Does Telepathy Exist? w/ Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell

Summary

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The Psychology Podcast

Episode: Does Telepathy Exist? w/ Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell
Date: February 27, 2025
Host: Scott Barry Kaufman
Guest: Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the controversial and fascinating question: Does telepathy exist, particularly among autistic savants? Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell—a neuropsychiatrist, psychotherapist, and author of The ESP Enigma—joins host Scott Barry Kaufman to discuss evidence for psychic phenomena, share personal and clinical anecdotes, and consider both scientific and speculative explanations for savant abilities, including telepathy and prophetic dreams. The conversation maintains an open, skeptical, yet curious tone, delving into experimental challenges, neurobiology, quantum theory, and ways to rigorously test extraordinary claims.

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Key Topics and Discussion Highlights

1. Human Potential and the Origins of Savant Abilities

[04:25–06:31]

• Human Potential Beyond the Ordinary
  • Dr. Powell believes human potential exceeds current understanding:
    • “Acquired savant syndrome is a really good example… someone gets struck by lightning or has an accident and afterward has musical or mathematical abilities… it makes a really compelling case for there being more to us than we think.” ([04:41] Dr. Powell)
• Clinical Practice
  • Powell notes the importance of psychotherapy:
    • “People would come to see me and do better faster than any of the medications could potentially kick in... You do what works.”

2. Ancient Wisdom, Pattern Recognition, and Spiritual Traditions

[06:43–09:44]

• Dr. Powell reflects on similarities between spiritual traditions (Buddhism, Native American beliefs, quantum physics):
  • “...the reality they describe is very similar to the reality described by modern physics…” ([06:51] Dr. Powell)
• Native American knowledge contained scientific insights on nature and cosmology. She shares examples (e.g., planetary cycles correlated with natural events).

3. Dr. Powell's Encounters with Telepathy

[10:58–15:28]

• Early Experiences
  • A magician who “read” words in random books—possibly more than a trick.
• Harvard Encounter
  • A psychiatric consult with a woman who predicted personal details about Powell’s husband and future events—details that came true.
    • “Within minutes of meeting her, she started telling me things about myself there was just no way she could know...” ([12:14] Dr. Powell)
• These experiences spurred Powell’s interest in rigorous study: “If this happened, then it’s really important to study.”

4. Scientific Skepticism, Experimental Design, and Challenges

[15:28–19:05]

• Host highlights validity concerns: Are extraordinary claims due to fraud, subtle cues, or something real?
• Dr. Powell distinguishes herself as an open-minded skeptic:
  • “I would say that definitely describes me... there’s several reasons why I think this is worth investigating.” ([19:05] Dr. Powell)
• Powell notes: Most families who contacted her were skeptical, well-educated, and not “new age.”

5. Documented Cases & "The Telepathy Tapes"

[19:05–24:02]

• Parents/therapists describe children accurately responding to unspoken requests (“Bring me a 7Up” before saying it aloud).
• Powell focuses on cases of independent communication (e.g., nonverbal children using iPads), minimizing possibilities of cueing.
• Collaboration and experiments with filmmaker Kai Dickens led to The Telepathy Tapes podcast, gaining widespread attention.

6. Methodological Hurdles and Scientific Protocol

[24:02–30:06]

• “Billion dollar question”: Is there a scientific (neuroscientific) or metaphysical explanation?
• Ideal experiment: Testing telepathic pairs in separate rooms, eliminating subtle cues.
  • Difficulty: Many nonverbal autistic children rely on a familiar person or letterboard.
  • Historical precedents: Studies from pre-autism-diagnosis days with strong controls; cases where blind, autistic children “read” eye charts via apparent mind reading.
• Savant syndrome often associated with early brain changes (trauma, autism, blindness); may result in unique neurological “workarounds.”

