Noah Karsky
The Telepathy Tapes
A podcast series documenting apparent telepathic abilities in nonspeaking autistic individuals
Last updated March 09, 2026
AI-Assisted Summary
The Telepathy Tapes is a podcast series hosted by Ky Dickens that began releasing in late 2024. It documents her investigation into reports of nonspeaking autistic individuals who appear to demonstrate telepathic or anomalous communication abilities - specifically, the ability to perceive information from another person’s mind without conventional sensory access.
What the Podcast Documents
The central phenomenon involves nonspeaking autistic individuals (many of whom use facilitated communication or spelling boards) who seem able to accurately report what another person is thinking, seeing, or experiencing - without any apparent conventional means of knowing. Dickens visits families, researchers, and practitioners across the country to document these accounts firsthand.
A recurring test format involves a “sender” focusing on a randomly selected image, word, or scene, while the nonspeaking individual spells out what they perceive. Families describe years of lived experience with this phenomenon before it was ever framed in terms of parapsychology.
Scientific and Methodological Questions
The podcast raises real methodological challenges. Facilitated communication itself has a contested history, with studies showing facilitator influence in some cases. The show attempts to address this by documenting trials where the facilitator is blind to the target stimulus - meaning the facilitator does not know what the sender is focusing on, ruling out unconscious cueing.
Powell’s controlled work attempts to satisfy basic experimental criteria: randomized targets, blinded facilitators, and recorded sessions. The results she reports are statistically significant, though the work remains outside mainstream scientific publication channels.
Noah’s Notes
This was a really interesting podcast series that I have recommended to many people. It presents itself as an easy-to-listen-to introduction to a world that is often discounted in today’s society, and hopefully invites people to the question of “what if it is all true?” Ky does a good job at being skeptical, introducing us to many families who find their children to hold this ability, and shows over the course of several episodes that this isn’t all just fluffy stuff.
I don’t really know the full details, but apparently the concept of a non-verbal autistic person using a speller to help them communicate is considered cheating, or at least means we need to throw out those tests. I think Ky is able to help folks move past this because there are examples with other children who can communicate via devices or other mediums that do not rely on someone typing for them. The episode below presents someone who tried to debunk a lot of these claims.
What I think is a really fascinating part of this podcast is the concept of “The Hill.” I’d never heard of anything like it before, and I find it really interesting to think about and to try to place it within the context of other consciousness threads. The Hill is essentially a “place” — and I use place very loosely because it is not a physical location — where people supposedly go into a meditative state and can meet up and speak with other people. It exists as a telepathic chat room where distance is no issue and these non-verbal people can talk and share ideas. I might be mixing this up with another podcast on this topic, but one thing I found interesting was that some of the members of the Hill sort of experience it through their own cultural lens. Additionally, it is mentioned that there have been people who are not autistic that have been to the Hill, but you cannot go if you lie.
Crazy theory #1: These children are the latest iteration of a rushed-out human hybrid or engineered human from some other non-human intelligence. I say rushed out because ideally they would not have the handicap of not being able to talk, but this could equally be an intentional thing. This theory comes from my recent reading of Abduction: Human Encounters by John E. Mack, and I am imagining that we as humans are really ticking close to the doomsday clock and the non-human intelligence are like “ok let’s get this out the door to try and help the humans.” Supporting this theory is the fact that some of those who visit the Hill say a large focus is to help humanity do things like raise their consciousness. The episode below is very interesting on the intention of raising the collective human consciousness, and looking into this more would be a worthy investment of time:
Crazy theory #2: This is like the early stages of Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, and the children are here to lead us to a transcendent consciousness and join them on the Hill — some sort of cosmic overmind.
In the end, I just find it really interesting to listen to. It allows us to take a step back, think open-mindedly about what is being communicated, and hopefully realize how silly we are for worrying about daily stresses when we could be focusing on moving closer to whatever the heck direction these children are pointing us.