← Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark
The Telepathy Tapes: Are Autistic Kids Mind Readers? | Dr. Diane Hennacy, MD
01:01:04
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- [00:00]
A
You believe that some nonverbal autistic individuals can receive information from another person's mind telepathically, and that is their primary way of communicating.
- [00:11]
B
One day, the therapist who was doing homework with her had her calculator die on her. When she switched to the new calculator, it gave her an answer that was in logarithmic notation. And then Haley typed out the answer in logarithmic notation. And then the therapist goes, well, wait a minute, Haley. How'd you know that? That's what the answ. The calculator wasn't within Hayley's eyesight. And Hayley typed, while I see the numerators and denominators in your head. And she said, what? You can read my mind? She said, yes. That really isn't the only ability that they and their parents report. There are reports by many of these parents and teachers that these children see dead relatives.
- [01:16]
A
You're a mom with a nonverbal child. You've been told they can't communicate, that they don't understand, that this is as far as it goes. But then something starts happening that you can't explain. You think something and they respond to. Not randomly, not vaguely, very specifically. And it happens again and again and again. And eventually you find a credited doctor who confirms what you thought might be crazy. Your child may be telepathic. The Telepathy Tapes podcast, featuring real families and a scientist who has made the impossible possible, has become a viral lightning rod, pulling in massive audiences, intense skepticism, and a question that's making people deeply uncomfortable. Are some nonverbal autistic children communicating in ways that we don't understand yet? Dr. Diane Hennessey didn't start her career chasing fringe ideas. She's a Johns Hopkins trained neuropsychiatrist, former Harvard faculty, a clinician and researcher who has spent decades studying autism at the highest levels of medicine. But after years of working with families like these, she says she witnessed something that she could not ignore. Today, the doctor behind the famous Telepathy tapes is here to explain exactly what she's seen and why she risked everything to say it out loud. You may vehemently believe it. You may vehemently disagree with it. You might believe parts and not others. Well, today we're here to listen and challenge ourselves by hearing a story that really could change everything. This show is free because of support from listeners like you. Please pause for two seconds before we begin to leave. A five star review for Apple or Spotify. Talking about how much you love the show. That helps keep the lights on. Please welcome neuropsychiatrist and scientist Dr. Diane Hennessy. From the telepathy tapes to culture apothecary. Before people try to write you off as crazy for what you're about to say, I want them to know who you are. Because you are a Johns Hopkins trained Harvard faculty, you've had decades in autism research, right? So can you share your credentials and experience and what areas of focus you're really known for in the autism field?
- [03:29]
B
So I started out actually in neuroscience because I was trained to be a scientist by a father who was not only a scientist in one field, but he had graduate degrees in three different branches of science, and he was the head of the artificial heart program at Battelle Memorial when I was a child. So I come from a scientific family and at the time I was an undergraduate, I became fascinated by the brain and really wanting to understand, you know, how does the brain work? And neuroscience wasn't even a major at the time, I was an undergraduate. So I just pieced together this curriculum in which I, I studied biophysics and anatomy and et cetera, you know, physiological psychology. So, and I did research in neuroscience laboratories. Then I realized what I'm really most interested in is really understanding human consciousness, that I really didn't want to be doing research on animals, that the questions I really interested in were ones that had to do with things that we as humans are uniquely equipped to do. And I became aware of research being done at Johns Hopkins and other places by neurosurgeons in which they would insert electrodes into people's brains and stimulate various parts of the brain when they were doing surgery and see what the person reported experiencing. And sometimes they would put an electrode in the cell and they would stimulate it and they would bring back an entire memory. And I thought, oh, wow, you know, I really want to understand how is memory encoded? And so decided I wanted to go to Johns Hopkins to become a neurosurgeon. And while I was there, I became enamored with neuropsychiatry, which is really combination of neurology and psychiatry. And what I loved about it was that I was studying basically what people reported they experienced at the time when brain imaging was starting to come out. And so I thought, this is the way for me to map out the brain. I did my residency in neuropsychiatry at Johns Hopkins, went on to the Institute of Psychiatry and did a six month training with Sir Michael Rutter, who was knighted for his work in autism. And this was back in 1987. When autism was really, really rare.
- [05:54]
A
Yeah, I was going to say, I mean, how much were people really talking about autism in the 80s?
- [05:59]
B
Not at all. So how I became interested in autism was a combination of two things. One was that my mother was a special ed teacher, and so I knew about some of these conditions that she would work with. But also in 1986, while I was still at Johns Hopkins, Oliver Sacks came and he gave a talk and. And he had a recent book published called the man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. And in it he describes these twins who were severely autistic, so severely compromised by their condition that they couldn't take care of themselves. And they were both institutionalized and they'd never been to school. They couldn't do simple math, and yet they could do amazing mathematical feats. They could tell you 6, 12, and even 20 digit prime numbers that they said that they just saw. It wasn't that they were calculating them and there wasn't even an algorithm for calculating them. And on top of that, back in the 60s, when Oliver Sacks studied them, computers couldn't calculate prime numbers. For them to just say that they unsintentionally saw these numbers, I thought, wow, okay, if I'm going to come up with some kind of theory of understanding how the brain can, you know, how the brain works, I've got to be able to explain phenomena like this.
