The Telepathy Tapes - Ep 1: Unveiling the Hidden World of Telepathic Communication in a Silenced Community

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

In the premiere episode of The Telepathy Tapes, host Ky Dickens embarks on a mind-bending journey into the mysterious world of telepathy in non-speaking individuals with autism. Through personal stories and expert interviews, Dickens uncovers a phenomenon she never thought possible—a hidden form of communication that defies mainstream science. Through a mix of personal anecdotes, scientific exploration, and interviews with experts like Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell, a Johns Hopkins-trained neuropsychiatrist, Dickens unpacks the mysterious connection between parents and their children, who seemingly can read minds. The episode takes listeners on a journey across the globe, meeting families who have experienced this phenomenon firsthand, and challenges the skeptic in all of us. Dickens brings listeners into a world where telepathy may not just be possible, but commonplace. She opens up a conversation about the potential of the human mind that mainstream science has largely ignored, inviting listeners to reconsider everything they thought they knew about communication and consciousness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, what's up, everyone? This is Kai Dickens, and you're listening to the Telepathy Tapes podcast. My son said to me, I can hear thoughts. What is this phenomenon happening? Why are his mind and my mind completely connected? Telepathy is the tip of the iceberg with their spiritual gifts. People don't understand that they can do this. They don't even have to be in the same room, the same zip code.

have to be in the same room, the same zip code. 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. Welcome to the very first episode of the Telepathy Tapes, where we venture into claims of widespread telepathy via a group who is systematically dismissed, non-speakers who often have autism. For decades, parents of non-speakers have been told by doctors, educators, and scientists that their kids are not in there. They are not capable of communication or competent of learning. Imagine being one of those parents and discovering that everybody has been wrong about your child. They are in there, they are competent, and they can communicate, but then also discovering that your child can read your mind. Would you expect to be believed?

We're going to meet people who experience this phenomenon from every corner of the world. We'll travel to Georgia, Wisconsin, Oregon, New Jersey, and so many places in between. We'll also hear from families in England, Israel, Mexico, and India. I find it very difficult to figure out how to bring anyone into this world due to the natural skeptic in all of us. So I think it makes sense to start at the very beginning and how I tumbled into this world four years ago when I heard a podcast featuring Dr. Diane Hennessey Powell. Welcome to the Cosmos in You podcast. So today we have Dr. Diane Hennessey Powell, who is a Johns Hopkins trained neuropsychiatrist, speaker, researcher, and author. In this episode, we discuss the research she's currently working on to study autistic savants and their telepathic abilities. I had never heard of something like telepathy

being talked about from a neuroscientist. And I went back to the intro just to learn a little bit more about Dr. Powell's background. I applied to medical school and went to Johns Hopkins. And while there, I continued to do neuroscience research and work with some of the greatest minds in neuroscience. And instead of staying on to Hopkins for faculty, I joined the faculty at Harvard. So as much as someone can be, she's a legitimate academic. And she goes on to talk about her background and research. She started by studying savant skills. For a quick refresher, savants have exceptional aptitude in something like math or language or art without having any formal training or exposure to the skill. So, you know, like someone who can play piano expertly

without one lesson or someone who has a brain injury and suddenly understands calculus. So Dr. Diane Powell is studying savant skills in autistic children. And somewhere along the way, enough parents had said, look, I'm actually not sure if they are a savant. I think they might just be reading my mind. Dr. Powell's primary subjects are non-speakers who are usually diagnosed with autism. Her subjects to date communicate by pointing to a letter board or typing into an iPad or some sort of other speaking device. She explained doing experiments with some of these non-speakers where she'll put them in a room and put the parent or teacher or whoever they're telepathic with in another room or on the other side of a partition. in another room or on the other side of a partition. Then Dr. Powell will generate random numbers or random pictures,

and the non-speaker will try to type out what they believe the parent or their teacher or whoever is looking at from the other side of the room. And here's the host, Suzanne Scully, asking her how accurate the children were. And the time that they are correct is statistically significant. Oh, yes, it's like over 95%. Over 95% of the time? Yes. I'm a science nerd. And that part of my brain just could not compute what I was hearing. However, I'm also a documentary filmmaker. And that part of me was totally fascinated. So I had to call her up. Oh, you're frozen. Can you see me? Hear me now? Diane, I'm gonna try this one second here.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Is it okay if I record this just because you never know what I know? Okay, great. And I'd love to hear it from you just in a nutshell. Explain the work you're doing right now. I'm working with children who have been reported by a parent to be able to read their mind.

