Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the most out there idea, which is
Speaker 1: one that actually a lot of scientists have come to,
Speaker 1: is the idea that consciousness does not it's not confined
Speaker 1: to the cranium. And what's interesting is that if you
Speaker 1: ask these children, they will tell you that they have
Speaker 1: a hard time staying in their body, so they spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time in a disassociative state.
Speaker 2: Today we have doctor Diane Hennessy Powell on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Doctor Powell is an integrative medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist, and psychotherapist.
Speaker 2: Her research interests include the neuroscience of extraordinary states of
Speaker 2: human consciousness and anomalous experiences. Her book is called The
Speaker 2: esp Enigma, The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Doctor Powell
Speaker 2: is an expert on autism and Savant syndrome and has
Speaker 2: studied children who seem to actually be able to read minds.
Speaker 2: This work was featured in the chart topping podcast The
Speaker 2: Telepathy Tapes. In this episode, we have a rich discussion
Speaker 2: about the evidence suggesting that telepathy might actually be real
Speaker 2: and the confounds and methodological limitations that make studying this
Speaker 2: topic so difficult. We also discussed the science of prophetic
Speaker 2: dreams and her theories of consciousness. I really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 2: I am very interested in studying autistics evants, and I
Speaker 2: hope to do some testing myself. I found that doctor
Speaker 2: Powell is a fellow open skeptic, which was great. Also,
Speaker 2: I love the question that is featured on her website,
Speaker 2: what is the full human potential? I really resonated with
Speaker 2: that question, so that further ado I bring you doctor
Speaker 2: Diane Hennessy Powell. Doctor Powell, welcome to the Psychology Podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: Such a pleasure so much. I want to talk to
Speaker 2: you about. Well, have your tagline on your website what
Speaker 2: is the full human potential? That's a right up my alley,
Speaker 2: Right up my alley. Do you believe that there's a
Speaker 2: lot more human potential than we're aware of?
Speaker 1: Oh? Absolutely, absolutely yeah. I mean I think acquired savant
Speaker 1: syndrome is a really good example of that, where you'll
Speaker 1: have somebody who appears to be just a normal, ordinary
Speaker 1: person and then they get struck by lightning or they
Speaker 1: have some severe accident, and then afterwards they're able to do,
Speaker 1: you know, either musical or mathematical tasks that they weren't
Speaker 1: able to do before, and so when you hear those
Speaker 1: kind of accounts, it makes it really compelling case for
Speaker 1: their being more to us than we think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm waiting for that special knock on the head
Speaker 2: that'll give me mozart likabilities, just waiting for that. Okay,
Speaker 2: well let's back up. Let's let's start with some fundamentals.
Speaker 2: So you're a retired medical doctor, neuropsychiatrist, and psychotherapist, which
Speaker 2: which hot resonates the most with you?
Speaker 1: M I'd say that they're all pretty Yeah, they're all
Speaker 1: pretty equal. I mean, i'd say that in my practice
Speaker 1: as a neuropsychiatrist that I I ended up doing a
Speaker 1: lot of psychotherapy because that was what really helped people
Speaker 1: the most. That people would come to see me and
Speaker 1: they would do better faster than any of the medications
Speaker 1: could potentially kick in. And I'd ask them, all, you
Speaker 1: know what's helping you that? Oh you know that conversation
Speaker 1: we had about this or that, And I'd say, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: so I you do what works. And so I became
Speaker 1: more and more of a psychotherapist in my practice, even
Speaker 1: though I originally was thinking that I would be doing
Speaker 1: predominantly assessments of people with neuropsychiatric disorders.
Speaker 2: I imagine you're a good a good psychotherapist, a good listener,
Speaker 2: a good seer of an holder of space for people.
Speaker 2: I can imagine that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, thank you.
Speaker 2: Do you see a common thread running through Buddhism, Native
Speaker 2: American spirituality, and Egyptian herographics that you think says something
Speaker 2: about humans?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say. What I'd say is that if
Speaker 1: you look at a lot of these spiritual traditions, which
Speaker 1: you see is that the reality that they described is
Speaker 1: very similar to the reality that is described by modern physics,
Speaker 1: quantum physics and the theory of relativity and so so
Speaker 1: I mean, there are several people like Capra who've written
Speaker 1: about that, and so that's one of thing that's interesting.
