
I'll cover that yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
You were like I'm watching murder show.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Well.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Okay, I guess the next bit is reading, watching,
listening, all those things.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
What have you been up to?
Speaker 1 (53:50):
What about you?
You usually go first oh do Iusually go?
Speaker 2 (53:53):
first yes, that's me and my big mouth, I guess.
So the only thing I watched, Ithink, since the last time was,
like I said, reign of Fire,which I was feeling Jared Butler
, okay Sorry, I was feeling likeI wanted like a good dragon
(54:18):
movie and I feel like you know,like I automatically think of
Rain of Fire, yeah, yeah, and soI took a watch of that.
Yeah, there's a lot ofcelebrities in there, yeah, I
forgot about Jared Butler, allof them, bruce.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
McHale yeah, matthew forgot about Jared Butler, all
of them.
Christian Bale yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
I completely liked him, alexander Sigg.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
I don't remember who the lady actress is.
She looks kind of like CharlizeTheron, but she's not Charlize
Theron.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
But she definitely had her moment around that time.
It's like a tough action girl.
I don't know, I don't remember.
I could look it up, I guess,because it's not fair to name
all those actors.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
No, leave out the chick.
Yeah, you were in the mood fordragons.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
huh, yeah, yeah, you were in the mood for dragons,
huh yeah.
And then I listened to a storythat had kind of similar vibes
as well Isabella Scoropuko.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
Scoropuko.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Huh, I don't know that name at all.
Oh, let me look up the name ofthe.
I looked up, I listened, Ilooked up.
I don't know what I'm saying atall.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
You listened to a book.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
I listened to a book, one of those like audio theater
books that they have on AmazonAudible Again, I mean it is the
same thing, yeah.
Dragon Day by Bob Pearl, sothat kind of had similar vibes
(56:14):
of like dragons are popping upout of nowhere and torching the
world, basically, and it's toldfrom the perspective of like a
journalist who's going aroundinterviewing people about what
happened and how it happened andstuff like that.
So it's got like an ensembleaudio cast.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Oh, that's fun.
Yeah, are.
Are any of the readers peoplewe would know like?
Are there any celebrities?
Speaker 2 (56:40):
um, let me read you the names here.
Okay, okay, okay, so thenarrators are hayley atwell,
michael Chiklis, aldous Hodge,greta Lee, jimmy Simpson,
christian Coulson, laura KaiChen, brady Jenis Zeke, alton,
(57:05):
christiane Seidel, alison Wick,sarah Haywood, wreck Mova, al
Piper, anna Dillon and LydiaKendall die.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
Well, hayley Atwell is an actress.
Okay, she was in MissionImpossible.
Oh, she's in the new MissionImpossible.
Nice, she's in Agent Carter.
Captain America, is that the umhis girly, captain America's
girly?
Speaker 2 (57:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
The Agent Carter.
Is she Agent Carter?
Let me look His girly, CaptainAmerica's girly, I don't know
the the the Agent Carter.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Is she?
Speaker 1 (57:39):
Agent Carter.
Let me look Um Peggy Carter,yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
Captain America's chick.
So if you want a dragon-y storywith an ensemble cast and
Captain America's chick that hasa rain of fire and a little bit
with a little bit of how totrain your dragon vibes, yeah,
(58:05):
then yeah, I would recommend.
It was easy, fun, yeah, listen.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Were you not into Marvel?
Huh, were you not into Marvel?
The Marvel movies.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
Some of them yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
I kind of got overwhelmed, oh okay yeah,
that's why you were like I don'tcare, no, I, I liked them at
first, but yeah it just there'sso many of them.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
I was like I can't.
Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah, I stopped after the main ones yeah, I haven't
seen any of the side stuff yeah,but uh, I did see the original
captain, america yeah it's likethe britishy chick, right, yeah,
so the, yeah, the woman whobasically yeah, yeah, okay, yeah
, yeah her, you know what I mean.
Basically, you're like, yeah,maybe we do hang out a lot,
(58:53):
rachel.
Speaker 2 (58:54):
I know these things are falling out of my ears.
Hang on, because I have a fewmore ones.
I'm reading East of Eden.
Did I mention that last time?
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Well, we both did, but you're still reading it.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
It's a honker, I'm still reading it Because I keep
taking breaks, but I'm going toget back to it.
Take your time, because I'monly about 40 pages in.
So it's very entertaining, butlike, I'm like, where's the like
?
Well, there is some murder init.
But I'm like I don't know, Iguess maybe I need like a more
(59:30):
modern voice sometimes.
Yeah, to intersperse, yeah,because yeah, I mean I like the
story, I don't find the prose tobe too heavy, or anything like
that, but I still like I'lllisten to like three hours and
then I need a break.
So I've got about 10-12 hoursleft Now 25.
(59:53):
So we're at the point of noreturn, for sure.
And I also read mother thing.
Did I tell you about that one?
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
no, I don't think so.
It's by.
I mean I, I recognize the titleAinsley.
Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Hogarth yeah, you'll probably.
It was quite popular, I thinklast year.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, andit is told from the perspective
of this narrator, and herhusband and her have been living
(01:00:36):
with her mother-in-law his mom,and she has been struggling
with borderline personalitydisorder, and she commits
suicide.
And things start to fall apart,though, when perhaps the
mother-in-law comes back tohaunt them.
As we maybe see, the narratoris maybe not super reliable.
(01:01:05):
Also love an unreliable narrator, so, yeah, it's fun um yeah,
and explores, uh, you know,roles of women, mental health,
yeah things, and ourrelationships to our mothers,
yeah, so, yeah, it's a, it's afun read.
Um, it definitely gets unhinged.
(01:01:27):
Um, I was like, okay, yeah, Isaw it and well, I didn't
completely see it coming, but Iwas from the first get-go I I
was like I don't trust thisbitch.
So I was right in that, I guess.
But yeah, I thought it was funand worth a read.
Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Yeah, did you listen to any podcasts podcasts or
watch any movies?
I?
Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
listened to one.
I kept trying to listen to oneepisode of kim and kent stay
alive, about the movie split,but I kept falling asleep.
Yeah, so not the podcast fault,right, I was very tired.
Yeah, um, I am reading anotherbook now, which is the lamb by
(01:02:21):
lucy rose, but I am not finishedwith that one yet.
Did you watch any movies?
Um, just rained a fire, like Isaid.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, say that.
Um, yeah, oh, no, I was goingto say I was trying to get Jay
to watch a movie with me theother day and they were like
we'll watch it later, but thenlater we were both tired and we
(01:02:43):
didn't watch anything, right?
Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
So what was the movie ?
Did you have it already pickedout?
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
No, I didn't have it already picked out oh gotcha, so
I have a bunch of horror moviesthat I want to see.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah, we'll probably go see Sinners this week.
Yeah, yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah, that will be good.
Okay, because I have beenreally trying hard to avoid
spoilers on the internet, allright, and the internet keeps
trying to tell me about itbecause I follow these horror
pages and stuff like that andthey're like Sinners, I'm like
shh, so I try and scroll past,scroll past.
Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Yeah, they were even talking about it, though in some
of my groups that are not likehorror-related or movie-related.
I was like, excuse me, I didn'task for this, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
It's huge.
Yeah, it is huge yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
So I'm trying not to form high expectations though.
Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Because if your expectations are too high, Then
it's going to fall flat.
Exactly, no matter what?
Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Yeah, yeah, no, I don't have any expectations,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
I expect that there will be vampires my expectation
is death of a unicorn.
That's the base.
This one doesn't seem like it'suh it's comedy and all.
Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Yeah, no, no, no, I was just kidding, because that's
the most recent movie I've seenme too well, I mean in the
theaters yeah, not um, let's seeI haven't really read much I
(01:04:21):
read.
I think I'm halfway through lessthan zero by brett easton ellis
.
That's my purse book, so I pickthat up page by page.
It's to take me a while to getthrough.
The only one I actually readand finished was Little Rot by
Akwaeke Emezi.
Good book, disturbing, kind ofdisturbing, but also not really
(01:04:48):
disturbing.
No likable characters at all.
So up my alley Gritty.
So again up my alley.
Interesting, interesting, Iwell.
I don't know what the authorwas actually trying to portray,
but to me it was all about the,the badness or the rot, the
ugliness that's within all of us, that most of us are quite good
(01:05:10):
at keeping hidden or controlled, I should say um, but in the
book, like the city itself isrotten, so it kind of seeps into
the beings of everybody and sothey all, no matter how good
(01:05:30):
they try to be, they inevitablybecome rotted more than others.
Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
And make poor choices , yeah, even sometimes against
their will, or and also I wouldsay, how the bad choices of
others affect us and then makeus against, almost against our
will, make the bad choice.
Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
It's like when you put cucumbers in a brine and
they can't help but turn intopickles there you go.
Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Yeah, so it was.
It was a good book I highlyrecommend.
I don't know if it's one oftheir best, because I haven't
read any of the other ones.
Um, it's my one and only, but Ireally liked it yeah, it
sounded really interesting, yeahso I think, yeah, that's it.
(01:06:23):
I didn't really watch anythingeither.
Um, yeah, I haven't watchedanything, haven't listened to
anything.
Yeah's it.
It's been pretty boring.
Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of music, but
not anything new Like just myplaylist.
Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Yeah, I've listened to music, but nothing new.
Yeah like, whatever playlistpops up on Spotify, it's some
sort of like.
Usually it's got Sublime or RedHot Chili Peppers or Old Rock
yeah.
Or Old Punk yeah, theOccasional Country.
It chili peppers.
Or old rock yeah, uh.
Or old punk yeah, theoccasional countries.
It's really weird.
There will be a playlist whereit's like sublime, red hot chili
(01:07:03):
peppers yeah, oasis, and thenall of a sudden some newish
country song pops on what ishappening?
Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
I think it's.
I think it's weird.
Like I have my whatever.
I am usually listening to musicon like Amazon Music or
something, not because it isanything special, but because
they offer me like a three-monthtrial and then I got stuck in
it.
Yeah, you know how these thingsgo, yeah.
But like I have like a whateverfavorited list where it just
(01:07:39):
plays all the songs I havefavorited, but like sometimes,
like I'm like there's like Idon't know a lot of songs in
there, like 400 or somethinglike that.
But sometimes it will play likethe same song over again.
I'm like what, yeah, like thesame song over again.
I'm like I'm like what, yeah,like uh, it played, yeah, played
(01:08:01):
, uh, raise your glass by pink,which I really love that song.
But then, like like 20 minuteslater or something, it played
again.
I was like wait a second.
At first I was like justjamming out and not thinking
about it and I was like wait aminute.
Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
I just listened to you.
Did you maybe like it on, liketwo different albums, or
something.
Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
No, it was the same.
It was the same one.
Interesting, Because sometimesI will like if there's like a
live version or whatever.
Yeah, that I also enjoy Mm-hmm,then I'll like the song over
multiple things albums, but notin this case.
It was.
It was the same, like picturepopped up and everything yeah,
(01:08:43):
yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
For some reason spotify's been really big on um
playing beastie boys.
Is it right to Yep that songover and over?
Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
and over again.
Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
And what's one of the popular ones by Muse.
I don't know, but it's a songthat I never liked.
I have never liked it.
I've never liked it on Spotifyyeah, I don't know why it keeps
playing it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
I skip it every time.
But it's like are you sure?
Are you really really, reallysure?
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, yeah, Idon't want to listen to this
song.
Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Yeah, no, I still can't get those Amanda Palmer
songs off of my list, Remember?
Yeah, every time one pops upI'll click the down thumb or
whatever, and I unhearted themall of them.
But as they still occasionallypop up, yeah, so they can get me
sometimes, because I'll be like, yeah, this song, and then I'll
(01:09:43):
be like, wait a second, wedon't listen to amanda palmer
anymore, and then I have to goand down down thumb it and we'll
skip it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
But then they come back up, yeah, sneaky, like yeah
, they're probably like youlistened to so much amanda
palmer last year, yeah, yeah,it's amazing what these programs
pick up because, like uh, whenI was driving grandma up to rio
(01:10:14):
rancho for her medical thing,all right, she doesn't want to
listen to red hot chili peppers.
Yeah, she wants to listen forlike red hot chili.
Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
No, she was like.
Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
She was willing to listen to like like dean martin
or something like that, or theandrew sisters or whatever, and
so I played those, but not verymuch, because she wasn't really
that into it either.
So there were like three songsLike maybe a Fred Astaire, not
Fred Astaire, frank Sinatra,yeah, like a Dean Martin, melly
Kalikimaka and one of theAndrews sister songs, and then
(01:10:50):
from that day on, for like twoweeks, those are the only
fucking playlists that would popup on Spotify.
Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
It was very weird, it didn't matter how much I
searched for whatever else.
Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Like I'm, like I don't want to listen to this.
So I'll pick a Runaway theRunaways playlist or whatever,
and I'll play all of it.
And then Spotify's like no, weknow you want to listen to the
Andrews sisters, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
yeah, so she didn't like to listen to music what you
guys listen to nothing, shejust complained.
Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Yeah, she did what granny did best, yeah, which was
to complain.
Yeah, um, but I think whenyou're 88 years old, you can be
allowed to complain, very true,yeah, you got years to complain
about.
Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
I feel like complaining more.
I look forward to that.
Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Me too, I look forward to not giving a shit.
Yeah, so like, subscribe,download.
Follow us on the socials, boththe podcast and our personal
ones, although we are not greatposters in any capacity.
Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Yeah, or in any of those situations, I'm trying to
get back up on that horse, yeahyeah, I plan on posting
something later, but so yeah, soanyway, follow us.
Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Download, review, all that stuff helps.
Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Yep and Yep.
And yeah, we hope you enjoyedthis, maybe slightly less.
Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Less murdery.
Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Yeah, yeah Figure when life gets heavier.
I want to go lighter, so Allright, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Well, thank you all.
We'll speak to you next time.
Talk to you next time.
Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Bye.
How do I start?
Oh, that's right, I'm Kiki andI'm Rachel, and this is Details
Are Sketchy, a true crimepodcast, and Rachel and I are
both sick today.
Yep, primarily because mygrandmother passed away this
(00:23):
past week and I was also gettingwork done on the house and so I
just didn't have the um abilityreally to one million research.
Understandable, yeah, um, so weapologize for that.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Rachel's turn is also again because, no, we don't
apologize for that.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
No need to apologize okay, well, I'm not sorry then,
uh, but no, I we do.
We haven't been keeping up withwhat we say we're going?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
no, it's.
It's not because we stoppedcaring about missing persons.
No, it's for other reasons.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, life just keeps life.
In this past year especially,since.
September.
Yeah, yeah, anyway, so nomissing person.
Rachel is also going to do themain one today.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I'm gonna do the main one and I decided that I didn't
feel very murdery this timearound.
So I have picked aviolence-free well 99.99%
violence-free crime and it'skind of a story, if you will, I
(01:43):
guess.
And we're going to do Miss Cleo, the TV psychic.
Nice yeah.
So what do you remember aboutMiss Cleo Katie?
Speaker 1 (01:54):
What do I remember about Miss Cleo?
Well, I remember thecommercials Not very well, but I
do remember her, but I thinkmostly because my dog's name was
Cleo.
So, I remember that.
Yeah, I remember she was apsychic.
I asked you to call her andshe'll tell you about your
future.
I think, specifically lovewould be the main one, right.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, that was a big one for her, yeah, yeah, she had
like that classic catchphrasecall me now.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah With her, oh, that's right, she did have an
accent.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Accent yeah, yeah, and she had, like usually, like
a little headband.
Right and some like cowryjewelry, yeah, and some colorful
outfit.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Yeah, she looked like the stereotype of a psychic.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, yeah.
Now would you be surprised if Itold you that Ms Clear was not?
Jamaican.
Well, no, yeah, I don't know ifI still want to do this part,
but I was going to ask you to.
I guess I am doing it, but moremore, a little bit more caution
(03:05):
on it.
I guess it doesn't.
You're like, what are youtalking about, rachel?
Like if you think you could dolike a fake accent and like keep
it up, like, and if so, I know,and if so, what would it be?
Speaker 1 (03:20):
No, I couldn't do an accent at all.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
I can do some accents , but don't think I can keep
them up, and you have to getinto that mindset.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, you'd have to be a really good actress or
actor.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
This is my accent that I'm doing now.
Now imagine doing that accentthe rest of your life.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And yeah, that's Miss Cleo.
Um, it's oversimplifying somethings, so we're gonna talk
about that.
So everybody remembers the adsalmost all of us, if you're a
millennial yeah, or a gen z.
Uh, maybe you remember yeahwell gen X would probably
remember Gen.
X.
(04:03):
Yeah For sure, baby boomers.
A woman with a thick Caribbeanaccent, promising to tell us our
future, if only we call.
She's wearing a turban and inthe background of the ad it's
like a blur of like pinks andpurples and shit like that yeah.