I'd love to hear, as a scientist, what has made you believe that this is not just a whoopee-whoopee type thing, but this is actual science. I started testing them, and I found that they were exceedingly accurate. We were capturing it. I mean, usually I try to have, like, three cameras. Oh, for sure. She gave an incredible overview of all the research she's done to date. And we also talked about the amount of parents reaching out to her about telepathy in their non-speaking children from all over the globe. cytokines. It's kind of nice to have these different cases that they're at different stages

and also demonstrate it in different ways. And so even if you can't get the perfect experimental setup, you have to look at the cumulative evidence to date. And that made me ask about the perfect experimental setup. If she could have anything, what would it be? Ideally, you would get some kind of brain imaging of both the transmitter and the receiver. And the simplest way to do that would be to do it with a quantified EEG. I was totally impressed, not just with Diane, but with the earnestness in which these families were approaching her, you know, desperate for answers. And I understood for the first time that if what the families were saying was true, there was a possibility that this research could completely shift our paradigm,

how humanity sees itself in consciousness. And I knew I had to document all of this research immediately. What I would love is to get to wherever you are and sit down with you and maybe come up there for a day or two and you you mentioned washington but i live actually in oregon oh okay and and and after talking through some of the logistics she said yes and i also asked her if she could please send me the drive of all of her former tests all right thanks all right take care all right bye thank you too bye-bye so i did get a hard drive in the mail from the camera guy who had previously filmed Diane's telepathy test with various kids. And the drive had tons of information,

lots of folders, lots of files. So I called up the camera guy who sent me the drive for two reasons. First, I wanted to understand what I was looking at on the hard drive and how all the footage went together. And more importantly, I wanted his take on the legitimacy of the tests before spending my own money and heading up to Oregon. Scroll down to where it says telepathy selects. Okay, so I'm in the folder right now. In the room, I had several GoPros set up. All right. There should be views from cameras A, B, C, D, and E.

And we also in that room had some large face display clocks. All right. So just to jump in and set the scene here, when I pulled up the footage, there were five cameras. And this was an experiment with a young girl named Haley and her therapist that worked with her often and said that Haley could read her mind. So Diane went to conduct a telepathy experiment, and this is what the cameraman captured. So what I'm seeing in this experiment is the therapist who's in a different room will look at a flash card or a random number through a random number generator and then Haley will proceed to try to identify that word or that number accurately via telepathy. So is that a partition on the table between Diane and Haley?

Yes we wanted to block the area so there would be no visual cues. And then I believe that microphone there so you could hear if there were any auditory cues given. So she's therapist is in the other room. She'd look at these cards, hold them in her mind. And then Diane would ask Haley, what do you see? And then Haley would proceed to type out letters and numbers and then hit play. And the talker would pronounce the word or the phrase. What was the takeaway that you observed from being there as a neutral outsider?

Haley wasn't 100%, but she was up in the 90% accuracy. And it just blew me away. It was pretty amazing. And seeing it actually take place and reviewing the footage afterwards, it was just a little jaw-dropping. And I was convinced that it's very real. Seeing how careful Diane was to set up the experiment made sure that there was a total separation. set up the experiment, made sure that there was a total separation. I did have an IFB that I was listening and monitoring what was going on in the experiment room.

So I can attest that there was no deception going on. This is a really good overview. And it's good to know, too, that you felt really blown away by it. Yeah, I believe each of us through our lives have had some similar personal experiences where, you know, it is when you're thinking about someone and say, well, I want to talk to them and then boom, the phone rings and it's them. Those situations, that knowingness tapping into the conscious collective. My conversation with Kent, the camera guy convinced me it was totally worth it to go up to Oregon and meet Dr. Powell in person. A flight on a new budget line and a rental car later,

I ended up at her beautiful historic house. It has this huge, beautiful brick driveway and rolling green lawns around it. People joke about it being Hogwarts West. And that's actually a really great description. The house feels as though it's been there forever. And it has beautiful woodwork and artwork, tapestries and rugs from all over the world. And there's Dutch doors with pane glass separating various small

rooms. There seem to be books and diplomas and pictures everywhere. And it just feels iconic, historic and full of knowledge. This is my home office, and I get a lot of emails from people who've heard me in a podcast or seen one of my lectures inquiring about research on savants and telepathy. So yeah, could you maybe even read me some emails of what parents might say when they reach out to you for the first time? This email is from a medical doctor. He wrote, as much as I have been trained to think otherwise, I believe that I am the guardian of a non-speaking autistic child who I had thought was a savant, but now it is inescapable to believe that he can easily read

my mind. He can write down any number of word of which I am thinking, as insane as that sounds. Please call me. She took me through an array of emails. We have made her multiple tests and he would answer correctly every time. Then I made up a number in my head and she wrote it. He was writing the answers from my thoughts. She can read other people's minds besides me. Looking forward to hearing from you. Take care.