7. Neurological and Quantum Explanations

[33:09–43:45]

• Host references neuroscience of other savant skills (e.g., transcranial stimulation; left hemisphere inhibition).
  • “To me, it doesn’t make it any less miraculous if telepathy falls under neuroscience or quantum principles.” ([33:30] Host)
• Dr. Powell proposes hypotheses:
  • Exceptional statistical/pattern recognition may underlie some “mind reading.”
  • But some evidence defies these explanations—random numbers, nonsense words.
  • “The most out there idea... is that consciousness does not... confine to the cranium... a lot of these children report spending time in a dissociative state.” ([43:52] Dr. Powell)

8. The Nature of the Telepathic Connection

[46:11–49:28]

• Telepathy usually observed between the child and a close bond (parent, not always the mother).
• Dr. Powell acknowledges the lack of stranger-based studies; wonders about expressive aphasia (many autistic children understand language but can’t express it).

9. Pattern Recognition, Genetics, and Further Testing

[52:32–58:14]

• Possible genetic basis: Families with mathematicians, musicians, scientists.
• QEEG (quantitative EEG) plans:
  • “Are they operating on different brainwave frequencies? Is there synchronization between telepathic pairs?”
• Practical challenges: Adapting equipment for sensitive children.

10. Telepathy vs. Fortune-Telling / Precognition

[62:28–67:15]

• Discussion about dreams that foresee the future (e.g., a dream about a broken hip comes true), and “presentiment” experiments (Daryl Bem's research).
• Powell: Both telepathy and precognition occur more often during crisis.

11. Scientific Curiosity and Next Steps

[70:07–70:54]

• Powell highlights the long history of serious investigation into telepathy (e.g., J.B. Rhine, parapsychologists).
• Host expresses support and interest in collaborating on further rigorous research.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• Human Potential:
  “There being more to us than we think.” ([04:41] Dr. Powell)
• Open Skepticism:
  “We both exist somewhere in the middle... open-minded skeptics.” ([18:20] Host)
  “There’s several reasons why I think this is worth investigating.” ([19:05] Dr. Powell)
• Experimental Ideal:
  “The two individuals... in separate rooms... so there needs to be that separation.” ([26:05] Dr. Powell)
• On Consciousness:
  “Consciousness does not... is not confined to the cranium... these children have a hard time staying in their body.” ([43:52] Dr. Powell)
• Universal Talent or Special Mechanism?
  “Is it going to reveal the nature of the universe in a way that playing piano won’t?” ([34:35] Host)
• Precognitive Dreams:
  “Both [precognition and telepathy] seem to be more likely... if there’s a crisis involved.” ([65:02] Dr. Powell)
• Randomness as Evidence:
  “I’ve even generated nonsense words [to test for random guessing].” ([68:37] Dr. Powell)
• On Scientific Inquiry:
  “It’s not just ‘who knows’, it’s like, let’s find out.” ([62:15] Host)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment/Theme | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:25 | Introduction to Dr. Powell’s views on human potential | | 10:58 | First personal and clinical encounters with telepathy | | 15:28 | Scientific skepticism and challenges in telepathy research | | 19:05 | Validity of evidence, focus on independent communication | | 24:02 | Scientific vs. metaphysical explanations | | 26:05 | Ideal experimental protocols | | 33:09 | Neuroscientific explanations for savant skills | | 43:52 | Quantum/universal consciousness hypothesis | | 52:32 | Genetics, pattern recognition, and QEEG plans | | 62:28 | Distinction between telepathy and precognition | | 68:37 | Testing randomness to rule out pattern recognition | | 70:07 | The history of telepathy research and next steps |

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Tone and Language

Both host and guest are respectful, intellectually adventurous, and careful:

• They balance skepticism with genuine curiosity (“open skeptic”).
• Dr. Powell offers personal stories and scientific reasoning, grounding her “out there” hypotheses.
• Host Kaufman affirms the wonder of the unknown but presses for rigorous experimentation.

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Closing Thoughts

The episode leaves listeners with a sense of open possibility and a call to scientific rigor. While the extraordinary claims surrounding telepathy—especially among nonverbal autistic children—remain controversial, Dr. Powell and Scott Barry Kaufman advocate for carefully designed studies, healthy skepticism, and above all, a fearless pursuit of deeper questions about human consciousness and potential.

