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The Telepathy Tapes is a podcast by documentary director Ky Dickens. The podcast speculates that nonverbal autistic children have telepathic powers. Season 1 was released in 2024.

The podcast examines the premise that nonverbal autistic children communicate telepathically with people around them, through personal testimony, anecdotes and interviews with proponents of paranormal powers.

The Telepathy Tapes was directed by American documentary maker Ky Dickens. Why Dickens professes by the a "science nerd", her degrees are in communications, fine arts and sociology.

The podcast quickly gathered a very large audience during the Fall of 2024, briefly becoming the most popular podcast on some streaming services in the United States and the United Kingdom. As of January 2025, The telepathy Tapes had a 4.9 stars rating on Spotify with over 2,000 reviews.

Interviews with parents of autistic children constitute the core of most episodes, with people presented as experts and Dickens chiming in to speculate about paranormal powers. Listeners can hear sessions during which autistic children try to guess numbers and words their parent is thinking about, successes in these tests being presented as evidence of telepathy. Psychiatrist Diane Hennacy Powell is heavily featured, the podcasts' website indicating she has been researching the topic for a decade. The audience is invited to subscribe to the paywalled portion of the website to see the videos of the children trying to read minds and fund Powell's research activities.

Reception

While the show received an enthusiastic reception from a large number of listeners and has been promoted by Joe Rogan, it has been heavily criticized for its pseudoscientific premise and speculations.

The Times' podcast reviewer, James Marriott, found listening to the anguish of the parents featured on the podcast "heartbreaking", but takes Dickens to task for presenting a mockery of the scientific approach.

Aware that what she presents does not constitute scientific evidence, Dickens chides "close-minded" scientists for not thinking outside the box. Beyond telepathy, Dickens convinced herself over the course of producing the podcast that autistic children can also communicate with ghosts and that strange powers can be accessed through crystals

Episodes

References

1. ^ Marriott, James (2 January 2025). "The Telepathy Tapes review — this hit podcast has contempt for science". The Times. Retrieved 12 January 2025.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
2. ^ Cockerell, Claudia (3 January 2024). "What is The Telepathy Tapes? The controversial podcast which replaced Joe Rogan as number one". The Standard. Archived from the original on 5 January 2025. Retrieved 12 January 2025.
3. Sager, Monica (3 January 2025). "Podcast Claiming Autistic Children Are Telepathic Knocks Rogan off Top Spot". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 6 January 2025. Retrieved 12 January 2025.
4. ^ Roeloffs, Mary (3 January 2025). "Podcast About 'Telepathic' Autistic Children Briefly Knocks Joe Rogan Out Of No. 1 Spot". Forbes. Archived from the original on 5 January 2025. Retrieved 12 January 2025.
5. "Telepathy tests". The telepathy Tapes. Archived from the original on 25 December 2025. Retrieved 12 January 2025. {{cite web}}: |archive-date= / |archive-url= timestamp mismatch; 25 December 2024 suggested (help)