I wondered why Americans pay so much for dumb stuff. So I asked a $200-an-hour psychic.

Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI

I'm not sure whether I should feel guilty for not telling Jessica about the ulterior motives for my palm-reading visit. On the one hand, I probably should have said I was testing it out for a story. On the other hand, she's a psychic, so she should have intuited it.

She didn't, which meant that on a warm June afternoon I found myself seated across from her in a sweaty little basement space in lower Manhattan.