What Are the Telepathy Tapes? | Psychic Kids, Hidden Science & Spiritual Truths Exposed

What if the mind-reading abilities we see in movies are actually real—and have been hiding in plain sight?

In this video, we explore The Telepathy Tapes, the viral podcast that challenges our understanding of consciousness, autism, and psychic communication.

We dive into the core claims of the podcast: that non-speaking autistics may possess full cognitive awareness and astonishing telepathic abilities—backed by first-hand accounts and compelling tests. 

You’ll also hear about the controversial criticisms, including the use of facilitated communication and the podcast’s paywall. Are these people gifted... or being exploited? Let’s unpack the nuance.

If you’re exploring psychic development, spiritual awakening, or the evolution of consciousness, you’re in the right place. 

Leave a comment below 👇 because this conversation is just beginning.

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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:40 Overview of the Telepathy Tapes
04:11 Exploring the Claims
11:37 Criticisms and Controversies
25:34 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

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Hey, I’m Ian Vogel—host of Alternate Timelines. My journey started on a small farm in the midwest, where I always felt a little out of place. After years of skepticism and even a stint as an atheist, a near-death experience changed my perspective on everything. Since then, I’ve explored plant medicine, past life memories, and the mysteries of consciousness. Now, I’m sharing those experiences to help others navigate their own awakening. Through real stories, deep conversations, and wild explorations of the unknown, we’re building a community where it’s okay to question reality. You’re not alone in the unknown. 👽✨

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:40 Overview of the Telepathy Tapes
• 4:11 Exploring the Claims
• 11:37 Criticisms and Controversies
• 25:34 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Transcript

