The Telepathy Tapes and the Power of the Unspoken

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Welcome back to the Goat Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. Today I'm sitting down with filmmaker Kai Dickens, the creator of the very popular Telepathy Tapes podcast, who's now working on a documentary that continues the fascinating exploration. I first came across the telepathy tapes through a friend and it stayed with me. it really invites us to consider some big and sometimes uncomfortable questions about consciousness, how we communicate, and the limits of what we think we know.

Kai shares what she's witnessed over years of working with families of non-speaking autistic children. many of whom seem to communicate in ways that challenge everything we've been taught. Some call it telepathy. Others call it intuition. Others don't believe it's happening at all. But any way you look at it, it's fascinating. So whether you're approaching this episode with skepticism, curiosity, or something in between, I think this conversation will intrigue you.

Thank you so much for coming and doing this with me. Oh, it's a pleasure. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast because, well, for many reasons, but I sort of found the Telepathy Tapes podcast. Through a friend.

I think kind of pretty soon after it had come out and I was totally enthralled by it and i have so many questions and then it sort of became this massive phenomenon so congratulations on that thank you and now it's like generated widespread media attention which I think is fantastic because you know, whenever And I have some experience with this too. I think whenever we're introducing like a new concept into culture, it can be incredibly uncomfortable for people. But I love that.

The pod raises these incredibly big and complex questions. really about consciousness, about communication, and of course some of which science has not answered. I'm just super curious and really excited to dig in with you today. I love it. I'm excited to be here. Can you tell me a little bit about...

How did you come to arrive at this subject? Why did it come and how did it overtake you? Yeah. So it's a kind of a layered nuanced response, right? You know, I up until the telepathy tapes was a social issue documentarian. So I was making projects about paid family medical leave and about access to, you know, accessible and affordable health care and stuff like that. So nothing like this had ever been on my radar.

And then as happens, you know, I had two, I had two friends die, you know, kind of in the prime of their life. So, and it was really unexpected. And. i was kind of going through that own cognitive dissonance of like why are we here and what does it matter and do we have a soul and has anyone ever really dug into these questions which yes there's hundreds of people have dug into these questions but i wanted to and i thought

Look, if I'm going to spend, because what happens with the documentary, right, is often you are spending months and even years researching something before you ever get paid for even, you know, so I was like, if I'm going to be doing that. I want to do it instead of fixing a broken society, trying to fix what's broken in humanity and figure out what we are and why we're here.

So I didn't know where that would lead. I just started reading. And I was reading about tree consciousness and Ian Stevenson's work around reincarnation and near-death experiences. And I was just open to everything. And, you know, it was actually kind of interesting because at this time I was also reading Big Magic, which I'm sure. Have you read? I haven't, actually. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this book about the creative process. Oh, right. And how ideas.

are like disconnected entities of consciousness right that come through you and that's right of course and she gives the example of the poet who runs and pulls it backwards yeah and then if you don't if it doesn't go to you it goes to someone else But if you want, you can also engage this, you know, big magic to come and work with you.

and but you don't ask it you can't tell it you know and so i did that too i was like working all this stuff and i said to whatever is out there like you know whatever to do next i really want to to answer this question and i want to do it big and bold so That's what I'm doing. Send me the thing, please.

And, you know, all these things kind of came together. And all of a sudden I hear an interview with Dr. Powell as part of my, like, what I would say, like 18 months of consciousness research. I was listening to a podcast called The Cosmos and You. And I heard an interview with Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell, who said she was doing a lot of testing on non-speakers.

who were considered savants and discovered quickly from a lot of the families and parents that they were like actually i don't think they are a savant i think they actually can read minds and so she did a bunch of research I wanted to delve more into this, met Dr. Powell, and kind of the rest is history. And so then did you know that you wanted to set out to do a podcast? Because it seemed like, right, tell me about that.

Yeah. So yeah, like, so I, you know, again, like typically make feature documentaries. So once I start, you know, talking to Dr. Powell, meeting some of the families, spending time with her. And then kind of picking up where she left off, right? Like where she did a lot of the tests and then I started really... understanding the intricacies of this world and how big it was. I realized this is not just a documentary. This is a huge series. This seems to be a series. And so...

That's what I started doing was going around the country and really trying to first proof of concept, like just do my own like ramshackle, bespoke telepathy task with these individuals to be like, is this happening? Is this working? And then to start spending time to understand like the method of communication and how the telepathy, you know, works. And again, like, is this all real?

it was phenomenal as i traveled the country i was filming it all came back and made a sizzle reel to pitch and that's what we did we pitched it to pretty much most of the major streamers and networks and i think To give them some credit, I think they are bound to their mandates.

sometimes they just can't do much but these pitches were going really well at some point someone said this is the best pitch we'd heard in five years someone else at one point said look like people often come in with promising the world and they only have a golf ball but we feel like you have a universe

And so I was like, yay. I was even keeping in touch with the families. Like, your story is finally going to get told. Like, I promise this is going to be a docuseries. One of these people will bite. And then no one did. It was like a whole slate of rejections. And I remember, I mean, I felt that this was the most important story in the world. Not because I was telling it. Like I've told many stories I don't think are critically important. But this to me was like this could change how everything

And no one is listening to these people because they have always been dismissed because these claims are so out there or, you know, hard to believe. And I was devastated and I didn't see a way forward. I was like, I can't afford just to go make this on my own.

