À la carte (January 26, 2025)
A podcast, a streaming documentary, a debut novel, and a Korean reality dating show
A paradigm-shifting documentary podcast
Aside from the fact that the Worst Person was sworn-in as President while surrounded by a cabal of dweeby bajillionaires, it looked like a pretty normal week in my house. We had friends over for an impromptu dinner. I went to the gym. My toddler threw a lot of protein on the floor, and I read about breastfeeding in antiquity. But interstitially, it was very much not a normal week, because in moments of downtime I was grappling with my beliefs relating to an afterlife, telepathic communication, and the boundaries of the self and of consciousness.
I’m nervous to recommend the podcast that triggered this quiet philosophical storm, lest I lose all credibility with my materialist readers. I don’t usually write about my inchoate agnosticism, which allows for ghosts and some woo, but not a literal reading of the Bible. However, I’m simply too desperate for discussion to keep this podcast to myself any longer. I need the social and intellectual experience that was season of Serial, where my entire peer group was conversant in the question of Annan Syed’s innocence!
The podcast, The Telepathy Tapes, follows documentarian Ky Dickens on her quest to document a little-known phenomenon—the ability of nonverbal autistic children to communicate … telepathically.
Yes, I am nine episodes deep into a podcast that purports to offer irrefutable evidence of telepathy and other psychic phenomena. And I’m listening as a skeptic, because I am a skeptic! I’m a lawyer and believe in reason and science and the claims made by this podcast, if true, really would rattle the world as we know it. But I’m feeling rattled. In in each episode, there has been a moment where the hair on my arm has stood. And to be honest, I feel a little tingle of excitement and relief at the possibility that we are surrounded by another realm, even if I can’t personally access it in my body.
Despite the fact that The Telepathy Tapes briefly dislodged Joe Rogan from the number one spot on Spotify, I don’t know anyone else listening to this world-rocking podcast, except my husband (who just listened to the first episode at my insistence), and I haven’t been able to find any meaningful discourse in the mainstream media. It does seem like there is a movement that seeks to discredit the validity of certain kinds of spelling-based communication methods used by many of the nonverbal individuals featured on the show. (I must confess I haven’t yet watched the video footage on The Telepathy Tapes website, which purports to show that there is no interference with any of the children as they spell.) But, as Dickens observes, not all the individuals portrayed as demonstrating telepathic abilities on the podcast rely upon those facilitated communication methods. And the full range of … unexplainable phenomena … documented by Dickens can’t all be explained by a few parents looking for their fifteen minutes of fame. I don’t know, guys. Give it a listen so we can discuss.
A documentary that is streaming on Netflix
If your family is anything like mine, it’s nearly impossible to find something to watch together after dinner. There is the faction that prefers something “feel-good,” there is the faction (me) that refuses to watch anything that fails the Bechdel Test or that features more than one gun, as well as the factions suspicious of subtitles or paying to rent a movie on Amazon Prime.
The next time you are at your parents’ house digesting a holiday dinner, I have a crowdpleaser for you to suggest—Will & Harper, Will Ferrell’s new eponymous documentary that follows him and an old friend from Saturday Night Live on a cross-country road trip. Don’t tell your transphobic uncle that the friend, Harper Steele, recently transitioned, after living as a man for over 60 years. Pitch it as a buddy road trip comedy and see how it goes, because your transphobic uncle is exactly the audience for whom this movie was made.
Ferrell and his familiar-faced friends are shocked by the news, especially once they learn how deeply and quietly their friend was suffering for decades, but thankfully they are uniformly supportive. (We have to wonder whether there are people in Steele’s life who weren’t so supportive.) The road trip in inspired by what appears to be an earnest effort by Ferrell to understand Steele’s journey and to support her in her transition. Ferrell allows himself to stand in for any viewer who doesn’t expect to have a trans friend, and Steele graciously allows Ferrell to ask all of his questions, which Ferrell does with so much lovely care. It is refreshing to see Ferrell step out of his well-known role as America’s Favorite Goon and to see the heart within the clown. I fell in love with Ferrell on this road trip, as he bared his fierce love for his friend, confronted his own blind spots with remorse, and showed a willingness to learn and grow and evolve in a decades-old friendship. And Harper! All of America should fall in love with Harper, whose brain is behind so many beloved zany moments on SNL, and allow her to find peace in her transition. This is real-life, and so while the documentary is heartwarming, the “ending” is hardly “happy,” in a one-note sense. The Trump Administration just declared, by medically inaccurate proclamation, that there are only two sexes—and that it would only recognize the biological sex present at conception. 1 Even before Trump was elected, Steele describes her fear for her safety in public places—her new hesitancy to enter bars alone, to wear a bathing suit, and anything else that exposes her as a trans woman in a potentially hostile environment. Even an American Sweetheart like Ferrell cannot fully insulate Steele from this hatred. In one awful scene, Steele is subjected to stares and vitriol as she sits across from Ferrell, who is dressed as Sherlock Holmes, at a Texas steakhouse. His gambit to distract from her has failed. But it makes for a poignant, albeit slightly heavy-handed, teaching moment in the film. It’s not all sad—there are also plenty of LOL moments, like when Will Ferrell wears a disguise to dinner in Vegas. I don’t think anyone could regret watching this!