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Transcript

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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, you know, 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.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Today we have Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell on the podcast. Dr. Powell is an integrative medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist and psychotherapist. Her research interests include the neuroscience of extraordinary states of human consciousness and and anomalous experiences. Her book is called the ESP Enigma, the Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Dr. 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 makes 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 autistic savants and I hope to do some testing myself. I found that Dr. Powell is a fellow open skeptic, which was great. Also, I love the question that is featured on our website. What is the full human potential? I really resonated with that question. So without further ado, I bring you Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell. Dr. Powell, welcome to the Psychology podcast.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Such a pleasure. So much I want to talk to you about. Love your tagline on your website. What is the full human potential? That's right up my alley. Do you believe that there's a lot more human potential than we're aware of?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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 either musical or mathematical tasks that they weren't able to do before. And so when you hear those kind of accounts, it's makes it really compelling case for there being more to us than we think.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I'm waiting for that special knock on the head that'll give me Mozart like abilities. Just waiting for that. Okay, let's back up. Let's start with some fundamentals. So you're a retired medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist, and psychotherapist. Which hat resonates the most with you? Are they all equal? Equal Footing.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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, what, you know, what's helping you? Oh, you know, that conversation we had about this or that? And I'd say, oh, okay. And 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.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I imagine you're a good psychotherapist, a good listener, a good seer and holder of space for people. I can imagine that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. Well, thank you.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Do you see a common thread running through Buddhism, Native American spirituality, and Egyptian hieroglyphics that you think says something about humans?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, I would say what I'd say is that if you look at a lot of these spiritual traditions, what you see is that the. The reality that they describe is very similar to the reality that is described by modern physics, you know, quantum physics and the theory of relativity and. And so. So. And there are several people, like Fritz Capra, who've written about that. And so that's one 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.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's a shame.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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 a hundred years ago.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

And so they. They were meticulously transcribed and. 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 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 take it for granted that the seasons that there are certain things that bloom at certain times of year, but there's actually these cycles where like certain trees are associated with certain planets and you can predict when they're going to bud based on that.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Correlation or causation.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Well, 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 ionized world and we know that electromagnetism plays a huge role in biology. So that's a possibility. Or it could be that it's just a synchronicity, that it really became a timing system that is used.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So. Interesting. Well, this tells a little bit about you and your own sort of way of viewing the world. You've been kind of a rebel in your own 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 you say the word, telepathy?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. Well, I guess you'd have to define what was in 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 a 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 his name is Jay Michelle and when he, when, when I met him, he said, oh, you know, let me do a magic trick for you. And I said, oh, okay. You know, and then what he did was he said, well, pick up any one of those books on that, on that back shelf. 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'd 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 when I asked him, well, you know, well, how can you explain that magic trick to me? And he said, no, it's just magic, and a magician never shares his tricks, you know. And 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 akin to telepathy. And so then the next time was when I was at Harvard and I did a 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. 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 or not. Oh, for example, at that time, my husband, who was a PhD biochemist and an MD, was applying for a postdoctorate 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. And it's also where he. He was actually born at Johns Hopkins. So he was multiple generations Baltimore 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 at UC San Diego. And I said, well. I said, well, where are we going to end up? And she said, well, name. Name a bunch of cities, and I'll tell you which one. And so I named off maybe 10 cities. And then she said, san Diego. That's where 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 my. 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, And I was, I. I was aware that Einstein had said that our. Our sense of time was an illusion. And, and that there were these theories about living in a block universe in which the past, present 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, you know, that are rare but that we occasionally stumble upon are really giving us this. The. An insight into the real nature of reality that most of us are really closed off from. So that's how I became interested in that.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I think there's a really interesting question about. 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 subtle cues sort of explanation that they don't even know that they're picking, like, the clever Hans horse that was able to. Everyone's like, oh, clever Hans can read minds, this horse. But they found out that this horse was really, really astute in all sorts of ways to subtle cues that humans were giving to come up with answers. So I think there's two interesting questions. I get the sense that the autistic individuals that you have been firsthand with, I get the sense that you don't. You don't believe they're faking it. You don't believe that they're like. They're like mentalists, you know, like, like, like magicians. Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

