What I Got Wrong About The Telepathy Tapes

How the blockbuster indie podcast radicalized me, and why its pseudoscience claims that telepathy exists in nonspeaking autists could harm, not help, the people it aims to reach

This is a difficult post to write (and it’s a long one, warning). Last month I published a post that signalled the blockbuster hit The Telepathy Tapes was a positive example on the indie podcast horizon. I called it “worth it,” and an example of “how audio can emancipate an idea, and then build a community around that concept.” I did not, however, throw up a bucket of confetti. My critique included that it sounded like it was edited by an AI bot, that the production values were “choppy and disruptive,” and that all of these created the net effect that the information fed to the listener at a speed akin to “drinking from a firehose.” Here’s what I wasn’t critical of: the science that it shares as fact.

These comments were included in a post that also recommended two other independent series, both of which I fervently stand by: Happy Forgetting and Phonograph. Please, find those two indie series and subscribe to them.

Right after this post went out, my email and DMs began to light up. Before I published on January 23, 2025, only one critical article about the series had been published. It ran in a McGill University blog post by noted science communicator Jonathan Jarry. The colleague who forwarded the Jarry article also sent a link to an episode published the same day by, Conspirituality, a podcast that critically looks at where conspiracy theories, new-age cults and pseudoscience interact with spirituality. Since that date, there have been more critical reviews. There was a scathing review from The Guardian, Lauren Passell published an apology for suggesting it to readers, meanwhile, The Times said The Telepathy Tapes has contempt for science. There’s also a deep Reddit thread to explore, an autism blog, and some great show notes from the Conspirituality podcast.

I have since edited my post, which means the URL version is different; but as one reader reminded me recently, the original version still lives in the inboxes it was delivered to.

If you’re not one of the many millions of people who have listened to The Telepathy Tapes, here’s a brief synopsis of Season 1. Host and creator Ky Dickens discovered a trove of video evidence of experiments that Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, described on the show as a neuropsychiatrist and medical practitioner, conducted with nonspeaking autistic people who seemed able to communicate thoughts and ideas via telepathy. These experiments are conducted with facilitated communication (FC), where a ‘facilitator’ aids the nonspeaking person in typing out words on an iPad-type-of device.

Dickens is so taken by this conceit that she remounts some of Powell’s studies, and then finds new participants to film her own evidence of these tests (she is a documentary filmmaker by trade). Dickens corroborates the validity of these tests with various people, including a psychologist who conducts EEGs of the participants. The Telepathy Tapes shares her journey towards discovering, believing, and then reenacting these experiments. The podcast aims to make the public believe telepathy is possible and that nonspeaking autists are often savants and lightworkers (and that facilitated communication is the way to understand and unlock this brilliance). But to fully understand and believe her results, Dickens also urges the audience should reconsider both Materialism and Consciousness from a new perspective.

Three main issues arise with the critical voices regarding this series

1. The Legit Argument, meaning the legitimacy of Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, whose life work is the foundation for the ‘experiments’ in this series that ‘prove’ telepathy exists in this selection of nonspeaking autistic people.

2. The Credibility Argument of facilitated communication (FC), the method of communication the nonspeaking autists, or “spellers,” use to communicate via an iPad (or some such device). This is always done with the help of a ‘communication partner,’ the facilitator (who in this series, is most often the mother).

3. A Potentially Dangerous Construct this podcast inserts inside a marginalized and susceptible audience. Dickens paints telepathy, and her experiments, alongside the work of Dr. Powell, as incontestable science. She froths up this concept and then shames her audience into believing an entire re-branding of both Materialism and Consciousness (which is to say, about the last 200-300 years of science discourse).

1 - The Legit Argument

This is less interesting to me. Sure, the legitimacy of Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, whose research forms the central thesis of the series, should be questioned. She had a medical license, she lost that license, and then it was reinstated. Dickens glosses over the details, and then she falsifies why her medical license was reinstated because it suited her argument—that Dr. Powell had been persecuted for researching telepathy (Dr. Powell herself clarifies this fact and says that Dickens got it wrong). For now, Dr Powell seems to have retired, both because of her age and stage, and also because she felt “compelled to retire because [she] did not want to be practicing when The Telepathy Tapes came out.”) Her words.