And she tells us we will beamazed, if only we call.
(04:26):
And it cuts to shots of herturning over a tarot deck,
accurately predicting the fatherof someone's baby or who
cheated on who.
She was like the Maury ofpsychics.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Basically.
That's funny right, took me asecond to get the reference, but
yeah, yeah uh.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
so what we may not know is that miss cleo was, or
became, the figurehead of abillion dollar psychic phone
network, a network like apyramid scheme made up of
hundreds of telephone psychics.
But of course, the scheme cameto an abrupt dissolution.
(05:19):
And I was thinking, well, Idon't know if I want to talk
about that now, but I mean thething that hit me.
They're like, oh course they'refake psychics, yeah, yeah,
because I mean, but that's me,you know, like I don't believe
in psychics, right some peopledo some people, do I?
scientific studies have notshown that humans have any
(05:42):
psychic abilities or telepathicabilities.
And we've certainly tried yeah,we certainly like in the 70s
and stuff went through a phasewhere the government really
wanted to tap into likepotential, like espn even the
1900s they were.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
There were scientists who dedicated their careers to
trying to find out stuff likethat, and also ghosts.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Because it would be like a powerful espionage tool
and shit.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Like there's so much you could do with it if it was
real.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
It's just not there, Sorry folks.
However, I'm sorry.
If you believe that, then I'mnot trying to shit on your stuff
.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
I also shit on religion, so Rachel shits on
anything that's notscientifically based.
I'm an equal opportunityshitter.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So I don't have a problem with like a fake psychic
, because I'm like, of courseit's fake yeah.
You know, and I think peoplewant to buy into that in new
ways.
You know Mm-hmm, and I feellike I'm used.
Yeah, like you said, somepeople do, but a lot of people
probably have like a little partof them in their mind that
(07:02):
they're like this might not bereal Sometimes it's just fun,
like I went to.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
There's a psychic down Solano that I, my friend
and I went to when we were, Idon't know, 18, 19.
Right, I didn't believe it, Ididn't think she was predicting
the future or anything like that, but it was kind of fun to head
, just you know, spend like 10bucks.
It was 10 bucks at the time.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
It does seem like it would be fun, although I feel
like I would ruin the fun, sodon't bring it to the surface.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Yeah, I would not take you with me to get a
psychic reading or a tarotreading.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yeah, but I do think that there are people, and many
people, who excel at beingpsychics or in the role of
psychics who are great atextrapolating information out of
a person without them knowingabout it, and they are really
(07:54):
good at reading body language.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
They're good at reading the nuances of someone's
voice and reading between thelines of what people say, in
order to draw out informationfrom people that you may not
know that you're giving them andfeed it back to them, and so I
think I think, um, most of usare actually really good at
(08:17):
reading people and if weactually spent time to yeah, you
know, really think about whatsomebody is conveying in terms
of body, you could easily readthem, yeah, easily maybe not I
don't know if I could, maybe, orwhat they want.
You know, like, yeah, somebodywho's I hate the term desperate,
(08:40):
but desperate for love, right,yeah, they kind of exude it.
You know, yeah, um, someonewho's down on their luck, kind
of they have it, they exude thatas well, right, you know, like
there's just certain or maybethey don't even need to exude it
, because they might evenstraight up tell yeah, that too,
(09:01):
yeah, um, but yeah, but I justmean.
Just mean in everyday life, likewhen you go into a restaurant.
If you really look at peopleyou can kind of see what their
problems are.
If you really give it like twoseconds.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
I don't think I can do that, no, but that's pretty
cool.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
You can.
Well, I'm not saying I do itwith any amount of accuracy, but
I think now, I think the onesthat give off the strong vibes
you can tell Next time we're ina restaurant you have to do it,
be like a psych.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You know the guy from psych.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
I'm not that good.
I'm not that good.
That was a bit of anexaggeration.
But I mean, like the what, theones that give off the strong I
don't want to say vibes, butthey just there's just an air
about them.
If you look for just a fewseconds, you can kind of see
that, because they sit a certainway and they have a certain
facial expressions and it's hardfor them to especially the eyes
(09:56):
.
It's really hard for you tohide your emotions in your eyes.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
Maybe Katie should have been a cop you could
interrogate.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
I'm way too gullible.
I'd be like, oh yeah, thatmakes sense.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Maybe Miss Cleo should have been a cop.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Maybe Maybe, maybe I should have been a psychic Right
.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Very true.
Well, we can start now.
Call our psychic line First.
Three minutes free no, I wouldfeel minutes.
No, I would feel terrible, Iwould feel terrible yeah, a lot
of people did um okay, so we'regonna get into that as well.
And also the reason that I'mlike I don't really have
(10:37):
problems is, I mean, like it isexploitive right, certainly to a
degree, and the way that thisnetwork did it was quite
exploitive right, um.
But I'm like this is really notdifferent from like
televangelism and stuff likethat and they like exploit
people out of their money andthey're flying around in lear
(11:00):
jets and shit yeah there'speople out there who's like, oh
you know, whatever, joel austinis like so close to christ or
whatever, yeah, uh.
So anyway, that's the otherthing that I was like.
You know, I don't think thatthis is worse than any other
thing but, um, but yeah, the waythat they did it was exploitive
(11:22):
.
And the third thing that Ithought is I wonder if this
would have been an issue likenow, because I feel like so many
business models are based onscamming.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, well, also, it would be different.
It wouldn't be on TV, it'd beonline.
I mean, there are so manypeople on YouTube.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
That's true.
They might not even be talkingto people.
They might be talking to AI orsomething.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Some of them are definitely AI, for sure, but
don't ask me how I know I findsome of their voices really
soothing, that's why I listen tothem.
The AI voices, like real peopledo Tarot readings and psychic
stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Oh yeah, I remember.
I know you watch those videos.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Not all of them, but there there are a few that just
they have a wonderful voice.
I wish they did something elsewith it and I just find it
soothing.
So when I'm anxious I'll put onone of their videos.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
So, uh, ms Cleo was born You're Ray Dell Harris on
August 12, 1965 in Los Angeles,california.
Her parents were Elisa TeresaHopus and David Harris.
We know that she attended aCatholic boarding school, like
(12:38):
an all-girls school, in Alhambra, california, and although she
would later claim to haveattended the University of
Southern California, there is norecord of her enrollment there
under her birth name or any ofher aliases, which she had a few
.
I'm sorry.
What was her birth name?
Again, uri Del Harris.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Okay, I thought it was like Sheila.
For some reason I was like youcan't have a second Sheila.
No wonder she changed it, yuri.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Well, and I can understand too, because, like
right, cleo rolls off the tonguea lot easier than Yuri yeah,
and I think that it's somethingthat might stick in somebody's
mind.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Yeah, because it's a name people know, but it's also
got a little bit of thatmystique still Because there
aren't that many Cleos out there.
It's a name people know, butit's also got a little bit of
that mystique.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, Because there aren't that many Cleos out there
.
Yeah, very true.
So she was known under severalaliases, including Reep Harris
and Cleo Millie Harris.
In the early 90s, Uri gotinvolved in a black arts
movement in Seattle and she wentto work at the Langston Hughes
Performing Arts Center there.
(13:49):
During her short time there,she produced and performed in a
few plays.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
All that kind of black arts.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Not like black magic.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
That's what I thought , because we were talking about
psychics and shit.
So I was like, aren't thatblack people?
Yes, I get that now I get thatnow.
Well, I mean again, we weretalking about psychics.
It's kind of a natural leap Iget it, I get it.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Where was I?
One of the plays was called ForWomen Only and it featured Uri
playing a Jamaican woman namedCleo Um.
Uri's colleagues who had knownher at the time said she did not
naturally have a Jamaicanaccent, nor did she ever claim
(14:38):
to be Jamaican.
The other plays she producedthere were titled Summer
Rhapsody and Supper Club Cafe.
After the last play, supperClub Cafe, was a flop, she
abruptly left Seattle, leavingdebts that she accumulated from
the play and the cast and crewunpaid.
(14:59):
She apparently wrote letters toall of the cast and crew, um
like, basically ious, anddetailing the amount she owed
each one.
Uh, but she claimed at thattime that she had bone cancer
and that she would be unable tomake good because of medical
bills and she basically skippedout now.
I mean it's up for debate, butlike I feel like maybe she
(15:23):
didn't intend to like scam themyou know what I mean?
like seemed like she planned topay them out of the profits of
the play.
That didn't happen, right?