Camera: 0:00

Telepathy Tapes podcast has been a cultural phenomenon and went absolutely viral, getting tens of millions of views and going to the top of the podcast charts, which is no small feat. And although there has been an immense amount of public support around this podcast, there's also been quite a bit of controversy. There is a lot to dig into here. This podcast has the potential to completely change our current scientific paradigm and how we think about consciousness and the nature of reality. If you know me, then you know, I love to tackle these big questions and have these big conversations. So let's get into it What's up? I'm Ian with alternate Timelines. Today we're gonna talk about exactly what the telepathy tapes are. We're gonna discuss some of the claims that are made in that podcast series. We're gonna talk about some criticisms of the podcast and really take an overall view and look at what the potential ramifications are if these claims are true. I'm gonna break this down and look at it from different angles because this is a very complex and nuanced conversation. I know many people out there have already listened to the telepathy tapes, so if you're one of those people and have an opinion on it or have thoughts around it, please leave a comment below. This really is a conversation and I'd love to hear your thoughts around this topic. This video is gonna be part breakdown and part reaction. If you like this content, please consider liking and subscribing. Every little bit helps, and it goes a long way in supporting the channel. I suppose it's appropriate to start this with a spoiler alert because I am going to be talking about different situations and themes that come up throughout the podcast. That being said, the podcast series itself is 10 episodes that are each about an hour long. Looking at about 10 hours of content, my 15 or 20 minute breakdown of it is gonna leave out a lot of really important details, one aspect of this podcast that has touched many people who have listened to it, including myself, is the fact that they tell so many stories, and these stories are very personal regarding the people who are going through the situation. So I can't emphasize enough that if you really wanna understand this for yourself, you have to listen to the entire podcast series. That's really gonna be the only way to grasp the magnitude of this podcast and the larger conversation that revolves around it. You don't have to take my word for it, and I highly suggest everyone make their own determination based on what they hear. In a nutshell, over the course of this podcast series, we're introduced to several non-speaking autistics and their families, and we also get to see how they demonstrate certain telepathic skills and even beyond that, more spiritual abilities. While, I do my very best to have a grounded and neutral perspective, I have to acknowledge my own bias. As you've seen from the videos on my channel, I describe my own telepathic communication with nonphysical beings and entities. This is something that's been a part of my lived experience. In addition to that, I facilitated hundreds of psychedelic ceremonies where it became abundantly clear to me beyond my own experience that the people that were around me and the people who were participating were also having shared experiences and telepathic communication. For me, the telepathy tapes is a confirmation of things that I already knew, understand, and have experienced myself. That being said, I do wanna emphasize again how important it is for us to use our own discernment, especially in situations where we're talking about potentially vulnerable populations of people, like the non-speaking autistics that are highlighted in the telepathy tapes. I think our major opportunity and challenge in this is highlighting these people's stories that they came forth to share and not do it in a way that's exploiting them or taking advantage of somebody who's in a situation where they maybe can't communicate their needs as easily as the people around them. First and foremost, my intention is to be respectful of those people. So when we really get into it and dig a little deeper, asking the question, what is the telepathy tapes? Well, again, it's a documentary style podcast made by Ky Dickens. I'm not gonna get too much into this part'cause you learn this pretty much right away in the podcast. Ky Dickens meets Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell, who is a Johns Hopkins trained psychiatrist, that's where it all begins. Dr. Hennessy Powell introduces Ky Dickens to many of the people that she's interacted with and people that have reached out to her for help in understanding what's going on with their non-speaking autistic children because they're displaying different abilities and attributes that they simply cannot explain. From there, we follow Ky Dickens on this journey through meeting multiple families, doing interviews and doing tests on these different people that demonstrate their telepathic abilities. One of the main claims made by this podcast series is that nonverbal or minimally verbal autistics, who are often thought of as having diminished mental capacity, actually have a full mental capacity just like you or I, or anybody who can communicate in a way that's not hindered. Essentially an autistic person who may appear to be disabled on the outside, actually lives on the inside and has a full and very rich life. The issue is that those people don't have a way to communicate because in one way or another, their minds are not attached to their bodies and they can't control their bodies to the point where they can either verbalize language or write or anything like that. There is a disconnect there, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there's not someone inside. There are several non-verbal autistics who are interviewed during this podcast who don't learn to communicate until they're in their twenties or late teens, which is kind of mind boggling to think about. There was somebody in there all along that had no way to communicate with the outside world. And that leads to another claim that's made by the telepathy tapes. And that is the way that our current society treats