What surprised me was that all of these people from various corners of the world were all saying a version of the same thing. They had a child diagnosed with non-speaking autism. Doctors and or educators had told the parents their children would never communicate or perceive the world beyond the level of a toddler. However, through a leap of faith or a twist of fate, these parents discovered their kids were in there. And in these cases, the kids learned to communicate via an iPad or a letter board. And once the kids were communicating, the parents discovered through various means their children could read their minds. And they would test this unbelievable assertion over and over again, only to find that it was true. Many of these parents

were not believed and felt alone. And they all had the same concerns. They had concerns about educating their children. They didn't know how to hide birthday presents or candy without it being found. They didn't know how to protect their private conversations or thoughts. And what touched me the most is these parents were grappling with something that they believed to be absolutely impossible. But here they were. They were watching something unfold that had no rational explanation. And they literally had nowhere to turn but this email inbox. So this is an email that I received from Sophia, and this is her first contact with me. Hi, Dr. Powell. I am from Mexico. I have a cousin, Mia. She is 12. She can't talk and didn't communicate with us before. Recently, she got an iPad and started typing things.

We thought she could read books in seconds and had photographic memory. My aunt read her some paragraphs and she could finish the sentence or said on what page it was. And this may sound silly, but she is reading my aunt's mind. We have made her multiple tests, not professionally, and that's what she really does. Just her mom's mind, so far no one else's. We don't know what to do now. I greatly appreciate your time reading this. I hope you could answer me. Thank you, Sophia. I asked Diane about the career implications of her following this line of research. I knew that a lot of people would think, boy, Diane's gone off the deep end. But that's the risk any scientist takes when they challenge the current paradigm.

The data was so compelling and accurate that I had to follow it, even though I knew I was risking my scientific reputation. After spending the weekend with Diane, I headed back to Burbank, feeling like my brain was being bent into a new shape. I was grappling with a collision of facts. Dr. Powell seemed smart and ethical and clearly wanted to conduct sound research on this topic. She also felt a strong sense of responsibility to take seriously the numerous emails that she was receiving from concerned and bewildered parents. During my time with Dr. Powell, I also learned how hard it was for her to get research funded,

and I got the feeling she was just tired of hitting brick wall after brick wall. And it's a good moment to note why this is. The reigning philosophy in science is something called materialism. This notion says all things in our world are the result of interactions between physical matter, right? Like things we can measure and observe. And research into telepathy falls way outside of the materialism lane. And thus, there's just not a lot of support for scientists like Dr. Powell who are thinking outside of the box. So I was wrestling with all of this, and I just kept coming back to the families. I just couldn't believe that parents of non-speaking kids who don't know each other

from all over the world are in on a mass conspiracy theory to trick the world into believing in telepathy. That's just impossible. These families don't know each other. In fact, most of them reaching out to Dr. Powell felt utterly alone. They weren't sure if they were the only ones in the world that this was happening to. So from my point of view, there was something big and something real going on. And as a documentarian, I was pretty sure this was going to be my next big project. But in order to fully commit and dive in, I needed to see it with my own eyes. I thought about that family in Mexico from the email.

Mia and her family had never met Dr. Powell. And it occurred to me that if I could get Dr. Powell and the family to Los Angeles, I could document a killer test for Diane with cameras from every angle, with mics on every single person. So I pitched this to Diane and she was gracious and open to the idea, but she wanted to Zoom with Mia's family first. And they were open to her filming this first Zoom meeting.

This is Mia. Hi, Mia. Nice to meet you. Yes, she's waving. Is this the mother over here on the right? That's right. Yes. Nice to meet you. Yes, she's waving. Is this the mother over here on the right? That's my mom. Yes. Nice to meet you. What is your name? Ileana.

In the Zoom image, we see Sophia, who's Mia's adult cousin, and her mother, Ileana. Sophia is the only one in the family who feels comfortable speaking English, so she's doing most of the translating. There are some other family members in the room who don't introduce themselves. I think one might be Mia's brother and her father. And you can just tell that everyone's excited to be there and eager to be taken seriously. Ileana. So I'd like to hear from her when she first started realizing that maybe this is what

was going on with Mia. Yes. Do you want to know when was the first time you realized that maybe that's what I could do? Just recently, in October, November. At this point, the adult cousin, Sofia, grabs off of the table an acrylic letter board. It looks like a piece of paper about eight and a half by 11 inches. It's clear with letters and numbers in black written upon it.

