Cringey List: The Telepathy Tapes

An indie series that broke many records...but also broke my trust

You know that feeling when your worst moment is also your best moment? Psychologists study it. Parents recognize it. Athletes live by it.

How about a critic? What happens when we publish a piece that shines a light on a series…only to learn that it’s not exactly what it appears to be? And that giving it more air in these pages felt like I was contributing to the wrong side of history.

Well, I can tell you. First comes shame, the admission you were wrong. And then embarrassment, to recognize that you’ve been hoodwinked, swindled and manipulated into believing something is real.

Last January, I was compelled to start the year on a note of optimism. The end of 2024 was bleak by many standards…so I went looking for material that would allow my first post of 2025 that could offer a different tone. I found some independently created series that were all doing something novel and I wrote a spotlight piece called “Three Series That Demand Your Attention (And Shape This Industry For The Better.” Two of the series included here do just that, Phonograph and Happy Forgetting. Go find them and put them on your lists….they do just that.

The third series, Telepathy Tapes, had shot to the top of the charts in November, and when she went on Joe Rogan’s Christmas Day special to talk about the series, it took his habitual top spot for about a week, and then remained Top 10 in many countries, for months. The thing is (sigh), I didn’t do a strong background check on this series. I went in cold for a listen and for a hot minute, I was sucked into the tagline of the show:

“For decades, a very specific group of people have been claiming telepathy is happening in their homes and in their classrooms. And nobody has believed them. Nobody has listened to them. But on this podcast, we do.”

I was like: democracy is being dismantled and it feels like the is burning down (California actually was)…maybe it’s time to think about things a bit differently. In the parlance of influencers, I was ready for a new mindset.

The final stage is reckoning, when we face the shame, tackle it head on, apologize, and the respond to it. Here’s how I dealt with this moment, in print:

What I Got Wrong About The Telepathy Tapes

What made this the worst/best moment of the year

First best: my incredible community of readers. Not ten minutes after my original post went out, by phone began to light up. Those that have my phone texted me…some hit reply from the post, others dug up my email or DMed me. They all wanted me to know—quickly—that series was not what it suggests it is, for many reasons.

That fact alone made turned this from worst to best in one go. When you publish online, it’s not always clear who’s reading it…or how it hits. The fact that people took the time to reach out to me personally meant a lot. It helped soften the sting of the moment.

But now what do I do with the original piece? The temptation was to remove it and pretend it didn’t exist. But that’s not very honest…it doesn’t tell the whole story. When I realized that I had been radicalized by this podcast, I had an important lesson to share. So I put an editor’s post-script on the original piece, and got to work.

I did a lot of research…I dove real deep. I talked to a bunch of people, including parents of autistic children that I personally know. I listened and I watched. Slowly I crafted the retraction piece—which I spent more time writing than regular posts by a wide margin.

I was terribly nervous to post this piece. You know those naked dreams where you watch yourself walking naked in public? But what happened surprised me.

Second best: this retraction piece became my most read piece, by a wide margin. This post has been viewed well over 5,000 times. I’ve had 37 shares on it to date and have netted 29 new subscribers, and two paid subscribers, and only one person unsubscribed.

For a small, very niche, newsletter, these are big numbers. It was 30 per cent more than the original post, and a third more than my other best performing posts.

So why is this my Cringey List pic of the year?

Long after I wrote the piece, the show continued to chart. Their Instagram feed jubilantly announced they had funded both Season 2 and a feature documentary film…and then began to post videos on its story feed that were off. Dickens continued to paraded around her “stars” of the series, non-speaking autistic kids and families, who were now now getting a lot of attention. It was all…cringeworthy.

Then Telepathy Tapes was named Best Indie Series at the Webby Awards. It got a full spread in New York Magazine. Ashley Carmen wrote a piece in Bloomberg that intended to set off alarm bells about how even successful indie shows can’t turn a profit—a piece that I’m highly suspicious was fact-checked beyond her one source, the host of the show. As the year progressed, it landed Ky Dickens in some powerful, persuasive places, like a keynote at a Davos offshoot event called State of the World, 2025. It even showed up in one of the NYTimes end of year lists, 41 Things That Stuck With Us From 2025 (meant in the positive light).

With each new accolade, the realization that this show was not only fraudulent in many ways, but helping to perpetuate a dangerous myth made me feel more uncomfortable; in particular the claim that Facilitated Communication is a magical pill of communication (which was widely discredited in the 1990s).

The premise of Telepathy Tapes ia a MAHA-fueled construct that could have the effect of reducing the much-needed early interventions for science-backed therapies for young autistic children. Who needs to fund expensive therapies if they are actually communication via telepathy, from a magical realm? Sure, the attention might feel great for the hot minute that it’s there; but the after effects will remain much longer.

What makes me most uncomfortable about this is that something that purported to be support and ‘give voice’ to a population—a part of society that is chronically under-resourced, marginalized—is actually a cheap solution that first takes advantage of the families who support this claim, and then weaponizes it against them.

And yet, many parts of this industry, in particular the celebrity-fueld podcast-sphere, lapped up the attention this series got. Jay Shetty, Rich Roll, Elizabeth Gilbert….and a long parade of others that chimed in to support this ‘miracle’ indie podcast.

It’s not only cringey, it’s quite shameful. Please, if there is a podcast god out there, this will not be crowned during the first Podcast Golden Globes moment of 2026.

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