And I like, you know, I just, I cried and I felt really despondent for a few weeks walking past those dusty drives. And then it just kind of hit me like, wait a second, I don't need someone to give me a green light. I can just go tell the story with a microphone. and that made then i like got like a dog with the bone with that idea and i remember calling a lot of families and even dr powell and being like you guys a podcast and they were all like that's a horrible idea

You have to see smelling to believe it. You have to see telepathy to believe it. Autism is so stigmatized, especially with a lot of non-speakers who can't speak or hear either. How can you do this in an audio format?

And I was just like, I really think this is it because we can go behind the fifth wall and interview the crew and this can set up the whole story in such a way that I think we'll get the doc funded and no one thought it was a good idea. So it's just remarkable what ended up happening. And so the podcast kind of sets out to present this thesis that there is such thing as telepathy, that we don't fully understand consciousness, that...

It's kind of generated from these very sweet, intimate stories between generally mothers and children or parents and children, sometimes siblings and children. And it's interesting because a very close family friend of mine who I grew up with, he has a son that has Pitt Hopkins. And I called him when the podcast came out, and I said, you know, do you feel that? And he said, everybody knows this, but we just don't talk about it.

Which I thought was also... super interesting like that this is this is kind of an axiom for many many parents with with us autistic children so how did you kind of it seemed it almost like when you listen to the podcast it almost it almost plays like a mystery you know it almost is like unfolding with you and with these families as as you go along what was it like for you to be

You know, you can pick one of the families and talk about, or maybe Akil, who is early in the podcast and has these incredible gifts. Like, what was that like for you to witness? And could you talk a little bit about, for anybody who might not have listened yet, what you witnessed? Yeah, yeah. I guess even to back up one step further, right, is that

There were claims coming in from all over the country. And, you know, I met Dr. Powell, but this was happening prior to Dr. Powell at places like the Trefford Center, which studied savantism and a former doctor named Dr. Bernie Rimland. Like there have been people throughout history. hearing or bearing witness to the fact that especially non-speaking individuals with apraxia, which is a form of autism where there's a mind-body disconnect, can read minds.

And that it's a part of their survival skill on earth, really, because often they're not engaged with or educated and that this is like a form of deep communication. personhood. And then there have been multiple people, scientists who've studied this from Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, again, to Bernie Rimblin, to the Treffert Center.

daryl treffert dr powell and now there's a whole new slew of research happening because of this being brought wide you know back into the open right and so What was remarkable was that, you know, what Dr. Powell had said at first to me was that, you know, these individuals put behind a partition can accurately tell you a made up word, a random number, a random picture, like whatever the person is looking at or seeing.

they can they can at least like 90 to 90 you know 100 of the time tell you what the person is looking at and so i it's hard to believe it's really hard to believe so the first time i saw it was with an individual named mia And I wanted to, I didn't know whether even not to trust Dr. Powell. Like it's just so hard to know what to believe. So I wanted to rent the location, set up all the queues by, you know, meaning like by the random cards and pictures and stuff.

buy my own ipad download the random number generator so no one was controlling this except for my little skeptical brain that wanted to see it to believe it to know if i should go spend my time and money and effort on it and mia was hitting all the everything that her her mom was looking at from behind this partition she was accurate and it was never not accurate

until we tried it with her dad where she could not do it with her dad and it was fascinating and but then dr paul said as remarkable as this was and as much as you know i think everyone in the room saw believes this is telepathy the fact that she was so early in her spelling journey that she was being touched would make it discredited So you should go see Akeel because he's not being touched.

And that was remarkable. And I don't have a doubt that Mia was spelling her own thoughts and that her mom wasn't doing some sort of Morse code on her head. I mean, I don't think anyone in the room thought that was happening. But how can they discredit like somebody Being able to read a number behind a screen, like even if they're elbows being assisted in pointing to a number.

Yeah, I mean, I think people will find a way to discredit anything that is kind of really challenging the status quo. So I think that's okay. But with Akil...

Well, one thing is, you know, spelling has evolved from facilitated communication, which was like really using push and touch to help someone find their body and space. The subjects in our project... are using spelling to communicate a rapid prompting method where there is no touch involved you're not allowed to touch them and that's one of the tenants of this new communication to make sure right that it can't be influenced and what's remarkable some individuals move on to be spelling

without anyone near them, right? Like on a keyboard or into an iPad and that's what Akil can do. so when we were there and we would show his mom a picture a random image a number and akil not only sometimes next to her but sometimes in another room sometimes across the room would accurately answer exactly what his mom was looking at. I mean, it completely shatters every belief you hold about who we are as individuals, as humans.

about the earth how so well suddenly you have to i mean i think what most of us want to now know why and i think that's what i have found from the people on the set the crew would be like, okay, okay, what? I don't know. I don't doubt that this is happening now. I want to know why it's happening.

you know so that sends you on a huge quest to figure out okay well what is consciousness and why is even like that's a level deeper of a question first it's how like right how is this right yeah and the how When I started looking into that, it was pretty fascinating because a lot of the researchers and scientists in the space will say, look, this is not new. This is not.

