Citation Needed - Miss Cleo

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Youree Dell Harris (August 12, 1962 – July 26, 2016) was an American television personality best known as Miss Cleo, a spokeswoman for a psychic pay-per-call service called Psychic Readers Network from 1997 to 2003.[1][2] Harris used various aliases, including Cleomili Harris and Youree Perris.[3]   Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Man, sure is quiet around here. Yeah, sure is. Hey, Tom, will you pass the Shakutori tray? Of course. Hey, here's a refill on your bourbon, man. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Oh, it's just so peaceful, really nice.

Right? Ah. Ah. Okay, who's turning? It's definitely not me. Right? Right? Oh. Ha. Okay, who's turning this? Well, it's definitely not me. I video-chatted with him for three hours last night. He had no idea.

I hold a baby, so I had to demonstrate my cats. I talked to him last time he called, and he keeps sending me text pictures of body hair asking if I think it's cancer. So I'm not, I'm out. Probably is. Did my contract guys, nope So I'm not, I'm out. Probably is. It's in my contract, guys. Nope.

I do not have to speak to him unless it is specifically scripted otherwise. Oh, good negotiation. Yeah, I know. Okay, okay. Rock paper scissors, odd one out answers. Okay, I'm three. One, two, three. It's you.

No, I do paper. One, two, three. It's you. No, I do paper. You walk through rock. What are you talking about? But I said, I said odd one out. You lose. That's I did not lose that rock beats just answer the phone. Fine. Fine. Hey Eli, what's up buddy? Oh, oh yeah, no, we're doing good. Cecil's been asking all about you.

Fuck you, you jackass. He has, yeah, like a lot. Stop that. Yeah, no idea. Why he won't respond to texts. He's actually talking about driving over to visit you. Fucker. Yeah.

No, I know. Yeah, it's awesome, right? So what do you need though? What are you calling about? No, no, no, we're good. Yeah, I know the topic today is miscleo. Nope, nope, just not necessary, no. Okay, yeah, that's a very good impression.

You did just now. Sounds like a good Jamaican marquee mark. That's fun. Yeah. No, we're just gonna do the episode with none of that without any of this stuff you just did. Mm-hmm. Well, because there's no such thing as a blackface quota,

that doesn't exist, that's not a thing. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where you choose the subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil, and I'll be leading this team of skeptics tonight. It's hard to have to know that psychics aren't real, but dumb enough not to realize the money is in bunking, not debunking, heath, no one, and Tom. All right, well, let's be clear though, this is a show about information from Wikipedia. And we let Eli talk some crazy, so much, Bunkie. It's very true. It's very true, very true. A lot of, a lot of, so what we need is a 900 number where,

you know, you can call and we bunk you for five bucks a minute. Right. Yeah, see, so this depends you can call and we bunk you for five bucks a minute. Yeah. See, so this depends heavily on who you're bunking with as to its profitability. I guess that's true. And our bunk versus bottom bunk. Oh, we're all bottom bugs. Patrons, every week you tell our fortune, will it be a Grande ice coffee from Starbucks or an eviction letter will leave that to you and any advertiser out there that

wants to buy an apropos nothing slot so uh mostly it all would be fine too can I just have a taste and taste why are you kicking me out just for smelling it that's rude I just wanted to is it because I'm with Eli? Okay, that's fair. If you would like to tell our fortune with your money, be sure to stick around till the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Noah, what person-place thing, concept, phenomenon, or event will we be talking about today?

Oh, I'm very excited. Today, we're gonna talk about the icon of the early 2000s culture that was, Ms. Cleo. All right, and Tom, no matter what I say here, you're going to answer with some kind of anewendo. So pretend I asked you a question. I'll see so I've been rubbing my crystal balls all afternoon to give you that answer. So I heard this. Okay. All right. And with that out of the way, who was miss Cleo? You know, Cecil, the thing is, man, the world has Cleo? Well, you know, Cecil, I think his man, the world has never seen more unsure, you know,

more uncertain than it does right now. It seems like every week there's some fresh and unanticipated hell that we have to contend with. From the pandemic to the murder hornets, to the rumbling of the Supervolcano and Yellowstone, and then, you know, of course, the horrible new reality that if you're forced to watch police brutality on Facebook, you can't pretend it didn't happen anymore.