No, no, no.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So they really. They're just doing it. They're just doing it. Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, right. I mean, you know, and I have several reasons why I believe that. And because I can understand why when people see one of these children with a letter board and the person holding the letter board is also the person they're being telepathic with, there's concern over subtle cueing. And, and, 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, but, but that's not really what I've been focusing on. Well, Kai. So Kai Dickens is a filmmaker who heard an interview of me on a podcast and Then came, 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. And 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, 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, beat Joe Rogan Rogan.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's the metric. The metric's not. It's Beat the Psychology Podcast, which is what this podcast is. Beat the Psychology Podcast in popularity. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. 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 you see all sorts of interesting responses. You see, you see there's two classes of people with their mind already made up. So you see the ones who are like, see, I've been saying it all my life, Telepathy 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 and basically nothing's going to 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 talking to you today. I'd like to think that we both exist somewhere in the middle, that we were open, open minded skeptics.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Right? Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that, that I would say that that definitely describes me 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 Telepathy tapes has come out, all bets are off. Yeah, because, because you could have a lot of people contacting me because they, they want to be part of something that's this, you know, 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, you know, 12, you know, 12 to 15 years. Okay. That's how long I've been getting these Emails from people. And, and it has been people who are parents or teachers or speech therapists who work with these children. And something happens where the child types something or points on the letterboard, 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 a glass of 7Up right now. And the child comes into the room, you know, with, with can of 7Up, you know, or father. Yeah, or a father who was in the laundry room.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's freaky.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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 in to the, you know, laundry room and tosses the shirt at him. And so then after that they're like, hey, you know, were you reading my mind? And they're, 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 that. 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 undergoing ontological shock. They, 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, and they, they don't know how to handle it. So, so they, so those are the reasons they'd 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 patients. I mean, they, they would just be 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, 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've tested some children who were, who, 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've got and, and where, and, 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 were the cases that I focus on. And then, and then there was one parent that who I, 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 him on, on Facebook. And, and that was Ramses. And he could speak the answer. And, and, and so, so those are the things that make me feel like there could be something there even with these non speaking children who use the stencil boards. But I agree that that's not the most compelling evidence and that there's still much more research that needs to be done before we can draw any real hard, fast conclusions.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. And I would like to contribute to that. 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 very interested in this. I've spent a large part of my career studying gifted students. I wrote a book called Ungifted and I had a whole chapter on savants. Daryl Treffer 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, I've never really focused on the, on the telepathy cases. I 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 artists, visual artists who do amazing things. And so I think like the, I'll say the billion dollar question, not the million dollar question. The billion dollar question that both me and you are like, we really want to know is like, I mean, are there explanations? I mean, is everything from a scientific point of view, it's like everything has a cause or is there a metaphysical explanation here? And how would we discover that scientifically or experimentally that whatever the answer is doesn't fall within the standard model of science.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. Well, I'm. So what I've been wanting to do is get what the ideal protocol would be. I mean, I. I know what if I could achieve it, I know what that would look like, but tell us.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

What that would be. Yeah.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Oh, what I would like to see is the two individuals that are telepathic with one another in separate rooms. And it's been hard to achieve with the children who are telepathic with their communication partner. And so then I've wanted to study children that have more than one person they're telepathic with or have more than one facilitator for their communication. And 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 a letterboard so that they can be in separate rooms. And so that's what I've been wanting to obtain. 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 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 alive today, 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 Rupert 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 wrote it up. And I thought, you know, that's so interesting because being blind at birth is another cause of savant syndrome, or I shouldn't use the word cause. I should say, though, that if you look at 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 they're, they're blind from a very early age. And so it, it's interesting because it suggests that you have, you know, during a time period when the brain is still, you know, undergoing massive, you know, construction, you know, and 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 during that really formative early years that that's associated with these abilities that seem to be workarounds for someone who otherwise is not going to be very functional.