Mia uses this board to communicate. She doesn't speak. And now with the pandemic, she's been like homeschooling. So she recently discovered that she can type like on the iPad and like that. And Mia typed her that she could read her mind. Uh-huh, uh-huh. She's aware she can do that. Do you know how long she's been doing that?

She recalls having memories even since she was in her mom's womb. That's what she says. And that she can read her mind ever since. And so was she developing normally and then regressed? She was diagnosed when she was two and a half years. So she never developed language. She never was able to speak. Nunca podía hablar.

No, never. And what is she most interested in? The music. Music. She likes music. Water. She likes water. Just swimming. What kind of music does she like? Mexican music. Oh likes music. Water. She likes water. Just swimming.

What kind of music does she like? Mexican music. Oh, okay. Like Selena. Do you know Selena? At this point, Mia walks into frame and grabs the letter board. And then she types something that seems out of left field. E. R. E. Mia very deliberately writes out Monterey, where she's from.

Her mom asks her in her mind to tell her where is she from, and she says Monterey, our hometown. So you're asking her these questions, and then she's answering them. I see. When I watched this for the first time, this moment was monumentally weird to me because Ileana for the first time, this moment was monumentally weird to me because Ileana, the mother, will ask Mia questions with only her mind to which Mia will answer

with the letter board. So we will not hear Ileana asking a question. But just like any mother will be like, come on, tell them where you're from or, you know, come on, participate. Ileana was doing that in her mind, encouraging Mia to start writing. I noticed it looks like she's not even looking at the board. Is that true that she oftentimes is just kind of pointing like this without even looking? Yes.

I wonder how she does that. She wrote in her diary that when she reads, she sees different colors. Mia says she can see colors around numbers and letters, which is scientifically referred to as synesthesia. So does she see colors around numbers and letters, which is scientifically referred to as synesthesia. So does she see colors around different letters? A is always blue or, you know, and C is always green. Yes, like that. Sometimes she sees a reflection of the colors and that's why she doesn't need to see the letters. She sees the colors. Mia's mom explains that Mia keeps a diary in the form of an ongoing Word document where she'll enter her thoughts and memories. Have you ever tried doing something like thinking of a number and

then she can give you the number? At this point, Dr. Diane and the family exchange WhatsApp information because Diane is about to start the test. So I'm going to, I'm going to give you a number. And she proceeds to send a number to Ileana who looks at it, then turns over the phone and Mia who's far away in the other side of the room, but we can see her, is clearly not seeing the number that's sent. And now Mia is walking from the far corner of the room where we've had eyes on her to her mother, so she can begin to type what number was just sent. Mia has a huge smile on her face. It looks like she's loving this moment, and she types in the correct number.

Very good. Okay. Let me try sending a word. No, that's how it's translated. Okay. Dr. Diane sends the family a word. Mia comes over again, a huge, huge smile on her face, and she correctly types in the word. She's got a beautiful smile. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. She's got a beautiful smile. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. So is she pretty much 100% accurate? I mean, is she always accurate or does she sometimes make mistakes? She's 100% accurate so far. Okay. And does she like doing the telepathy? She said that she prefers to talk with her mom like telepathy instead of speak. So tell me a little bit more about your reaction to this when you discovered that she, that she could read your mind.

Did she think that it was impossible? The beginning she thought it was impossible. And the next day that when she went to wake her up, she had a word in her mind. And Mia, as soon as she woke up, she typed that. She's in love, I remember. Purple school bag, that's what she was thinking. And Mia wrote that in the iPad. If that was hard to hear, when Mia first said to the family, I can read your mind, they thought it was impossible.

However, the day after that admission occurred, Ileana, Mia's mother, walked into the bedroom, woke her up for the day and said, what am I thinking about? And Mia wrote on her iPad, purple bag. And Ileana was thinking about her purple bag. So that moment won her over. They go on to talk a lot about Mia's interests, her health profile, whether or not she's eaten gluten, certain things that might impact Mia's body. The conversation ensues and it's fascinating. Is it hard to keep things hidden from her? Her mom, she hides things, not only secrets, but things like objects. And Mia always finds them. This one girl, she liked to eat potato chips. And when her parents would try to say, oh, we don't have

any chips left. She knew exactly how many chips were left. Mia says that she remembers also her first appointment with a neurologist. What did she say about that? That she went when she was six months old and that the doctor mistaken her diagnosis because he said that she had microcephalia and that he was wrong. Her diary is where she types things like that. As if telepathy weren't enough to process, Mia has also journaled about memories which go back to her earliest weeks of life.