Speaker 1: But also I was really interested in what are the
Speaker 1: universal truths? And you know, what is it that, regardless
Speaker 1: of the culture, just keeps arising and perpetuated independently of
Speaker 1: one another. And I think that we've really lost a
Speaker 1: lot of the knowledge that our ancestors had, and so
Speaker 1: that's been a lot of my interest in it. That's
Speaker 1: a shame, I think. So I think so it you know,
Speaker 1: when I when the work that I've done with Native
Speaker 1: Americans is a really good example. So one of the
Speaker 1: people I've been working with is somebody who's working off
Speaker 1: of these archives that come from interviews that an anthropologist
Speaker 1: did with indigenous elders over one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so they were meticulously transcribed and translated, and in
Speaker 1: it there's a lot of there's a lot of science
Speaker 1: in it. That's what's so interesting. I mean, they had
Speaker 1: such a knowledge of, for example, the you know, the
Speaker 1: planets and how they and the star systems, and they
Speaker 1: they really understood the cycles of nature, so that you know,
Speaker 1: when you know, for example, when you had certain phenomena happen,
Speaker 1: you would also concurrently see something else happen. So so
Speaker 1: for example, there are there are sites that I've gone
Speaker 1: to where there's a very specific light that comes into
Speaker 1: a cave on a particular day and when that when
Speaker 1: that day happens, it's also the same day that the
Speaker 1: snakes come up from underground, and so you know, or
Speaker 1: you know, and we just think of, for granted that
Speaker 1: the seasons, that there are certain things that bloom at
Speaker 1: certain times a year and that, but but there's actually
Speaker 1: these cycles where like certain trees are associated with with
Speaker 1: certain planets and you can predict when they're going to
Speaker 1: bud based.
Speaker 2: On that correlation or causation.
Speaker 1: Well, it's a it's it's an interesting it's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing because, I mean, it's really hard to think of
Speaker 1: what the causative factor would be unless you're thinking that
Speaker 1: it has something to do with electromagnetism and the fact
Speaker 1: that we live in this kind of you know, ionized
Speaker 1: world and we know that you know that electromagnetism plays
Speaker 1: a huge role in biology, so so so that's a possibility,
Speaker 1: or it could be that it's just a synchronicity, that
Speaker 1: it's just a that it really became a timing system
Speaker 1: that is used.
Speaker 2: So interesting, Well, this tell us a little bit about
Speaker 2: about you and and your own sort of way of
Speaker 2: viewing the world. And you've you've you, i mean you
Speaker 2: you've been kind of a rebel in your own the
Speaker 2: field for your whole career, trying to constantly seek out
Speaker 2: multiple truths and seek out alternative explanations for things. And
Speaker 2: when did you make contact? When did you first make
Speaker 2: contact with the phenomena of telepathy? That's how that's how
Speaker 2: you say the word telepathy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I guess you'd have to define. You know,
Speaker 1: what was my first contact? And what I mean by
Speaker 1: that is that when I was a teenager, I had
Speaker 1: a friend who traveled with the circus with the magician,
Speaker 1: and one day that magician was in town and my
Speaker 1: friend said, oh, you've really got to meet this guy.
Speaker 1: And he most of what he did was Houdini type tricks,
Speaker 1: and my friend was the person who would be there
Speaker 1: with the sledgehammer to break the glass in case something
Speaker 1: went wrong. And yeah, and so when when when His
Speaker 1: name is Jay Michelle, and when he when I met him,
Speaker 1: he said, oh, you know, let me do a magic
Speaker 1: trick for you. And I said, okay, you know, and
Speaker 1: then what he did was he said, well, pick up
Speaker 1: any one of those books on that on that back sheelf.