The institution of academia has been grappling with where to draw the line between science and pseudoscience since recorded time. If one wades into these waters, they should expect a rough ride. Do we need to invoke Galileo again to prove this point? It’s not that these scientists aren’t brilliant in their fields, or that they have created or published both seminal and controversial works…that much is expected. The pipeline from Fabulist to Scientist is best seen by looking at the life and work of the MacArthur-winning magician-turned-pseudoscience sleuth The Amazing Randi.

A continued focus on whether she is credible, or not, retired or lapsed, quack or genius, steals the focus from more pressing issues.

2 - The Credibility Argument of Facilitated Communication (FC)

This is both complex and troubling. Unless you’re deeply read in on the educational challenges and therapeutic modalities in the autistic community, you could not only miss this, but you could become one of the millions—like me—who completely misjudge its relevance, and thus its danger.

Facilitated Communication (FC), also sometimes called Rapid Prompting Method (RPM), Spelling to Communicate (S2C) or supportive typing. All are methods whereby nonspeaking (and sometimes completely nonverbal) autistic people supposedly learn to communicate via an iPad-type device. The basis of The Telepathy Tapes is a series of tests that are conducted where the facilitator is secretly shown a word, or a complex math equation, without the ‘speller’ being able to see it. Yet, without prompting, the ‘speller’ can type out the correct answer.

This comes to a wild conclusion in Episode 10, where the ‘spellers’ answered a call from Dickens for ‘what this series means to them.’ The “powerful and transformative” responses, which are purportedly written by nonspeaking children, were read aloud by their FC partners and shared with podcast listeners. Their messages talk about wanting to be seen for their brilliance, to be visible to the world, as well as a call for better support systems, like shiatsu and more respite workers. As Matthew Remski reminds us in this Conpsirituality episode, these concerns seemed to be more illustrative of the concerns of the parents of the autistic children, and less concerns of the teenagers themselves.

What’s the deal with FC?

I will spare you most of the details I discovered down this long and dark rabbit hole. For those who are curious to delve more into the controversy around FC, here’s a short list of resources:

• It originated in the 1970s in Australia, gained wider attention in the 1980s when a Syracuse University Sociologist Professor brought it to the US, but had been largely discredited by the scientific community by the 1990s.

• The disturbing Wheaton case, where Janyce Boynton admitted that she was ‘spelling out’ her sexual assault trauma, not that of Betsy, her former client, the severely autistic nonspeaking child, which led to the father being accused of sexual assault (before the charges were dropped).

• Detractors feel that FC can turn the clock back on language development in the autistic communities it's trying to help; others claim it can remove the voice it’s trying to protect.

• Linguist Katherine Beals, who specializes in language and literacy acquisition in autism, questions how FC can even be taught to nonspeaking autistic children, given their physical and psychological challenges (maintaining eye contact being just one, because lipreading and watching social cues are part of language acquisition).

• Facilitated communication has not been condoned by any peer-reviewed science journal

There’s a key detail about FC that Dickens hides in plain sight

The facilitator is always present, most often physically touching the child, while the act of communicating, or typing, is taking place. This is one of the key arguments against FC…that it’s not the child communicating their thoughts, but rather the facilitator subtly cueing the child to instruct them on how to respond.

To get ahead of this detail, Dickens uses an emotional anecdote. She likens FC to learning how to ride a bike: first a hold, then a hand, and then just an occasional push. But she doesn’t complete the analogy…no one claims to ride a bicycle independently with dad still holding the seat.

When you hear this emotional thought, you’re more likely to miss the key detail in Episode 2, when she describes the connection between the facilitator Mia and her daughter:

“And slowly, her mom started putting less pressure on Mia, moving her hand up to Mia's elbow and then to her shoulder, then to her upper back and eventually up to her neck.

And now she barely touches Mia with a single fingertip on her forehead.

When I met Mia's family in person, none of this felt suspect to me. And if I'm being honest, it still doesn't.”

I missed this detail the first time I listened. I was still caught in my own emotional reverie of both learning to ride a bike with my late father, and then teaching my now-grown son to ride a bike. This was the exact moment I was “pilled” by this series (as Remski refers to the affect in Ep 241 of Conspirituality).