A debut novel by a favorite critic
As a nonfiction writer myself, I’m curious about the moment when a veteran nonfiction writer crosses over to fiction—is the transition motivated by a desire to tell a truth that feels like it can only be told in a novel? Is the debut novel merely a creative and intellectual challenge for someone growing restless with their craft? Will I recognize the writer in her characters? In her style?
My interest was particularly piqued when I saw Lauren Elkin had written a novel, because Elkin is the author of some of my favorite pieces of recent cultural criticism, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City and Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art.2 I wondered what of her nonfiction writing I would recognize in her novel, titled Scaffolding, and whether I would be able to hear the cultural critic on the page. Right away, I recognized Elkin’s Paris and trademark ex-pat Francophone perspective, but was pleasantly surprised to find myself immersed in (what at least felt like) a novel sprung from the imagination, not merely memoir disguised as auto-fiction. Scaffolding comprises two stories, thinly interwoven, of the inhabitants of the same apartment in Belleville, fifty years apart. Across the generations, the characters are consumed with questions related to marriage, fidelity, and fertility; they’re also connected by coincidence, or perhaps by fate.
Some of the threads that connect the generations are so fine as to almost miss them, despite the fact of the generational connection being one of the primary sources of intrigue in the novel. I found myself frequently flipping back, trying to see if I had missed a hint of an explanation. I don’t think I did, so Elkin’s intentional withholding might stem from what
recently referred to as a desperation for intrigue. On the other hand, the reader is a voyeur—we are watching the multiple inhabitants of the apartment, skipping back and forth in time, and thus actually know more than the apartment than the characters themselves. Ultimately, I think I wanted a little more resolution from this bifurcated narrative, and a little less Lacanian theory. There are multiple psychoanalysts in this novel, and multiple characters with connections to Lacan, and as Melissa Febos recently said in a class I’m taking "Fuck Lacan, no one understands Lacanian theory on the first read.” But the inclusion of psychoanalytic theory, as well as interesting feminist history, is where Elkin shines as a researcher—and what distinguishes Scaffolding from Real Estate by Deborah Levy or other quite midlife crisis novels. Elkin doesn’t dumb down her novel. There is a lot of passing French that goes by untranslated, which could be annoying to a non-Francophone reader. But I think it would be a great book to bring on a trip to Paris and an inspiration for a trip to Belleville.A Korean reality show
I have to send out a big thank you to my friend M for this week’s television recommendation. Despite being a loving mother and a generous and productive member of society, M has somehow always made the time to watch every single reality TV show so I don’t have to. This means she is always there ready to discuss when I am six years late to a reality dating show franchise (ahem, Married At First Sight). But when she has a fervent recommendation, I trust her completely and clear my evening. Single’s Inferno is our latest obsession, blending my abiding passion for reality dating shows with my fascination with sex and dating culture in South Korea and Japan. (Love is Blind: Japan was the last show I enjoyed at the center of this cultural Venn diagram.) The FOURTH season just premiered on Netflix, but I started back in the very beginning. Four women and five men meet on a desert island; if they manage to partner up with someone, they can escape to “Paradise” (a bland luxury hotel that seems to be miles from a beach or any natural beauty resembling paradise) for a night, where they can swim, eat meat, and reveal their ages and professions.
Perhaps the show would feel less groundbreaking to me if I watched Bachelor in Paradise or Survivor, since it seems to blend elements of both. But I imagine that even if you are an ardent viewer of those mainstream reality franchises, the addition of Korean cultural elements on Single’s Inferno will be captivating. For example, the rationing of meat is a fascinating cultural peculiarity of the show! While on the desert island (“Inferno”), the contestants are provided with ingredients for mostly vegetarian meals. Contestants who win physical challenges are allowed to invite guests of their choosing for a meal of meat and iced Americanos! Can you imagine seeing contestants on a Bachelor franchise actually eat, let alone discuss the specific pleasures of meat? (And what is less un-American than rationing meat?)
But what is most fascinating to a North American viewer like myself is how RESERVED everyone is. No one is trying to “steal anyone for a second” like you see at a typical Bachelor cocktail party. Flirtation is so subtle that most American eyes will miss it completely. Everyone is constantly nervously smoothing their hair. What is described as “direct” might be a woman merely asking a man a question, or not covering her mouth when she answers. Everyone on this season is unquestionably gorgeous, and so who is perceived to be conventionally attractive to members of the opposite sex is also interesting. The most popular female contestant at the start of season 1 looks about 15 years old and is dressed for the desert island like Elle Woods arriving at Harvard, in tweed with a Chanel bag. One man enters with typical reality TV swagger, and the ladies all titter, saying he looks like he’s Korean-American, not a Korean. I can’t stop watching!! Stay tuned for more thoughts.
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Sexual differentiation doesn’t take place until about six weeks after conception.