non-speaking autistics is a violation of their human rights. Often we do not assume competence with these people, and they're not given the tools or even an opportunity to learn the skills that they would need to learn to be able to communicate with the outside world. From an early age, these autistics are labeled as disabled and thrust into an educational system that is not made for them, and essentially robs them of their opportunity to get an education. Over the course of this podcast, it becomes abundantly clear that these school systems are resisting and they do not want to acknowledge something that is being demonstrated by these families. The fact that their children are competent and they deserve an education. The podcast does an excellent job of demonstrating why this is, why people aren't able to get funding to do research around this and where the resistance is coming from within the system. It's really heartbreaking to think about, especially from the perspective of a parent, knowing that your kid has gone through years of just having to endure nonsense and be stuck in a system that does not serve their gifts and their brilliance that's hidden inside. I don't know how you can look at the situation, look at the evidence that's provided, and not consider this some sort of abuse or an actual human rights violation. This is a really important point and a big question. I'd love to hear your feedback and hear your thoughts around this. Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Another point that's made by this podcast is that as these nonverbal autistics learn the skills and begin to communicate with the people around them, it becomes abundantly clear that they have telepathic abilities. They can read minds and communicate with each other without words. this has demonstrated multiple times throughout the course of the podcast series. Not only that, they bring to light the fact that educators and people in this field have known about this for decades. This is not a new phenomenon. This is something that's been happening and going on different countries all around the world for a long time. But these people have been silenced and it's just not safe for them to speak about their experiences because they could lose their jobs. We're talking about hundreds, if not thousands of people and families around the world who are experiencing this on a day-to-day basis. these telepathic abilities have been and are being demonstrated over and over and over again in different contexts. I know there's some criticism about how this data is being gathered. I totally get that and I will address that a little bit later. So stick with me. now here's where things get really interesting, because in addition to their telepathic abilities, the podcast also claims that many of these individuals have spiritual gifts, including being able to communicate with ghosts and non-physical beings, the ability to tap into information that they should have no way of knowing, and even the ability to sometimes predict the future. Now I know that that may seem really far out there and like a huge leap. I totally get that. And there are some things that come up throughout the podcast that are just not explainable. For example, children who know multiple languages who have never been exposed to them. These are non-verbal, non-speaking autistic kids. Sure, there may be some sort of logical explanation to explain some of these things, but when you would try to apply some of those explanations to the real example and the real life of these people, like the little girl from Mexico who knows Portuguese and has never been exposed to it. It's like it, it just seems silly, like the logic, it just doesn't match up. The logic is illogical. Throughout the podcast, there are multiple situations that come up that you just can't logic your way out of. Before we get to the criticisms, there is one more claim that's made by the telepathy tapes, and that is that the majority of these people who have these telepathic abilities, they meet up in a place, a spiritual, non-physical space, and communicate and have their own community. In the podcast, this place is known as The Hill, and it's described as a almost like a chat room where anybody can go and interact with anybody who's there. This reminds me of that scene in Ace Ventura two where his guru's floating up in the clouds and he learns how to astro project, and he finds'em up there and they have their conversation and then he, he comes back down. Like that is a example of essentially what these people are talking about and the kind of situation and the kind of experience they're having that is a very rough approximation. There's no crazy Jim Carrey hairdo or monkeys in that space. I would imagine. And what I covered there is a lot. This podcast makes some big claims and challenges, some really deeply established paradigms in our culture and in our society. Understandably so there has been a fair amount of criticism and critiques of this podcast, so let's explore that and see what's there. The main criticism comes in the different methods that are used to help these nonverbal autistics communicate. Some of them require assistance from somebody touching the person so that they can then know where their body is in space, and it's kind of like a support for them to be able to communicate on their own. And I guess that itself is the criticism that they're not actually communicating on their own if somebody is helping them or potentially guiding their hand when they spell and type out the words that they're trying to communicate. Specifically, when somebody is there helping to support the non-speaker with physical touch, that is called facilitated communication. Facilitated communication, has developed a not so great reputation, mostly because there have been several occurrences and well-documented court cases where the person who is helping the non-speaker was actually speaking for them and translating messages that were not true. This led to accusations of abuse that never happened, which tore families apart, created big court cases, and really put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth when it came to thinking about facilitated communication. So I totally