It was when I stopped thinking and started believing.

Now that I’ve read a dozen articles and studies about FC, I see this detail in the story: “And now she barely touches Mia with a single fingertip on her forehead.”

Does it matter that Mia touches her daughter while she types? Is it relevant? Does this dictate, or sway, the answer?

I dunno. Does Houdini escape the straightjacket, or walk through the brick wall? Did the Illusionist actually saw the woman’s body in half? The work here seems to fall into a very similar category; it’s part illusion and part belief.

Dickens repeats that anyone can see for themselves on her website, where she has archived the documentary evidence of these experiments. However, to view this evidence, you must join her ‘Membership,’ for just $10.

The disclaimer on the membership site claims reads:

“Protecting the privacy of non-speakers and their families is our top priority. Paid access ensures their images aren’t freely shared online and helps us maintain a record of who views the tests, adding an extra layer of security.”

However, she is also making a film. I would also imagine that she aims to distribute this film by any means possible (including the Internet) once it’s completed. No doubt it will include some of her filmed “proof,” which makes this requirement to pay for access seem both predatory and disingenuous.

What I see most clearly is evidence of a successful business model. Week by week, I watched the Spotfund climb closer to her stated goal of raising $450,000 towards a feature film. It reached $170,000 before the Donate button was buried on the website. The Feature Film Team was announced, and Season Two is underway—so job done, I guess.

Although FC and other similar techniques are still in use today, it has moved from one backed by science and education in the 1980s, to being entirely discredited in the 1990s, to now, thirty years later, where it exists with the help of a ‘Wellness’ vibe, with its latest—and most successful—Influencer, Ky Dickens, at the centre.

3 - A Potentially Dangerous Construct…And What Joe Rogan Has To Do With It

The Telepathy Tapes was independently launched in September, 2024. If there ever was a series designed to do well on Twitter/X, this was it. Based on the supportive tweets referenced, by November, the series was getting noticed by a few different YouTube UFO enthusiasts , a personal finance influencer, and a random assortment of ‘psi’ folks, each with sizeable followings.

By December 23, 2024, Dickens reported on X that her series had reached Number 1 Series and Number 2 show on the Apple charts. Two days later, dressed in elf costumes, Joe Rogan briefly discussed The Telepathy Tapes with comedian Duncan Trussell on his December 25, 2024 episode. From there the series went nuclear. Dickens recently went back on the show and spent two and a half hours talking to Rogan about the “miracles” of FC communication, and how the community has had to face “a big cover-up.”

Two months since the original highlight of The Telepathy Tapes, it’s still charting. Publicly available services are Spotify and Apple charts, broken down by country, and then the Riverside chart which also considers the YouTube charts; when I toggled around with different countries for Spotify this week, the results varied. North America has it top 20; today Denmark has it at 50; New Zealand and Australia top 10, UK at 25. Her appearance on the show seems to have produced a bump in recent ratings.

Yes, it was absent from many lists (India, France, Mexico, Germany and others). But after a non-exhaustive analysis, it’s fair to say that in North America and many English-language countries, The Telepathy Tapes still doing much better than many brand name shows.

What did Joe Rogan say about The Telepathy Tapes in December?

The fullsome answer is, not much.

Just before the six-minute mark, after provoking that there was a “war on Christmas,” raging against Kamala Harris, talking about aliens and Seth Speaks, Rogan responds with:

“Here's the thing about all this. I think some telepathy is real. It is real. I think it is real. Have you listened to The Telepathy Tapes?”

Trussell had not, so Rogan offers a rundown of the series: It’s about “scientific research” was used to observe ‘nonverbal’ autistic kids and parents…” The kid was accurate 95% of the time,” he says.

[Seth Rogan 00:06:51]: But it's really fascinating, man, because it's a dismissed thing. It's a woo-woo thing. But if it's real, shouldn't scientists study it like it's real? It seems like through scientific study, it's real.

I think it's an emerging part of human consciousness that we don't agree to or we don't admit to.

And there it was. In less than two minutes of airtime, the science of the show is validated, and the fate of The Telepathy Tapes was sealed.

