The first three episodes of The Telepathy Tapes present us with a strange case of cognitive dissonance. Host Ky Dickens, while exploring the hidden world of non-verbal autistic kids, discovers they have telepathic abilities. It sounds ridiculous. Bizarre. The stuff of science fiction — and yet, as Dickens and neuroscientist Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell conduct dozens of tests, she becomes ever more convinced that it’s true. If this research were to be widely accepted, she posits, rather than disbelieved and derided, then it could change everything.
But listening to these experiments, how over and over the kids guessed the random numbers, words, or pictures that had been generated correctly, learning in painstaking detail the ways in which they couldn’t have cheated, and how agonizingly Dickens arranged the experiment to make it scientifically viable… well, it’s all kind of dull.
If you want to actually watch the tapes, they are behind a paywall on her website (that paywall goes unmentioned throughout the podcast). But from what we hear at least, the tests sound pretty convincing.
So much so, that throughout these first episodes, it often seems that the reason for including such a panoply of identical sounding experiments is to overwhelm the doubters into submission. If she can get us to a place where we could not only believe the telepathy, we’re actually a little bored by it, then where can she take us next?
Well, before too long, she is arguing that non-speaking autistic children can see ghosts, predict the future, and even physically heal us. Yeah.
What’s so frustrating about The Telepathy Tapes is that buried under the increasing pile of woo-woo are real people, dealing with emotional turmoil, who have been treated poorly by medical establishments all over the world. A frequent bugbear amongst all the parents interviewed is that in educational settings, the people teaching their kids rarely “assume competence,” automatically conflating an uncooperative body with an uncooperative mind. When we hear from the non-verbal kids, usually via a technique known as “facilitated communication” (a hugely controversial method, as the show discusses), it often sounds like they’re experiencing their condition as a form of locked-in syndrome, living their lives in endless frustration that their minds are full and fascinating, but that they aren’t able to share them with anyone.
There’s plenty about The Telepathy Tapes that is hard to believe, but the struggles of non-speakers and their parents ring true. If the podcast had stayed there, really dug into that issue, then — even with the telepathy claims — it could have been a vital listen. But Dickens’ decision to take it further into the uncanny, talking to parents who believe that their children are angels from another realm sent to heal the world, overrides the more important points.
There’s a gnawing air of irresponsibility looming over the whole thing. A couple of people that Dickens interviews say that all non-verbal autistic children have these abilities. Every one of them. What would happen if everyone started believing that? Neurodivergent people are already used to being othered; wouldn’t things become far worse if the world started to believe they were literal beings from other realms? And what about the exhausted, lonely, overwhelmed parents who don’t understand why their kids aren’t showing signs of these supernatural gifts? How much harder would that make their lives? The claim “If you believe and trust in your child and their abilities, and enable them to spell [type via facilitated communication], you won’t be disappointed” is so mind-blowingly reckless, it’s infuriating.
Listening to The Telepathy Tapes, it appears as though Dickens has become so besotted with the wild ideas her interviewees are espousing, she hasn’t thought at all seriously about the ramifications. Despite that, she insists they are true. Almost even more vexing than the wildness of these claims is the vehemence with which Dickens proposes them. It’s like she’s been drinking the Kool-Aid for so long, she’s forgotten that not everyone else has.
Dickens pays lip service to doubters, but in practice that looks like little more than individuals saying “I was skeptical — now I’m convinced!” On the show itself, there are no real conflicting voices, no debate. Dickens only fleetingly seems to realize that the gravity of what she is proposing is so immense, even those who are inclined to believe might need some more hand-holding. Her reassurances boil down to “trust me.”
I did not. And the fact that enough people did to make The Telepathy Tapes the number one podcast in the US is troubling, to put it mildly. There’s a second season on the way, and it is genuinely difficult to imagine where on earth Dickens will take her dubious behemoth next.
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Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can find her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Paste, and her Letterboxd page.