new to anyone. We all have this ability. It's within animals. It's rampant in the animal kingdom. What I have found out since releasing the telepathy tape, This was actually remarkable. There was, and we did a talk tracks, which is like our follow-up season on this a few weeks ago, a talk tracks episode about the sheer amount of people that are caring for people with Alzheimer's or dementia.

who have lost their voice, are saying, I telepathically connect with my aging parent or as a caregiver with the person I'm taking care of. And the emails we were getting in the Alzheimer's dementia space were similar to what Dr. Powell was getting initially from parents, right? No one will believe me.

people it sounds bonkers i don't know where to put this but i am getting visuals or hearing words from the person i love who can no longer communicate due to you know what's happening in their brain and So it seems like telepathy is a part of us, is a part of communicating and connecting when other things fail us. Acura's all new ADX, a compact SUV that isn't just built and crafted for everything. To escape the grind with available all-wheel drive.

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You sometimes become in communion with, wordlessly in communion with somebody, you know? I mean, and that can be in the same room, in a different room, that can be. you know, with somebody, you know, you thinking of someone and they call you or you're, you know, saying to, I mean, I think that we all. I think that everybody that I know does believe that there is some kind of, you know, communion that happens. It's just not quantifiably. a proven mode of communication.

Yeah, and I think I feel very hopeful that this can get proven now in the next few years. I know Dr. Powell received, I believe, a bit of research funding to go and do like a... intensive experiment with MRI and QAGs to try to, you know, and then I know the University of Virginia is doing something, University of Oregon is doing something. We're working with a scientist who just innovated. This is unbelievable.

hyper scanning q e g that has a letter board built in so when you send the picture to the parent they can type directly into the screen so you can see where their eyes are tracking just to prove there's no funny business so I feel very confident in a few years.

anyone pushing back or just you know on this will be like oops i was on the wrong side of history and that happens with most scientific breakthroughs right for sure the rainbow was a sign from god until it was water and prisms and sunlight you know Right, right, of course. And there was that poor doctor, I think, in Austria who suggested they wash their hands between handling staffers and delivering babies, and he was sent to a mental institution.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His name will come to me at some point. I want to talk to you a little bit about, because there's sort of two areas, right? There's facilitated communication and then there's telepathy and facilitated communication. And those methods have kind of been discredited by some people in the scientific establishment. But you have Dr. Powell. And for me, like... the anecdotal experiences of the families themselves who are daily in and out with these kids.

I mean, do you feel that the scientific community has sort of a bias towards dismissing things? Like, you know, I just wonder if... There is a lack of just openness or just the empirical data, you know? I mean, what do you think that we are missing or the scientific community is missing initially in terms of how they're evaluating these experiences? Yeah, I think that's a great question. And actually, I'm very excited because the Talk Tracks episode we're releasing this week, episode eight.

is someone who goes through a lot of that question, exactly, the pushback. And she was a scientist that was trying to debunk this lovely day. And she couldn't. And she ended up debunking the claims that the Democrats were making. and i think there's a few things at play here right like the telepathy is there with or without spelling most parents are experiencing this long before spelling even happens some experience with experience it with their verbally or minimally verbal

Children. So I think those are two different things. But spelling has evolved from facility communication where you're being touched to these other methods where there's no touch. And, you know, I don't think a lot of, not just mainstream scientists, but mainstream journalists are looking into the dogma around spelling. There's just been things attached to it for 30 years without anyone being like, wait a second.

which is what a lot of people say is this ideomotor effect or like this Ouija board effect, right? Or like, the parent is thinking it and therefore the kid will just think it and they're like controlling their body almost like a joystick or something and you know i think there's a few elements of this which which aren't even like if someone just were to really think it through don't make sense you know i think the first and foremost is that so many of these individuals

are spelling things that their parents don't know or haven't been taught you know like one of my favorite things that it's going to be in the documentary houston who was in the podcast when he first starts spelling openly which is when you're communicating on your own his mom asked him a question and i don't remember exactly what it was but he started reciting the gettysburg address verbatim oh my gosh she didn't know the gettysburg address

you know or you know when we're on set or when i'm often with these families like the parent will say we're doing this and the child will bring over the letter board like i wanted to go do this And they're like, no, we're not doing that. I don't want to do that right now. Like there's a real conflict of what you want to do, which doesn't happen if you're like joysticking someone. And, you know.

just the languages that some of the non-speakers will know or information on something that other people don't know. So it's easy. It's easy to be like, oh, spelling's been dismissed. And it's because of this. But I haven't found a journalist or scientist yet to say, wait a second, what are they pointing to? And is that accurate? And really looking at the newest, most cutting edge research around it. But more importantly,

Spending time with a speller. Because once you're in the home with a speller, It's just like, oh, okay. You see where their eyes are going. You see what they're doing. You see how fast they're going. And one of my favorite things that really I think seals it sometimes is you'll see a parent really wants a quick answer. What do you want for dinner? Or do you want to go for a walk or to the beach? Like, hurry, hurry, hurry. Like, you know, and they'll be like, the weather is nice today.