- [07:26]
A
And so that was really the first time you were exposed to learning about autistic savants. People that were just geniuses. Their autism brought out these kind of special abilities.
- [07:37]
B
Correct.
- [07:38]
A
How did you come to the conclusion that autistic savants might have telepathic abilities?
- [07:44]
B
Well, how I came to that conclusion was actually when I was over in India and I had been invited to go over there by someone who worked for the Indian government with various autistic children. And she wanted me to test their savant abilities that she had witnessed. And she had also read my book, the ESP Enigma, and she wanted me to come over and talk about that. It was when I was over there evaluating these children who had, for example, knowledge of science that they had let allegedly had never been taught, she said to me, oh, by the way, they're also telepathic. And I thought, really, if that's true, then I have to test that, not only because of the implication that has for what human capacity is, but also because I couldn't know how they knew that knowledge was it that they were getting it from me? Because of course, I know the answer before I'm Asking it. Or they, you know. Or is it that they're getting that information from somewhere else?
- [08:47]
A
When this woman tells you, by the way, they're telepathic, did you believe her automatically or were you a little skeptical?
- [08:53]
B
Absolutely. People can witness something that they think is telepathy. And yet I know that telepathy implies, you know, that there's this mind to mind transmission of information. And that's a big leap within science to say that that's possible unless you've actually set up an experiment in the appropriate way.
- [09:15]
A
I mean, you had this amazing respected academic career and. But you were willing to risk it on something this controversial. Why?
- [09:22]
B
Because that's how you advance science. It's a combination of things. One is that where I trained, which Johns Hopkins, it's known to be at the cutting edge of science. And I remember in my freshman year of medical school being told by the professors that half of what we teach you is going to turn out to be wrong, and it's your job to figure out which half. So you're encouraged to go against what people think already. And secondly, I knew that the implications were huge because there are certain things that if people make those claims to a psychiatrist, it's automatically assumed that they are mentally ill and then they're put on medication. And one of the things that I noticed during my career is that occasionally people will tell you things that you think, wow, that really sounds crazy, and then it turns out to be true. So I feel that it's my duty as a psychiatrist to understand what really is true versus just having these sort of preconceptions about. About what, you know, what somebody could possibly be experiencing.
- [10:39]
A
Walk us through the first case that you witnessed of telepathic autism. Who was the child and what ended up happening that you just couldn't rationalize away.
- [10:48]
B
So the first child that I tested was a girl named Haley. And how she was discovered to be telepathic was that she was having people come into her home that would work with her on her homework. And one of the therapists who was working with her was doing a lot of math with her, and her father thought that she was a mathematical savant because there have been these autistic individuals that, I mean, it's going back at least a couple hundred years who've been reported who just spontaneously are able to do math, and they've never been taught math. And so that's what her father thought was going on with her. And then one day, the therapist who was doing homework with her had her calculator die on her. And so then she had to switch calculators. And when she switched to the new calculator, it gave her an answer that was in logarithmic notation. And then Haley typed out the answer in logarithmic notation. And then the therapist goes, well, wait a minute, Haley. How'd you know that? That's what the answer came up. Because the calculator wasn't within Haley's, you know, eyesight. And Haley typed, while I see the numbers and, you know, the numerators and denominators in your head. And she said, what? You can read my mind? She said, yes. And then she said, well. She says, well, if you can read my mind, what am I thinking about now? She, you know, was thinking of that purple dinosaur, Barney, and that's what Haley typed. And then she's, what's the name of my landlord? And Haley typed, helmut. And her landlord's name was Helmut. I mean, that's not a common name.
- [12:28]
A
Whoa.
- [12:29]
B
Yeah. Within a few months, the other therapist who was coming into the home, because this therapist didn't say anything to anybody. I mean, she was afraid to, because she was afraid people would think she was crazy. And so then the other therapist who's coming into the home notices that Haley was making the same kind of spelling errors that she would make. And she jokingly said, oh, you know, Haley, you know, you make the same mistakes as me. It's like you're reading my mind or something. You're thinking what I'm thinking. And Haley said, yeah, I am. And then the therapist said, well, how do you spell I love you in German? Because this therapist was bilingual. And then Haley typed I love you in German, and she'd never been exposed to German. After hearing this story, I thought, wow, I mean, I really want to test this under controlled conditions. And so what I did was I put a visual barrier between the therapist and Haley. And then I used a random number generator and a random list generator so that I knew that the stimuli were random. You know, within parapsychology, that's one of the concerns, is if the stimuli are not random, then it. Then you start getting into sort of probabilities. You know, if I were to say, you know, well, guess what color I'm thinking of? And then you said, blue. Well, I mean, a lot of people, that's the color they think of. Or if I said, what fruit am I thinking of? And you said, apple. I mean, probabilistic. That's more than, you know, that's just a high likelihood because people are predisposed towards picking certain things. But if you're using something that randomizes the numbers or randomizes words, then you're removing that kind of human bias into the stimuli. So I used that randomization and then I tested her for a total of six hours. And with randomized numbers, randomized words, randomized pictures, where I would give it to the therapist who would then one by one, look at it and then think it, and then say, haley, read my mind. And then Haley would type what it was that she was thinking. And I was in another room watching all of this with a camera feed, and I had cameras covering the whole room, seeing it for the first time. I mean, it really was. Was pretty mind blowing.