And you'll discover, as I did, as we meet more and more families, that telepathy is just the tip of the iceberg. But then the conversation took another unexpected turn. And you'll hear Mia's brother talk here for the first time. Ever since they discovered that she had telepathy skills, she can't sleep with the lights off. We don't know why. Sometimes when she's in her room, I see her looking around and she starts laughing as well. Do you ever ask her what she sees when she's looking around? People. She says she sees people. I realize that this seems way off topic, but the family didn't think it was. And they certainly aren't the only family who will say their kids can see things that they simply can't. I really appreciate meeting all of you and appreciate you taking the time.

And I really want to help. I feel that these children, they're not getting their educational needs met. You're very welcome. I appreciate it too. Gracias. Thank you. Bye. Dr. Diane got what she needed to believe it was worth having Mia's family come up to America for some formal tests. So now it's game on. We're going to rent a house in Glendale to set up tests ourselves. This will be a place Dr.

Diane has never been, the family's never been. And at this point, I trust Diane deeply, and I trust that she really is concerned with upholding the scientific method. But I just wanted to be in charge of buying all the cues, all the props, the blindfold, booking all the crew, booking the home, just so that it was bulletproof. I understand the high degree of skepticism that, of course, will surround this and all the tests and all this information. And I needed to make sure that I handled one test without Diane or the family bringing or providing anything. Back at home, I went on a telepathy test shopping spree. Okay, this. She went shopping again. These are for the test next week. I've

been married for 12 years. We have two little kids. And my family thinks it's hilarious to make fun of me by documenting three things. One, all the tape I leave around the house. And two, they think it's funny to take photos of me taking photos. And three, they love to document all the things I buy on Amazon because apparently it's more often than I like to believe. So these are just Amazon things? I believe the families 100%. I just want to like help appease any skeptic.

This is me trying to justify everything I'm pulling out of the box when the night before I had said we have to scale back on ordering out. I don't want Dr. Powell to bring this stuff. I don't want the families to bring this stuff. I just want to be like the layer for the skeptics where it's like, you know, get this stuff on Amazon. I'm not even going to open it until the day of. I just think that's the way to go. So you turn that off. And the next step was finding an

Airbnb that was affordable, booking a small crew who could handle five cameras, the audio feeds to each one of the people there and getting the family and Dr. Powell to Los Angeles. It was a huge lift, but if we want to categorize worth in terms of things that positively and permanently change your life for the better, then this was worth every penny. It took about six weeks of effort and I called in a ton of favors, but now it's testing time. Various professional crew members from all over LA were doing me a solid. One of my close friends and a cinematographer, Michael Agnesanti, came in from Chicago with all of his equipment. I wanted him to make the trip for two reasons. One, we worked together a lot, and I knew that

he'd be able to capture everything happening in that room with integrity. But two, he's a huge skeptic. He doesn't really believe in anything out of the norm. He's a materialist, which I love about him, but meaning anything supernatural or having to do with ESP, he raises his eyebrows at. And I also needed someone in Los Angeles who can translate for the family. And I wanted to make sure it wasn't someone that was part of the family or someone Dr. Powell knew and someone that I could trust. My friend Rebecca is a total outsider to this world. She's an animator. She animates Disney films and Pixar films. And so she felt like a completely safe bet. And she speaks Spanish fluently.

So I asked her if she would volunteer her time to be a Spanish-English translator during the tests. Prior to the testing day, I sent Mia various questions so I could get to know her better. And here are some of Mia's thoughts in her own words. I am Mia and I have autism. I can't speak. I communicate by writing. I'm not sick. I like mathematics. I'm very intelligent. I don't like earrings and I don't like dresses. They are uncomfortable. It would be nice to be me without dresses. My mom asks me how I feel about having autism.

I feel good. We are all good at something. I can't imagine being any other way. I am happy. When I grow up, I'm going to sell my book. With the money, I'm going to go on vacation to Japan. I like Japan because it's so developed. On Monday, I start high school and I don't want to.

My mom says I'm a good student and I'm going to do well. I don't like the teacher. I feel like she thinks I don't know things. I like the kids. I don't even know if they will like me. Imagine not being able to talk. Sometimes it hurts like hell. Autistic people can do anything.