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[Today Show Host]

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[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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 TDSC for instance, to electrostimulation on everyday people to like Snyder, you know, has done some of that research. Alan Steiner, have you come across his research at all, you know, attempting to. There is something about disinhibiting our left hemisphere. There's something there, you know, 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. Then 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 wonderful, full of wonder as far as I'm concerned. But 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 tuathe one opened up a new world for me. And I guess the, 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?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, yeah, I do, I do, yeah. And, and I don't know if you knew this, but Darrell Trefford, he witnessed my experiments with Haley and I mean he went public.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I didn't know that.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. He publicly stated that he had seen evidence of telepathy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have the, the videographer who took the footage of Haley, which, I mean, that was like 12 years ago now or 11 years ago now, also has an interview of Daryl Treffer saying what he thought.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You know, so well, I mean, it's an interesting. That's really cool. Thank you for that. Daryl Trafford had a very open mind and he was very, he had 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 Darrell Trefford. He really cared about these people in.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

A way that a lot of other.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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, by telling that story. I think what's so interesting is like, well, how do we define mind reading? Let's really get into it because there's the kind of mind reading where it's possible that every thought we have does influence some really slight body tic or gesture or some sort of different way of breathing. 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 level of pat. You know, everyone looks at Michael Jordan dunking from the free throw line and they, they don't say, there's non scientific explanation for it, but they're still in all, you know, his talent was 3, 4 standard deviations above the mean. It's possible that these autistic individuals are three, you know, two, three standard deviations above mean in implicit learning ability, in the, you know, in statistical learning, you know, discovering. Some of these reoccur, 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 think there is a universe in which they are actually tapping into the consciousness of the other person? Like it was kind of presented in the telepathy Tapes that maybe there is this kind of universal consciousness that they all go. That these autistic people all hang out. All hang out in this other realm, this other plane. I forget what the name of that plane was. How much do you think there's. There's a real possibility of this kind of. They're able to actually see and access a more universal consciousness? Because that's a different question.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, it is a different question. Well, I mean, I have several different hypotheses about what could be going on. And that's what you do as a good scientist, is that you have to think about what are all the things that this could possibly be so that you design your experiments accordingly. And 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 letter board moves. They think that, you know, that the parent is queuing that way, you know, unconsciously queuing, you know, by moving. And if you really. I mean, if you study the. You know, I've got hours of video of, for example, Haley, and she was able to type independently 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 here depend. You know, there's 26 letters there and there. There aren't 26 different positions of the board. I mean, 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 cueing. And so are they seeing.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Do you. Do you block them off from seeing from visually watching the parent?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, well, I did with. With Haley so that she couldn't see them. You know, but a lot of the. That the kids that 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 on sub, you know, sub vocalizations, you know, 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 cords 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, a lot of them have perfect pitch. Some of them seem to have really sensitive hearing, so they can hear somebody at more of a distance. So if there's subtle cueing going on, you know, that's the form I think would be, you know, it would take. That's where I put my money.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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. The answer correct.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, she was. She was phenomenal. I mean, you know, I have six hours worth of just random number after random number after random number or, you know, random word or, you know, randomized pictures.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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 Haley can do. But I won't. I won't say that they're. That. I'd say they're. They're tricks, but. And ethical mentalist would. As Most mentalist would say that that is as well. But she's obviously not a mentalist. So she's not, like, consciously trying to figure out how to game, how to full.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

No, no, no.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think 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.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

I want to know what it is, too.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

What is that talent? Because some. I mean, some people, 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, but it seems like you put forward some 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 interesting, I'll say out there, but really fascinating quantum theory ideas that could maybe explain a tapping into a universal consciousness. Can you kind of double click on the most out there idea that you have?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

The most out there idea that I have.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Well, about what, what could be going on here? About what could be going on.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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. 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, 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 worked with a lot of people who were traumatized and, you know, and they're, they, they are more prone to dis. Association. Okay. And, and one of the things that you see is common to a lot of the literature in parapsychology for the, some of the people who've been the best psychics, you know, for example, trained by the military or whatever, is that they oftentimes say that they have out of body experiences. You know, they would do, you know, something called astral 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, 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.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Oh, it's not only the mother, okay.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Because the tape tapes kind of only Presents it that way. Okay.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