So we didn't see any of this coming, you know, this is all a surprise. You can't even see the world didn't always seem so full of nasty surprises as it does now. And I think I figured out why we lost one of our most sacred national treasures. Our spiritual norad, if you will, the world is bereft of that early 2000 psychic icon, Miss Cleo, she's the NORAD. I think, yeah, that's it. Yeah, I think it might be what started

a solemn, it's downward spiral, I think you got it. Yeah, speaking of NORAD, every year on the solstice, NORAD sends out data from the Miss Cleo tracker. Here's the last. Nope. She hasn't moved yet. She's still sitting on a table, flipping cards on speakerphone. Still right there. Sarah Pillen can see Miss Cleo.

Yeah. When they moved Trump down to the bunker, Miss Cleo was just sitting down there and hanging up. So for listeners who are old enough to remember a time when television was something that just happened to you and when houses had phones, the musical tones of Ms. Cleo's grading fake Jamaican accent will be forever etched into our memories. By the way, my parents had a landline phone until last year. My dad's still has a lot of money. They sold them out in hell.

They sold them out in hell. And they'd be furious every time. I'd be at their house and they'd get like eight random calls today. Every time I'd be like, that's just gonna be a fucking Tom marketer. Don't answer the phone. Does anybody need your weird house phone number?

You have cell phones. No, my dad would slowly effortfully go over to the phone, answer it, and then yell and be angry. Do you guys remember when someone phone calls used to be surprises? Like, you're like, oh, I don't know who this is. I better answer it. Instead, now you just look at it.

Like, I'll get to that shit later. They don't have that instinct of like, you gotta answer phone calls. You know, you absolutely do not. You know, even people you know will be like, is it okay if I call you? Exactly, I text people to let them know I'm gonna call them. No, because it's terrifying to get a phone call.

Terrifying. How with you Heath, it's terrifying. Fun call. Fun call. What are you? Maybe that's an emergency thing. Like if, no, if somebody fucking calls you as cause someone died or somebody.

Exactly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I will, Miss Cleo didn't get her start stealing money in the phone psychic business. Instead, Miss Cleo began her career in the theater. Though at this point, it's important to note

that Miss Cleo was not yet Ms. Cleo. In fact, Ms. Cleo wasn't even Jamaican yet because of the pesky detail of having been born in L.A. And being called Yuri Del Harris by her, I guess, very boring parents who lacking psychic powers were unable to foresee Harris's transformation from kid born in California to heavily accented Jamaican clairvoyant. Yeah, somewhere I guarantee there's a tape of a radio show with Yuri Del Harris and Ralph Northam doing voices together doing their hilarious. So anyway, Harris was the author of several plays, the owner of a theatrical production company in Seattle.

Well, the owner of a theatrical production company in Seattle. Well, the owner of a theatrical production company for about like a year after which she was forced to leave town to escape a mountain of unpaid debts, which she did by pretending she had bone cancer and paying her cast and crew with handwritten IOUs like they were mis-cleo bucks. Yeah, well, of course she had to leave. She was overrun because all the theater

people in Seattle found out she was the highest paying production company. Yeah. Well, my pleasant, pretty sure there's a spot in Seattle. Now we're Cleo bucks are legal. 10. So I guess like totally unfazed by the bone cancer, Harris began working for the psychic readers network and began acting in their infomercials. So here, Ms. Cleo emerged from the spent ashes of Yuri Harris, and suddenly she was a Jamaican mystic, though perhaps not all that suddenly, actually. Although Harris was actually born to wealthy parents in SoCal, the character of Ms. Cleo

was actually borrowed from Harris' own play, titled For Women Only. And to be fair to Miss Cleo, while she was not Jamaican and her accent and backstory are completely fake, she did claim to have studied Haitian voodoo. And so I guess if you're going to co-opt one Caribbean culture for fun and profit, you may as well make it a two for. Really? Yeah. Just ask Major League Baseball. That's like their whole business now.