She didn't have it and she waslike, how do I get out of this?
Mm-hmm, Because I feel likethere's not other instances
where it's like, oh, she'sscamming people over and over
(15:44):
again, Right, We'll see.
We'll see that, even though, ofcourse, we think of the psychic
knife order thing as a scam.
But we're going to come to findout that Ms Cleo is basically
just a spokesperson for thecompany.
Okay, so there were multiplephone and psychic networks
floating around in the 90s andearly 2000s, but the one Ms Cleo
(16:09):
would go to work for was thePsychic Advisors Network, also
known as the Psychic ReadersNetwork.
This network was started in1993 by owners Stephen Fadere
and Peter Stolz.
In 1997, Uri Harris popped upin Florida working for the
Psychic Readers Network.
(16:30):
According to an interviewconducted in 2012, it was her
sister who encouraged her to gointo the business.
At that time, Harris adopted aJamaican accent and utilized
this persona for her telephoneand tarot card readings.
And so I read some articles andI watched a documentary about
(16:52):
it, and there is an articlethat's called from the New York
Times, like I worked for thepsychic hotline that Miss Cleo,
that's a better name than that,but basically that's the gist of
it and I think that one of thethe person who authored that was
also popped up in thedocumentary a few times.
But, he said that he worked forit for them for like just like a
(17:20):
month or so and, uh, that he heworked some people worked in a
call center, but he worked fromhome and he said the interview
was just really easy, reallybrief, and other people worked
for them, so that too.
They were basically like hereis a warm body, here's a phone,
and basically they gave themlike a little handbook, they
gave them a tarot deck and theybasically implied like you're
(17:44):
faking it yeah, right there isnever any kind of analysis of
like determined whether or notthe person had real psychic
abilities.
Right um, the name of the gamewas let's keep these people on
the phone as long as possible.
Right, because you make yourmoney.
Yeah, exactly.
And so, uh, he said he woulddial in from home, from his
(18:05):
landline, like you dial in towhatever the network, and then,
like you, hang up your phone,basically, and wait for calls to
come in.
And he liked it because you canwork whatever hours, he would
like, work at night and like ontop of his other jobs that he
had.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
It was a 90s early-aught side hustle.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And so that's what Ms Cleo was doing at first as well
, and he also said that when youdo it, that most people adopt a
persona.
Yeah, he said that he oftenadopted like a southern lady
persona.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
He said people liked.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
like responded better to women and they responded
better if he had an accent.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Yeah, yeah, I see that on YouTube.
Yeah, there aren't that manymale tarot readers.
Why am?
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I admitting this one go for it um, that is an.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
It's just an interesting point, like why
would we believe women over metI the way I just answered my own
question?
Never mind, I'm just thinkingabout it.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
Where was I?
She adopted that persona in thelate 1990s and the Psychic
Readers Network was desperatefor anything to make their
agency stand out from the crowd.
Uri Harris first appeared on alate-night infomercial in her
Miss Cleo persona and what shesaid is that in an interview,
like at first, like she wasseeing the ads and the ads were
(19:41):
not very good.
They had like a blonde, whitelady doing them and it was just
kind of stale.
And you know, she like knewsome people like in the network
and she was like this is notvery good.
Oh, what she was like in thenetwork and she was like this is
not very good.
Oh, what she said was not verygood is like they were doing
like the tarot readings, but itwas all wrong.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
And since she actually knew how to read the
tarot yeah.
She at first, like, was justadvising them on, like, how to
do it, right, right.
And then on one of the nightsthey had her appear Mm-hmm, and
she was a massive hit.
Yeah, she claimed to be ajamaican shaman and at that time
(20:21):
the network's website had herbio listed that she was born and
had grown up in trelawney,jamaica.
When miss cleo basically wentviral before viral was a thing
um, the psychic readers networkadopted her as the face of their
organization.
Uh, they started.
She started appearing inmultiple commercials uh,
(20:44):
basically all their commercialsand you know she was.
She went on talk shows, the.
They started using her face asthe face of their organization,
sending advertisements andemails in her name, using her
face.
Some of the advertisements sentby email.
(21:04):
Also, some of the TV spots MsCleo used would advertise a
quote-unquote free tarot readingOkay, wait, hold on, let's play
one of these commercials.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I just looked it up.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Go for it If you've never had a reading from a real
psychic.
Try us right now for free.
Your father had a stroke at ayoung age did he not Right.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Right, right.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yep.
So yeah, people love her andthe thing is too that she did do
like those readings and stuff,live, yeah on tv, um, and
everybody who knew her said thatshe was a very talented psychic
or whatever some of thembelieve that she was a genuine
(21:54):
psychic.
Uh, other people seem tobelieve that she.
You know, like I said, justread people really well but
whatever it was, she had a giftfor it.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah, um, or those people were also hired to no.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
No, because these were people who were, who were
in her life after after words no, I mean the reader, the people
she was reading live, that'salso possibly true, that's.
But people.
But what?
I'm uh?
But people who knew her saidyeah, she read for them, or read
(22:31):
for people that they knew aswell said that she was really
good at it.
Yeah, and it was like uncannyher ability.
Customers who believe they werecalling in wait where was I?
Oh, yeah, Okay.
So the advertisements theywould often advertise a free
(22:51):
tarot reading like call now foryour free reading.
Customers believe they werecalling in and they were going
to speak to miss cleo herselfand, of course, they end up
speaking with one of the manypeople who were working for this
network, not miss cleo, right?
one of them said that.
Like that, one of the other uhemployees for the network said
(23:15):
that like, sometimes they wouldbe like be like where's Miss
Cleo, is Miss Cleo here?
And they would like put thephone down and like pretend to
be like looking for Miss Cleoand, like you know, they said
that throughout the time a lotas well.
And they'd be like, oh, lookslike she just stepped out for
lunch or something like that.
They would get one of the manyemployees of the Psychic Readers
(23:42):
Network who worked either froma call center or from home
utilizing a script, script, likeI said, a strip, utilizing a
script and instructions to keepthe callers on the phone for as
long as possible.
What the callers didn't know isthat it was only the first
three minutes of the call thatwere quote-unquote free.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Well, why would they think that the whole thing would
be?
Speaker 2 (24:03):
free.
Well, because it didn'texplicitly state that.
I know, but wouldn't you thinkyou would think?
Speaker 1 (24:12):
You would think, but I mean, I was a teenager and
even I knew.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Many people did not think.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
Yeah, and time was spent collecting that free time
was spent with them collectingthe caller's information.
So they were trained to use upthat free amount of time.
Yeah, and then they would sendthe callers more ads.
After the first three minutes,callers were charged $4.99 a
(24:42):
minute.
Jesus Christ, yeah, a fortunefor the time.
A fortune now.
Yeah, it is a fortune.
Now, too, you could watch awhole-ass movie for that on
Prime or whatever.
That's true, you could watchlike a newer movie for that.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
Not in the theaters, but like, no like on Prime or
something.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
I knew what you meant .
I just wanted to clarify forour listeners in case they're
like no way you can.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, no, not in the theaters.
Those days are long gone,indeed.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Not only was it expensive, but many of the
callers were lonely, scared ordesperate.
They probably needed some moresubstantive help, such as
therapy, legal advice orfinancial advice, and were
instead scammed out of up tohundreds of dollars, dollars.
(25:39):
Yeah, miss cleo herselfremained a viral sensation, with
just about every tv owninghousehold knowing her name.
She made appearances, like Isaid, on talk shows.
She was parodied by so manydifferent comedians and comedy
skit shows, including thechapelle show sn Mad TV.
Well, of course, yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Is Mad TV still on?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Great question.
Miss Cleo was a pop culturesensation In 2001,.
The Psychic Readers Network putout a book titled Keeping it
Real A Practical Guide forSpiritual Living, allegedly
authored by Ms Cleo.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Sorry.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
No, it is funny.
And was it authored by Ms Cleo?
No, no, it was not.
So we're going to see moreabout that in a little bit.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Anybody can write that shit.
Yeah, can write that shit.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, although prosecutors and past clients and
employees of the PsychicReaders Network had been trying,
somewhat unsuccessfully, toprosecute the Psychic Readers
Network, it wasn't until aprosecutor in Texas named Ms
Cleo herself as a main party inthe case that it got enough
(26:52):
publicity and traction to reallystick.
Not Texas, sorry Florida.
I don't know why I wrote Texastraction to really stick, not
Texas, sorry Florida.
I don't know why I wrote TexasTo really stick and succeed.