I think it would be lovely if first we could have breakfast and the parents are like, Walker Beach, you know? That's so funny. I mean, I, my, my, like he he he describes all the time like his son is incredibly good at math and they'll pose you know an equation and The parents don't know the answer to the math question. And once he's done it, they take out a calculator and he gets it right. So, I mean, yeah, to that point, I think there is. Is there any kind of.

you know, thinking around this mystery of how this savantism works, like how these kids can be fluent in multiple languages if they haven't been exposed to them on a daily basis. I mean, that's a huge mystery, right? I mean, that is the question. You do say in the podcast that savantism is sort of scientifically accepted. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And so sovantism, right, is having exceptional skills in something you haven't been taught or, you know, even exposed to.

There are language savants, and I think one of the hypothesis or things that we put forth in the project is Look, Savant's skills are the calendar computation and math and music that we can't understand how someone has this information, but they do. is accepted. We can't explain it, but it's accepted. And this idea that ESP should be a savant skill was first introduced by a man named Bernie Rimland, which is like, wait a second, these are individuals who know things they shouldn't know.

It could be language. It could be someone else's thoughts. And just because we don't understand it doesn't mean it's not true because we can see quite clearly that it's happening. So interesting. And like on... Did you find a correlation, like is there an inverse correlation between how nonverbal someone is and how telepathic they are? You know, I don't, I haven't seen that because what's fascinating is I... First of all, I think

I don't know if every single person who is nonverbal has these abilities. I have no idea. I just know the ones that I've met too. And I was talking to a woman yesterday who's been innovating this magnetic merge.

treatment to individuals with autism to help their alpha brainwaves stretch all the way across the body because right now they don't go all the way and she says often when they start to stretch their their voice comes back or they're not the voice it's like their ability to speak arises and they can speak when they couldn't have before And I felt

super sheepish asking her this even with the telepathy tapes being out i still do because here's a scientist that's working with a medical treatment for you know or you know to help non-speakers regulate their body and i said hey do you know if any of the non-speakers you've met talk about telepathy or any of these things and she goes yeah they all do i mean that i've matched like most of them will and i said oh okay well does that still

exist once their language is connected and they do this treatment? And she said, yeah, it does. So I thought that was really interesting. Really interesting. Super interesting.

You know, I think we, and I don't want to beat this dead horse, but I just find this intersection really interesting. You know that we have a paradox in society that people are really quick to dismiss. phenomena like telepathy as pseudoscience, but a significant portion of Americans believe in God, which also lacks empirical evidence. So why do you think that certain beliefs are more socially accepted, like believing in God, where others are more marginalized?

Yeah, so, and I kind of go into this at great lengths in the telepathy tapes that, you know, I don't think people realize. I live within a paradigm. I didn't really realize that. And the paradigm in which we live in is called materialism. And that's not the desire to buy nice cars and anything like that. It's not being materialistic. It's about this scientific belief that what's real can be measured and observed.

And I think when materialism really took root, there was a big effort to make sure that you know i guess kind of what spurred out of this materialism is that this idea that anything that can't be observed or monitored is frivolous you know so whether that is something like god or these other ideas that are kind of

and you know invisible and you know kind of hushed over campfires and that's everything just can't be possible there's no way they can be possible And if you believe they were possible, you weren't scientific, you weren't smart, you were gullible.

and you know laughed at and and most of our institutions now from universities to the mainstream media to you know are rooted in materialism and most of materialism isn't bad right like like science and biology and physiology and psychology like those things are incredible like we should not throw out our textbooks there are really great

bodies of research and important elements of academia. But where materialism falls short is that it hasn't been able to explain where consciousness comes from. Why? Why does it exist? And the idea is like, oh, well, it arose from all these other physical blocks we can't observe, right? Like from physics and biology and all these different things consciousness came from. But the materialist paradigm also can't. you know, make sense of other things. There's been...

Millions of people around the world who've said that they've seen a spirit or had a dream where they talked to a loved one. you know the phone telepathy if you will or before that and mark twain would call it mental telegraphy where someone would write a letter and it was postmarked the same day you wrote them the letter even though you hadn't talked in five years and you didn't realize that happened until you both got each other's letters in yesteryear right now that's phone telepathy

Most of us have had an experience like this, near-death experiences that seem to be universal. And instead of answering those things, they're just brushed aside. Well, it can't possibly be. And that's where a lot of scientists, which I think are going to be the people on the right side of history, kind of put their hand up and said, just because this stuff is inconvenient and doesn't fit into this materialist paradigm doesn't mean it's not real and not happening and we need to account for it.

And so instead of being sick of their research around psi abilities like telepathy or precognition or even like mediumship being dismissed, they decided we're going to start a new academy called the Post-Materialist Academy of Sciences so that we can do our own peer reviewing of articles and support each other. And make it so you are not fired when you talk about this stuff in a college campus or debunked immediately by the mainstream media when you put something like this out.