- [14:51]
A
So I just want to make sure I understand what you're claiming. You believe that some nonverbal autistic individuals can receive information from another person's mind telepathically and that is their primary way of communicating?
- [15:04]
B
Yes, that. That. That. What I would say is that they're able to get the information in a nonverbal way. There isn't any evidence of any kind of subtle cuing going on. I can't really explain it in your typical senso. And so that's really what telepathy is defined as, is it's mind to mind communication without a known sensory mechanism.
- [15:30]
A
And you know, some people are going to say this sounds insane.
- [15:32]
B
Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Yeah.
- [15:35]
A
But you've been working on this now for how many years?
- [15:37]
B
I've been working with autistic individuals for a long time. But in terms of the telepathy claim, and actually testing that, the first time I did that was back in 2013.
- [15:49]
A
When they are reading people's minds, is it just a single word keyword? Are they able to understand and see full sentences? How much information can they. Can they read?
- [16:01]
B
Oh, yeah, they can get a whole sentence.
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A
The whole thing.
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B
Like they can absolutely get a whole sentence.
- [16:05]
A
So I could like sit here and tell them the whole plot of a movie and they'd be. The whole time they're tracking what I'm thinking.
- [16:11]
B
Yeah, I mean, I. I don't know if they'd be able to do it with you, per se.
- [16:14]
A
Oh, why is that?
- [16:16]
B
Well, it's interesting. I mean, so typically who they can do it with is somebody that they feel a connection with. Oh. So oftentimes, I mean, who they feel the most connected with is their mother. Sometimes it's a teacher or therapist who comes into the home, but they can also form this connection with somebody Pretty instantaneously. I mean, you know, so it doesn't have to be somebody that they've known a long period of time.
- [16:44]
A
Because this is what I was curious about when I was. When I knew I was going to be talking to you. I was like, does Dr. Diane walk around the grocery store or the airport or the mall and just sees a nonverbal autistic kid? And do you say stuff to them to see if they react? Like, I was wondering if this is. They can all read anyone's minds.
- [17:00]
B
I can't say that they all can, and I can't say that they can read everybody's mind. I've only personally tested maybe 20, and I've received reports from maybe 100 different families from various parts of the world. And how people contact me is that there'll be somebody who is spending time with their child, and then the child starts doing things that they go, oh, my God, this child is reading my mind. And then they type in, you know, they do an Internet search and they type in autism and telepathy. And my name comes up, and then I get an email from them saying, you know, what is this? And what do I do about it?
- [17:44]
A
So in your experience, do you think that all nonverbal autistic kids have this ability, or do you think this is just some.
- [17:51]
B
I can't really say.
- [17:53]
A
Okay.
- [17:53]
B
What I would say is it's possible.
- [17:56]
A
Got it.
- [17:57]
B
It's possible that all of them do. And what I've wondered is whether or not there's a way in which our consciousness is shared. So if you think about it, you know, when a baby is developing in your womb, they're developing within you, and then you give birth, and there's this connection between you and the child that there's a lot of mirroring that goes on for the baby with the mother. So if a mother is depressed, the baby's. The imaging of the baby's brain is actually similar to that of the mother in terms of the depression. There are a lot of mothers who report that, you know, when their baby's an infant and is not capable of speaking, that they just have this intuition that, oh, my baby needs me right now. You know, and they go in to check on the baby right before the baby cries. And so I think it's really actually a natural part of. Of biology, you know, certainly, you know, with within, you know, mammals that, you know, where we. We have dependent young for us to have some kind of connection between us that then what happens is as we mature, that gets, you know, it gets reduced. And that maybe that connection is part of what makes it so easy for a very young child to actually learn a language. I mean, when you think about how, you know, how remarkable it is that you can have a child by the time they're two years old, speaking in full sentences, and their sentences actually make sense in the context of what they're speaking about. And it's not that in the past, the parents were spending all of this time with picture books teaching the child what these sounds mean. The child's just picking it up like a sponge. Like, how are they. Whatever those concepts are that you're thinking about, how are they pairing that with these sounds? It's a very complex thing. I mean, try going to, you know, as an adult, try going to a foreign country and understanding what people are talking about without ever having a language book or a translator app or whatever. Do you think you could do it if somebody didn't make an effort to teach you? Whereas these babies, little children, they're picking it up so easily, and then that ability goes away. It's harder and harder to learn new languages as we get older. So my hypothesis is that it's possible that this sort of communication is like the precursor to language. And then once we develop language, language becomes the primary way of communicating. But what's happened with these non speakers is that their language development was disrupted, typically at around one and a half years old, sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later. But the fact that it's disrupted then causes them to just not give up that original way of communication.
- [21:19]
A
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- [24:32]
B
So everybody that I have studied was contacting me because they were already convinced that the child was telepathic. So I haven't been doing, you know, a lot of this research since the telepathy tapes, you know, and so before the telepathy tapes, I mean, it was just me, you know, self funding my research to just, you know, follow up on some of these interesting stories that, you know, I would receive from parents that just like, hey, you know, something's going on here, you know, can you come and, you know, and assess my child? And so I would be willing to do that out of, you know, curiosity and also, as I said, the significance for science. But at this point, you know, now that the telepathy tapes, you know, has come out and so many people have heard about, you know, these phenomena, it's just basically not the same playing field.