Speaker 1: And this was at my friend's house and he had
Speaker 1: he had hundreds of books, and I just randomly picked
Speaker 1: up a book and then I opened it up and
Speaker 1: I was I was looking at it, and he would
Speaker 1: he read it to me word for word. I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: how do you do that? He goes, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: close that, you know, go get another book, and I'm
Speaker 1: holding it so that he can't I mean, it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine how he would know what page I'm on,
Speaker 1: and yet he was doing that. And and when I
Speaker 1: asked him, well, you know, you know, well, how can
Speaker 1: you explain that magic trick to me? And he said, no,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just magic, and a magician ever shares
Speaker 1: his tricks, you know, and so so that was sort
Speaker 1: of in the back of my mind, but I just thought, well,
Speaker 1: that was a magic trick that I don't understand, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't. But but I think, looking back on it,
Speaker 1: I think that that was really very into telepathy. And
Speaker 1: so then the next time was when I was at
Speaker 1: Harvard and I did consult on this patient who was
Speaker 1: trying to sign out against medical advice, and the staff
Speaker 1: thought that she was mentally ill and therefore incapable of
Speaker 1: making that decision for herself, And within minutes of meeting her,
Speaker 1: she started telling me things about myself that there was
Speaker 1: just no way that she could know. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether quit or not. Oh. For example,
Speaker 1: at that time, my husband, who was a PhD biochemist
Speaker 1: and an MD, was applying for a post doctorate in biochemistry.
Speaker 1: And so the first thing she says to me, is
Speaker 1: your husband's a chemist? And I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: Then the second thing she said to me is he's
Speaker 1: applying for a job right now in two different cities,
Speaker 1: which was right. There were two cities that he was
Speaker 1: applying for a postdoctorate in. And then I said, wow,
Speaker 1: that's really interesting. I said, can you tell me which cities?
Speaker 1: And she says, well, in his heart of hearts, he
Speaker 1: wants to go to one city, but you'll end up
Speaker 1: in the other one. And I knew in his heart
Speaker 1: of hearts he wanted to go back to Johns Hopkins,
Speaker 1: which is where we met in medical school, and it's
Speaker 1: also where he was actually born at Johns Hopkins. So
Speaker 1: he was multiple generations Baltimorian and had a lot of
Speaker 1: family there, and so I knew that's where we wanted
Speaker 1: to go in his hard hearts. Then I knew the
Speaker 1: other one that he was applying for was the UC
Speaker 1: San Diego. And I said well, I said, well, where
Speaker 1: are we going to end up? And she said, well,
Speaker 1: name a bunch of cities and I'll tell you which one,
Speaker 1: and so I named off maybe ten cities, and then
Speaker 1: she said, San Diego, that's will you end up. And
Speaker 1: then she made other predictions about my life, all of
Speaker 1: which became that came true. And so it was always
Speaker 1: this sort of thing in the back of my mind
Speaker 1: of well, gosh, you know, if this happened, you know,
Speaker 1: if this happened, then it's it's really important to study.
Speaker 1: And I was I was. I was aware that Einstein
Speaker 1: had said that our sense of time was an illusion
Speaker 1: and that there were these theories about living in a
Speaker 1: block universe in which the past, president, and future all coexist.
Speaker 1: And so I thought, well, you know this, it could
Speaker 1: be that some of these you know, oddities that that
Speaker 1: we that are rare but that we occasionally stumble upon,
Speaker 1: are really giving us this the that this the you know,
Speaker 1: an insight into the real nature of reality that most
Speaker 1: of us are really closed off from. And so that's
Speaker 1: so that's how I became interested in that.
Speaker 2: I think there's a really interesting question about There are
Speaker 2: multiple there are so many interesting questions. One is how
Speaker 2: much of what we're seeing is not faked. That's one
Speaker 2: big question, right, But another question is if it's not faked, okay,
Speaker 2: then what is the explanation? Is there a metaphysical explanation
Speaker 2: or is there, you know, subtle, subtle cues sort of
Speaker 2: like explanation that they don't even know that they're they're
Speaker 2: you know, like the clever Hans horse, you know that
Speaker 2: was able to everyone's like, oh, Courhans can read minds
Speaker 2: this horse. But they found out that this horse was
Speaker 2: really really astute and in all sorts of ways to
Speaker 2: subtle cues that the humans were giving to come up
Speaker 2: with the answers. So I think there's like two interesting questions.
Speaker 2: I get the sense that the autistic individuals that you
Speaker 2: have been first hand with, I get the sense that
Speaker 2: you don't you don't believe they're faking it. You don't
Speaker 2: believe it. They're like they're they're like mentalists, you know,
Speaker 2: like like like magicians.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, no, no, they.
Speaker 2: Really they're just doing it. They're just doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah right, I mean, you know, and I have
Speaker 1: several reasons why I believe that, and because I I
Speaker 1: can understand why when people see one of these children
Speaker 1: with a letter board and the person holding the letter
Speaker 1: boards also the person they're being telepathic with, I can
Speaker 1: understand why there's concern over subtle queueing. And for the
Speaker 1: most part, those aren't the children that I've really focused
Speaker 1: on studying those are the children that Kai has witnessed.