So the character of Ms. Cleo is supposed to have been an authentic shaman, whatever that is. Oh, it's like a bachelor that's married. Oh, yeah. Yeah. As she claims not only in fact that she is a shaman, but like any good shaman, she has

her own shaman, like a Jamaican nesting doll of shaman's, I guess. So Miss Cleo Shaman was supposedly a 93 old lady who Miss Cleo quote, won't even move without talking to, which sounds fucking exhausted. Okay. It just feels like a shaman for a shaman. That's just an addiction counselor, right? Like you're just describing your sponsor from masculine anonymous.

Like you sure have asked him for shaman if you're on fire, you're doing spells and somebody's just like, hey, don't do that anymore, don't. You take this back. No, no, the idea is that you get four shaman's under you and then they each have four shaman's under them. But you don't even have to shaman anymore.

Just sit back and rake it in. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fucking completely inexplicably. Miss Cleo became a hugely popular cultural figure. She has spoken word albums, a fact that I simply cannot get enough of. I want so much hair. Really, really?

That's the key. Yeah, she does. And actually, I did finally find them. It took some, it took some doing and they are every bit as fucking amazing as you would think. You got to get her and Shatner together doing them. Yes. I just came when I thought of it. I'll both, I like a do at a rocket man.

That'd be amazing. So these are recorded entirely, of course, in her bullshit accent. So that's basically like having Eli read his blog while pretending to be Markey Mark. That's going to be a patron goal now. She's actually such a widely known public figure that she's been parodied by Mad TV and Dave Chappelle. Wow. We should all do character blogs.

Heath's blog could be really tall. That'd be perfect. That's fun. And mine could be co-opted by E-Le. I forgot. I came up with Tony D. He's like, you could jog blog. I could, I could have a jogging blogger.

I'm a senior righty. A are you could jog blog. I could I could have a jogging blogger. I'm so you're right, Ethan. Jogging with swords. That'll be your thing. Your thing's boring. You are. So the psychic readers network promise that if you called Miss Cleo, you'd get the first three minutes of your genuine Jamaican phone psychic reading for free. Nice. After which you only had to pay $4.99 a minute to be lied to.

Not even $5. A trouble. What? That's a bargain. Not bad. I just run a bar under. It trouble was that the first three minutes was sometimes not free at all. They just sometimes would charge you for that. And then other times the first three minutes were used to gather information about the caller before they were passed on to the psychic, which turned what would be a cold reading into a hot reading Because now you just told the scammer a bunch of shit that they could resell back to you. Why would people do that?

It's fucking people are stupid. Who calls the fucking Jamaican genius? Because they can genius a yeah exactly. Like this is not America's best and brightest. It's a hell of a lot of fun. The time you get to that point you're right. Yeah, yes. Other times the first three minutes,

they just put you on hold. Nice. Nice. And then you hold for three minutes. That's amazing. So when you finally got to the reading, you didn't very often actually get to talk to Miss Cleo, but rather one of her associates.

So think like Jamaican psychic elves, I guess, with Santa's busy. So, oh, then of course psychic powers aren't real. That's one of the other problems with it. Also that is psychic elf call center is the land of misfit ploys. It's moving. Wait, they'd sometimes just put you on hold

for your three three minutes. I'm gonna start you and then they start you. Yeah, I'm gonna pitch something to you guys. Let's do a 15 minute hold every episode. What do you guys say? There's 15 minutes of elevator, reggae music. Yeah, just playing, playing, playing music that has no beginning or end. It'll be perfect.

So a little flavor here on these info commercials. All right. Someone a little younger. Yeah. So on screen is Miss Cleo looking smug and sassy sitting in like a high back wooden chair rescued from an estate sale while early 2000s swirly background effects transported both Miss Cleo and the viewer to a world between world. This is on a television, everybody.

It's like a computer phone. You would be really big and heavy. Yeah. Yeah. I wish it in everybody. It's like a, this youth, computer phone, you would watch. It was really big and heavy. Yeah. Yeah. Then a caller's voice would appear seemingly summoned by Miss Cleo's insistent query. Don't you really want to know? That's racist.

Holy shit. The caller. It's not as racist as she is. It's super racist. Anyway, the caller, voice fraught with concern,ores Ms. Cleo to tell her who the father of her baby was. This is from a commercial, not a mori povice. Ms. Cleo smiling just another day in another world begins flipping tarot cards over across

the table and with barely a glance in their direction informs the caller. All right, let's take a look. Let's go to the DNA test. It's going's take a look. It's gonna keep doing it. It's the one that's very unpleasant, okay? He's also the one who had another girlfriend while he was sleeping with you, but you knew that. Towards the caller. Jesus Christ.