It's a lie that we can't. We find it more difficult, but we can. It would be possible if they believed in us more. No one knows what life is worth, but don't tell me it doesn't matter. Today, we are on trial. Only the good memories will remain. The good memories. Let's record thousands of memories.

Okay, it's testing day, and there's a lot going on. Mia, her father, her mother, and her cousin Sophia, who originally reached out, are all at the house. And so is a crew of about six people. The house is a mid-century ranch in Glendale. It's on a beautiful wide street with lots of lawns and trees. Because there's almost nothing in the cabinets, I make the assumption that the house is mostly used for Airbnb and film rentals. There's a large living room, and that's where we've set up. We've removed almost all the furniture from the room, except for a gray fabric couch, where we will position Mia and her mother for the tests.

Before we get going, I do a little meeting with the crew and Dr. Powell. So just technically, we have a camera here that's going to be a wide shot on the family. This will be kind of a close-up that will row between the three of you. We need to make sure the GoPro can see over her shoulder so we can see the number. And then every time that you have your cue, I'll just bring a divider in and put it between Ileana and Mia. The flashcards that I had, the numbers only go up to 10, which that's not statistically probably that great. So we were talking about using a random number generator. So, Dr. Powell, what numbers do you want to put in there?

I would like to try three digit numbers. So there'll be numbers between 100 and 999. I'm putting all of this in here just to make sure people understand that the crew and myself went through great pains to make sure that there could be no cheating. We provided the iPad. In this room, I downloaded the number generator, and we set up the parameters 100 to 999. There was always someone generating the cue that was given to Dr. Powell, which then she would give to the parent. That's a reflective surface there, the TV, so we need to cover that.

Okay. And there's a mirror there parent. That's a reflective surface there, the TV, so we need to cover that. Okay. And this one too. And there's a mirror there. And there's a mirror there? Yes, that's got to be covered up as well, or taken down. All right, so TV covered up, and then that mirror is going to come down. And then, Brian, maybe if you wanted to do like a 360 of the room really quick? I'm going to put all of this raw footage on the website, thetelepathytapes.com.

The crew, myself, and dr powell were meticulous about making sure this test was bulletproof so there'll be a blindfold on mia the other thing we're gonna do is put a divider up every time that she sees the cue so as far as line fold goes let me just try this on and see yeah i can't you can't see anything can't see anything no hey does anyone else want to try out this blindfold to make sure that you can't. You can't see anything? Can't see anything, no. Hey, does anyone else want to try out this blindfold to make sure that you can't see anything? Sure. This is Michael. Can you see anything?

Oh, no. Like, no, it's a fist. All right, cool. That blindfold, by the way, is something called the Mindfold, which, as you now know, you can buy it on Amazon Amazon and it is really intense and very dark and I was so happy it was Michael who decided to try it on in addition to Dr. Powell because as I noted previously he's my resident skeptic and had he not tried it on I think he always would have been questioning about the efficacy of the tests. So we were about to start the test but first I just wanted to recap what the family was hoping for. We want answers like what's the origin of what she's doing? Where does it come from? If it's something that she will develop in time or it's

something that's like as good as it gets. And what should we do from now? We just want her to be happy. And there are so many things that we don't understand and we can't help her. Okay, so our goals are pretty much set. We're going to start testing this and the family just wants validation. They have experienced this in their own home. They think Mia is telepathic and they need to know, is she? Just to set the scene here, Dr. Powell hit a random number into the random number generator. Then we asked her to hit it again and again. So we made sure it was super random. So we're going to go for this number. Okay, and then show Michael's camera, and then show Ileana. And Ileana stared at it for a while. There's a blindfold on Mia, and she's on the other side of a partition from her mother.

I got frustrated with myself when I rewatched this for injecting myself too much in this moment, because I was concerned that if Ileana didn't see the number for long enough, maybe the telepathy wouldn't work. Let her stare at it for just another second. The number that was generated was 698. Dr. Powell has just shown all the cameras in the room and she shows Ileana. Dr. Powell is putting the iPad face down. We're taking away the partition and Mia is going to take off her mind fold, the blindfold, so she can type. Okay.

Okay. All right. And she wants to take it off now? She can. Say, voy a quitar. I'm at six. Nine. Eight.

That was it? Very good. So Mia got the number correct and everyone was acting so calm like this was normal. And I think everyone was just feeding off of each other and acting calm. But I was freaking out inside. And I wanted to go again and again and again. Mia was smiling and laughing. We all kept checking in with her and the family. And everyone wanted to keep going, which I was very happy about.