That was in 2002.
So psychic readers who hadworked in the call center
previously came forward to admitlike there were no shamans
(27:13):
there, there was no like likequalified psychics there, that
all the interactions werescripted and that the hiring
managers had heavily impliedthey were to fake it as long as
they kept the clients on thephone as long as possible.
Psychic callers made onlybetween $12 and $0.24 in a
(27:35):
minute.
Yeah, so Miss Cleo herself onlymade $0.12 a minute, plus
$1,700 a commercial and nobenefits.
So I was trying to figure outhow much money that she made,
(27:57):
but I couldn't find, like theinternet doesn't know exactly
how many commercials that shemade yeah.
So I did an estimate for if shedid 30 and if she did 50.
So if she did 30 she would make51 000.
If she did 50 it would havebeen000, which today would be
about $150,000.
But not that much consideringthey were making millions off of
(28:24):
her.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, and most of that, that's from the
commercials alone.
Or is that like the 12 centsand you're just saying it
averages like eight hours a day?
No, no.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
That's the commercial money.
I didn't count the money thatshe made from being on the phone
, but that would have been amaximum amount of $15 an hour if
she was on the phone like for awhole hour.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Well, that's better than we're doing.
It is better than that.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
But not what you would expect for a celebrity.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
No, no, not at all.
She should have been making waymore than that.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
She was a salaried worker who happened to also just
be the entire face of theorganization and the individual
most responsible for thebusiness's success.
Responsible for the business'ssuccess.
The Florida prosecutor, aaronCronenberg, admitted the only
(29:24):
reason he had been able to nameMs Cleo in the lawsuit is that
the Psychic Readers Network wassending out collection, tons of
collection notices to people whosaid that they were only on the
line for a few minutes and theywere claiming a much longer
time, or some people who sworethat they had never even called
at all.
And one of those collectionnotices was signed, or more than
(29:44):
one, but one that they used wassigned Cleo, and that signature
, which would turn out to not bea real signature, allowed her
to be named.
So suddenly the case had tonsof national attention because of
how viral Cleo was.
Comedians and news anchorsalike all dropped this same joke
(30:06):
.
She didn't see that one coming.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
God, yeah, let's not do the obvious one, guys Right.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
It's very hokey and they showed like in the
documentary.
They showed clips of tons ofpeople saying basically the same
joke over and over again.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, God Cringe, as the Zoomers say, yeah you can
think it, but maybe don't let itout of your mouth.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, One talk show host who I watched her segment
as she was interviewing thedirector of the documentary and
she said that when she had toannounce that news it was put
into her script.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
That joke?
I don't doubt it.
Of course, with all theadditional publicity, it was a
perfect opportunity forjournalists to dig into her
story and her background.
And when they did, theyuncovered all the personal lies
and misinformation that Ms Cleohad spread Her past history of
defrauding the Seattle TheaterCompany, that she had a string
(31:07):
of aliases, that she lied abouther education and possibly even
her background and ethnicity.
She had told everyone adifferent story about her
background, that she had beenadopted by Jamaican adopted
parents, that she had been bornin Jamaica and that her mother
had brought her to the States,etc.
Different versions of somethinglike that.
But it turned out her parentswere not Jamaican at all and she
(31:31):
had not been adopted.
An expert on the Caribbeandiaspora who appeared on the
documentary admitted that,although she had stated earlier
that she knew, the accent wasobviously fake and she said any
Jamaican would know that it wasa fake accent, that Western law
(31:55):
and Western culture dependedheavily on legal documentation
such as birth certificates, butthat Caribbean people do see and
recognize identity in differentways.
Many other people, such asYuri's friends and her lawyers,
defended her Jamaican heritageor alleged Jamaican heritage and
(32:17):
identity.
One of her friends seemed toalso imply that Miss Cleo was
one identity that Yuri had ortook on and that perhaps she may
have had like disassociativeidentity disorder because she
said that she had a fewdifferent personalities that
(32:40):
would come out.
One of them was a malepersonality named Maxmarie who
was elegant, formal and shealways spoke in metaphor and
(33:02):
riddles, and the Max personawould come forward.
Or one of these other personaswould come forward when Cleo was
overwhelmed, or would say shewas overwhelmed by the spiritual
world or maybe by attention andshe needed a rest.
And so it's possible that ifshe did have like dissociative
(33:24):
identity disorder, that maybethe Cleo personality like just
became her dominant personality.
What did they say?
Personality, yeah.
What do they say?
Uh, they said they would.
Suddenly, when she, when shechanged to one of her other
personas, they would feel likesuddenly this is a stranger in
my home, like they would walkdifferent, they would have
(33:45):
different mannerisms, which doesto me I mean not that I'm an
expert or anything, but it doessound possibly like did, but
then again it could just bereally good acting, yeah, but
like at that point in her lifelike what's she getting out of
it?
You know what I mean?
Because she wasn't in thespotlight, this was just
something that was happeninglike privately you know, and so
(34:09):
I don't know why she would fakeit.
But I mean, I know that DIDitself is like a controversial
diagnosis, but I don't know.
I would prefer to err on theside of believing people when it
comes to talking aboutthemselves and what their, their
own, experience is.
(34:30):
One thing, however, that herfriends uh seem to agree on is
that she was a deeply spiritualperson, and many of them
genuinely believed, like I saidearlier, she had a gift or
connection to the spirit world,that she was indeed a genuine
psychic or, at the very least,that she was a highly sensitive
(34:52):
and intuitive person whobelieved that her insights were
a genuine spiritual gift.
People who received readingsfrom Ms Cleo herself were amazed
and impressed by the insightsthat she had, and some of them
believed that she gave theminsights about themselves or
their families, that they didnot know themselves and that
(35:12):
there was no way for her to haveknown, not know themselves and
that there was no way for her tohave known.
Many people in her life didbelieve that she had a very
difficult childhood, althoughshe was tight-lipped about what
may have happened to her.
One friend reported that shehad confided having considered
suicide as young as age seven,and another friend has stated
(35:37):
that she had a very challengingchildhood, which she implied may
have involved sexual assault,and I said those things could
also be lies, of course, butunfortunately this kind of thing
is so prevalent that I doubt it.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
I doubt that that's a lie.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, of course.
To bring it back to thelawsuits against the Psychic
Readers Network, when Ms Cleowas deposed and her contract and
her tax returns, everything wasrevealed.
It was shown that the documentshad gone out under her name,
were forged.
Under her name were forged.
(36:19):
However, the company defendeditself, saying that Miss Cleo's
persona was their personaltrademark and property.
So not only did they ruin MissCleo's reputation and her career
, but they also robbed her ofthe ability to continue making
money using this persona thatshe was essentially living her
life as every day, not tomention her future ability to
make money.
(36:39):
As Miss Cleo, her face was onall their advertisements and
their merchandise, like MissCleo branded tarot cards and
Ouija boards and her name wentout, like I said, on their
emails, on their collections,notices and official letters,
but she never got paid royaltiesfor any of that.
(37:01):
Yeah, she was not on thecompany board.
She was never involved in anydecisions that the company made,
not even the ones involving,like I said, her own likeness.
So eventually, having uncoveredthis information, the Florida
Prosecutes and the Federal TradeCommission dropped Ms Cleo's
name altogether from the lawsuitand they only focused on the
(37:23):
heads of the company, who theinvestigation revealed to be,
like I stated earlier, two whiteguys by the names of Stephen
Fetter and Peter Stoltz.
Their operation was never ingood faith to create a genuine
psychic network, but, of course,to just make a bunch of money.
(37:43):
Now, like I said before, Idon't find this better or worse
than, say, tv evangelists orreligious networks.
They're basically doing thesame thing and don't get stopped
because they can hide under theguise, as I wrote, of the most
prolific religion.
These two declined to StephenFetter and Peter Stelz declined
(38:07):
to be interviewed for the MissCleo documentary.
It seemed they've just gone onwith their lives with little to
no impact to their careers orpersonal well-being, which
cannot be said of Ms Cleo.
The company came to a settlementwith the Federal Trade
Commission to shut down thepsychic hotline and they had to
(38:28):
pay a $50,000 fine.
They were forgiven $500 millionin debt.
They were forgiven $500 millionin debt and ultimately the
company was found to havebrought in more than a billion
dollars in profits.
So the cushy CEOs were doingjust fine.
They raked in a billion dollarsbecause of Ms Cleo and she
(38:49):
herself made less than $100,000.
Yeah, less than a hundredthousand dollars, yeah.
