Well, I mean, the most out there idea, which is one that actually a lot of scientists have come to, is the idea that consciousness does not it's not confined to the cranium. And what's interesting is that if you ask these children, they will tell you that they have a hard time staying in their body, so they spend a lot of time in a disassociative state.
Today we have doctor Diane Hennessy Powell on the podcast. Doctor Powell is an integrative medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist, and psychotherapist. Her research interests include the neuroscience of extraordinary states of human consciousness and anomalous experiences. Her book is called The esp Enigma, The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Doctor Powell is an expert on autism and Savant syndrome and has studied children who seem to actually be able to read minds.
This work was featured in the chart topping podcast The Telepathy Tapes. In this episode, we have a rich discussion about the evidence suggesting that telepathy might actually be real and the confounds and methodological limitations that make studying this topic so difficult. We also discussed the science of prophetic dreams and her theories of consciousness. I really enjoyed this conversation. I am very interested in studying autistics evants, and I
hope to do some testing myself. I found that doctor Powell is a fellow open skeptic, which was great. Also, I love the question that is featured on her website, what is the full human potential? I really resonated with that question, so that further ado I bring you doctor Diane Hennessy Powell. Doctor Powell, welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
Such a pleasure so much. I want to talk to you about. Well, have your tagline on your website what is the full human potential? That's a right up my alley, Right up my alley. Do you believe that there's a lot more human potential than we're aware of?
Oh? Absolutely, absolutely yeah. I mean I think acquired savant syndrome is a really good example of that, where you'll have somebody who appears to be just a normal, ordinary person and then they get struck by lightning or they have some severe accident, and then afterwards they're able to do, you know, either musical or mathematical tasks that they weren't able to do before, and so when you hear those kind of accounts, it makes it really compelling case for
their being more to us than we think.
Yeah, I'm waiting for that special knock on the head that'll give me mozart likabilities, just waiting for that. Okay, well let's back up. Let's let's start with some fundamentals. So you're a retired medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist, and psychotherapist, which which hot resonates the most with you?
M I'd say that they're all pretty Yeah, they're all pretty equal. I mean, i'd say that in my practice as a neuropsychiatrist that I I ended up doing a lot of psychotherapy because that was what really helped people the most. That people would come to see me and they would do better faster than any of the medications could potentially kick in. And I'd ask them, all, you know what's helping you that? Oh you know that conversation we had about this or that, And I'd say, oh, okay,
so I you do what works. And so I became more and more of a psychotherapist in my practice, even though I originally was thinking that I would be doing predominantly assessments of people with neuropsychiatric disorders.
I imagine you're a good a good psychotherapist, a good listener, a good seer of an holder of space for people. I can imagine that.
Yeah, well, thank you.
Do you see a common thread running through Buddhism, Native American spirituality, and Egyptian herographics that you think says something about humans?
Yeah, I would say. What I'd say is that if you look at a lot of these spiritual traditions, which you see is that the reality that they described is very similar to the reality that is described by modern physics, quantum physics and the theory of relativity and so so I mean, there are several people like Capra who've written about that, and so that's one of thing that's interesting. But also I was really interested in what are the
universal truths? And you know, what is it that, regardless of the culture, just keeps arising and perpetuated independently of one another. And I think that we've really lost a lot of the knowledge that our ancestors had, and so that's been a lot of my interest in it. That's a shame, I think. So I think so it you know, when I when the work that I've done with Native
Americans is a really good example. So one of the people I've been working with is somebody who's working off of these archives that come from interviews that an anthropologist did with indigenous elders over one hundred years ago.
Wow.
And so they were meticulously transcribed and translated, and in it there's a lot of there's a lot of science in it. That's what's so interesting. I mean, they had such a knowledge of, for example, the you know, the planets and how they and the star systems, and they they really understood the cycles of nature, so that you know, when you know, for example, when you had certain phenomena happen,
you would also concurrently see something else happen. So so for example, there are there are sites that I've gone to where there's a very specific light that comes into a cave on a particular day and when that when that day happens, it's also the same day that the snakes come up from underground, and so you know, or you know, and we just think of, for granted that the seasons, that there are certain things that bloom at certain times a year and that, but but there's actually
these cycles where like certain trees are associated with with certain planets and you can predict when they're going to bud based.
On that correlation or causation.
Well, it's a it's it's an interesting it's an interesting thing because, I mean, it's really hard to think of what the causative factor would be unless you're thinking that it has something to do with electromagnetism and the fact that we live in this kind of you know, ionized world and we know that you know that electromagnetism plays a huge role in biology, so so so that's a possibility, or it could be that it's just a synchronicity, that it's just a that it really became a timing system
that is used.