- [25:20]
A
In your opinion and with your research, are the limitations with these special abilities with non verbal autistic kids just reading minds and, and that, or are you finding that they're also able to have other supernatural phenomena like they're communicating with the dead, almost like mediums or anything like that? Or is it just specifically just the living, a close caretaker, they're able to read their mind.
- [25:45]
B
So the only thing that I've really done a lot of controlled experiments around is the telepathy claim. And that really isn't the only ability that they and their parents report. So there are reports by many of these parents and teachers that these children, for example, see dead relatives.
- [26:10]
A
How do they know that if they're non verbal?
- [26:12]
B
So it's because they are communicating by either typing into a keyboard on a computer or they're typing onto a spelling board. And one of the things to understand about the spelling boards and this population is that the part of their brain whose development has been disrupted is the part of the brain that connects the Wernicke's area, which is the area of the brain that's in the back. That is what's involved in understanding the meaning of words. It's what enables us to understand language. So if you have a stroke back there, then you could speak, but it's gobbledygook and when other people speak to you, it's gobbledygook. Then there's a part of the brain in the front that's called Broca's area. And if you have a stroke there, then it disrupts your ability to express speech. And so it's broken or it's not articulated very well. And there's this pathway that connects the two, and that's what's undergoing development during the first seven years of life. The idea is that we're actually born with an intact area of the brain for understanding language. And so we start picking it up and understanding it very early on. But it's the development of the ability to express it that takes time and takes practice. And it's a very, very complex motor act. That's why so many children need speech therapy. Because what I'm doing now, moving my tongue around my mouth, and sometimes it's up at the roof of my mouth and sometimes pushing against my teeth or whatever you. My lips are doing all kinds of things in order to make these sounds. Well, that requires that my. What's called the proprioceptive system be intact. And the proprioceptive system is the sensory system that tells me where things are located in space. And so when that is not developed well, then, for example, if it's affecting your limbs, you may not know if I'm pointing this finger. I may not be able to tell you which finger it is or where it is. So that's one of our senses, is knowing where body parts are in space. And we know that that system is dysfunctional in a lot of these non speakers. And it's one of the reasons why they're, they're. They have very poor fine motor control. Some of them have difficulty typing on their own. And so when you have them pointing to a letterboard, they're. They're able to use their larger muscles to point, you know, as opposed to typing, which requires a lot of fine motor control.
- [29:23]
A
Why do you think that this special ability shows up in kids with autism but not neurotypical people?
- [29:28]
B
It might show up in some neurotypical people. One of the things that's interesting about individuals who are autistic is that by virtue of their autism, they're actually removed somewhat from all of these cultural biases that are introduced to us through our educational system or through even interacting with other people. Autism. The name itself comes from autos, which means self. The diagnosis got that name in the very beginning because these children were coming to child psychiatrists. And one of the Most prominent features of it was that they just seem to be perfectly happy all by themselves sitting in a corner. So if you're in your own little world, ever since you're really, really small, you're not having the experience of people saying to you, well, you know, that's impossible. You know, just think about, like, how little kids will report things to you that sound really magical. You know, they've got imaginary friends and, you know, they just. They think that all kinds of things are possible, but then as they get older, it's, you know, no, you don't believe in those things anymore.
- [30:37]
A
So when you're sitting there watching Haley on tape that first time, and you're. You're watching her read the minds of the people in her life, what was going through your mind watching that?
- [30:46]
B
Well, you. You have this sort of like, holy smokes, it's. It's real.
- [30:51]
A
Yeah. So were you like, I gotta go talk to the next kid. I want to see if this is, like, if so I can find more like this.
- [30:57]
B
My reaction was that I wanted to go and take the data, analyze it, and present it to my scientific colleagues. And that's what I did. That's another reason why I filmed it, is that you really need to be able to show other scientists what you observed so that you can have some kind of peer review around it. And I presented it at the Science of Consciousness Conference. That is a conference that was put on every year by the University of Arizona, and people were blown away by it. I presented at the Parapsychological Association Conference. And the Parapsychological association, they are a member of the scientific academy that studies these kinds of phenomena and does so in a very, very rigorous way. And so, because of having become a parapsychologist, so that I do the studies properly, I understand, you know, what skeptics would say. I understand, you know, So a lot of people don't realize that actually parapsychologists are harder on this kind of research than a lot of other scientists, because we know how much criticism there is about the field. There have been people studying these phenomena going back, you know, well over a hundred years.
- [32:25]
A
Wow.
- [32:26]
B
And there's a lot of research that was done, actually funded by military intelligence and that has more recently become declassified on these. On these kinds of phenomena.
- [32:41]
A
Are you talking about like MK Ultra type of stuff or what are you talking about?
- [32:44]
B
Yeah, MK Ultra is. That's another thing in and of itself. So what I'm talking about is just people like, for example, the remote viewing that was done with Individuals at Stanford Research Institute.
- [32:59]
A
Is that called astral projection?