So after the entire fiasco.
Miss cleo kind of became arecluse for a few years oops,
hang on.
But she surrounded herself byfriends and found family and
they helped her drop her backout of her shell.
(39:11):
Unfortunately, like I said, herall her later attempts to earn
money basically off of the misscleo name, um, or appear in any
kind of semi-celebrity capacity.
Then she would get sued by thepsychic readers network, like
she tried to appear in, like alocal car commercial.
(39:34):
Uh, she was like the face ofbenefit cosmetics, I guess for a
short time.
And uh, she also, uh, had somekind of deal that she was on
like cinnamon her face was on acinnamon toast crunch cereal but
every time that something, shewould get something like that,
she would get sued and have toend it.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So like even her, like actual face, not just the
persona, the face.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Yeah, I mean because, yeah, she, you know they would
say, yeah, they own basicallyanything right or whatever.
Like maybe she had completelychanged her look, or something
like that.
But no, Like, of course, likeshe lived the rest of her whole
life like that as Miss.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Cleo.
Okay, so wait.
So let me, because I'm confused.
So she would like appear inthese commercials with, like the
turban, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:29):
Oh, okay, I mean, that's how she dressed, that's
how she dressed like every day.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
I thought maybe she was trying to do something like
just.
I mean, I know Cleo is herself,but I mean as herself, not what
people would know her as.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Well, she introduced herself at that time as
Cleomilia Harris, but apparentlythat was still like the accent,
the look, all the things theywould say.
This belongs to us.
Yeah, even though, yeah, thatwas her everyday self, and so
attempts to basically make moneyoff of her celebrity were
(41:09):
always thwarted.
Yes, well, I could see that.
Yeah, yes, well, I could seethat.
Yeah, however, she did, yeah,really find a big community.
She really made a home withinthe Florida LGBTQIA plus
community In 2006,.
She came out as a lesbian andshe became like a big advocate,
(41:34):
like an activist for queerrights in Florida.
She also, you know, I think,continued her personal, you know
readings and stuff like that.
Unfortunately, in 2016, shepassed away from colorectal
cancer at the age of only 53.
(41:54):
At the time she passed away,she was not rich.
There's no evidence of anyriches having been accumulated.
She was living with roommates.
Like I said, having struggledwith her career since her public
downfall, however, it did seemlike she had gone on to live a
happy life and had a lot offriends around her.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Well, that's good.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, what else did I want to say about that?
Yeah, I just said that, likeshe didn't really get to, I
guess, redeem her public name orpublic image during her
lifetime.
That is, I think, all I have onMiss Cleo.
(42:43):
But yeah, like I had said aboutthe scammy thing in the theater,
since it didn't really seemlike she went on to scam people
you know, and so I don't thinkthat that was like her whole
shtick was being a con artist,um, although like it seemed like
(43:05):
you know, with the psychicthing, but she was just like a
patsy in that organization.
So, yeah, it seemed likeoverall she was not a horrible
person, um, and yeah, it seemedlike she had a lot of joy in her
(43:29):
life.
So I'm glad that, yeah, I'mglad that, yeah, I'm glad that
she had people who cared abouther, and whether or not she was
really Jamaican or not, I mean,although I can't speak for
Jamaican people and how theymight feel about that but I mean
it seemed like she, thatpersona, was where she, like,
(43:54):
found her home you know, andlike it didn't seem to hurt
anybody.
Yeah, okay, that's all I got,okay interesting any thoughts?
Speaker 1 (44:09):
uh no, I think we kind of talked about them did
that-hmm, did that go short?
No One question, though.
Maybe you don't know, did thecompany have her sign papers
that say that they owned herpersona?
I don't know.
Okay, yeah, and I.
Because I would feel like thatwould be the way that they would
(44:34):
be able to sue her.
Speaker 2 (44:36):
I mean, it seemed like that the courts seemed to
side with the company?
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, they usually do .
Speaker 2 (44:44):
Maybe she did, or maybe it's just a case of
corporate bias, Like shewouldn't have had anybody to
really defend her or afford todefend her so well.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I imagine it's probably hard to prove too like
like baby ruth's, when you thinkof a baby ruth who do you think
of baby ruth the baseballplayer?
Yeah, he didn't have anythingto do with it.
And he sued the company forusing his name.
And the court said, uh, thecompany said no, we didn't name
it after him.
We named it after a previouspresident's daughter named Ruth,
(45:21):
his youngest, or something likethat.
So that's where we get babyRuth.
And then the courts were like,okay, yeah, which is bullshit.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, it's bullshit Like nobody's going to think,
grover.
Cleveland's daughter.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
No, no.
So baby Ruth didn't get shitfrom that candy bar, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Yeah, it seems like something like that.
But yeah, I just thought it'scrazy that like she can't just
go out wearing whatever shewears and like talking however
she talks, like every day of herlife.
You know, talking however shetalks like every day of her life
.
You know, Like her friends saidthat, like there was never a
time that she wasn't using, likethe Jamaican accent and stuff,
like it was her whole self.
(46:02):
Yeah, regardless of whether ornot it was authentic.
Yeah, it became authentic toher Interesting?
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Yeah, that also is an interesting question, like if
she had gone there there, let'ssay, she didn't have the persona
of cleo, she just went on thereas what was her name?
Uri harris.
Uri harris, yeah, would theyhave owned her?
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I don't know, you know, I don't know.
But then again, if she went onas uri harris, then like nobody,
nobody would have known who shewas.
Right, like if she just woreclothes like you or me and like
dropped the accent, like whowould know who she was?
Speaker 1 (46:45):
True, but I'm just saying in general yeah, like
anybody.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
That's why I was asking you about, like rock star
personas and stuff.
Right, yeah, because, like youknow, if, like whatever, richard
simmons or whatever takes offall this makeup and whatever and
walks down the street, yeah, Imean there's people who
recognize him.
But like a fraction, yeah, withthe same people, yeah, would
otherwise, yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
So no, I just meant like it may not have worked that
way if she went on that way,but if she went on that way,
yeah, as uriah harris, and let'ssay it for argument's sake, it
did work.
Yeah, they then own.
Speaker 2 (47:27):
I mean she, she didn't do an interview in 2012
and that footage was used andshe, you know, was her.
She had the accent and she, youknow, had like a head wrap and
stuff and she said like my nameis yuri cleo milia harris,
otherwise known as miss cleo.
(47:47):
Yeah, and I don't think, butthen again, that was just an
inner, like she wasn't makingmoney off of that.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
So yeah, but but I don't think that's what I mean
either.
I mean like let's forget her,Like let's say you went on as
Rachel Wilbur, no persona, justyou as you are and you became
famous and the company, whatever, would they own.
You as Rachel Wilbur, not thepersona you, Great question.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Yeah, and because Miss Cleosaid that she wasn't putting on
a persona, right, right, thatthat was her.
Yeah, so yeah, valid question.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
I guess maybe that's celebrity too right Like, do
celebrities own their own image?
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Yeah, I mean, isn't that a fight that they're having
right now with, like the AI andshit like that yeah.
Um, okay, I mean, in Back to theFuture or whatever, didn't
Crispin Glover win a lawsuitagainst the Back to the Future
people?
However, when a lawsuit againstthe Back to the Future people
because he was in the firstmovie right as Marty's dad, his
(49:00):
young dad, and then he wasn't inthe subsequent films but they
dressed up another actor to looklike him and he successfully
sued for that, oh that's cool.
Yeah, but I mean it's adifferent time.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean it's adifferent time.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Yeah yeah, I remember around that time people would
ask me if I named Cleo afterMiss Cleo.
No, I did not.
I named her after the bandLetters to Cleo.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
That sounds like you.
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Why does it sound like me?
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (49:38):
Just you know, it would be some like obscure-ish
band or something like that, oran obscure-ish literary
reference.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Oh my god, am I that obvious?
Speaker 2 (49:54):
We hang out a lot, katie, that's true.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
I didn't think they were that obscure.
They were in.
10 Things I Hate About you.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
No, no.
But like I know, like the band,I know their music, but like I
never remember their name.
Maybe that's just me though.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
I played, I think the record was.
I forget what the record wascalled, maybe Copilot, but I
played that record over and overand over, and over and over
again.
Yeah, I don't know why I likedit so much.
It's good, yeah, okay.
So good, yeah, okay.
So no missing person, did youwant to say?
Speaker 2 (50:40):
anything else.
I think that's all I have tosay about Miss Cleo.