And I do think more and more researchers and scientists are starting to move this direction. And many of them are working in the shadows where they're keeping their good university chairmanship job or whatever. But certainly conducting research and curious about these matters on the outskirts. So I think science is changing. And I think there's going to be quite a few funerals that need to happen on the old guard. But I do think that in 100 years,

this won't seem out there. It just won't. And when you look at our native cultures around the world, telepathy precognition you know dream travel stuff like that which seems so hard to believe it's that was part and parcel of their existence it was just how you hunted and how you communicated and how you found cures to things i mean it was It was just part of being alive. And language is convenient. And it replaced, I think, a lot of these intuitive skills.

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I think you make a good point around materialism and then I think it's kind of then fortified by capitalism, right? Where the systems that are in place are so invested in us. being in the material and you know when we're when we exist in these spaces of of connection, of communion, of spirit. We don't really need anything. We don't need to buy anything, you know. And so I do think that, you know, it is also challenging more broadly to these systems that are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really is. And, you know, it's been interesting, too. I always. you know like just watching some of the the journalist outlooks that i love that i've always revered and like gone to like just being like oh the celebrity days i must be doing this or that and it's like wow so interesting because like

Did you go talk to any spellers or the people teaching this or the scientists on the cutting edge of really trying to prove this? Because there's a lot there. And I think that if anyone is curious, they just start to look into it. it's hard to go back then you kind of you become changed forever when you start to do the work And it seems like that's what happens, right? You or Dr. Powell or anybody starts to look at the evidence that's been collected thus far and speaks to the families.

It's kind of irrefutable that there's something to it. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I mean, Dr. Powell has been at this for years and she's continuing to do it and she's got a whole new like bunch of research lined up. It's been great because the University of Virginia has been looking through our tests to write a peer-reviewed journal about the tests that we did, which weren't even like, you know. and done in a controlled setting. Like that's hopefully what's going to be happening in the next year or two, right?

So, yeah, I mean, there's so much great research that's being done on this right now. I'm very excited for it to come out because what I'm hearing from scientists, you know, emailing and stuff is like.

it's pretty remarkable what they're finding when they're trying to replicate what we found. Right. And also, you know, I think the skepticism sometimes, you know, when I was speaking to friend about this and It sort of reminded me too of that book Ghost Boy where You know, this was a book about a young man who was misdiagnosed as being in a vegetative state and he appeared to be in a coma, but he could hear everything that was happening like his brain was.

was alive. And Eric was talking about you know, imagine Imagine being wrong. He's a parent of a non-speaker. Imagine being wrong and... And they are there and they are, you know, in his case, like a 14-year-old boy who's a 14-year-old boy and understands everything and has incredible sophistication around math, as I said before. I think as a parent, of course, I think there's a line between, you know, you have to put down skepticism and, of course, you don't want to...

You don't want to speak for your child, right? There's a line to walk and I'm sure there's a discovery process in there, right? Like you... I'm sure that there is truth to the fact that parents want it to be true. They will it to be true. But then, again, just in talking to this one family that I'm close to.

just is true if you speak to them right they're just he he can do these things and and and he is in there and they don't want to be skeptical to the point where you know if there's a breakthrough and and start speaking one day that he would say, I was there the whole time and you guys didn't believe me. Right. Yeah. Well, that's the thing that I think is so remarkable is that when you go spend time with families. Almost everyone who I've met will be like, yeah.

We know this. This is true. We never talked about it. Or, I don't know, other people were experiencing this until the celepathy tapes came out because we kept it secret. I mean, who believes that? Who would ever believe that? You'd be kind of laughed at, right? Or shrugged off like, oh, you have a telepathic link with your child or you think they're reading your thoughts or...

You can feel your emotions or they're talking to in dreams. I mean, I think a lot of people felt like they were patted on the head. It's just like, oh, you poor mom or dad, you're so hopeful. You need something to cling to. And, and what's remarkable is, you know, I think there is anecdotal evidence, which is, I think, really important, right? Not just a few, not just a handful, not just hundreds. Thousands of people around the world.

are saying this is their experience. And that's what was so beautiful. I think for the families that participate in telepathy tapes and will be participating in the film is that they're getting feedback from so many other families saying, this was our experience too. We never felt like we could talk about publicly, you know.

And there's a lot of Me Too's going on. And that, I think, is part of why this was so, got so viral. Because those who know a non-speaker or family or a friend who has a non-speaker in their family. when they went to those people and said is this true they were like yeah it is yeah yeah exactly and how are you metabolizing this and your role in this and

You know, it's like you're on a crusade that's beautiful and, you know, you're more visible and you're really changing the way that people are perceiving what it means to be a non-speaker. So how has this been for you? You know, I just really, really try to keep focused on the non-speakers and their families, right? I feel like that is as like a steward of the story like my main priority and

It's been remarkable to see how validated I think so many people feel. And I do keep checking in with a lot of the non-speakers. We made a non-speaker advisory board just to check in with around the film and everything. And I often will say like, is this too much because the magnifying glass yeah it is on me but it's also on all of you and it's making all the war Are you okay? And their messages always keep going. And I'm kind of like, can I not? It's an honor. But they're like, keep going.

like don't stop you know i like that this will break but it takes a critical mass of people to believe is kind of the message i keep getting back so So it's exciting and it is hard. I mean, it is hard to like have this work that is so important, but not for me, but to these families and these individuals who.