So interesting, Well, this tell us a little bit about about you and and your own sort of way of viewing the world. And you've you've you, i mean you you've been kind of a rebel in your own the field for your whole career, trying to constantly seek out multiple truths and seek out alternative explanations for things. And when did you make contact? When did you first make contact with the phenomena of telepathy? That's how that's how you say the word telepathy.
Yeah, well, I guess you'd have to define. You know, what was my first contact? And what I mean by that is that when I was a teenager, I had a friend who traveled with the circus with the magician, and one day that magician was in town and my friend said, oh, you've really got to meet this guy. And he most of what he did was Houdini type tricks, and my friend was the person who would be there with the sledgehammer to break the glass in case something
went wrong. And yeah, and so when when when His name is Jay Michelle, and when he when I met him, he said, oh, you know, let me do a magic trick for you. And I said, okay, you know, and then what he did was he said, well, pick up any one of those books on that on that back sheelf. And this was at my friend's house and he had he had hundreds of books, and I just randomly picked up a book and then I opened it up and I was I was looking at it, and he would
he read it to me word for word. I was like, wow, how do you do that? He goes, oh, you know, close that, you know, go get another book, and I'm holding it so that he can't I mean, it's hard to imagine how he would know what page I'm on, and yet he was doing that. And and when I asked him, well, you know, you know, well, how can
you explain that magic trick to me? And he said, no, it's just it's just magic, and a magician ever shares his tricks, you know, and so so that was sort of in the back of my mind, but I just thought, well, that was a magic trick that I don't understand, and it wasn't. But but I think, looking back on it,
I think that that was really very into telepathy. And so then the next time was when I was at Harvard and I did consult on this patient who was trying to sign out against medical advice, and the staff thought that she was mentally ill and therefore incapable of making that decision for herself, And within minutes of meeting her, she started telling me things about myself that there was just no way that she could know. And so, you know,
I don't know whether quit or not. Oh. For example, at that time, my husband, who was a PhD biochemist and an MD, was applying for a post doctorate in biochemistry. And so the first thing she says to me, is your husband's a chemist? And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Then the second thing she said to me is he's applying for a job right now in two different cities, which was right. There were two cities that he was applying for a postdoctorate in. And then I said, wow,
that's really interesting. I said, can you tell me which cities? And she says, well, in his heart of hearts, he wants to go to one city, but you'll end up in the other one. And I knew in his heart of hearts he wanted to go back to Johns Hopkins, which is where we met in medical school, and it's also where he was actually born at Johns Hopkins. So he was multiple generations Baltimorian and had a lot of family there, and so I knew that's where we wanted
to go in his hard hearts. Then I knew the other one that he was applying for was the UC San Diego. And I said well, I said, well, where are we going to end up? And she said, well, name a bunch of cities and I'll tell you which one, and so I named off maybe ten cities, and then she said, San Diego, that's will you end up. And then she made other predictions about my life, all of
which became that came true. And so it was always this sort of thing in the back of my mind of well, gosh, you know, if this happened, you know, if this happened, then it's it's really important to study. And I was I was. I was aware that Einstein had said that our sense of time was an illusion and that there were these theories about living in a block universe in which the past, president, and future all coexist.
And so I thought, well, you know this, it could be that some of these you know, oddities that that we that are rare but that we occasionally stumble upon, are really giving us this the that this the you know, an insight into the real nature of reality that most of us are really closed off from. And so that's so that's how I became interested in that.
I think there's a really interesting question about There are multiple there are so many interesting questions. One is how much of what we're seeing is not faked. That's one big question, right, But another question is if it's not faked, okay,
then what is the explanation? Is there a metaphysical explanation or is there, you know, subtle, subtle cues sort of like explanation that they don't even know that they're they're you know, like the clever Hans horse, you know that was able to everyone's like, oh, Courhans can read minds this horse. But they found out that this horse was really really astute and in all sorts of ways to subtle cues that the humans were giving to come up
with the answers. So I think there's like two interesting questions. I get the sense that the autistic individuals that you have been first hand with, I get the sense that you don't you don't believe they're faking it. You don't believe it. They're like they're they're like mentalists, you know, like like like magicians.
Yeah no, no, no, they.
Really they're just doing it. They're just doing it.
Yeah yeah right, I mean, you know, and I have several reasons why I believe that, and because I I can understand why when people see one of these children with a letter board and the person holding the letter boards also the person they're being telepathic with, I can understand why there's concern over subtle queueing. And for the most part, those aren't the children that I've really focused on studying those are the children that Kai has witnessed.
But that's not really well. Kai so Ki Dickens is a filmmaker who heard an interview of me on a podcast and then came to interview me, and she was really fascinated by my research, and she asked me if she could witness some of my experiments. And she didn't really want to. She didn't want to go and see some of my experiments with people I'd already studied. She wanted to start fresh with people who had just recently
contacted me. So so I put her in contact with the family so that she could see me interviewing them for the first time. And and then she she flew me to la and we had a couple of the children come there, and then we also went to Atlanta and and when she saw the experiment, she was just so blown away that she created the podcast, The Telepathy Tapes, which has become a big hit.