He's a speedist. By the might and righteousness of Miss Cleo's otherworldly proclamation, moralizing and slut shaming, shame facetly mutters. I know. When you caught them, by the way, they were both butt naked banging on the bathroom floor. Okay. I'm You're on the shaggy song.

I slipped in that. That's not okay. Oh, Rose got it to it in the voice. Heath. No, but meanwhile, though, at the same time a youngish ish no illusions himself a long time tarot reader thought to

himself oh my god is this why fucking sound like I'm saying there's at least one happy ending for you this didn't prevent psychic readers network from doing rather a lot of business so in just three years they build out a billion dollars, a billion of fake psychic bullshit. Let me put that in perspective for you. First, the people on the other end of the line weren't even deluding themselves

into thinking that they were psychic readers network. I was gonna say, 1000 million. It's a thousand million. We'll get to what the number means. The psychic readers network had an army of work from home employees, cold reading via prepared scripts. They made about 20 cents a minute.

Miss Cleo as the spokesperson over the course of three years, she made about a half a million dollars over the course of that time. Well, I mean, those people at home, they got 20 cents a minute and five CleoBus. Let's not forget. Yeah. You know, they were all Seattle theater people

and they needed the money. And the time this comes out, who the hell knows which is worth more? Yeah. Yeah. This is worth more than almost all of my 401K. Yeah. Oh no.

Also, a billion is a really fucking huge number, especially when that billion is built in five dollar increments. Right? So a billion dollars at five dollars a minute is 200 million minutes. Six million people called this number. Six fucking million people. Oh, okay.

So the average call was 33 minutes of misplane explaining why you have HPV and then being like, I'm getting a mastermind dead father. He says your phone bill is going to be $165 today. That's a average call. That's it. So like, think about this, this is 3.33 million hours of people lying to desperately lonely people at a rate of $300 an hour. For $300 an hour, you can hire attractive people to lie to you with their bodies and be rather more assured that you guessed the ending. You get a paternity test for way more. Any comment on that, Senator Graham, but hire people. Any comment on that?

Oh, actually, actually, Cesar, you might have to cut that joke. Andrew says the NDAI signed his airtight. Senator Graham says your airtight too. So. his airtight. Senator Graham says your airtight too. So no, he doesn't. So the psychics readers network wasn't content only to charge people who called, right? Sometimes they charged people who never called at all. They charged miners. They charged people who were dead for calls made after those people were dead. Well, they from another dimension. Yeah, I was just helping. I didn't. To get more people to call the company employed mis-cleo robo calls to leave messages that mis-cleo had

a dream about them and they needed to urgently find out what it was all about. So these desperate marks not realizing that dreams are fucking boring and even less useful in crystal balls were really returned to misclose voicemail. Okay, I'm getting word from the producers. It looks like we had our Patreon goal of Tom interpreting a dream. So send your very detailed dream description to citation pod and Gina.com and Tom will reply to a lucky winner. A lucky winner season. Okay, a lot of lucky winners and he can't wait to read them. Listen to him in the background, guys. He's jumping with joy.

That's him jumping. And while he does, we'll take a break for a little apropos of nothing. So good. Hello, yeah, you're fucked. Hello, yeah, you're fucked. Hello. Yeah, you're fucked. What the hell's going on? Yeah, uh, yep, and it'll probably be Maligment. Oh, see, so Tom, thank God you guys are here. Grab a phone, help out on this, okay? Well, hold on, hold on, because I never said it was just a puppy that would get cancer. What?

What is all of this? What's this? Well, okay, luckily, to lend her suffering from the syphilis. Oh, here's your two other possibilities. Oh, great, he's doing great. It's my nihilistic psychic light. You know, business has really ramped up in 2020

and I can't hire people fast enough. And that is when the blight, unfortunately, is gonna settle in. Nilistic psychic line, what now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I gotta be honest, we got so few calls. I was about to shut the whole thing down, but since 2020 really settled in,

people are warming up to the, it's gonna end in a fiery pit of misery message that we've been selling all these years. Yeah, yeah, and of course, when there's a mass die off and a famine, what do you get? Yeah, that's right, you get cannibalism, so. Wait, wait a second, you're getting paid

to lie to people about how horrible the world is. Where do you even get this idea from? Watching Fox News during the Obama administration. Did you see how profitable that shit was? Yeah, no, that's, you got a point. So is there, is there like a script somewhere that I can read you? Yeah, can I improvise? I've got some.