I think deserve to be brought out of the shadows, to be educated as full equals, to have the right to communicate in schools and in careers. It's hard to watch their number one way of communicating being.

slashed by the same dogmatic, not thought through dismissal. But what I'm hoping is that now that there's so much attention on non-speakers, there'll be enough money pouring in to prove the validity of spelling and hopefully get these individuals into you know just to include in society in a way that they deserve yes absolutely do you feel that Do you feel that going through this process has changed you in any way? Like the way that you regard consciousness or...

Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean... and not just me but i think even like yes for sure for me and i look at like my dad or other people that i'm really close to who are who are extremely skeptical who have been changed by kind of being on the journey with me right my wife who doesn't believe in anything like this doesn't believe in

I think she thought I was wild when I first started working on this. She's completely in belief now. But for me, it's done two things. One, I now fully believe that consciousness survives death. Because that's one thing that the non, once you believe the telepathy and you see it with your own eyes, it's pretty easy then to be like, what else have I dismissed? And when so many non-speakers often before the telepathy are talking about talking to the other side.

And they constantly are talking about other people in the room you can't see. It's pretty unusual. And I don't, I didn't know what to make of it the first time I heard that. And then I heard it from person after person, after person, after person, after person. And it's like, okay, how can you dismiss this? You know, it takes so long to get out of thought, spell a thought out. And the parents certainly often don't believe the same thing to be true.

And what do they get from lying about that? Especially when it takes so much effort to get the thought out. So with that type of stuff, I believe consciousness survives the body now. I believe that there is some sort of informational field and I don't know if that's how savantism works, but it does seem like we're able to somehow download information. Because I don't know how else someone knows a language they haven't been taught. Right, tap into some sort of mainframe. Yeah.

And so how will you develop this into a feature? Or is it going to be a feature documentary? Yeah, so we're filming it right now, which is exciting. Same families? Some. Yeah, there's a few key same families, Katie and Houston and Libby and John Paul and, you know, their girlfriend Lily and, you know, Akil. But there's also other families that get introduced. And one is kind of a love story between two.

you know 19 20 year old non-speakers in connecticut and just like john paul lily they are in love And one of their chief communication partners is the non-speaker Nina's sister, Natalia.

and she's been so moved by going through this journey with her sister that she actually stopped her career to open a spelling school and that's another story like when she that when natalia she ended up having a medical situation she had to kind of take a medical leave and that's right when nina starts spelling and she starts spelling herbal cures to her you need to look at this and she's like how do you know herbal cares

And Nina said, I can like commune with a lot of the plants. It doesn't matter if they're right next to me. I can like tap in and understand what they're good for. And these are what you need and start, you know, prescribed like a Chinese herb that Natalia had never heard of. She looked it up and it's something that's really good for raising the immune system slowly. and so it's

It's beautiful, you know, and what's really beautiful for me is going back out into the field, being with these families again, and now it's not just me. I have the producers and production corps, you know, all the people, and they're seeing this and watching their scales fall from their eyes. And cry on set because you're like, oh, shit, this is true. Wow. You know, it's remarkable. It is remarkable.

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we are kind of entering into this era where there certainly is like deep exploration into these things. Like, you know, there's, you know, people who describe psilocybin journeys you know having very much this coming to the same conclusion that there's there is this incredible all things are connected that You can feel and hear what people are saying from a world away or from the other side, etc. And I don't know, it feels like there's a lot of...

These ideas or openness to these ideas are kind of dovetailing. And there are a lot of ways in which they're kind of peeking, you know, poking through that societal wall. Yeah, I think you're right that there's a merger of a lot of the stuff at the same time. And I think the access to...

all the psychedelic drugs and medical studies, right? Or people, I think the embrace of near-death experiences and those conversations around that, even meditation. I mean, meditation was considered fringe science. It was just a bizarre thing for people to study 30 years ago. And now I know it can change people drastically. Yeah, absolutely. It's true. Rewire the brain. And there's, yeah.

I want to talk to you a little bit about like the ethics. Some people raise sort of ethics questions around like responsible storytelling. And I saw that documentary on Netflix called Tell Them You Love Me. Tell Them You Love Me, which I wanted to kind of get your... did you see that i sure did yeah and so is that the kind of sort of

unethical, you know, landmine that people are talking about. Maybe you could say a little bit about what it's about and then I'd love your opinion on that. Yeah, I mean. Tell Them You Love Me is about a true story. I believe her name was Anna Steubenfield, who was a communication partner to a young man that was nicknamed D-Man. And they ended up having, you know, a not just like emotional relationship, but a sexual one. And, you know, she was brought to court for, you know, I mean.

having sex with someone who couldn't consent you know and i think the issue with that case is that the consent was between d-man or the possible consent or who knows between d-man and anna and there wasn't a third party there to to check when if you're dealing with someone who doesn't have a voice who's communicating via spelling or on you know communication device And there's something as deeply, you know, personal as like a relationship or...

and kind of anything that's going to materially impact their lives, you have to have another communication partner between the two that are consenting. You just have to. You always have to have a third person. and you know in our film like

And also in our podcast, like the subjects communicate with way more than one person, right? There's usually coaches or communication partners or sometimes someone who comes to get like respite care who spends time with the speakers. There's often a sibling, maybe one or both parents. And that's really important when it comes to major life decisions. You have to have like two or three people be like, yeah, this is definitely what they want.