The creator, Ky Dickens, was not featured. There were no questions for her and certainly no critical analysis. Rogan himself admitted he was only on Episode Two at the time the show was taped.

On January 3, 2025, Forbes ran a Breaking story that Rogan had been unseated from his habitual number-one spot. On January 30, 2025, Variety reported that Ky Dickens had been signed by United Talent Agency.

I Was Radicalized By This Podcast

It’s not an easy phrase to write. I was not keen to admit to this…but I’m choosing to do so publicly because I feel it’s that important. I was bamboozled by this series and I failed to see it through an appropriately critical lens. Before I was shaken awake, this series made me believe things that I knew very little about.

Bingeworthy focuses on the art and the craft of narrative storytelling. I don’t usually zero in on fact-checking and peer-reviewed critiques; but after the facts of this series became apparent to me, I realized that I should do some more of this going forward…especially when it comes to scientific claims and a rallying call to reimagine all of “consciousness.”

It seems relevant to also mention that I believe in science, in public education, in vaccine-supported healthcare. I live in a country where I pay income tax to support these institutions (Canada).

So how did this happen?

This is where the third and critical issue with this series lies; and also where the potential danger lives. It’s also why I’ve spent weeks writing and researching this response, a rebuttal to my own analysis.

Bottom line is this: I got it wrong because I wanted to believe it was true. Yes, I wanted to believe nonspeaking autistic children have a hidden brilliance. Sure, I was ready to consider that some non-speaking folks might have savant skills locked inside. Why not believe there was a mid-wife-type-of-person who could help them share their brilliance with the world?

Why was I so willing to believe this? It was January when I began to listen. The world was quickly changing around me. The news is a hellscape of horrors. Subconsciously, I needed a series that could both lift me up, and throw my head down in a pile of sand. Perhaps this emerging new world order primed me to believe the unbelievable. I am not alone in feeling this, which is equally concerning, and could explain the metoric rise of this series.

Is it worse that I’m not even the target audience for this series? I am not the mother of a nonspeaking neurodivergent child who is willing to drop everything and run towards the light, towards a magical phenomenon, where I discover that my child not only can communicate, but is also prolific, gifted, and prosaic. What a bloody relief that would be were it the case. Instead, I became an enabler for these ideas.

I have two old friends who are the mothers of autistic children and they are the hardest-working people I know. The idea that this podcast could enlighten their child’s gifts and undue years of frustrating, isolating, and exhausting work of parenting a nonspeaking child sounds like a gift that’s too good to be true…because it is. I also ignored the red flag that when I texted both of them about The Telepathy Tapes, neither had heard of it. One of these women is deeply involved in the lobbying efforts to get better resources and support for the autistic community in Ontario.

Hope and belief have been weaponized by this series, and Dickens uses science and members of the medical community to attempt to legitimize these claims of telepathy. In the end, Dickens has become an Illusionist, who crafts arguments to create buy-in, at scale.

The first time, I joined along for the wild ride. But on my second much closer examination, the series felt coercive, manipulative, and controlling. After committing many hours to secondary research on the topics she raises, I can also attest that her work seriously lacks journalistic merit.

Her version of a ‘critic,’ is Jeff Tarrant, who has a PhD in psychology (and does the EEG readings for her experiments in this series). Tarrant is the author of Becoming Psychic and his ResearchGate profile indicates that he has a small number of academic titles, mostly around what VR, AR, or yoga do to improve mood, as recorded by their EEG states….no mention of autism or neurodivergence expertise, which seems very relevant to interpreting these EEG results. His website indicates he runs an online Neuromeditation Institute.

Tarrant is called on to be the expert witness to validate the work of Dr. Powell. Dickens puts it blankly to Tarrant Episode 4:

“Is there any way that this was all just an overproduced magic show?”

And concludes: “There was no way that any of this could have been contrived.”

Case closed. That’s her proof.

This is shallow and I should have spotted it the first time. But I think what was also going on is that I was circling a shame hole that she created to make me revisit my previously held beliefs about science and consciousness.