As long as you tell them horrible shit's gonna happen to them, yeah? Yeah, no, I was made for this job. Yeah, yep, yep, nope, yup. And it turns out these won't be the kind of radioactive spiders that give you superpowers just that hurt you. Wait, don't we usually do the character stick in the pre-showskin? Yeah, we're all doing the best we can while Eli's gone.

She's all, okay, okay, I'm done. I'm done. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall.

I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. I'm tall. Well, when we last left off, Miss Cleo was pretending to care about you in exchange for cash. How's that different from any podcast that Eli's on, Tom?

How's that different from any podcast that Eli's on, Tom? How's that? Ah! Ah! Not wasted. Subway less money. Subway less money. Ah! Yeah.

He's cheaper than Miss Cleo. Ah! We're all cheaper than Miss Cleo. Sure. Definitely. So, in 2001, there must have been more than a few complaints that this seemed just a little too much like a scam because the Psychic Readers Network was sued by Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, and the

Federal Communications Commission. The FTC in 2002 charged the company with deceptive advertising, billing, and collection practices, though Miss Cleo herself was not charged operating under the theory that if you buy a box of poison cereal, you sue Kellogg's and leave Captain Crunch the hell out of it. Well, it doesn't get that makes sense. But yeah, well, but you should be able to sue Captain Crunch regardless of poison as well, right? You're supposed to be a boot. Jesus. Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Florida can't even agree on how much a returnable empty glass bottle is worth.

So this must have really pushed them off. They must have been furious about this. All right, gotta admit, the fact that all the states were in alphabetical order except Florida's kind of freaking the end of the second. That's insane. What happened there? I just moved that one and piss off Noah. Oh, well played.

Well played. So probably one of the best things about this part of the story comes not from Miss Cleo, but from Jay Howard Beals III. This guy's director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. And he is solid fucking gold. You can tell that when this case came up, like he threw his hand up in the conference room and like wiggling his chair like a kid doing the peepee dance

to get this assignment. In his 2002 statement, the aforementioned J Howard Beals the third said, quote, you don't need a crystal ball to know the FTC will continue to stop unfair deceptive trade practices. Okay. Asterisk, except Christianity. That's very honest.

That's true. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was infusing my homeopathic remedies with copper. What was that? Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. is that last like gotcha moment was, Beals making three generations of his own namesakes proud,

elevated the dad joke again to Olympian heights, noting nine months later, quote, I'm no psychic, but I can foresee this. If you make deceptive claims, there's an FDC action in your future. Ah, that's too risky, Bid. Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry, I was supplementing my virility

through natural mail and hands, but when I said that was, was that what you said? Ooh, you're gonna be the top bunk from now on now. So the psychic readers network settled the claim and I love this. This is astonishing to me. They settled the claim by forgiving $500 million worth of fraudulent consumer debt and then paying a $5 million fine. Well, together, let me offer some perspective here.

Like imagine if you beat someone up and you took $100 from them and then you told them you're going to be back tomorrow for another one hundred dollars. But instead, you got caught and your punishment was to pay five dollars and then agree not to take any more of their money tomorrow. That's pretty much the same thing. It really is. The only difference is that while you're hitting them in the face, you're also telling them how significant the three are cups is in their Celtic Cross. So, yeah, the card of abundance.

And also, by the way, punch. I know this doesn't matter to you who I'm punching, punch. But the three of cups is also showing that I'm gonna make $495 million. Oh, this is a fucking insane punch. You in the deck. Sorry. This is a bad day for you, but I'm like gonna say. Punch you in the dick. Sorry. This is a bad day for you, but I'm gonna be making a lot of money.