Speaker 1: But that's not really well. Kai so Ki Dickens is
Speaker 1: a filmmaker who heard an interview of me on a
Speaker 1: podcast and then came to interview me, and she was
Speaker 1: really fascinated by my research, and she asked me if
Speaker 1: she could witness some of my experiments. And she didn't
Speaker 1: really want to. She didn't want to go and see
Speaker 1: some of my experiments with people I'd already studied. She
Speaker 1: wanted to start fresh with people who had just recently
Speaker 1: contacted me. So so I put her in contact with the
Speaker 1: family so that she could see me interviewing them for
Speaker 1: the first time. And and then she she flew me
Speaker 1: to la and we had a couple of the children
Speaker 1: come there, and then we also went to Atlanta and
Speaker 1: and when she saw the experiment, she was just so
Speaker 1: blown away that she created the podcast, The Telepathy Tapes,
Speaker 1: which has become a big hit.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the metric, the metrics, not it's beat
Speaker 2: the psychology podcast, which is what this podcast is beating
Speaker 2: the psychology podcast in popularity. Wow amazing, Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 2: but it really has kind of taken the world by
Speaker 2: storm this podcast. People are really really interested and in
Speaker 2: the truth about this, and and I you know, you
Speaker 2: see all sorts of instertrecting responses. You see. You see
Speaker 2: there's two classes of people with their minority made up.
Speaker 2: So you see the ones that are like, see, I've
Speaker 2: been saying in all my life, Tilepthy exists and I
Speaker 2: talk to my dead mom every day. And then there's
Speaker 2: the other end, which is like this is just complete bullshit,
Speaker 2: you know, and like basically nothing's gonna change my mind
Speaker 2: about that. Now, I would like to think, and I
Speaker 2: don't know you that well, but I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: telling you today. I'd like to think that we both
Speaker 2: exist somewhere in the middle, that we were open and
Speaker 2: open minded skeptics.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean that that I would
Speaker 1: say that that definitely describes me and true. And the
Speaker 1: reason and this is an important point. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's several reasons why I think that this is
Speaker 1: worth investigating. The first one is that you have to
Speaker 1: look at who is it that contacts me so prior
Speaker 1: to the telepathy tapes. Now that now that the teleptity
Speaker 1: tapes has come out, all that's are off because because
Speaker 1: you could have a lot of people contacting me that
Speaker 1: they want to be part of something that's this you
Speaker 1: got this kind of momentum and you know kind of attention,
Speaker 1: and so we have to look at, you know, who
Speaker 1: is it that has contacted me over the last you know, twelve,
Speaker 1: you know, twelve to fifteen years. Okay, that's how long
Speaker 1: I've been getting these emails from people. And it has
Speaker 1: been people who are parents or teachers or speech therapists
Speaker 1: who work with these children. And something happens where the
Speaker 1: child type something or points on the letter board and
Speaker 1: it is a repetition of what the person themselves is thinking.
Speaker 1: And or sometimes it starts with the child doing something
Speaker 1: like that's in response to whatever the person was thinking.