- [33:01]
B
Remote viewing? You know, it's the same thing as what used to be called clairvoyance, you know, so remote viewing is this idea of seeing something that is not at this, you know, at this location, you know, so one of the most famous remote viewers was someone named Inga Swan. And you could give him, you know, geophysical coordinates, so, you know, 70 degrees north, 70 degrees west, and then he could draw what it was he saw there. I know, it's pretty remarkable, really. He was one of the most accurate. And, you know, and he claimed that how he did it was this thing called, you know, astral projection. You know, rather than get too caught up in, you know, those kinds of aspects of it. The way that I think about it is I go back to my initial interest, which was studying savants, because really, these savant abilities are just as remarkable as esperance. You know, that, you know, the idea that, you know, a foreign language that you've never studied or that you can solve math and you've never studied math, and you can do it reliably.
- [34:13]
A
I really wish I had that ability with math. I have to use a tip calculator, unfortunately, when I go out to eat.
- [34:19]
B
Yeah. So when I think about it, you know, the way that, as a theoretician, I conceptualize it is we live in. In a sea of light and sound waves. Sound is just vibration, you know, and so sound is when we can hear it, but a lot of vibration is, you know, outside of our range of hearing. Similarly, a lot of light is outside of our range of seeing. And, you know, we have some other species that can see, you know, those ranges that are close to our range. Just above it, ultraviolet, or just below it, infrared. But that's just a tiny sliver of light. And so think of all of this, all of these waves of light and sound as being full of information about that which they interact with. Yeah, I mean, how I see things is because of the light being reflected off of you. There are lots of animals that can navigate by hearing sound waves that have bounced off of something, and then they know that an object is there. So you have of light and sound in all of these frequencies, both within audible and visual and outside of it that are interacting with whatever this thing is that we call reality. So rather than just, you know, hearing these phenomena, just going, oh, that's impossible, you know, because I've never experienced it. Instead of going there, what I go to is, well, wait a minute, you know, let's do some thought experiments here. Just like, you know, just like a hundred years ago Einstein did thought experiments and that's how we got the theory of relativity.
- [36:25]
A
I mean, I hear what you're saying. I think if I just. If I could try to be the voice of my audience, I would say one, I think they probably believe it's possible. I do think there's going to be some because a lot of of my audience is Christian. I think there's going to be a lot of my audience that say sure, is it possible? I believe it is. However, you know, talking about things like remote viewing or clairvoyance or telepathy, you know, they would view it as demonic. What's your response to that?
- [36:51]
B
I don't think that those abilities are in and of themselves demonic. Okay. Because I think some of them are really God given abilities that have some survival mechanism to them. Like the bond that I had with my baby that, that would enable me to be there if she needed me. Right.
- [37:12]
A
Like intuition.
- [37:13]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm talking about intuition. Okay. Where we get into something that I would put a judgment on, you know, that you know, you know, demonic or you know, you know, whatever, you know, evil or you know, whatever is when you start looking at people that take. Start engaging in certain practices that are harmful to life, you know, or that are trying to put themselves at some kind of advantage or you know, or like, or if they're appealing to demons for their abilities or you know, whatever, you know, if you're in engaging in certain practices, then yeah, I'm not a supporter of that. What I'm more promoting is the idea that we are more connected with one another. And one of the things that's so beautiful is that what I see that helps to form that connection is actually love that the people who seem to have these abilities with one another, it's that they just have a beautiful love bond and there's nothing demonic about it at all. Act, you know, it, it's quite beautiful. It, it's because there's this inability to deceive one another when you're that connected and there's also no desire to deceive one another.
- [38:32]
A
So in your opinion, you don't believe these kids are under demonic influence that have these abilities or has there been something you're like, well, Timmy over there was a little ornery. I don't know.
- [38:44]
B
That is a concern of mine that, that because some of them are so open that it does make them more vulnerable to something like that.
- [38:57]
A
I know this is controversial. I Know, some of my audience is going to disagree, some are going to agree, believe it, not believe it, whatever. But it's important to hear these conversations. I think it's important to talk to scientists like you hear your, your opinion on this, your research on this, and then, you know, use that to either defend why you disagree with her or use that to, to then say, actually, I agree, I'm coming over to her side. I know, but, you know, it's important, I think, to get out of our box and hear these interesting conversations that we wouldn't normally be exposed to.
- [39:25]
B
Exactly. And to the extent that any of these children have, you know, you know, whether you want to call it demonic attachments or whatever you want to call it, then they need help. You know, just like you have people that go to the Catholic church for exorcism. Sure, yeah, you want to know that.