I mean, that's the metric, the metrics, not it's beat the psychology podcast, which is what this podcast is beating the psychology podcast in popularity. Wow amazing, Yeah, yeah, so but it really has kind of taken the world by storm this podcast. People are really really interested and in the truth about this, and and I you know, you see all sorts of instertrecting responses. You see. You see there's two classes of people with their minority made up.
So you see the ones that are like, see, I've been saying in all my life, Tilepthy exists and I talk to my dead mom every day. And then there's the other end, which is like this is just complete bullshit, you know, and like basically nothing's gonna change my mind about that. Now, I would like to think, and I don't know you that well, but I'm looking forward to telling you today. I'd like to think that we both exist somewhere in the middle, that we were open and open minded skeptics.
Right right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean that that I would say that that definitely describes me and true. And the reason and this is an important point. I mean, there's there's there's several reasons why I think that this is worth investigating. The first one is that you have to look at who is it that contacts me so prior
to the telepathy tapes. Now that now that the teleptity tapes has come out, all that's are off because because you could have a lot of people contacting me that they want to be part of something that's this you got this kind of momentum and you know kind of attention, and so we have to look at, you know, who is it that has contacted me over the last you know, twelve, you know, twelve to fifteen years. Okay, that's how long
I've been getting these emails from people. And it has been people who are parents or teachers or speech therapists who work with these children. And something happens where the child type something or points on the letter board and it is a repetition of what the person themselves is thinking. And or sometimes it starts with the child doing something like that's in response to whatever the person was thinking.
So for example, maybe the mother's thinking, gee, I really would like the glass of seven up right now, the child comes into the room, you know, with can of seven up, you know, or a father or father, a father who was in the laundry. Yeah, you know, a father in the in the laundry room and he was looking for a shirt of his and it was a specific shirt. And then the child comes into the liner room and tosses the shirt at him. And so then after that they're like, hey, you know, were you reading
my mind? And there at first when they say that, they're kind of joking because they're thinking, oh, you know, this is just one of those coincidences. And then when the child said, yeah, I can read your mind types that, and then they start testing and they go, oh, well, what you know, what am I thinking now? And then the child, the child types it. They go, oh my gosh,
what is this? And then they they do an internet search and then they see that someone with my credentials has actually studied this, and then they contact me because they don't know what they don't know what to do about it. They're trying to make sense of it. They're they're they're undergoing onto logical shock. They don't know what to do about a child that now they think, oh my gosh, the child is reading all of my thoughts and they don't know how to handle it. So so
they so those are the reasons they contact me. Is because they wanted to just know, you know, you know, can you tell me anything? Can you you know, can you help me? You know? And I you know, I didn't none of them became my patience. I mean, they were just contacting me because they were just really concerned, and it was from all around the world. And a lot of these parents were engineers, medical doctors, psychologists. I mean, they were not people who already had a new age type way of thinking.
You know.
And so so that's the first thing is who, the nature of who contacts me and why they contact me. And then the second thing is that I I've tested some children who were whose parents had sent me an actual video, you know, where they're like, here, let me send you a video of what I what I got and where. And in those cases, I could see that the child wasn't using a letter board. They were actually typing independently into like an iPad type like device that
had an electronic voice. And so that's that's what that's that's what got my attention. And and so those are the cases that I focused on. And then and then there was one parent that who I somebody had told me about, somebody who followed me on Facebook and knew about my research, said oh, you should check out this this child whose mother's posting videos of them on on Facebook.
And that was Ramses and he could speak the answer and and and so so so those are the things that make me feel like there's there's could be something there, even with these non speaking children who use the stencil board. But I agree that that's not the most compelling evidence, and that there's there's still much more research that needs to be done before we can draw any real hard, fast conclusions.
Yeah, and uh, and I would like to contribute to that.
Uh.
My my colleague Simon Baron Cohen at Cambridge University, and I would love to team up with you. So let's keep up that conversation off channel. But we're we're very interested in this. I've spent a large part of my career studying gifted students. I wrote a book called on Gifted and had a whole chapter on savants. Uh. Darald treffort Is was a real dear personal friend of mine, and he actually at one point asked if I wanted to run his savant center, and I didn't have the
time to do that. You know, just in my free second, I'll run a savant center. But I've always really been fascinated with a lot of these cases, and I've never really focused on the on the telepathy cases I've I've I've I've focused on other cases like playing piano, you know, just without learning, you know, how to without explicitly explicitly learning how to play piano. You know, you have these these you know, artists, visual artists who do amazing things.
And so I think, like the the I'll say the billion dollar question, not the billion dollar question. The billion dollar question that we're that both me and you are like we really want to know, is like what I mean, are there explanations? I mean, is everything from a scientific point of view, It's like everything has a cause cause you know, there's there's or is there a metaphysical explanation here?