Speaker 1: So for example, maybe the mother's thinking, gee, I really
Speaker 1: would like the glass of seven up right now, the
Speaker 1: child comes into the room, you know, with can of
Speaker 1: seven up, you know, or a father or father, a
Speaker 1: father who was in the laundry. Yeah, you know, a
Speaker 1: father in the in the laundry room and he was
Speaker 1: looking for a shirt of his and it was a
Speaker 1: specific shirt. And then the child comes into the liner
Speaker 1: room and tosses the shirt at him. And so then
Speaker 1: after that they're like, hey, you know, were you reading
Speaker 1: my mind? And there at first when they say that,
Speaker 1: they're kind of joking because they're thinking, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: this is just one of those coincidences. And then when
Speaker 1: the child said, yeah, I can read your mind types that,
Speaker 1: and then they start testing and they go, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what you know, what am I thinking now? And then
Speaker 1: the child, the child types it. They go, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: what is this? And then they they do an internet
Speaker 1: search and then they see that someone with my credentials
Speaker 1: has actually studied this, and then they contact me because
Speaker 1: they don't know what they don't know what to do
Speaker 1: about it. They're trying to make sense of it. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're undergoing onto logical shock. They don't know what
Speaker 1: to do about a child that now they think, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, the child is reading all of my thoughts
Speaker 1: and they don't know how to handle it. So so
Speaker 1: they so those are the reasons they contact me. Is
Speaker 1: because they wanted to just know, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: can you tell me anything? Can you you know, can
Speaker 1: you help me? You know? And I you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't none of them became my patience. I mean, they
Speaker 1: were just contacting me because they were just really concerned,
Speaker 1: and it was from all around the world. And a
Speaker 1: lot of these parents were engineers, medical doctors, psychologists. I mean,
Speaker 1: they were not people who already had a new age
Speaker 1: type way of thinking.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And so so that's the first thing is who, the
Speaker 1: nature of who contacts me and why they contact me.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing is that I I've tested
Speaker 1: some children who were whose parents had sent me an
Speaker 1: actual video, you know, where they're like, here, let me
Speaker 1: send you a video of what I what I got
Speaker 1: and where. And in those cases, I could see that
Speaker 1: the child wasn't using a letter board. They were actually
Speaker 1: typing independently into like an iPad type like device that
Speaker 1: had an electronic voice. And so that's that's what that's
Speaker 1: that's what got my attention. And and so those are
Speaker 1: the cases that I focused on. And then and then
Speaker 1: there was one parent that who I somebody had told
Speaker 1: me about, somebody who followed me on Facebook and knew
Speaker 1: about my research, said oh, you should check out this
Speaker 1: this child whose mother's posting videos of them on on Facebook.
Speaker 1: And that was Ramses and he could speak the answer
Speaker 1: and and and so so so those are the things
Speaker 1: that make me feel like there's there's could be something there,
Speaker 1: even with these non speaking children who use the stencil board.
Speaker 1: But I agree that that's not the most compelling evidence,
Speaker 1: and that there's there's still much more research that needs
Speaker 1: to be done before we can draw any real hard,
Speaker 1: fast conclusions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and uh, and I would like to contribute to that.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: My my colleague Simon Baron Cohen at Cambridge University, and
Speaker 2: I would love to team up with you. So let's
Speaker 2: keep up that conversation off channel. But we're we're very
Speaker 2: interested in this. I've spent a large part of my
Speaker 2: career studying gifted students. I wrote a book called on
Speaker 2: Gifted and had a whole chapter on savants. Uh. Darald
Speaker 2: treffort Is was a real dear personal friend of mine,
Speaker 2: and he actually at one point asked if I wanted
Speaker 2: to run his savant center, and I didn't have the
Speaker 2: time to do that. You know, just in my free second,
Speaker 2: I'll run a savant center. But I've always really been
Speaker 2: fascinated with a lot of these cases, and I've never
Speaker 2: really focused on the on the telepathy cases I've I've
Speaker 2: I've I've focused on other cases like playing piano, you know,
Speaker 2: just without learning, you know, how to without explicitly explicitly
Speaker 2: learning how to play piano. You know, you have these
Speaker 2: these you know, artists, visual artists who do amazing things.
Speaker 2: And so I think, like the the I'll say the
Speaker 2: billion dollar question, not the billion dollar question. The billion
Speaker 2: dollar question that we're that both me and you are
Speaker 2: like we really want to know, is like what I mean,
Speaker 2: are there explanations? I mean, is everything from a scientific
Speaker 2: point of view, It's like everything has a cause cause
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's or is there a metaphysical explanation here?
Speaker 2: I mean, are and how would we discover that scientifically
Speaker 2: or experiment experimentally that that whatever the answer is doesn't
Speaker 2: fall within the the standard model of science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm so what I've been wanting to do
Speaker 1: is get what the ideal protocol would be. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know what if I could achieve it, I know
Speaker 1: what that would look like, but that would be Oh.
Speaker 1: What what I would like to see is the two
Speaker 1: individuals that are telepathic with one another in separate rooms.
Speaker 1: And and it's been hard to achieve with the children
Speaker 1: who are telepathic with their communication partner because and so
Speaker 1: then I've wanted to study children that have more than
Speaker 1: one person they're telepath you know, telepathic with and so
Speaker 1: you know, or had more than one facilitator for their communication.