- [39:46]
A
My mom called me the other day after absolutely raving about this eye cream she got from Zebra. And when moms find a product they like, it becomes their entire personality for like a week. She's like, alex, this eye cream has this cooling metal applicator, depuffs my eyes. And I'm like, mom, are you selling skin care? Now? She's like, it's got caffeine, it's got Coq 10 Aloe Shea Butter. It brightens my eyes, it's hydrating, it's firming my skin. Apparently the caffeine really helps reduce puffiness, the antioxidants help support firmness, and the cooling applicator feels like you just put two tiny ice packs under your eyes. Now, my mom is in her late 50s. She has amazing skin for her age. She has always been good about sunscreen. She doesn't lay out in the sun and she has never had any work done. I think one, she has a really good just base system there to set her up for success. But she is raving about the Zebra eye cream. And I do have to say, she did say to me, what do you think? How does my makeup look and stuff? I said, your under eyes look really good. Thinking that she had a new concealer, but it was the Zebra eye cream. And so she said, well, it works so good, Alex. I bought everything else on the site. And I was like, did you use my discount code? Code? She forgot. Don't forget when you order the Zebra eye cream or any of their other stuff because they make clean products that actually work for everyday use, like their deodorant, which is totally fragrance free, aluminum free, goes on clear, holds up in real Life Heat. They've got toothpaste which is phenomenal. It's the only toothpaste I've used for a couple years now. I love zebra toothpaste. They also have new kids toothpaste flavors that are totally non toxic. Go to yay zebra.com use code Alex for 10 off your order. That's yay zebra.com code Alex for 10 off. Apparently another podcaster was talking about this case where a newborn baby in the NICU had coverage denied. In a letter addressed to the baby, I'm not kidding, the insurance company said that the baby didn't need coverage anymore because, and this is real, the baby was breathing on its own and drinking from a bottle, which is a wild standard. Imagine being three days old, learning object permanence, and you're already getting insurance denial letters. Welcome to America, kid. I cannot stress enough that you need crowd health and you should ditch your conventional health insurance because it sucks. Traditional health insurance blows chunks. Yeah. I actually interviewed CEO Andy Shinover on the podcast and what he's building makes so much sense. Especially if you're in that season of life where pregnancy is on your mind. With crowd health, pregnancy is treated as one health event. Prenatal care, labor and delivery, postpartum. You can get all that covered with a $3,000 personal responsibility. That's it. No guessing what is covered, what isn't, and you actually get to choose how you deliver your baby. Imagine that. True Women's rights, hospital, birth center, or home birth, whatever you want. Crowd health allows eligible funding for things interns often refuses to touch, like certified doulas, licensed midwives, pelvic floor therapy, lactation support, breast pumps, and home birth supplies. This is incredible. It is a system where members fund one another directly, which feels human. Okay? You have the power to take control of your health care. Join Crowd Health to get started today for 99 for your first three months by using code culture@joincrowdhealth.com that's joincrowdhealth.com code culture Crow Health is not insurance. Opt out. Take your power back. This is how we win. Join Crowd Health.com CODE Culture did any of these kids say anything? Totally shocking.
- [43:04]
B
One of the things is they report being able to see things through their parents eyes often times. So this one mother, she can walk down the street with her son and he can have his eyes totally closed down Times Square and he doesn't bump into anything. And he says he's doing it because he's using her eyes. Wow. There's this girl named Lanier and one of the things that was fascinating about her was that her mother had this necklace that had a cross on it, Christian cross on it. And Lanier grabbed her necklace, and then she started spelling that the necklace had belonged to her mother's great grandmother in France. And the mother was like, yeah. I mean, you know, she had never told Lanier that. But then Lanier went on to say, and this is where your great grandmother is buried. And her mother didn't know where her great grandmother was buried. And then she was able to actually go and validate that.
- [44:07]
A
Did you ask, like, how do you know that? Like, did you press her? Like, you know, how do you have this information type of a thing?
- [44:14]
B
They describe that they have more than one different, you know, one way of knowing. I mean, you know, sometimes they get images, sometimes they hear a voice. You know, they say they time travel. I mean, you know, there's all kinds of things they, you know, that they say they do. I mean, you know, once again, it's. These are really fascinating anecdotes, but, you know, I can't say that, you know, I've had a way to study all of this, you know, in a scientific way, but when you're asking me about, you know, what things are funny or shocking or humorous. Yeah.
- [44:46]
A
So if I were the biggest skeptic on Earth, what clip are you saying this is? The one you need to look up that you should watch.
- [44:52]
B
Some of the best evidence that I've seen unfortunately, is not available to the public. And, yeah, unfortunately, just the parents didn't
- [45:01]
A
sign off on it.
- [45:02]
B
The autistic individuals that I introduced Kai to were the ones who were willing to be. Be part of a podcast, a movie, and a lot of the parents are not interested in that at all.
- [45:18]
A
That makes sense. So, really, like, the best thing is to. To listen to the telepathy tapes, Right?
- [45:22]
B
Okay.
- [45:23]
A
Some critics might say, you know, this is wishful thinking, it's confirmation bias. In some cases, it's exploitation of vulnerable kids. What is your response?
- [45:33]
B
It's none of those things. It's not wishful thinking, because I wouldn't wish the consequences of this on anybod. I mean, I've paid a huge professional price for it. It's not like, you know, why would I wish this? I'm not the originator of this. I'm the one who started having people contact me saying, this is what I'm experiencing. And a lot of the parents are very, very distressed by it. Not every parent is always having the kinds of thoughts that they want their child to be picking up on.
- [46:07]
A
That's what I'd be thinking. I'd be panicked. And then I'd be like, oh, my gosh. I mean, that's such a. Yay. You're like, wow, this is so cool. I can communicate with my child in. In a. In a unique way. That's cool. But also, every individual, whether you're a parent or not, you have thoughts that you want to be private.