I probably have more thoughts,but I can't.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
Think of them right now.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
I can't think of them right now.
Speaker 1 (50:51):
Yeah, we're both in a cold fog.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
Yeah, when I picked Miss Cleo, I thought it was
going to be a little bit sillieryeah story than it was yeah,
well, it's still kind of a sillystory yeah, yeah it is, and I
mean I mean it's lighthearted inthat, like you know, I mean
nobody really got hurt, eventhough miss cleo's reputation
was ruined and stuff, she stillhad a happy life and yeah she
(51:18):
had people who cared about her,so that made me happy.
Yeah, um, what made you think ofit?
Um, I was looking.
I I googled like silly crimesor top 10 silly crimes or things
like that.
I was looking around forsomething that that was more
lighthearted because I knew thatI wanted to do a non-murdery
(51:41):
crime and when I saw Miss Cleo Iimmediately remembered her
commercials and stuff and I waslike okay, yeah, and I remember
vaguely when she got sued yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
I don't remember that at all.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
Maybe I wasn't in the country at the time but I, I
always thought like it was heryeah thing, yeah, and even like
these show clips in the news,like they sure seem like they.
They skew the story that way.
Yeah, like they would be likeMiss Cleo's psychic network.
Yeah, it really made it seemlike she was the scammer.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
She was in charge.
Yeah, what?
Speaker 2 (52:26):
was the year 2002-ish yeah.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
That it came tumbling down?
Yes, okay, why didn't I knowabout that Interesting Guess?
I was busy in college.
Yeah, didn't have TV.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah, I was in high school then.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Yeah, I was either in Hawaii or St John's.
Yeah, no, I didn't go to StJohn's until 2003,.
So Hawaii probably, or here injust oblivious.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Yeah yeah, maybe it just wasn't something that, a
story that caught your attention, yeah, but yeah.
So when I saw that I that I waslike, okay, I'll do that, oh
yeah yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
See, I was gonna go the other route and go like
serial killer.
Yeah, I guess that's how I dealwith grief.
I'm like let's see the worst inpeople.
I'll cover that yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
You were like I'm watching murder show.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
Well.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
Okay, I guess the next bit is reading, watching,
listening, all those things.
Speaker 2 (53:48):
What have you been up to?
Speaker 1 (53:50):
What about you?
You usually go first oh do Iusually go?
Speaker 2 (53:53):
first yes, that's me and my big mouth, I guess.
So the only thing I watched, Ithink, since the last time was,
like I said, reign of Fire,which I was feeling Jared Butler
, okay Sorry, I was feeling likeI wanted like a good dragon
(54:18):
movie and I feel like you know,like I automatically think of
Rain of Fire, yeah, yeah, and soI took a watch of that.
Yeah, there's a lot ofcelebrities in there, yeah, I
forgot about Jared Butler, allof them, bruce.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
McHale yeah, matthew forgot about Jared Butler, all
of them.
Christian Bale yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
I completely liked him, alexander Sigg.
Speaker 2 (54:43):
I don't remember who the lady actress is.
She looks kind of like CharlizeTheron, but she's not Charlize
Theron.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (54:50):
But she definitely had her moment around that time.
It's like a tough action girl.
I don't know, I don't remember.
I could look it up, I guess,because it's not fair to name
all those actors.
Speaker 1 (55:07):
No, leave out the chick.
Yeah, you were in the mood fordragons.
Speaker 2 (55:14):
huh, yeah, yeah, you were in the mood for dragons,
huh yeah.
And then I listened to a storythat had kind of similar vibes
as well Isabella Scoropuko.
Speaker 1 (55:32):
Scoropuko.
Speaker 2 (55:36):
Huh, I don't know that name at all.
Oh, let me look up the name ofthe.
I looked up, I listened, Ilooked up.
I don't know what I'm saying atall.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
You listened to a book.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
I listened to a book, one of those like audio theater
books that they have on AmazonAudible Again, I mean it is the
same thing, yeah.
Dragon Day by Bob Pearl, sothat kind of had similar vibes
(56:14):
of like dragons are popping upout of nowhere and torching the
world, basically, and it's toldfrom the perspective of like a
journalist who's going aroundinterviewing people about what
happened and how it happened andstuff like that.
So it's got like an ensembleaudio cast.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Oh, that's fun.
Yeah, are.
Are any of the readers peoplewe would know like?
Are there any celebrities?
Speaker 2 (56:40):
um, let me read you the names here.
Okay, okay, okay, so thenarrators are hayley atwell,
michael Chiklis, aldous Hodge,greta Lee, jimmy Simpson,
christian Coulson, laura KaiChen, brady Jenis Zeke, alton,
(57:05):
christiane Seidel, alison Wick,sarah Haywood, wreck Mova, al
Piper, anna Dillon and LydiaKendall die.
Speaker 1 (57:17):
Well, hayley Atwell is an actress.
Okay, she was in MissionImpossible.
Oh, she's in the new MissionImpossible.
Nice, she's in Agent Carter.
Captain America, is that the umhis girly, captain America's
girly?
Speaker 2 (57:35):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (57:36):
The Agent Carter.
Is she Agent Carter?
Let me look His girly, CaptainAmerica's girly, I don't know
the the the Agent Carter.
Speaker 2 (57:39):
Is she?
Speaker 1 (57:39):
Agent Carter.
Let me look Um Peggy Carter,yeah.
Speaker 2 (57:45):
Captain America's chick.
So if you want a dragon-y storywith an ensemble cast and
Captain America's chick that hasa rain of fire and a little bit
with a little bit of how totrain your dragon vibes, yeah,
(58:05):
then yeah, I would recommend.
It was easy, fun, yeah, listen.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Were you not into Marvel?
Huh, were you not into Marvel?
The Marvel movies.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
Some of them yeah.
Speaker 1 (58:19):
I kind of got overwhelmed, oh okay yeah,
that's why you were like I don'tcare, no, I, I liked them at
first, but yeah it just there'sso many of them.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
I was like I can't.
Speaker 1 (58:29):
Yeah, I stopped after the main ones yeah, I haven't
seen any of the side stuff yeah,but uh, I did see the original
captain, america yeah it's likethe britishy chick, right, yeah,
so the, yeah, the woman whobasically yeah, yeah, okay, yeah
, yeah her, you know what I mean.
Basically, you're like, yeah,maybe we do hang out a lot,
(58:53):
rachel.
Speaker 2 (58:54):
I know these things are falling out of my ears.
Hang on, because I have a fewmore ones.
I'm reading East of Eden.
Did I mention that last time?
Speaker 1 (59:08):
Well, we both did, but you're still reading it.
Speaker 2 (59:10):
It's a honker, I'm still reading it Because I keep
taking breaks, but I'm going toget back to it.
Take your time, because I'monly about 40 pages in.
So it's very entertaining, butlike, I'm like, where's the like
?
Well, there is some murder init.
But I'm like I don't know, Iguess maybe I need like a more
(59:30):
modern voice sometimes.
Yeah, to intersperse, yeah,because yeah, I mean I like the
story, I don't find the prose tobe too heavy, or anything like
that, but I still like I'lllisten to like three hours and
then I need a break.
So I've got about 10-12 hoursleft Now 25.
(59:53):
So we're at the point of noreturn, for sure.
And I also read mother thing.
Did I tell you about that one?
Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
no, I don't think so.
It's by.
I mean I, I recognize the titleAinsley.
Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Hogarth yeah, you'll probably.
It was quite popular, I thinklast year.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, andit is told from the perspective
of this narrator, and herhusband and her have been living
(01:00:36):
with her mother-in-law his mom,and she has been struggling
with borderline personalitydisorder, and she commits
suicide.
And things start to fall apart,though, when perhaps the
mother-in-law comes back tohaunt them.
As we maybe see, the narratoris maybe not super reliable.
(01:01:05):
Also love an unreliable narrator, so, yeah, it's fun um yeah,
and explores, uh, you know,roles of women, mental health,
yeah things, and ourrelationships to our mothers,
yeah, so, yeah, it's a, it's afun read.
Um, it definitely gets unhinged.
(01:01:27):
Um, I was like, okay, yeah, Isaw it and well, I didn't
completely see it coming, but Iwas from the first get-go I I
was like I don't trust thisbitch.
So I was right in that, I guess.
But yeah, I thought it was funand worth a read.
Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
Yeah, did you listen to any podcasts podcasts or
watch any movies?
I?
Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
listened to one.
I kept trying to listen to oneepisode of kim and kent stay
alive, about the movie split,but I kept falling asleep.