So as this kind of science is emerging, as these studies are emerging, is the field starting to put some sort of ethical, these ethical guidelines around how... I think it's critical. And I mean, that's been one of our biggest issues as well as like when we've been trying to talk to scientists. to do some telepathy testing. People sometimes don't understand autism and they need to understand the consensual respect that is required here.

Some of the things we've done for our film is we have five non-speaking advisors. One who's a non-speaking advisor around the science. And we've been getting so many emails about how to do the science and how to test it. So we said, great, let's do a roundtable where we get a lot of you together, along with some non-speakers and talk about that together. Because they have ideas about what's fair and not fair based on their apraxia.

at that stuff will be like okay we're gonna put this on the table and you did it and it's like no no i have an ocular motor problem i need the spelling word right in front of my eyes it doesn't mean i can't spell it just means you have to meet me where i'm at i can't meet you where you're at So I think scientists often do come at this from an ableist perspective.

which is like whoa you gotta sit down at a table with a non-speaker and say what what works for your body and what feels safe for your body so that you can actually do this or show us what you know

so i think that's a big thing there's a sweet story i want to share too because you know so often what happens with apraxia is your emotions or what you might be doing with your body isn't reflecting what's what's going on in the inside which is really important to sit down and spell with someone

we when we were shooting in atlanta for the film recently we were with lily you know we had a few days doing something with her and our final day i said lily we're running off time but what do you want to do for the final hour or so

And she spelled a telepathy test, which I did not, I didn't have any scientists there. We didn't have anything ready. And I was like, why do you want to do that? We don't have any of the right people here. And she said, because you only have boys do it in the podcast. And I want to show girls can do it too.

and i was like okay and then it got really serious suddenly we were putting up gopros around the room and different cameras coming in and partitions were being cut and she's being here and her dad has to go here and everyone no one can see that and it got really serious like the energy moved and then i noticed she started crying

So, you know, I got into my knees in front of her and I said, Lily, like, we don't have to do this. We were just setting it up and I didn't mean to make it so serious. We just thought if we're doing a telepathy test, we better get it from all angles. and she picks up the letter board and she spells no literally all my dreams are coming true so you know you have to check in you have to check in And you have to presume competence. You absolutely have to presume competence.

and make sure that this individual can spell with more than one person so you absolutely know from like two verifiable sources what they're feeling and wanting to do. That's so interesting. Wow! That's such a touching story. I think, you know, it's like...

It's so hard to be misunderstood in life, right? Even for us, like verbal people, like it hurts to be misunderstood. It hurts when somebody puts words in your mouth. It hurts when... nobody really sees the real you and so this is like exponentially more painful I would imagine for non-speakers who like Lily imagine her all her dreams are coming true because

There's so much implicit in what she's saying, right? Like, you are understanding her. You're changing the culture around this. Like, there's an opportunity for her to show the world that she also is capable of this and that they're... you know there are layers of communication that non-speakers might have that we just don't have so yeah yeah and and really sweet too like we first did dyslopathy tips with her good friend lizzie who's Lily was in Lizzie's wedding. They're close in age.

And Lily's one of her communication regulation partners, but also just her good friend. So we're like, this is great. It's not a family member. And somebody asked her, you know, solid and she got them. And then she's like, can I do it with my dad too? And we were like, I'm worried about time. And we're like, okay, get Scott in there. But I did ask Lily, I said, why is it important to do it with your dad too? And she's like, I want the world to see how well we're bonded.

And I think she knew it was important, you know, for her and her dad to just like present that bond as well. And I just, you know, there's so much love there. And what was the test that you were administering? You know, we, again, we were on the fly, so we pulled up a random number generator and a random word generator.

And often I will ask because sometimes non-speakers will say, I have a really hard time with numbers because I need to see something that has an image. Or, you know, like I can be like, I understand what the image is coming from that person's mind. Or some people do better with words. Some people do better with numbers.

And, you know, like people like Akil can do all of it. And same with Mia. So I do ask because I do think that whether or not someone has this ability, that's the question, of course. But then like what, how strong is it?

Something really special that we're doing in a few weeks, you know, when all this stuff around testing and testing and testing came up, I had a few conversations with non-speakers and their families who they said, you know, we don't even know what we're capable of. Like this is something we just do in our house with the people we love, or this is just a survival thing. And I was like, well, do you guys want to go somewhere? Like we can just like.

practice your telepathy like get like a few spelling communication partners and have a few of you in the room that are really good at this and see and they were like yeah so so we're gonna do that just to see and i love it because there was a real question for them that's like

at least the non-speakers i talked to for this where we're like yeah i know i can do it with my mom and my teacher and my brother and i can hear everyone else's thoughts but i don't know who's else you know who can read me and blah blah blah Could I type with this person's spelling communication partner and can we flip it all around and see what we're capable of so we can tell the scientists, sure, we can do that test.

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You know, there's so much love there between Lily and her dad. Or her communicator, she ended up in her wedding. Like, is that kind of like an important table stake? Yeah, I would say it's the baseline. I'd say it's the baseline to all of this. And I would also say the telepathic communication, at least for those who can hear it back, which many teachers and communication regulation partners and some parents say they can, it usually...