I mean, are and how would we discover that scientifically or experiment experimentally that that whatever the answer is doesn't fall within the the standard model of science.
Yeah, well, I'm so what I've been wanting to do is get what the ideal protocol would be. I mean, I know what if I could achieve it, I know what that would look like, but that would be Oh. What what I would like to see is the two individuals that are telepathic with one another in separate rooms.
And and it's been hard to achieve with the children who are telepathic with their communication partner because and so then I've wanted to study children that have more than one person they're telepath you know, telepathic with and so you know, or had more than one facilitator for their communication.
And so so because there needs to be that separation between the person who knows the answer and the person holding the letterboard, or the child needs to be able to type independently and not need someone holding the letterboard,
and so that they can be in separate rooms. And and so that's that's what I've been wanting to obtain, and and and I think the reason why I think it's possible that that could happen is in part because the fact that I looked in the literature and and there actually were these studies that were done back you know, back before autism was even a diagnosis. With these children that when you read the description of them, you'd say, oh, if that child was live today, they for sure that
child would be diagnosed as autistic. And in those studies they were able. This was before we had stencil boards and you know, rpm you know, that form of communication. So these were children who were tested with separation and by scientists who were credible. There was there was a scientist at Cambridge who is the person that is responsible
for Rubert Sheldrake becoming interested in telepathy. I don't know if you're aware of that, but he was working there was a professor there he really admired who told him about this study that was done by a friend of his who was an ophthalmologist. And the ophthalmologist had this child who was blind, but if the mother was in the room, the child could read the eye chart. And then he discovered that it was because he was really,
you know, reading the child's mind. And so he actually conducted studies with the child, you know, separated from the mother, demonstrating this you know, this mind reading going on, and and wrote it up and and I thought, you know, that's so interesting because being blind at earth is another cause of Savant syndrome. Or I shouldn't use the word cause.
I should say though that if if you look at who are who are the most likely to have Savant syndrome, it's either people who have the acquired form, or it's people who are who have autism or their their lined
from a very early age. And so it's interesting because it suggests that you have you know, during a time period when the brain is still you know, undergoing massive uh you know construction, you know, you know, in the pruning process and the whole you know, setting up the wiring for how you're going to navigate in the world.
That that that during that really formative early years, that that that that's associated with these abilities that seem to be work around for someone who who otherwise is not going to be very functional.
Yeah, because I think that there are scientific, neuroscientific explanations for how some of these other savant abilities come into being. You know, we can actually use certain T D s C for instance, to electrostimulation on everyday people to like Snyder, you know, has has done some of that research. Alan Steiner, you come across his research at all, you know, attempting to uh, there is something about disinhibiting our left hemisphere.
There's something there, you know that that is that has a scientific explanation that if we can disinhibit the left hemisphere, we can kind of have people tap more purely into some of these more modular functions on the right hemisphere than like holy cow, like we can do all sorts of incredible things, and to me, it doesn't make it any less miraculous or amazing if it turns out that telepathy, you know, falls under some basic neuroscience principles or even
quantum physics principles. To me, it's still amazing and one wonder full, full full of wonder as far as I'm concerned. But it is. It's such an interesting thing what you're doing. And the reason why I was so excited to seek to come across your research because I really had encountered all these other savant skills, but it never dawned on me to investigate the TWEP one opened up a new
world for me. And I guess the question that I'm the burning question for me is does that follow the same principles as these other savant skills or is it something really special? Do you know what I mean? Is it something that's going to kind of reveal the nature of human of the universe in a way that playing piano won't? You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, Yeah, I do, I do. Yeah. And And I don't know if you knew this, but Darryl Trefford he witnessed my experiments with Haley, and I mean he went public.
I didn't know that.
Again, he publicly stated that he had seen evidence of telepathy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I have the videographer who took the footage of Haley, which I mean that was like twelve years ago. On Hour eleven years ago now also has an interview of Darryl Trefford saying what he thought, you know.
So well, I mean the question it's an interesting that's really cool. Thank you for saying Daryld Trufford had a very open mind and he was very un going to hit a lot of unconditional love for these individuals. He was such a he had such a big heart. I just want to give a really big shout out to Daryld Trefford. He really cared about these people in a way that a lot of other people, you know, have
looked over them. So that's that's a wonderful story. Thank you for honoring his memory in that way by telling that story. I think that's what's so interesting is like, well, how do we define mind reading? Like like what, let's like really get into it. That's like because there's the kind of mind reading where you know, it's possible that every thought we have does influence some really slight body tick or jesture or some sort of different way of breathing.
Every every letter, every letter of a thought, you know, and that you know when the person is that these these these these these autistic savants are so good at pattern recognition at at an advanced level that is far beyond it's still human, but it is. It's like Michael Jordan's level of you know, everyone looks at Michael Jordan dunking from the free throw on and they don't say, there's non scientific explanation for it. They're still in awe.