No, no, no. It's not just the mother. In fact, strangers, though.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Strangers?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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 was 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, you know, trained medical doctor, same training as me, that where, from the standpoint that you're very much immersed in the, you know, the materialist, you know, model that neuroscience teaches us.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. Why not as a complete stranger, though? Why not a complete stranger?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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. 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 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. And that latter one is Wernicke's. And so if you. If you have a. If you have damage of some sort to 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 when children are learning how to speak, they, they. They. 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 reason to believe that when the parents say this kid's really still understanding, 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 show, you know, what is their wiring in their brain? I mean, do we see wiring that is consistent with a Broca's type aphasia.

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[Today Show Host]

Business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you Grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's a great question. What a great question. So there's so many, so many unanswered questions. Still. I keep going back to what is talent? Anyway? I have a friend who, a colleague who studied gifted children, profoundly gifted children and prodigies. So the prodigy phenomenon to me is not irrelevant to this discussion. To define as a prodigy, you have to show some adult, full form, fully fledged expertise before the age of 10. And a lot of these kids, these prodigies, they are able to do that, and it's without formal training and they're able to do that. And my friend who studies prodigies found that usually there is some family member who had this talent if you go far enough back. And so you start to think about genetic transmission. You start to think about, well, what's encoded in the genes and then what exactly does that code for? That allows for some exceptional talents. And then I start to think about telepathy. What's the genetics of the talent for telepathy?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, well, it's very interesting. I mean, 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 Grandin 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 musician. I mean, you know, 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've got musicians on both sides of the family. I've got mathematicians on both sides of the family. And so, you know, there's something about, in our genetics that predisposes us towards that pattern recognition as opposed to being verbal thinkers. And the problem is that most people are verbal thinkers. And verbal thinking can then get you caught up in these kind of, you know, endless do 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 can talk ourselves into believing a lot of different things. 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's off.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's a real talent there, you know, for Pat, for pattern recognition that probably a lot of these autistic savants have. By the way, Dow Treffer. Dowd Treffer didn't like using the phrase autistic savant. He just wanted to call them 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 QEEG analysis of both telepathic pairs talking to each other? What do you think could be some, like, 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 hypotheses there?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Well, I mean, and that is my intention to be good.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I know.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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, MRIs. No, to, to see that. But, you know, that that's a, 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 QEEG gives you a, you know, some information, you know, and so one of the things I'm very interested in is, you know, what brainwaves are they, you know, are they operating on, you know, you know, what deviation is there from, you know, are normative data, you know, and so, you know, are they. Do they have a lot of theta, you know, which theta is the 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 Ingo Swan. He had a hit, a 7 Hz signal that was, you know, unique. 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, yeah, you know, that doesn't, you know, prove things one way or the other. But 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 in, you know, can, can we detect that in the, in the signals? And that requires, you know, fairly sophisticated EEG equipment. But that's, that's the equipment that we're getting. We're also getting.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Oh cool.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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. You know, they've got caps in it that don't use a gel.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I'm so happy to hear that you're going to do this. I'm so happy. There is, there is some research. Maybe you could adopt some of the methodologies. But they do have research showing couples in love and how synchronized their brains are. And I wonder if you often find couples who've been with each other over a certain number of years, they feel like they can start reading each other's minds. I just think that it could be something similar. I know earlier I was really belaboring the point about why just the mother or why just someone 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 make them more predictable. 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. We all get caught in our own Mother always, when mother really wants her coffee, she always goes to this spot. You know, it's not like you read mother's mind. You've spent enough time with mother.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