Okay. Okay. Here's the number. Okay. When it's clear to prove the board, let me know. Okay. It's okay? Yep. Uh-huh. We generated another number, and the number was 956. Mia has her mind fold, which is a very intense blindfold on, and she's behind a partition. Dr. Powell shows the number to the cameras and to her mother, and now she's putting

the iPad face down. And we're about to pull away the partition and remove the mind fold. Nine, five, six. Was that it? That was it. The room felt electric. Mia got that one right too. And you could tell the family was so relieved that Mia had the same accuracy here in front of the neuroscientist that she had at home. We check in with Mia. Everyone wants to continue going. We continue to do well over 20 tests with Mia and her mother, and she was correct every single time. And now we're going to do a different test with Mia. We have six different color popsicle sticks, yellow, purple, blue, green, etc. We're spreading the sticks out on a round end table that

we grabbed from the living room we have placed different color popsicle sticks about six inches apart from one another in two rows of three then one by one we will hand me a different color popsicle sticks and while blindfolded she needs to put each one in the appropriate colored pile so if we had our yellow stick for example she'll need to put it in the yellow pile, all while having the Mindfold on. All of this is so mind-blowing. I'm not even sure what we're testing here, but it seems to me that we're testing can she just see through the Mindfold. Okay. Okay. And she's going to hand her the popsicle stick. Mia was just handed a green popsicle stick and she put it into the green pile. We start doing the test and Mia accurately puts sticks into the various piles. However,

we notice that our piles are so spread apart that she's having a difficult time moving her body in such a way to reach the far yellow pile. So we move the piles a bit closer together, and she continues with her accuracy. It doesn't look a lot how. In fact, what you see on the footage is that she put the green sticks where the green sticks go, the red sticks where the red sticks go, the purple sticks where the purple sticks go, etc., etc., as though she can see through her blindfold. When the test was done, I was in complete shock and didn't even know the correct question to ask. So I asked, can she see through her mother's eyes? And they asked her that,

and she said, no, I can see everywhere. After the room had seen Mia accurately display her mind reading abilities again and again with random numbers and random pictures, that now feels commonplace. But this popsicle stick test feels like a new frontier. I look at Michael, who's behind the camera, and he looks shaken up, so I ask him what he's thinking. I mean, I wouldn't do it as a skeptic. I'm generally a skeptic in my life, for most things. But through seeing this, I can't... It's hard for me to not believe this is authentic. I'm looking at everything. I'm watching her. I'm watching the mom. I'm watching... I'm watching everything and

for me and my perspective it's real. Yeah. I mean... And Rebecca, you came today, an animator by trade. You just came as a friend because you speak Spanish and as a complete outsider, like what did you take away? That there is something at play that we as humans don't see because we're busy with our senses. We're busy with the tactile world.

This is proof. It's just proof of that. She spelled out horse in Spanish. Like, it's, that's out of this world. Because if someone's blindfolded, there's something else happening there. So I would ask the mom to question while rolling. I also asked the family what they believed about telepathy or ESP before Mia revealed that she could read minds. And this is how Sofia answered. We have never read anything, nothing about telepathy or psychic skills or we don't know anything about it.

We still, I think we still know very little. We started looking up information after we saw that she, she does. And I think before that we didn't even believe that that could be possible. But it's so clear what she does that there's no doubt that she can do it. My favorite test had to do with a book I brought from home, something she'd never seen. And to me, this was just remarkable. So Ileana, close the book. What you see on screen is Ileana, who's got the book toward

the camera, and Mia is facing the opposite direction. Okay, and then just open up to any page. When Ileana landed on a page, we'd ask Mia the page number, and she would correctly state the page number that she'd flipped to. Sometimes we'd point to a word on a page that we had just opened to, and she would correctly spell out the word. We did this a few times, with both Ileana opening up the book and some of the crew opening up the book. And now with the number, the numeral on the page. Do it with the number you have.

What page do I have here? One, three. Which one is it? Bravo, Mia! Very good, Mia. a character on page 26. Can you tell me? Iliana was flipping through this book, and again, it's a book I brought from home, and there is a picture of a pirate on page 26. And so she stops there and gets excited and is asking Mia, what picture are we looking at on page 26? Again, the book is facing clearly away from Mia.