You know, his talent was three for standard deviations above the mean. It's possible that these autistic individuals are three you know two three standard usion and above mean and implicit learning ability in the you know, in in in statistical learning, you know, discovering some of these recur these
really complex statistical patterns that are associated with thoughts. And then there's then there's like straight up mind reading, which is like do you do you think there is a universe in which they are actually tapping into the consciousness of the other person, Like it was kind of ended in the telepathy tapes that maybe there is this kind of universal consciousness that they all go with. You know that these artistic people, you know, all hang out, all
hang out in this other realm, this other plane. I forget what the name of that plane was. Do you do you how much do you do you think there's there's a real possibility of this kind of they're able to to actually see and access a more universal consciousness. Because that's a different question.
Yeah, it is a different question. Well, I mean I have several different hypotheses about what could be going on, you know, And that's what you do is a good scientist, just that you you have to think about, you know what, what are all the things that this could possibly be, so that you design your experiments accordingly and so so one of the you know, I'd say it's a mistake to think that a lot of people think that you know, because the letterboard moves, they think that you know that
at the is queuing that way, you know, unconsciously queuing, you know, by moving. And if you really, I mean, if you study that, you know, I've got hours of video of for example, Haley, and she was able to type independently into a into a talker. But then what happened is when I put a barrier between her and the therapist she was telepathic with, then she regressed because it confused her and so she reverted back to using
a stencil board. But if you look at that stencil board and you see how she goes from, she'll go from here to here to here to hear depends. You know, there's twenty six letters there and there there aren't twenty six different positions of the board. I mean that it's hard. And also, these children, a lot of them don't have very good vision. So if there's queuing going on, I don't think that it's a visual queuing.
And so are are they seeing? Do you do you do walk them off from from visually watching the parent?
You know? Well I did with with Haley so that she couldn't see them, you know. But a lot of the that the kids that uh Kai has witnessed, there weren't the visual barriers between there, and I feel that
that's essential that there be a visual barrier there. And yeah, but the other the other confounding factor, and I think this is a more likely thing than than that, is that if you look at studies uh on sub you know, sub vocalizations, you know, what what you what you learn is that when we read silently to ourselves, that there actually is a little bit of vibration of the vocal cores. That's not it's not audible, but there is a little
bit of that. And so my question is, since so many of these kids have like an amazing hearing, you know, perfect you know a lot of them have perfect pitch. Some of them seem to have really sensitive hearing, so they can hear somebody at more at a distance. So if they're subtle queuing and going on, you know, that's just the forum. I think it would be take. You know, it would take that's think you put my money.
I love I love this. I'm finding this conversation exhilarating. For what it's worth. I really want to, I really want to, like really nerd out with you, Like let's talk about all the possibilities, including the most miraculous ones, but let's talk about the others as well. So with Haley, just so I understand, correctly, when you put the barrier up, she did revert back to another way of communicating, but still she got the answer correct.
Absolutely, Yeah, I mean she was, she was phenomenal. I mean, you know, I have got six hours worth just random number after random number after random number, or you know, random word or you know, randomized picture.
I mean she's mentalist. Like I'm I also took up a hobby as a mentalist. I became a professional mentalist last year. So I you know, I love doing I can do all those things Halely can do, but I won't I won't say that. I'll say they're they're tricks. But and and uh and and ethical mentalist what is most mentalists would say that that is as well. But but she's obviously not a mentalist. So she's not like consciously trying to figure out how to game, you know,
how to full no no no, yeah, yeah yeah. And I think that's that's important to recognize and to also give her a humanity about it. So and I think we also can like say objectively, like, you know, she has an extraordinary talent there, whatever that is, and whatever it turns out to be is no less an extraordinary talent as someone who can play a beautiful sonata, you know, Like it's a talent. And the question is what is that talent? And I think that's what I want to know,
what is that talent? Because some I mean some people, but some, but you have a lot of people listening to telepathy tapes who are not interested in science and immediately go to the other accessing a universal consciousness, which I don't fully understand how that would work. And but it seems like you you put forward some in your in your book which I just ordered. I can't wait to get it. But it looks like in your book, correct me if I'm wrong, you put forward some pretty
interest I'll say, out there. But but really fascinating quantum theory idea is that could maybe explain a tapping into a universal conscience? Can can you? Can you kind of double click on the most out there idea that you have?
The most out there idea that I have?
Well, what could be going on here? About? What could be going on here?