That's. 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. I mean, my, 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 jumped off of the sofa and, and you know, because she was ready and because she would always, you know, see them to the door with me. And so, but, you know, I really started to wonder if she was, was telepathic I mean, a la, you know, Rupert Sheldrake's research. And the. Here's the reason why was that she developed surfers here from. We lived in San Diego, and the water down there, you know, gets, you know, pretty contaminated. And so it's a real problem for people that surf in the ocean there. And, and so. And she, she was a springer spaniel. You couldn't keep her out of the ocean, and so she develop these untreatable ear infections. And so she was. She was stone deaf. I mean, you could fire, you could set off fireworks right in front of her and she wouldn't flinch, you know, and she. And so she stone deaf. And I didn't realize 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.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You know, interesting.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. So. Yeah, so it's. Who knows?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Well, it's not just who knows, it's like, let's find out.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Exactly.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

We're not just like, oh, who knows? No, we're like, let's design an experiment here.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Exactly.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

And it seems 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 feel like that's a separate thing. 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 going to be separate, maybe correlated, related, but not completely the same talent. I don't know. What do you think?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah, well, I agree. I mean, I think that it's. It's interesting. I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with the research that Daryl Bem did on Presentiment.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Of course. Of course. Legend.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Legend, yeah. And so, you know, so, you know, even though it's, you know, just a fraction of a second or whatever, you know, that it still is beforehand, you know, and so that. That really does challenge our concept of time.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You know, what do you make of the replication attempt that didn't find it? Found it at chance levels?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

You know, there's so much of that in science. I mean, you know, that I, you know, I'd have to try it myself and see if I could repeat it, you know, for me to comment on other people's science, you know. But 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, you know, they don't necessarily get tossed out and so.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. I just. I just think it's worthy of further study.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Oh, definitely.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Yeah. And there's, you know, what's interesting to me is that there is. There's such 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 in people who don't ordinarily experience them if there's a crisis involved.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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. 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 breaks his hip.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Oh, my gosh.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

And so. So it's one of those things where it's like a warning system, you know, that mean there were a lot of people who reported, you know, that like, 9, 11 was going to happen before it did. You know, there's the book that was. There was a book called. There was a book that was written about a ship called the Titan, like a decade before the Titanic sank. And I write about that. When you read my book, you'll read about that, 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 reverie, you know. And so, you know, so it. So it's like there's. There's something, you know, about disasters, crises, etc. And the same thing is reported about telepathy where you'll have, you know, for example, two siblings that are, 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. My gosh, somebody dies and somebody else, you know, somebody dies and other person's aware of it, but otherwise they don't tend to have all the experiences. Wow.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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 everyone equally as good as at having their dreams become a prophecy? Maybe not. And then the question is, well, what makes those who are good at what's going on there? So that's a whole. To me, that's another layer of fascinating with the work that you do. In addition, it's not exactly the same thing as mind reading. And I also want to just return to something I said earlier because I made the point about being with someone you're familiar with could help explain a lot of it, seeing their patterns. But just to be skeptical of my own self for a second for saying that a lot of these things, they're coming up with random strings of letters, right? They're thinking you come up with any word in the dictionary, that kind of stuff.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've even because of the fact that words, once you get the. The first few letters, I mean, then, you know, there's only so many combinations of what the rest of the word's going to be. And so it stops being as impressive as a random number. And so I've even generated nonsense words.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow. It's not. Wow. It's not. Well, are you. Do you. Are you still wowed?

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

I've been doing this for. I've been doing this for, you know, you know, like 12, 13 years more, you know. You know, 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.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right. For you, it's like, yeah, telepathy is real, you know, whatevs. Whereas people listening to telepathy tapes for the first time, who are encountering this phenomenon for the first time are just riveted.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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, 150 years, there are a lot of people who have done studies on things like telepathy and precognition. And. And so that's one of the reasons why I became interested in, you know, coming up with a theory to understand it, because it's not that this is just the first time anybody has observed something that they would call telepathy. It's just that in these children, if that's what we're observing, it's the most consistent and it's the most accurate.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, you're right. There's a long list of paranormal psychologists going back to one of my favorites. Probably my favorite, J.B. 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 mindness you have and for keeping at it, for not giving up and for the new territories that you're going into. And I would like to help you in any way I can and 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.

[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

Thank you.

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[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

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[Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell]

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[Today Show Host]

This is an iHeart podcast.