She cannot see it at all. ¿Qué personaje es? Pú. I. R. A. T. A. Filata. i r a t a she clearly types p-i-r-a-t-a which spells pirate in spanish i love this moment because the crowd just goes wild at this point everyone in the room had had their mind blown. If someone on the crew wasn't won over by the random flashcards

or the random number generator or the popsicle stick test, they were by this book test. We decided to start pushing the envelope, and we tried to see if Mia could do telepathy tests with her father. We tried random number generators, random picture generators. Okay, so there's the number. Okay, Mia, you can take off the blindfold. And she could absolutely not tell us what her dad was looking at. Sometimes we'd show her dad a flashcard or a number and Mia would start typing and then stop. And sometimes

she wouldn't even type at all. The test with her dad wore Mia out. She wanted some snacks, and so while she left the room, we asked her mom some casual questions. Her mom had mentioned that the family was deeply Catholic. I asked her mother about her gut reaction when Mia first revealed this, especially in light of her faith. You'll hear Rebecca, our translator, often in this conversation. So when she said that she could read her mind, she did feel afraid. She doesn't understand even how to speak to their friends about her abilities.

That people would see Mia as something dark or be scared of her gift. So now that she's experienced it slowly, she's been less and less afraid because she's starting to understand it more and more. So Mia says the fact that they don't communicate verbally, communicate mentally, is a gift. She loves it. So Mia says it's more beautiful for her to communicate with her mom in that way. With telepathy.

She feels like a mother of someone really important. Someone who's not common. She knows that Mia is going to change a lot of minds and hearts. She wrote in her diary that she can read everybody's mind, but you have to believe in her for her to do it.

We did more tests that afternoon and the following day, including a QEEG test where we did a brain scan between Mia and her mother. My name is Dr. Jeff Tarrant. I'm a psychologist and then have been studying and working with neurofeedback and quantitative EEG analysis for about the last 25 years. If you remember my first call with Diane, she said she wanted to do a QEEG brain scan during a telepathy experiment.

Dr. Tarrant volunteered to do this for us. He put tight caps on both Mia and her mother, filled the holes with some sort of gel, clipped something on the ears, and hooked all of this up to a computer. Mia did not like the clip on her ear, but she was a trooper and able to sit still long enough to do some telepathy experiments so Jeff could get good data. The biggest overall finding is really this increase of activation across all the brain waves. If there was no change, I would definitely be skeptical. This won't be the only QEEG test that Jeff volunteers to do for us, so we'll dive more into his findings and research in future episodes. After our two days of filming together, I had more questions than answers, and I was fixated on finding out how and why this is

possible and how widespread it was. When we were leaving the shoot, I said to Dr. Powell, that seemed so easy to demonstrate and so unbelievable. How is this not everywhere? And in so many words, she said, you haven't seen anything yet. And then she relayed in a gentle way that all of the tests we'd done over the past two days would not be accepted by her scientific peers. That was difficult for me to compute because what I saw in that room twisted my mind and my heart and my soul into a pretzel. My entire worldview was shifted in one afternoon.

And here's Diane Powell telling me she was good, but none of the tests that we did today would be accepted by her scientific peers. And I felt crestfallen and confused. We were so careful. There was no cheating. Every mirror was covered. All the glass was covered. Mia was never even looking in the direction of the cues. We tested the blindfolds. We had partitions. People were looking at this from every angle. We had five cameras. Everyone in that room saw with their own eyes that Mia consistently somehow could read her mother's mind. Even Jeff Tarrant, the QEEG guy, said, I've never seen anything like this. I couldn't understand what Dr. Powell was telling me,

that all the tests we'd done over the past few days would be thrown out by science. And we will get into that. We'll get into why that is. But at that moment, I looked at Dr. Powell and said, who could be better than this? And she said I should go test one of the children she tested before. She suggested that I go meet a boy named Akil and his mother, Manisha. A few weeks later, I got on a plane and went to New Jersey with Michael, my skeptical yet partially softened cinematographer. I was on a journey to figure out

what could possibly make a candidate better for testing than Mia, who seemed so accurate and so completely telepathic. Without knowing it, I was walking straight into a decades-long battle over truth and perception, ableism and greed, skepticism and gatekeeping. And in the center of it all are parents who are working so hard every day, invisible against all odds. And they know exactly what is happening under their own roofs.

So if you open this book right now and you looked at a picture and said, what am I looking at? What would he say? He will tell me what I'm looking at. Do you have to be in a room? No, it's in my mind and it just goes there. In the next episode, our universe expands exponentially and we're faced with the possibility that scientists, educators, the media, doctors, and critics have gotten everything completely wrong. A very special thanks to my incredible collaborator and producer,

Jen Merza, who created all music and sound effects for this episode of The Telepathy Tapes. Remember that you can review some of the tests and see some of the film recordings on our website, thetelepathytapes.com. Thank you so much for tuning in and join us next week as this world expands and deepens.