Well? I mean the most the most out there idea, which is one that actually a lot of scientists have come to, is the idea that consciousness does not it's not confined to the you know, the cranium. You know that that. And what's interesting is that if you you know, if you ask these children, they will tell you that they have they have a hard time staying in their body, so they spend a lot of time in a disassociative state. And in fact, it's you know it, It's interesting because
if you think about it. They they really have poor proprioception. They have really poor you know, they have a really there's a disconnect between their mind and their body because their body doesn't really cooperate very well. And they they're very they've got very high anxiety levels. And I know, being an expert on I work with a lot of people who were traumatized, and you know, and they are
moren't prone to disassociation, okay. And and one of the things that you see is common to a lot of the literature and parapsychology for some of the people who've been from the best psychics, you know, for example, trained by the military or whatever, is that they'll oftentimes say
that they have out of body experiences. You know, they would do you know, something called astro projection where they would they would basically you know, focus their conscious attention outside of themselves and could see things from a perspective outside of themselves. And so so you know, so I find that very interesting that these children, you know, report
that on a regular basis. And in fact, there was a book written by this boy who's Japanese that was translated into English where he was answering the questions that were posed to him, and the name of the book is the reason I jump. And when asked why do you jump, he said, I jump because it feels like my soul is leaving my body.
It's fascinating. The one sticking point, the thing my mind keeps going back to this over and over and again. Maybe you have found in your studies an exception to this, But why only the mother, like why like if? Okay, because the tapes kind of only presents it that way.
Okay, No, no, no, it's not just the mother. In fact, strangers though, well, well it's it's usually somebody with whom they have a close bond, Okay, you know. So for example, one of the people who contacted me about, you know, about their autistic child was actually someone who is a retired medical doctor, male medical doctor, who adopted a child,
so it wasn't even his, you know, biological child. And he's the one who you know, discovered this and he was shocked because he was trained medical doctor, same training as me. That where from the standpoint that you're you're very much immersed in the you know, the materialist you know model that neuroscience teaches us.
Yes, why not that complete stranger?
Well, there there are some of these Some of these kids, you know, report being able to read the minds of some you know, somebody that they don't really know. But I've never studied that. I mean, I can't say that it's actually true. I mean, you know, how do I know that it's not just auditory hallucinations. I mean, that's always you know, one of the things that one has
to think about. And and there's this, you know, a lot of these children have an expressive aphasia, which is, you know, basically there's an area of the brain that's involved in the expression of language, and then there's an area of the brain involved in the understanding of language, and that the latter one is weern't the case. And so if you if you have a if you have damage of some sort too Broca's area, then then you
you you end up having problems with speech. But you can also end up with problems with the hand because if you look at the the homunculus and you know of the brain, you see the hand is very close
to where the mouth is. And and when children are learning how to speak, they they they they're they're babbling, but they also do babbling with their hands, which is one of the reasons why you can teach sign language, and and and so, so that's the area of their brain that's problematic, you know, and and and so they're so So I have every reasona believe that when the parents say this, kids really still understanding what people are saying,
comprehending language. I think that that's probably true. And one of the things I want to do is to do studies on them to to show, you know, what, what is their wiring in their brain? I mean, you know, do we see wiring that is consistent with a brocus type aphasia.
That's a great question. What a great question. So is There's so many, so many unanswered questions. So, you know, I keep going back to what what is talent? You know? Anyway, I have a friend who a colleague who studied gifted children and profoundly gifted children and prodigies. So the prodigy phenomenon,
to me is not irrelevant to this discussion. A lot of these To define as a prodigy, you have to show some adult like full form of fully fledged expertise before the age of ten, and a lot of these kids, you know, with these prodigies, they are able to do that. And it's without formal training, and they're able to do that. And and my my friend who studies prodigies, found that usually there is some family member who had this talent if you go far enough back, you know. And so
you start to think about genetic transmission. You start to think about, well, what what's encoded in the genes, and then what what exactly you know, does that cold for that allows for some exceptional talents And and then I start to think about telepathy, what what what are the what's the genetics of the talent for telepathy?
You know? Yeah, well, I you know, it's it's it's it's it's very interesting. I mean, you know, like I come from a family of pattern pattern recognizers. I mean, I'm a pattern recognizer, and I think that's one of the reasons why I think so out of the box. And you know, and when I spoke with Temple Grandon about it, you know, about my pattern recognition, she said, well, you probably come from a family of mathematicians and musicians. And I do. I mean, my, I mean, everybody everybody's
a mathematician or a musician. I mean, you know, my my I have a brother who's a theoretical physicist and a brilliant mathematician. My father was, you know, a brilliant mathematician and scientist, and my mother was a brilliant musician. And I took up musicians on both sides of the family,
that math petitians on both sides of the family. And so, you know, there's something about in our genetics that that predisposes us towards that pattern recognition as opposed to being verbal thinkers, and that the problem is that most people are verbal thinkers, and and and and verbal thinking can then get you caught up in these kind of you know, endless doo loops, you know, and you can and you can stray from what you know what you can stray
from seeing things as they really are, because you know, we we can talk ourselves into believing a lot of different things using words. But but with with something that like pattern recognition, it's it's more of a it's more of a sensitivity to how things fit together, and and and and because of it, you can recognize when something is.