Yes, deep, deep love has to be there, but also no agenda. You have to be able to clear out almost like you're in a meditative state. You have to be agnostic about the answer. Yeah. Yeah, like another wonderful story to share is Nina and Natalia, two of the new people who are going to be in the film, who are two sisters. The first time Natalia realized that telepathy was real is they were out on a boat, their dad's boat.

And Natalia was kind of like, I'm cold. I'm sick of this. I want to go in. And then all of a sudden she gets a thought in her head that's like, no, can you please tell dad I want to stay out? It's beautiful out or something like that. And she's like, the heck? And she looked at her sister and her sister was kind of smiling and she was like, oh my gosh, like, did that just come from my sister?

And there wasn't a letter board or anything there, but... when they went back inside she said she asked you know nina did you send me a message into my brain when we were on the boat and nina said yeah i wanted you to know and i say and i want to stay out i'm paraphrasing because i don't remember exactly but it was something along those lines

And Natalia has said that has continued, you know, that like they'll be, she'll be shopping and she'll promise, you know, I'll come back with a book and all of a sudden she'll hear a comment to her head and say, not that book, that book sucked. you know and she and then she'll come home and you know so i'm glad you didn't get that book i don't want bubble you know whatever and so

And so a lot of, and I love this because it's, again, it's not about, the telepathy is there without the spelling. When people get obsessed about the spelling, it's like, Okay, I mean you need a foil to be like this isn't true and that's fine That's okay, but like it doesn't mean it's not true and happening still I lived in Spain. I went on exchange when I was a teenager, and I lived with a family that had identical twin sisters. I'm still very close to them.

and they absolutely could communicate telepathically. It was bizarre. I mean, one time one fell off a moped and the other one kind of collapsed in agony. Like, there are hundreds of stories. I don't know if you call it telepathic, but whatever that is, there was no membrane between. one and the other, and everybody sort of accepted it. You know, it was like this special gift that I think, you know, they came from the same cells dividing, and so it was, you know, understandable.

I guess, like, I had this, I don't know, it was really interesting listening to the podcast as a mother, you know, and like, I found it so... incredible like the the dedication and the stick-to-itiveness and the open-mindedness and like all of the ways in which

mothers show up for their children and I mean it does feel cellular right it feels like this I don't know, anybody who is a mother understands, right, like that there is a cellular connection to this being and that you would really do anything for the well-being of your child. Is that just, was that just kind of my, am I sort of uniquely reading into this? Like, or did you feel like, wow, there's like something between a mother and a child?

otherworldly and that you witnessed yeah but you know it's so it's so complicated because yes i think the love and sacrifice from these parents it cannot be understated from the whole family yeah i mean you have an individual who often as independent as they could get with some of their skills still does need you all the time and especially when they're younger and eloping like which means like running away

you know just like every few minutes um and and or eating everything in sight like john paul used to eat nails and keys and you know and then you know they've locked up the the kitchen and made sure that wouldn't happen, but you still can't control it. It's just, you know, just living the world, there's constant fear. And I read once somewhere that for parents of someone with severe autism, they have as much trauma as I can.

like a PTSD from a war veteran from being on high alert all day long. It never stops. So I think there is such. love and care and that society needs to give the parents and i think that the to reflect the love and care these parents are giving their children like it is a non-stop sacrifice so yeah i mean i think

That was humbling to see because I think, you know, I have two neurotypical kids and I get so frustrated with them. And I'll have the part of my day where I'm like, oh, can you just go do something or, you know? Or you find a moment of reprieve where it's like, they're playing happily alone. And then to think that some parents never, ever, ever get that. And then the fear compiled of like, will they ever communicate with me?

or connect with me. And one of the most beautiful stories that happens, this is a woman who's not in the Slopathy Tapes, but she and her son were going to Monisha's new autism foundation. and they would teach spelling there and and anyway but before this this was a five-year-old so he wasn't learning to spell yet but they were doing stuff with memory cards like to point to memory cards so you could like learn those motor skills

And before the instructor would even say which car to point to, the boy would be pointing to it. And the mom got concerned and said, look, it seems like my boy is reading the mind because the instructor won't even ask the question already. He's going to the answer. And so, of course, they were told this is kind of common. I had a phone call with that mom.

And she said, you know, it's so remarkable is that I've tested this at home and he can do it with me and the whole world, the whole, you know, medical doctors and educators told me he'll never communicate with me. he's aloof i'll never have a relationship with him and she goes and the irony is i have a more deep intimate connected relationship with him than probably any neurotypical parent So beautiful.

Well, I can't wait for this documentary. And thank you so much for amazing content and for, you know, like breaking this open for us. And it's been so wonderful to go on this journey alongside you. I feel like I've learned so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. This conversation reminded me how much mystery still exists in the way we connect and how quickly we also tend to dismiss what we can't fully explain.

What I love about Kai's work is that it offers a perspective just to listen more closely and to honor the quiet intelligence in every human being. I hope you enjoyed today's podcast as much as I enjoy talking to Kai. So thank you for listening and see you next week.

Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.