How did she do this? First, she uses big words: Materialism, for one, which at first listen I took to mean all of the physical, material things around me. But with some additional research, I learned there’s another word for this: evidence-based science. There’s the bedrock of physics with its laws of motion and gravity. And then we move upwards through chemistry, and biology and finally up to the top realm, the wider sphere, until we get to her second big word: Consciousness, which she talks about with a Pollyanna-like tone, suggesting that we both don’t fully understand it, and yet we are trapped by it.

Both of these statements can be true on any given day. And then I read the news of mass layoffs by email, threats of tariffs, the 51st State conjecture, a Gaza real estate grab, Correleone-style deal with Ukraine, a failed peace deal. Agreed! Our consciousness is limited! And yes, I feel trapped.

Without realizing it, my brain had gone into hyperbolic mode. It was susceptible to new ideas and persuasion, even when I didn’t knowingly consent to these ideas.

When I listen to the series a second time, I feel shocked and horrified that I didn’t hear some of the obvious red flags the first time I listened. There are many, but I’ll give you an example. In Episode 3, Dickens talks about a new family she has been introduced to, near Atlanta, Georgia, and after a Zoom meeting decides it’s worth the trip to do her telepathy experiments.

But then she moves the needle further. She plans to take Tarrant with her but now she wants hyperscanners—Red Rlag 1 —suddenly Dickens wanted to consider it was more than “just” telepathy in her experiments, because—Red Flag 2—she wants to investigate “a merging of consciousness,” between facilitator and child.

This should have indicated an offramp toward pseudoscience; there’s always a bigger, more pressing, more complex problem beyond the one you’re still grappling with. So when she begins to throw around terms like “materialism,” and then, “a merging of consciousness,” it becomes a purpose-built solution for people that I’ll call the Willing-To-Believe.

The Telepathy Tapes is a great story, but it’s not science

To build a movement, you need a problem, a means to solve that problem, a renewable resource—a way to expand your empire—which the neurodivergent community offers in spades. Dickens offers an adversary (establishment science) to believe in and an underdog to follow (Dr. Powell and the FC movement broadly…after they donate to her film, that is).

This is also the playbook of the MAHA movement: pull people in by belief, instead of science; make them feel validated and cured; sell them the thing that will cure the problem. And then…wrap them into a community of believers, where everyone thinks and feels the same way you do, which allows for infinite growth.

In Dickens’ space, much like MAHA, distrust in science and medicine is essential. When Dickens says “You and I are both products of the materialist paradigm that has influenced skeptical scientific thinking for decades,” she wants you to wonder if you’ve been influenced by science or skeptical science, and then to look for the root of your disbelief.

And if you feel unsure in that moment—and I was—you will be more willing to believe her version of the story. This is exactly the crosswalk where Dickens wants to find her listeners.

When Dickens tells you: “We assume that the world is made out of matter and energy, and that’s the end of the story,” she concludes that phenomena like telepathy explain that: “The materialist view of the mind is wrong.”

She decides for you.

When someone comes across a series like this, which works to convince you of something new, it’s hard not to let your desires get in the way of reality. As Jarry said, “If I drip-feed this magical thinking over the course of seven hours and build it up anecdote by anecdote, you might just start believing in it.” Why? Because many people want to believe these new ‘truths.’ And then those with nonspeaking autistic children need to believe it’s true.

This is both the promise and the challenge of building a persuasive podcast series. Yes, it can yield great things…but there’s a responsibility that comes with that. As her career explodes on this event horizon, Dickens falls short of keeping listeners safe, and leverages this belief into a business model that benefits her, and her podcast community.

Increasingly we live in a world of disinformation…and as I watched happen in The Telepathy Tapes, these worlds of fringe ideas are starting to blur into mainstream at increasing velocity. History is being rewritten in soundbites. Science is being redefined through policy. The role of being critical, and being a critic, has never been more important; but it’s not a job that’s getting easier with time. There’s no AI plugin that’s smart enough to do this.

And hey, if you want to believe it’s real, that telepathy exists, have at it. Just don’t call it science. And please don’t tell me the way I conceptualize science and contemplate all of consciousness is wrong until I believe telepathy to be true. Because I might briefly believe you…and then I will have to do a lot of research and reflection to undo this new truth that you have force-fed to me. I’d rather hold my own spoon.

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