Off absolutely absolutely, So there's a real talent there, you know, for for pattern recognition that probably a lot of these autistics savants have. By the way, Dowd treffor Dowd Treffor didn't like using the phrase autistics savan He just wanted to call him savants.
So I don't know if we.
Should do that. But yeah, no, so there there's something. So I think without a doubt pattern recognition plays plays a role. But but is it the complete explanation? I think is the interesting question? What did you think you could find using q ee G analysis of both telepathic pairs talking to each other? What do you think could be some like if if you start to go in that direction and you start looking at that, what what
do you think you could find? Like what what are some potential hypothesis there?
Well, I mean, and that is my intention to be getting on them. Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I mean I you know, as I said, you know earlier, you know, I would love to see what the wiring is, you know, do like you know, you know MRI, you know, to see that. But you know that that's that could be traumatic for some of these children to you know,
go into a machine like that. And and so you know, the the q e G gives you a you know, some information, you know, and so one of the things I'm very interested in is, you know what what brain waves are they you know, are they operating on you know, you know what what deviation is there from you know that are normative data, you know, and so uh, you
know they do, they have a lot of data. You know, which data is a frequency that we associate with the hippocampus and with dreaming sleep, and it's also been associated with you know, some of these psychics like Englo Swan he had to hit a seven hurt signal that was you know, unique and and so yeah, so looking for things like that, looking for I mean, I would anticipate that you're going to see a right hemisphere dominance, you know, but that you know that doesn't you know, prove things
one way or the other. What by doing simultaneous recordings of each individual, then I want to see is there some kind of synchronization that occurs? So is it is it that they're you know, can can we detect that in the in the signals? And that requires you know, fairly sophisticated ee G equipment, But that's that's the equipment that we're getting. We're also getting, uh, we're getting caps that are you know, very user friendly for for children
with sensitive scalps. You know, they're more expensive, but it would enable us to you know, put the cap on without having to poke their poke all of the electrodes with you know, a needle to put the gel in there. They they've got caps that don't use a gel.
I'm so happy to hear that you're going to do this. I'm so happy. There is some research and maybe you could adopt some methodologies. But they do have research showing couples in love and how synchronized their brains are. And I wonder if you know, you often find couples who've been with each other over a certain number of years, they say they feel like they can start reading each
other's minds. I just think that there's it could be something similar like like I know, earlier I was really belaboring the point about why just the mother or why just someone that you're familiar with, because I do think there's something there that familiarity with someone allows these children to pick up some regular patterns that you know, make
them more predictable. I mean, they like predictability people with autism, and if you spend enough time with someone, any human, you start to realize, God, humans are actually pretty predictable. They there we get we all get caught in her, you know, mother always when when when when mother, you know, really wants her coffee, she always goes to this spot. You know, it's not like your red mother's mind. You've spent enough time with mother.
That's well. Yeah, I mean you could say the same thing about you know, like for example, my dog. You know, I mean I don't have a dog right now without a dog, but you know, but I've lived with dogs a good deal all the time. And and yeah, they they get to the point where they just know your habits. They mean, I I used to have a dog as a as a co therapist. And and she she knew that when a patient handed me a check that it
was the end of the session. You know, she would immediately jump off of the she'd jump off of the sofa and and and you know, because she she was ready and because she owed always see them to the door with me. And uh so, but you know, I really started to wonder if she was was telepathic. I
mean a lah you know Rubert Sheldrake's research. And here's the reason why was that she developed surfers here from we we lived in San Diego and the water down there, you know, gets you know, pretty contaminated, and so it's a it's a real problem for people that surf in the ocean there and and so and she she was a springer span and you couldn't keep her out of the ocean, and so she developed these untreatable air infections.
And so she was she was stone deaf. I mean, you could fire you could set off fireworks right in bront of her and she wouldn't flinch, you know. And she and and so stone deaf. And I didn't really lies how deaf she was, because she would she she would. It was like she understood what I was saying to her, and so I thought she was hearing me. And so then one day I thought I'd test it by just calling her by thought, instead of actually you know, calling her out, you know, and she'd come and I thought.
Well, that's wow, you know interesting.
Yeah. So yeah, so you know, so it's you know, who knows what?
You know? Well, it's not just who knows, it's like let's find out like exactly, We're not just like, oh who knows what? No, We're like, let's design an experiment here.
Exactly.
And it seems like like the phenomenon of mind reading is a different category of mind of future predicting. So you said earlier there were two things in one, you got a two in one. Earlier you said this individual was saying all these things about where your husband was going to go and what choices, but it turned out to be eventually true. And I think I feel like that's a separate thing, Like that's another thing, another thing
we need to study, which is fortune reading. I don't think that's the same thing as mind reading, whatever it turns out to be. I think they're both gonna be separate, maybe correlated, related, but not completely the same talent. I don't know, what do you think?