understand people's weariness about using facilitated communication. There is an opportunity for manipulation in that process. The thing is, the majority of the people that are in the telepathy tapes and demonstrate these telepathic abilities, do it in instances where they're not being touched by anybody. Sure. You can question the validity and accuracy of facilitated communication when the child is being touched, but when they're not being touched, that's something different than facilitated communication. A lot of the criticisms that I see and hear around the telepathy tapes seem to be, when people try to oversimplify the situation, they hear the word facilitated communication. They look it up on Wikipedia and say, oh, this is debunked. I think it's really important to ask questions and to be critical, but in the majority of the debunking videos that I've watched, people are just overly simplifying a very complex and nuanced situation. If you label everything that happens in the telepathy tapes as facilitated communication, you're misrepresenting what's actually happening in a majority of the cases, and you're just throwing the baby out with the bath water. To me that comes across as being intellectually lazy in most circumstances. And in watching several of these videos, it became abundantly clear that the people who were saying, oh, this is debunked because of facilitated communication, didn't actually watch the telepathy tapes because what they were describing was not actually what was happening and what demonstrated in the podcast. When we make the distinction between facilitated communication that requires touch and what is demonstrated in the telepathy tapes, then that argument and that criticism just falls apart, it doesn't make any sense. Another criticism is that this podcast is exploiting vulnerable children. And I suppose if you look at it through the lens of this is all facilitated communication and we can't trust any of the pieces of communication that come from these children, then I suppose that kind of makes sense. But if you assume competence, especially in the kids who aren't being touched and are communicating on their own, and they're saying that it's important for them to get the story out and for them to talk about their experience, then where does that leave us? Many of these people communicate that even though they can't speak, it's important for them to get their story out because there are other people who could benefit from it. Yes. We live in a world with immoral people who do immoral things. Look no further than the facilitated communication examples of people who are lying and making up stories and tearing families apart. That is terrible. And what are we gonna do? Not let these people speak? Are we gonna treat them like they are not competent and that their stories aren't important? Like what is the best way to remedy the situation? I think it is to shine a light, give more resources to people who are doing this work, have oversight and communities built around these sorts of very gifted children so that there are monitors and people who can observe what's going on to try to minimize that. I don't think we can ever fully 100% eradicate immoral behavior and immoral people. We just need to be more aware of it and watch for situations where that might occur. Another criticism is the lack of peer reviewed research and scientific credibility. Now, if you listen to the podcast, they address these at great depth, so I'm not gonna get into it too much here. Our current scientific industrial complex is simply not set up to support research in fields and in areas that can't be profited from such as telepathy. Even though there is credible research, peer reviewed research, particularly by Rupert Shedrick in the area of animal telepathy, this has been a well documented and is understood to be a real phenomenon. And it's accepted by many people. But if a researcher tries to make that leap from animals to people and validate this experience in humans, then they risk damage to the reputation and loss of funding. So yeah, in a lot of ways there is a lack of peer reviewed research and scientific credibility, and that is by design. People love to point out that the majority of the data used in the telepathy tapes was not collected via doubleblind placebo controlled experiments. And that just drives me crazy because a doubleblind placebo controlled experiment is not appropriate for every setting. Anecdotal, evidence is evidence, and yes, we need to be discerning about the quality of that anecdotal evidence, but we shouldn't just negate it. There's so much credible and valuable research that's done every year that doesn't rely on double-blind placebo controlled experiments to gather the data. Using a double blind to gather data does not immediately validate that data. And scientific research is only as good as the people who are doing that research and analyzing the data. I went to college from microbiology and chemistry and spent two and a half years as of research assistant. I was deeply embedded in the scientific method and it is an incredible way to gather data and learn more about the world around us. But it's not the end all be all. And when it comes to double-blind placebo controlled experiments being the gold standard. Consider this as of 2024, there had been an average of 1,284 drugs were called every year by the FDA since 2012. Nearly one third of the drugs approved by the FDA in that timeframe were ultimately recalled due to excessive adverse events or lack of efficacy. is well over a thousand drugs every year that get recalled that have been through an FDA process that require that each of those drugs have double-blind placebo controlled experiments to prove their efficacy. I promise you, collecting data using that specific experimental format is not appropriate in every case. And again, the data is only as good as the people who are analyzing it. The last major criticism of this podcast is the fact that they took the video footage, put it on a website and put it behind a paywall. So if you wanna see the experiments for yourself, you have to pay, I think,$10 to see the footage This podcast ran for months and had millions of views with no commercials