Yeah, so not the podcast fault,right, I was very tired.
Yeah, um, I am reading anotherbook now, which is the lamb by
(01:02:21):
lucy rose, but I am not finishedwith that one yet.
Did you watch any movies?
Um, just rained a fire, like Isaid.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, say that.
Um, yeah, oh, no, I was goingto say I was trying to get Jay
to watch a movie with me theother day and they were like
we'll watch it later, but thenlater we were both tired and we
(01:02:43):
didn't watch anything, right?
Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
So what was the movie ?
Did you have it already pickedout?
Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
No, I didn't have it already picked out oh gotcha, so
I have a bunch of horror moviesthat I want to see.
Speaker 1 (01:02:54):
Yeah, we'll probably go see Sinners this week.
Yeah, yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (01:02:58):
Yeah, that will be good.
Okay, because I have beenreally trying hard to avoid
spoilers on the internet, allright, and the internet keeps
trying to tell me about itbecause I follow these horror
pages and stuff like that andthey're like Sinners, I'm like
shh, so I try and scroll past,scroll past.
Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:17):
Yeah, they were even talking about it, though in some
of my groups that are not likehorror-related or movie-related.
I was like, excuse me, I didn'task for this, yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
It's huge.
Yeah, it is huge yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
So I'm trying not to form high expectations though.
Speaker 1 (01:03:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:36):
Because if your expectations are too high, Then
it's going to fall flat.
Exactly, no matter what?
Speaker 1 (01:03:41):
Yeah, yeah, no, I don't have any expectations,
yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
I expect that there will be vampires my expectation
is death of a unicorn.
That's the base.
This one doesn't seem like it'suh it's comedy and all.
Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Yeah, no, no, no, I was just kidding, because that's
the most recent movie I've seenme too well, I mean in the
theaters yeah, not um, let's seeI haven't really read much I
(01:04:21):
read.
I think I'm halfway through lessthan zero by brett easton ellis
.
That's my purse book, so I pickthat up page by page.
It's to take me a while to getthrough.
The only one I actually readand finished was Little Rot by
Akwaeke Emezi.
Good book, disturbing, kind ofdisturbing, but also not really
(01:04:48):
disturbing.
No likable characters at all.
So up my alley Gritty.
So again up my alley.
Interesting, interesting, Iwell.
I don't know what the authorwas actually trying to portray,
but to me it was all about the,the badness or the rot, the
ugliness that's within all of us, that most of us are quite good
(01:05:10):
at keeping hidden or controlled, I should say um, but in the
book, like the city itself isrotten, so it kind of seeps into
the beings of everybody and sothey all, no matter how good
(01:05:30):
they try to be, they inevitablybecome rotted more than others.
Speaker 2 (01:05:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
And make poor choices , yeah, even sometimes against
their will, or and also I wouldsay, how the bad choices of
others affect us and then makeus against, almost against our
will, make the bad choice.
Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
It's like when you put cucumbers in a brine and
they can't help but turn intopickles there you go.
Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
Yeah, so it was.
It was a good book I highlyrecommend.
I don't know if it's one oftheir best, because I haven't
read any of the other ones.
Um, it's my one and only, but Ireally liked it yeah, it
sounded really interesting, yeahso I think, yeah, that's it.
(01:06:23):
I didn't really watch anythingeither.
Um, yeah, I haven't watchedanything, haven't listened to
anything.
Yeah's it.
It's been pretty boring.
Speaker 2 (01:06:37):
Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of music, but
not anything new Like just myplaylist.
Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
Yeah, I've listened to music, but nothing new.
Yeah like, whatever playlistpops up on Spotify, it's some
sort of like.
Usually it's got Sublime or RedHot Chili Peppers or Old Rock
yeah.
Or Old Punk yeah, theOccasional Country.
It chili peppers.
Or old rock yeah, uh.
Or old punk yeah, theoccasional countries.
It's really weird.
There will be a playlist whereit's like sublime, red hot chili
(01:07:03):
peppers yeah, oasis, and thenall of a sudden some newish
country song pops on what ishappening?
Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
I think it's.
I think it's weird.
Like I have my whatever.
I am usually listening to musicon like Amazon Music or
something, not because it isanything special, but because
they offer me like a three-monthtrial and then I got stuck in
it.
Yeah, you know how these thingsgo, yeah.
But like I have like a whateverfavorited list where it just
(01:07:39):
plays all the songs I havefavorited, but like sometimes,
like I'm like there's like Idon't know a lot of songs in
there, like 400 or somethinglike that.
But sometimes it will play likethe same song over again.
I'm like what, yeah, like thesame song over again.
I'm like I'm like what, yeah,like uh, it played, yeah, played
(01:08:01):
, uh, raise your glass by pink,which I really love that song.
But then, like like 20 minuteslater or something, it played
again.
I was like wait a second.
At first I was like justjamming out and not thinking
about it and I was like wait aminute.
Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
I just listened to you.
Did you maybe like it on, liketwo different albums, or
something.
Speaker 2 (01:08:22):
No, it was the same.
It was the same one.
Interesting, Because sometimesI will like if there's like a
live version or whatever.
Yeah, that I also enjoy Mm-hmm,then I'll like the song over
multiple things albums, but notin this case.
It was.
It was the same, like picturepopped up and everything yeah,
(01:08:43):
yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
For some reason spotify's been really big on um
playing beastie boys.
Is it right to Yep that songover and over?
Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
and over again.
Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
And what's one of the popular ones by Muse.
I don't know, but it's a songthat I never liked.
I have never liked it.
I've never liked it on Spotifyyeah, I don't know why it keeps
playing it.
Speaker 2 (01:09:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
I skip it every time.
But it's like are you sure?
Are you really really, reallysure?
Yeah, I'm like, yeah, yeah, Idon't want to listen to this
song.
Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Yeah, no, I still can't get those Amanda Palmer
songs off of my list, Remember?
Yeah, every time one pops upI'll click the down thumb or
whatever, and I unhearted themall of them.
But as they still occasionallypop up, yeah, so they can get me
sometimes, because I'll be like, yeah, this song, and then I'll
(01:09:43):
be like, wait a second, wedon't listen to amanda palmer
anymore, and then I have to goand down down thumb it and we'll
skip it.
Speaker 1 (01:09:53):
But then they come back up, yeah, sneaky, like yeah
, they're probably like youlistened to so much amanda
palmer last year, yeah, yeah,it's amazing what these programs
pick up because, like uh, whenI was driving grandma up to rio
(01:10:14):
rancho for her medical thing,all right, she doesn't want to
listen to red hot chili peppers.
Yeah, she wants to listen forlike red hot chili.
Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
No, she was like.
Speaker 1 (01:10:26):
She was willing to listen to like like dean martin
or something like that, or theandrew sisters or whatever, and
so I played those, but not verymuch, because she wasn't really
that into it either.
So there were like three songsLike maybe a Fred Astaire, not
Fred Astaire, frank Sinatra,yeah, like a Dean Martin, melly
Kalikimaka and one of theAndrews sister songs, and then
(01:10:50):
from that day on, for like twoweeks, those are the only
fucking playlists that would popup on Spotify.
Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
It was very weird, it didn't matter how much I
searched for whatever else.
Speaker 1 (01:11:02):
Like I'm, like I don't want to listen to this.
So I'll pick a Runaway theRunaways playlist or whatever,
and I'll play all of it.
And then Spotify's like no, weknow you want to listen to the
Andrews sisters, that's funny.
Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
yeah, so she didn't like to listen to music what you
guys listen to nothing, shejust complained.
Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Yeah, she did what granny did best, yeah, which was
to complain.
Yeah, um, but I think whenyou're 88 years old, you can be
allowed to complain, very true,yeah, you got years to complain
about.
Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
I feel like complaining more.
I look forward to that.
Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
Me too, I look forward to not giving a shit.
Yeah, so like, subscribe,download.
Follow us on the socials, boththe podcast and our personal
ones, although we are not greatposters in any capacity.
Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Yeah, or in any of those situations, I'm trying to
get back up on that horse, yeahyeah, I plan on posting
something later, but so yeah, soanyway, follow us.
Speaker 1 (01:12:13):
Download, review, all that stuff helps.
Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Yep and Yep.
And yeah, we hope you enjoyedthis, maybe slightly less.
Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
Less murdery.
Speaker 2 (01:12:23):
Yeah, yeah Figure when life gets heavier.
I want to go lighter, so Allright, all right.
Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Well, thank you all.
We'll speak to you next time.
Talk to you next time.
Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Bye.
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