- [46:26]
B
Of course.
- [46:27]
A
So then, are you finding that a lot of these parents are in great distress? Like, so everything I think my child is. Is reading my mind.
- [46:37]
B
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of them are. And see, that's one of the reasons why, you know, once again, again, none of this is about exploiting anybody. It's me trying to perform a service of trying to help understand what is going on here. What are we looking at here and how is this even possible? It's one of those things where, if anything, what people want to know, they want to know, can I shut this off? But until you understand what's going on, you don't even know how you can then shut it off. It's not that the children want to be telepathic, so is there a way? I don't have all the answers yet. What I'm saying is that both parents and the children to some extent, have a certain amount of distress from this. And so what I'm trying to do is just try to understand what's going on, see what can be validated. Know, I mean, a lot of it, you know, I can't validate, you know.
- [47:41]
A
So are the study still ongoing?
- [47:43]
B
Yeah, I'm not being funded by, you know, any kind of, you know, organization that has an agenda. I'm not willing to do that.
- [47:55]
A
Mind readers Anonymous.
- [47:57]
B
I don't know what it would be. People are genuinely curious to try to figure out what's going on. And then there's also people that want to know, well, how can we, you know, how can we help these families?
- [48:08]
A
Sure. So with the kids that you have studied, are they able to read people's minds within a certain distance? Is it just who's right next to them? Is it anywhere in the home?
- [48:19]
B
With the individuals that I've studied, I've only been able to do it within the same home. And there's a lot of logistical reasons for that. I mean, one of them is that I haven't really had enough funding to work long enough with them to even try to develop the situation in which the child would be comfortable being tested away from the Home further away from the mom with cameras ongoing. It's like, it's a high stress situation in the first place because they know they're being tested, and autistic children do not handle change very well. Well, they, you know, they're very. They. They love their routines. For them, oftentimes their parent or the teacher is like a lifeline, you know, so you. You just can't show up.
- [49:11]
A
Right.
- [49:11]
B
With strangers.
- [49:12]
A
So it wouldn't be easy to be like, let's go. Okay, let's go somewhere far away in town from your mom now. Let's go to another state now. Let's go across the world. Like, yeah, I see what you're saying.
- [49:20]
B
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you. It would take some time to work towards that, you know, and I can understand why, you know, if we could achieve that, that would be more compelling evidence. It's just, you know, I'm, you know, I'm. I haven't been in a position to be able to do that.
- [49:36]
A
Has this been proven in controlled conditions?
- [49:39]
B
I've controlled it to the extent that I can. And some people would say, well, it's not controlled unless, you know, they're, you know, in. In totally separate, you know, buildings or whatever. And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of skepticism around this where people are, you know, you can always come up with another. More str. But then, you know, it's easy to come up with those, but then executing them can take some time.
- [50:07]
A
How do you rule out parents or caregivers influencing responses in your research with
- [50:11]
B
Haley, what I did was, is I had a visual barrier between the therapist and Haley so that there couldn't be any visual cueing. And then I also had both of them. Them mic'd with a very, very sensitive mic so that if there was any kind of, you know, vocalization, it would be picked up. The other thing is that for the individuals who use the letterboard, one of the things we've done is we've looked at the position of the letterboard, you know, laying a grid over it so that you can see is this board in the same exact position each time it gets lifted up and put back down? Or is there any kind of pattern to. Oh, it's moved a little to the left when it's an E, and it's moved a little to the right when it's a B. Just see if there's any kind of cueing that could be done from that. And so I've had other scientists review the work, and right now I've I've written it up with scientists from the University of Virginia and the University of Oregon and we're going to be submitting it to a peer reviewed journal along with video clips so that other scientists can review it. Because it really. I'm not trying to just go out here and make claims. I'm trying to open up a conversation.
- [51:45]
A
Let's say you're wrong. What happens then?
- [51:48]
B
Let's say that I, for example, that there's some kind of vocalization that is not being picked up by the mic but is picked up by super, you know, super extraordinary hearing by the autistic individual. Let's say that's the case. I'd publish it, but my obligation would be if there is an explanation for it, then, you know, that really explains the phenomena, then I'm obligated to actually let people know that. It's just that we have to do the experiments in order to even get there.
- [52:29]
A
And if you're right, what does it mean for the autistic community?
- [52:34]
B
So for the non speakers who, who use spelling as a means of communication, it's really important to know whether or not this is what's going on, whether or not they're actually picking up information from the therapist. What the goal is of spelling to communicate is to actually eventually have the child express their own thoughts. Thoughts for them to have a true means of communicating with others. And what many of the therapists tell me who work with these children is that if they didn't acknowledge that telepathy was a real thing, then they're not clearing their mind of the answers that come to their mind when they're working on the homework or whatever. And then the child's not really learning.
- [53:38]
A
Right.
- [53:38]
B
They're just picking up on what the therapist is thinking and whether it's picking up on what the therapist is thinking because the therapist is cueing them in some unconscious way or picking up what the therapist is thinking because there's this telepathy going on. Whatever it is, the goal of teaching them spelling is so that they can communicate their own thoughts, not just repeat what, you know, whatever thoughts are in the other person's mind.
- [54:06]
A
Has the behavior of those kids drastically changed that are now able to communicate?