So I'm gonna. So Miss Cleo had to move on from being the voice shouting at you like an all-knowing Sean Paul from your daytime TV screen and begin a new, which she did by voice acting as anti-poolay in the video game Grand that auto vice amazing. She did ads for used car dealerships in Florida and in 2015 This is the greatest thing in the world. She appeared in a series of ads for French toast crunch Just for some reason The ads never aired because the company that she worked for not evidently having been

completely crushed by their massive fine of 0.5% of their receivables intervened, saying that they actually owned the character, Miss Cleo. Okay. Does French toast have a voodoo origin? I'm not aware. Right. Yeah. Like you have to dip the bread in like chicken and trails and then fry it off. I don't get it real toast. Yeah. I don't know. By the way, her name was Auntie Chicken. Is that what Pooley makes with his French for chicken?

Awesome. All right, there is, and I mean this guys, there is nothing in the entire world funnier than this French toast crunch commercial. there is nothing in the entire world funnier than this French toast crunch commercial. I cannot imagine the creative Don Draper-esque superstar in the boardroom that fucking pitch this thing. This has to be heard to believe I know we don't do this but we have to play this commercial because otherwise my life will lose all of its meaning. Alright, let me play a clip. I'll just play the clip. I go on babies, miss Cleo is back. No, do you have silverware sweet pea? Alright, let me play a clip, I'll just play the clip. That's born and school Baba bite a French toast crunch. Oh, cinnamon-y-hat maple syrup.

I can't bring this to you, man. French toast crunch is back and I predict your love it. You didn't know. What the fuck, man? This was a real commercial people paid money to add it to everything. You still get French toast crunch because like I really, really want it. Oh my god, yeah. Yeah. It's just a shame we have an audio medium so you can't see the little swirly French toast crunch because like I really, really want to do it. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just a shame we have an audio medium so you can't see the little swirly French toast crunches behind. I know. It's so good. It's so good. They blew their budget on graphics for that. Not so sure. Not so stardom.

Paris backed off the psychic claim, saying that she was never actually psychic. That was all just company propaganda. No, not a psychic. Indeed, you see, she preferred actually to be called a Caribbean voodoo shaman. That's obviously different. It's different. This is serious.

Yeah. Well, since that's different and not a psychic, she was able to use her notoriety to continue to offer readings. Still in the Missclio character. Ranging in price, I love this. From $75 to $250, depending, I guess, like on the trim package of the bullshit. Your grandfather was really dead when I got in touch with him. So you're saying legally, with him. So you're saying legally she was able to with lawyers establish a legal difference between psychic and voodoo shaman legally. I don't know if it was with lawyers, but it's

what she did to not. Well, just she did it. Okay. I think she just did it. Yeah. She just did it. Yeah. She was like, she wanted distance herself from the trouble she was in under the psychic readers network, but still capitalize herself from the trouble she was in under the Psychic Readers Network, but still capitalized and leveraged the Miss Cleo character. Right. Nice. So, she wrote a book. The title of this book may actually be the world's most ironic title in all of books. The book is called Keeping It Real. Nice.

By Miss Cleo. Nice. She started a podcast called Conversations with Cleo. I feel like I'm a little toyed with starting an online dating service because I guess the world needs more of those. But the entire service would be geared towards finding someone for Miss Cleo. That's what she said. What? What? Dating her.

Herch service. Yeah. This is a little like inventing Tinder because you're wondering if anyone in your area is up. is a little like inventing Tinder because you're wondering if anyone in your area is up. Or inventing a social network because you have no friends. Yeah, that's a stupid idea. There's no money in that. So in 2014, Harris still using the Miss Cleo persona appeared in the documentary Hotline and she gives an almost unbelievably tone deaf interview. It's fucking amazing where she laments how little of the money All of which was obtained by fraud and deception the fake psychics actually received You know, it's weird like in the pretrump area you wouldn't have had to qualify unbelievably tone deaf with almost

High bars now So although she acknowledges that the other fake psychics were paid far less than she was, she still seems like utterly baffled and upset in this documentary that people think of her as a liar, which again, she totally was. Also, she literally gives that interview, be moaning her spoiled reputation as a liar in her fake Jamaican accent. Chris in Jamaican costume. So in 2006, she came out as a lesbian, a fact which might not be worth noting at all. If she hadn't made this announcement, well, simultaneously thanking her mother for sending

to her to an all girls boarding school, which I've just fucking love. And then really nothing interesting happened until Harris died from being so full of shit it killed her by giving her colon cancer. Jesus Christ. Should have seen that one coming. Tom, if you had to summarize, are you learning one sentence? What would it be? Never give away the first three minutes for free.

