The number one podcast on Spotify lately has been The Telepathy Tapes by Ky Dickens. I heard about this by accident and thought it was odd that some kind of fantasy podcast was beating Joe Rogan. Actually, looking now, it seems that Rogan has retaken the top spot in the US but the Telepathy Tapes is still #1 in other places around the world. At some point I got curious. What the hell is the Telepathy Tapes?

Well, it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a documentarian who has made a 7-part podcast claiming that some non-verbal autistic people are actually telepathic. I listened to the first two episodes last night and while I won't say I'm a believer, the carefully produced and very well-written show certainly makes you wonder. 

The first two episodes introduce several characters who are key to the story. There's Ky Dickens the person narrating all of this. She meets up with Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, a retired medical doctor who has been trying to prove the telepathy and ESP are real for many years. There's also a cameraman who joins Dickens to film what is happening. He's described as a true skeptic, someone who doesn't believe in God or any religion and who is generally skeptical of everything.

In the first two episodes we're introduced to two children who are largely non-verbal but who learned to communicate later in life by typing on iPads. Dickens and Dr. Powell put them through a series of tests in which their mothers view a randomly generated 3-digit number or a word and the children, who can't see the number or word, type it out on their device. They do this over and over and seem to get it right every time. By the end of the 2nd episode, the skeptical cameraman is convinced what is happening is real and can't possibly have been faked because neither the children nor their mothers had any control over the tests or knew what was coming in advance.

Regular readers know I'm a big fan of science fiction. I've written quite a few posts about Star Wars over the years but I'm also a fan of SF books which I started reading in my early teens. There are some fairly famous ones that involve children and telepathy including The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham and Time for the Stars by Robert Heinlein (and many more). This is a pretty well-known trope in SF so it's very odd for me to hear this sort of thing presented as fact. It just feels like a science fiction story to me. It's something that's fun to think about but not something people can actually do.

And yet, it's a pretty striking presentation. There are associated videos of some of these tests with children which do seem to suggest it would be very difficult if not impossible to cheat. I mean, how many three digit numbers or 4-5 letter words could you guess in a row? The answer should be zero. So either the moms and kids have worked out some kind of incredible, non-verbal communication or...I can't even say it because it sounds crazy. But the thrust of the podcast is that these kids really can read minds.

I couldn't see the trick if there is one. Unless the podcaster is secretly making a documentary about human gullibility and cheated on every test on purpose, I don't see how anyone could do the things these kids do.

Given how popular this podcast is I expected to see a bunch of skeptical responses online, undermining the claims with evidence of fraud (what else could it be?). But there's really not much out there yet. I did find this post from McGill University's Office for Science and Society. It's titled "The Telepathy Tapes Prove We All Want to Believe."

When Powell introduces Dickens to allegedly gifted nonverbal autistic children, Dickens, to her credit, takes charge of testing their abilities “so it’s bulletproof.” She brings in multiple cameras and a cameraman who she says is “a huge skeptic, a materialist.” Her goal is to rule out any shenanigans, to the best of her ability, to see if these kids can indeed read minds. So far, I’m on board.

Thus begins a series of tests spanning multiple episodes, where Dickens generates words and numbers at random, shows them to the mother, and the child is able to spell them out by pointing at a board held by the mother...

Episode 1 of the podcast, for example, showcases Mia, who comes from a Hispanic family and whose telepathic gift is said to have 100% accuracy. One of the tests done has her mom opening a Spanish-language book that Dickens brought from home (to prevent cheating). The mom selects a page, says “Ooooh!” in excitement, and asks her daughter to name the character who is drawn on the page. The video clip posted to the website clearly shows the mom not only holding the letter board in front of Mia but holding Mia’s jaw as Mia points to the board. Mia does spell out “pirata,” Spanish for “pirate,” which is the correct answer, but the mother’s influence cannot be ruled out: move the head and the finger will follow. In a different test, Mia’s mother is touching Mia’s forehead during the spelling, where it would be easy to subtly press down whenever Mia’s finger hovers over the right number...

Akhil from episode 2 is a stronger case. He uses an iPad to type and the tablet is on the floor. But here again, the word he needs to type is shown to his mother who very noticeably in the video points with her index finger at the iPad keyboard and leans her body in different ways from letter to letter, thus feeding her son clues. (This kind of clueing is well known in facilitated communication and can take many forms.) We are only shown short clips on the site, so it’s impossible to confirm how many hits and misses there were in total.

The description of the interaction with Akhil doesn't match what is narrated in the podcast. Not only do we hear Akhil answering questions quickly in real time, some of his answers happen while he is seated in another room 15 feet away from his mother or looking at the floor. No one is touching him or holding his iPad when he answers. He does this completely on his own and some of the words he repeats are words I doubt most people even know. He also identifies what is in photos his mother is looking at.

Again, if he'd done this once out of ten tries you could call it chance but he seems able to do it accurately every time. And sorry but there's no way to accurately communicate letters and numbers through changes in posture. That claim is almost as incredible as telepathy. If Akhil and his mom can do that they should have a Vegas act. It feels like you're left with a choice between believing this is really happening or believing outright deception is involved. But if so how?

Anyway, I'm not a true believer and this seems too much like science fiction to me. It's a magic act except none of the people involved are magicians. They are non-verbal kids with severe autism and fairly normal moms who believe this is happening even if they can't explain it. Whatever is happening here seems literally incredible, meaning it's hard to credit. But it's surprisingly hard to discredit too, at least on first listen. 

If you're so inclined, you can listen for yourself. Episode 1 is here. Here's a promo for the show.