Yeah, well, I agree, I mean, I you know, I think that it's you know, it's interesting. I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with the research that Daryl Baum did on presentiment.
Of course, of course, legend, legend.
Yeah, and so you know, so you know, even though it's you know, just as you know, a fraction of a second or whatever, you know that that it still is beforehand, you know, And so that that really does challenge our concept of time.
You know, what do you make of the replication attempt that didn't find the founded chance levels.
Yeah, you know, there's so much of that in science. I mean, you know that that I you know, I'd have to try it myself and see if I could repeat it for me to comment on other people's science, you know, I mean, you know, there's I mean, you know there there have been all kinds of things that have you know, had difficulty with you know, replication, but they didn't get that, you know, they don't necessarily get tossed out, and so right, yeah, I just I just
think it's worthy of further study. But yeah, and and there's you know, what's interesting to me is that there is is there's such a a connection with one of the things that precognition and telepathy share in common, is that both of them seem to be more likely to happen and people who don't ordinarily experience them if there's a crisis involved.
Interesting.
Yeah, so you know, you you get more of these precognitive dreams when it's like a disaster that you know, or you know, or somebody that's going to die. You know. One of these autistic children, she she had a she had a you know, a dream that her father was going to slip on ice and break his hip and then and they live in Arizona and they're like, oh,
you know, what are the chances of that? And then and then, you know, I don't know, a month or so later, he's on a business trip and he slips on ice and freaks his hip up in the and so so it's it's one of those things where it's like a warning system, you know that. I mean, there were a lot of people who reported, you know that like nine to eleven was going to happen before it did.
You know, there's the book that was there was a book called, uh, there was a book that was written about a ship called the titan like a decade before the Titanic sank, and and I write about that. When you read my book, you'll you'll you'll you'll read about that and and it's like the details are unbelievably similar.
And the person who wrote that book said that it came to him in some kind of you know, reverie, you know, and so you know, so it so it's like there's there's something you know about disasters, crises, et cetera. And the same thing is reported about telepathy. But you'll have you know, for example, to siblings, they're you know,
really really close. They're different parts of the country, and one of them gets in an accident, the other one, you know, simultaneously has a dream about it dies and somebody else, you know, somebody dies and you and the other person's aware of it. But otherwise they don't tend to help those experiences.
Wow, this whole, this whole connection of dreaming and prophecy is so interesting and it leads me. It makes me wonder if that's a talent too. So is that is everyone equally as good at having their dreams become a prophecy? You know? Maybe not? You know? And then and then the question is, well, what makes those who are good at what's going on there? So so that that's a whole To me, that's just that's that's another layer of
fascinating with the work that you do. In addition, it's not exactly the same thing as mind reading, all right. And I also want to uh, just return this thing I said earlier, because I made the point about like being with someone you're familiar with could help explain a lot of it, seeing their patterns. But I just to be skeptical of my own self for a second when
I for saying that a lot of these things. They're coming up with random strings of letters, right, they're they're they're thinking, right you you come like random like like like any word in the dictionary, right, that kind of stuff.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I've I've even because of the fact that words, once you get the first few letters, I mean, then you know, there's only so many combinations of what the rest of the word is going to be, and so it stops being as impressive as a random number. And so I've even generated nonsense words.
Whow. And I mean it's that wow, it's not wild? Are you do you are you still wild?
I've been doing this. I've been doing this for you know, you know, like twelve thirteen years more, you know, so you know it. I mean I do find it remarkable, of course, you know, but but it's it's not the same as somebody for whom it's a really recent experience.
For you, it's like, yeah, tell up, these real you know what epps, Whereas people listening to telepathy tapes for the first time who are encountering this phenomenon for the first time are just riveted.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know, and you have to also realize, I mean, that there's lots of people before me. I mean, for over you know, one hundred and fifty years. There are a lot of people who have done studies on things like telepathy and precognition. And so that's one of the reasons why I became the interested in coming up with the theory to understand it, because it's not that this is just the first time anybody has observed
something that they would call lepathy. It it's just that in these children, if that's what we're observing, it's the most consistent and it's the most act you know, accurate.
Yeah, you know, you're right. There's a long list of yes of paranormal psychologists. Going back to one of my favorites, probably my favorite, jb Ryan, who wrote The Reach of the Mind, and I have that on my bookshelf. Really did a lot of experiments that left a lot of unanswered questions. So I guess to wrap up our interview today, thank you for the skeptical open mind as do you have, and for keeping at it, for not giving up, and
for the new terror tories that you're going into. And I would like to help you in any way I can. In my colleague at Cambridge we'd love to do some sort of controlled study or something, but regardless, thank you so much for the work you do. It's really incredible. Thank you.