- [54:11]
B
The behavior really has. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons that was for me, one of the real compelling pieces of data that made me think that spelling is legitimate. It's that you hear account after account from parents of their child once they learn to spell to communicate. Not having tantrums on a regular basis makes Sense. Yeah, it does.
- [54:34]
A
You're finally heard.
- [54:35]
B
You're finally heard.
- [54:36]
A
I mean, that's why babies cry. They don't. They're trying to tell us they want something.
- [54:40]
B
Exactly.
- [54:41]
A
Is there any danger in parents trying to replicate this at home with their nonverbal autistic children?
- [54:47]
B
If somebody's willing to test it, then they're already sort of thinking it might be a possibility. There are some parents who have said, you know, they're disappointed that their child. Child is not demonstrating telepathy, you know, so there's some parents who say, you know, well, why isn't my kid telepathic? You know? Well, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, maybe all of these children aren't telepathic. I really, honestly don't know. But what some parents say is that these children only really develop the telepathic bond with somebody that they feel really close with. And so it could be really more a statement about the nature of the bond or lack of a bond between those two individuals.
- [55:29]
A
Is there anything that you believe about this that you're almost afraid to say out loud?
- [55:34]
B
No, I say a lot of things.
- [55:36]
A
Good for you. Good for you.
- [55:38]
B
That's great. You're my kind of woman.
- [55:40]
A
Where can people listen to the telepathy tapes?
- [55:43]
B
Oh, well, you can go to the telepathytapes.com. i mean, you can. It's on a lot of podcasts, Spotify, Apple. Yeah, yeah, it's all over the place. And, and then my understanding is the movie's coming out at the end of August or early September.
- [55:57]
A
Is it like a documentary?
- [55:59]
B
Yes.
- [55:59]
A
Oh, cool. Okay. Using your footage.
- [56:01]
B
Yeah.
- [56:02]
A
And where can parents contact you if they do feel like their kid has this ability?
- [56:07]
B
They can reach me at Dr. Diane Hennessey, spelled H E N N A C Y dot com. That's my, that's my website. But I also now have a nonprofit research institution and it's called hennessyinstitute.org the mission of the Hennessy Institute is really to be exploring these abilities that these individuals, not just the non speaking autistic individuals, but people who have what we call neurodiversity. People whose brains are just wired differently, they experience things in a different way. And a lot of them, they just have genius level cognitive skills because their brains are not, they're not verbal thinkers. So verbal thinking is the slowest form of thinking. It's also the form of thinking in which we can get the furthest away from actual truth. Because if you think about it, language can be used for deception, language can be used for rationalizing and talking ourselves into believing something. And what a lot of these neurodiverse individuals report is that it's just pure perception, pure experience. And it's also gestalt thinking, which is just holistic thinking, where you see the whole pattern at once. And that kind of thinking is, I think, the kind of thinking that can actually help us to solve a lot of the problems that we're in today, because we can go around and around and around in circles, you know, if we're still engaged in this sort of verbal thinking, you know. And so we're living in a time of tremendous disinformation, misinformation, you know, and a lot of it is, you know, purposefully deceptive. We need to be developing and understanding intuition so that we can actually be closer to truth. And I think if we're closer to truth, we're closer to God.
- [58:13]
A
If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture, it could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would that remedy be?
- [58:21]
B
The thing that has worked for me is that I. When. When. When there's a disagreement with another person, I really. I don't go into judgment about them. What I do is I try to understand where they're coming from, you know, so there's a lot to be gained by listening to one another. You know, we've oftentimes stopped truly listening to one another because, you know, even when the other person's speaking, we've already got, you know, going on in our head what we think, you know, we're already thinking about. Well, this is what I'm going to say to that. And it's like, no, we need to really, truly learn to listen to one another. Because what I find is that we actually, a lot of us actually have more common ground than we really lives. It's just that we. We get caught up in these narrative loops that, you know, that divide us.
- [59:15]
A
Very good. I think that's perfect for this episode. Dr. Diane, you're a legend. Thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary.
- [59:20]
B
Oh, thank you.
- [59:24]
A
I know that this episode may be hard to wrap your head around. It certainly is for me. Even if you disagree with her theories, I'm glad you listened. To strengthen your own worldview by hearing ideas that are outside of the box. Let's discuss in the Keith Servatives Facebook group. Now, for me, and I know that it's bumping for you too, when we talk about people being able to possibly communicate with the dead or use telepathy or time travel or things of that sort. When I'm looking at this from a scriptural point of view as a Christian, which I know a lot of you are, that is super challenging for me. The Bible is very clear on things like that. And then I hear stories like this, this, and I hear Dr. Hennessy talking about it and I'm just thinking like, well, if it's so demonic and evil, how could God allow for a child who is not really capable of understanding what's going on, be inundated with those thoughts or abilities when they don't really know how to get out of it? Do you see what I'm saying? I don't know. I'd love to hear from people smarter than me, which basically 99 of you guys are. I ask the questions of interesting guests and then I love for us to discuss. So look, I know what you're probably thinking right now and I want to hear about it. Leave a five star review if you appreciate the variety and guests that we bring on this show. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, anywhere you get your podcast. This content is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.