Okay. Are you ready for the question? So I got to give. Yeah, thank you already. Three minutes. What are we having lunch? Yeah. See, I think you already know the answer to that question.

Uh, we do. Heats first. All right, Tom. So at a curiosity, I looked up some stuff about Jamaica. And I learned that Google's search algorithm is an ignorant white guy on Bing just searching for it. Which of the following results is the widest? Hey, when I typed Jamaica is known for the top three suggestions were rum, coffee, and earthquakes.

Okay. B, it's not. When I looked up, words associated with Jamaica, the first three suggestions were reggae, sprinter, and Jamaica. That one makes sense though. That's very associated. Like, there's one or one. Little on those firsts.

Yeah, it would have to be first. What did I know? No. Or was it C? From that same search about word association, the very first link to pop up was an article aimed at American travelers entitled 15 Jamaican Patois phrases to no and use on your next visit. Okay, how to get punched in the fucking face and deserve it. That's the real thing.

Oh my God. Well, you know, it's hard because I've only been a Jamaica once and I've left early. So I'm going to get a good answer. You read that article and tried to use some of those 15 crazy. Yeah, right. He's correct. By the way, they ran me out. All right. I got a tough one for you. Tom, what other way did Yuri Del Harris try to cash in on her misclio fame after the psychic line gig dried up? Hey, guided tours of Jamaica that just turned out to be that neighborhood in Queens. Be offering to switch to a bad Brazilian accent if they renamed that city a Cleo

Desionero. I love it. See, a little known run for the presidency in 2004 under the slogan, Jameka, America, great again. That's amazing. Or D, the misclionoscopy, where she would examine her former colors, rectums to see how they fit their heads up there. All right, those are, those are all amazing ideas. And I just, I'm going to go with C because I actually wish that Miss Cleo had run for

president. What if this fucking slogans would have been brilliant? She did. She did actually. She really cracked. She ran for now, but president, I know miss that. For the purposes of this question. Oh, she is.

I got so excited. I was. I was like, how do I fucking miss that? I watch documentaries. I read documentaries. I read it. You think that would have slipped its way in there? She probably would have done better than John Kerry.

I don't know. I was thinking. She probably would have. More credible. Just came off as more credible. Oh, all right, Tom. What other cereal did Miss Cleo advertise for? A, Frosted Mini Cheats, B, fruit dupes, sea, bounce checks,

or D racketeers. Oh my God. Backeteers is my favorite thing you've written. That's amazing. It's gotta be racketeers because it's just. It is racketeers. And since you didn't stump us, Eli wins this week. What? Eli, I pick Heath as the essay this week.

Okay, so if Eli's back, he'll be the host. If he's not, then someone else will do it. We'll figure it out. So, who knows, maybe he's still hanging out with his baby. All right, well for Tom, Heath, Noah, I'm Cecil. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, Heath will be an expert on something else.

Between now and then, you can check out our funny shows that our colleagues do, the Skeptocrat, God Awful Movies, D&D Minus, and the Skating Atheist, or you can check out that one show that Tom and I do. Cognitive Dissonance, or visit our YouTube for our weekly Cog Dislives Dream 9PM Central, our YouTube page. And if you'd like to pay us way less than 499 a minute,

you can make a per episode to nation and patreon.com slash citation pot or at least a five star view. Anyway, you can you can also pay us more than that if you want. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, 150.000 episodes. Great. I love it. Sounds great. Grande cup of coffee. You could say more podcast. Most of these episodes are 30 minutes.

You could go a buck 50 here and you'd be right on target. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com. No, if you text me a picture, I'm calling the police. Well, then go to a doctor. What? No, I don't even know how that would be possible

if you hadn't eaten Legos. Yeah. Every argument ends like this. This is great. I'm not having this argument with you again. I think you're lying. I think you're a liar. I think you ate Legos or you put them in there the other way.

I'm not having this argument with you again. I think you're lying. I think you're a liar. I think you ate Legos or you put them in there the other way.