yet. Some people wanna say that the fact that they're trying to make a little bit of money by giving people an extra perk on their website, they pay 10 bucks, they can watch the footage themselves. That somehow that is an example of the filmmakers being greedy. To me, this doesn't seem shady or manipulative or exploitative whatsoever. As a content creator myself, I totally get the idea of wanting to get paid or have some sort of energetic exchange for the work that we do. When I look at all the claims made by the telepathy tapes and the criticisms, a couple of things stand out to me. The first is that, yeah, some of this stuff could have been faked. It is possible. There are logical explanations and ways that people can potentially game the system and make it appear like there is a communication or something happening that's not actually happening. Yes, that is conceivably possible and if you are making that claim, you're also implying that the people who were observed and documented in this podcast, that they were intentionally trying to deceive the people who were filming them. And based on everything that I consumed and watching the podcast series or listening to it twice, I just don't believe that that's true. These are real people with real lives that are challenging enough as it is trying to deal with nonverbal autistic children. And you're telling me that they're gonna take the time to teach their kids more as code or some elaborate signaling system that will allow them to get by undetected in some sort of video format. That just doesn't make sense to me. Yes, I get that some of the claims made in the telepathy tapes are big claims and that those require evidence which is present. But if you're claiming that these people are being intentionally deceitful, I would also want to see evidence of that, and I just don't. And yes, maybe there is some sort of elaborate mentalist trick and way to deceive the audience into believing that telepathy is real when that's really not what's happening. But just because there's a different way to produce that result doesn't mean that the telepathy isn't happening. They're not disproving telepathy they're only stating the fact that there is another way to achieve that result. Discernment is incredibly important, but at a certain point, skepticism can turn into a closed-minded belief system of its own. And I say that coming from the perspective of someone who was a militant atheist for 10 years. There's nothing open-minded about me or my perspective during that period of time. And I know that's not gonna be the same for everybody, but it certainly appears in many cases that identifying oneself as a skeptic can turn into a form of identity. And if we identify with something, we don't wanna let that go. And any attack on that can feel very personal. And a lot of the criticisms that I saw regarding the telepathy tapes were pretty harsh, and it seemed that many of these people were triggered and felt personally attacked in some way. I just couldn't understand some of the like extremely harsh criticisms that I saw. I think this speaks to a deeper truth, that if we lean too much into our strengths, our ability to logic and reason and be that skeptical person, sometimes our strengths can become our weaknesses and cause us to be unbalanced and really not to see a situation for what it is. I know that's not always the case, but that can certainly happen. I've observed it many times in many situations in my own life. Part of discernment is knowing our own biases and looking inward, not just analyzing the thing that we're analyzing, but being aware of our own relationship with that thing and our preconceived notions and, uh, unconscious biases as much as we can be. And I'm not trying to claim that I have no unconscious biases. This podcast touched me deeply at several points in basically every episode. I was moved emotionally to tears. Quite often, just hearing people's stories and connecting with these people who are sharing a intimate part of their lives and sharing their pains and the different experiences they've had. And I mean, I just can't imagine what it would be like to be in that situation. So I'm, I'm truly grateful for the conversation that has arose around this podcast and for all the people who put it together, the people who made it, and the people who were vulnerable and allowed themselves to be videotaped and tested and shared their stories throughout the course of this podcast series. And if there are two main takeaways that I could bring from this, the first is that. We need to do better for the nonverbal autistic population. We need to assume competence and create systems and structures so that they can receive proper educations and so that they can become assimilated into society and so that their inherent gifts and natural abilities are fostered and celebrated and not so that they're locked in a closet or pretended like they don't have it. Part of that is acknowledging the mistakes that have been made, looking at the system, acknowledging it doesn't work for this population of people, and taking accountability and deciding we're gonna do better. How can we actually support these people? How can we support them on an individual level? And more broadly, how can we support research that will shine a light on the true gifts that these people have? How can we bring more acceptance and compassion to the real lived experiences that these people are having? And my second takeaway is that there are some major glaring holes in our current scientific paradigm. If consuming this podcast doesn't spark something in you and help you to realize that. Oh wow. Our science for as amazing as it is and as much as it's done for modern society, it's still lacking and it's not perfect. And we need to take everything with a grain of salt and understand that our scientific understanding and our body of knowledge, it's not complete and it's still growing and that there are many opportunities and areas for improvement. But now I want to hear from you. If you've watched it. If you haven't watched it, what are your thoughts? Is telepathy real? Is this all shenanigans? Please leave a comment below. Let's have a conversation. And yeah, much love, peace.