Is Telepathy Real, and Are Autistic Kids the Key To Unlocking It? A Debate.

I recently debated the authenticity of "The Telepathy Tapes," a recent hit podcast.

Photo by Alireza Attari on Unsplash

The Telepathy Tapes, a hit new podcast, has taken the nation by storm. Over Christmas, it was the most popular podcast in America.

Millions of Americans have by now no doubt listened to the series, which claims that telepathy, speaking to the dead, and the afterlife are all real — we just have to listen to nonverbal autistic children (kids who cannot reliably speak) in order to prove it.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter since last year, you probably read my pieces on the podcast, which included a lengthy interview with the main scientific expert it relies on.

In short, my argument is that the podcast is largely a rehash of old autism controversies. Decades ago, a technique called facilitated communication promised the parents and caregivers of nonverbal autistic children — who had long been diagnosed with severe cognitive impairments — that their kids were really no intellectually different than anyone else.

By holding onto the child’s shoulder, arm, or wrist, facilitators could help them communicate to the world through typing.

But over time, facilitated communication was exposed as a fraud. The facilitators were the ones subconsciously typing the messages, not the children. Taking the agency away from someone is bad enough, but there were also horrible scandals — facilitated communication was tied to sexual abuses and even murders.

The Telepathy Tapes is trying to put a second wind into the sails of facilitated communication and similar techniques that make nonverbal autistic children dependent on a facilitator to speak to the world. The twist this time is that the children can read the facilitator’s mind, and this means that telepathy and all manner of paranormal phenomena are real.

Well, maybe they are real, but this podcast doesn’t prove it. In fact, it promotes behaviors that could be harmful towards disabled children.

I made that case on an episode of The Argument, a new debate podcast. My opponent was Jeffrey Kripal, an academic who studies the paranormal and religion at Rice University. Kripal was a pleasure to speak to, but I hope that in the future Ky Dickens, the host of The Telepathy Tapes, will accept an offer to debate (she was not up for it this go round).

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