Speaker 1: And so so because there needs to be that separation
Speaker 1: between the person who knows the answer and the person
Speaker 1: holding the letterboard, or the child needs to be able
Speaker 1: to type independently and not need someone holding the letterboard,
Speaker 1: and so that they can be in separate rooms. And
Speaker 1: and so that's that's what I've been wanting to obtain,
Speaker 1: and and and I think the reason why I think
Speaker 1: it's possible that that could happen is in part because
Speaker 1: the fact that I looked in the literature and and
Speaker 1: there actually were these studies that were done back you know,
Speaker 1: back before autism was even a diagnosis. With these children
Speaker 1: that when you read the description of them, you'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: if that child was live today, they for sure that
Speaker 1: child would be diagnosed as autistic. And in those studies
Speaker 1: they were able. This was before we had stencil boards
Speaker 1: and you know, rpm you know, that form of communication.
Speaker 1: So these were children who were tested with separation and
Speaker 1: by scientists who were credible. There was there was a
Speaker 1: scientist at Cambridge who is the person that is responsible
Speaker 1: for Rubert Sheldrake becoming interested in telepathy. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're aware of that, but he was working there
Speaker 1: was a professor there he really admired who told him
Speaker 1: about this study that was done by a friend of
Speaker 1: his who was an ophthalmologist. And the ophthalmologist had this
Speaker 1: child who was blind, but if the mother was in
Speaker 1: the room, the child could read the eye chart. And
Speaker 1: then he discovered that it was because he was really,
Speaker 1: you know, reading the child's mind. And so he actually
Speaker 1: conducted studies with the child, you know, separated from the mother,
Speaker 1: demonstrating this you know, this mind reading going on, and
Speaker 1: and wrote it up and and I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting because being blind at earth is another
Speaker 1: cause of Savant syndrome. Or I shouldn't use the word cause.
Speaker 1: I should say though that if if you look at
Speaker 1: who are who are the most likely to have Savant syndrome,
Speaker 1: it's either people who have the acquired form, or it's
Speaker 1: people who are who have autism or their their lined
Speaker 1: from a very early age. And so it's interesting because
Speaker 1: it suggests that you have you know, during a time
Speaker 1: period when the brain is still you know, undergoing massive
Speaker 1: uh you know construction, you know, you know, in the
Speaker 1: pruning process and the whole you know, setting up the
Speaker 1: wiring for how you're going to navigate in the world.
Speaker 1: That that that during that really formative early years, that
Speaker 1: that that that's associated with these abilities that seem to
Speaker 1: be work around for someone who who otherwise is not
Speaker 1: going to be very functional.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think that there are scientific, neuroscientific explanations
Speaker 2: for how some of these other savant abilities come into being.
Speaker 2: You know, we can actually use certain T D s
Speaker 2: C for instance, to electrostimulation on everyday people to like Snyder,
Speaker 2: you know, has has done some of that research. Alan Steiner,
Speaker 2: you come across his research at all, you know, attempting
Speaker 2: to uh, there is something about disinhibiting our left hemisphere.
Speaker 2: There's something there, you know that that is that has
Speaker 2: a scientific explanation that if we can disinhibit the left hemisphere,
Speaker 2: we can kind of have people tap more purely into
Speaker 2: some of these more modular functions on the right hemisphere
Speaker 2: than like holy cow, like we can do all sorts
Speaker 2: of incredible things, and to me, it doesn't make it
Speaker 2: any less miraculous or amazing if it turns out that telepathy,
Speaker 2: you know, falls under some basic neuroscience principles or even
Speaker 2: quantum physics principles. To me, it's still amazing and one
Speaker 2: wonder full, full full of wonder as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: But it is. It's such an interesting thing what you're doing.
Speaker 2: And the reason why I was so excited to seek
Speaker 2: to come across your research because I really had encountered
Speaker 2: all these other savant skills, but it never dawned on
Speaker 2: me to investigate the TWEP one opened up a new
Speaker 2: world for me. And I guess the question that I'm
Speaker 2: the burning question for me is does that follow the
Speaker 2: same principles as these other savant skills or is it
Speaker 2: something really special? Do you know what I mean? Is
Speaker 2: it something that's going to kind of reveal the nature
Speaker 2: of human of the universe in a way that playing
Speaker 2: piano won't? You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I do, I do. Yeah. And And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you knew this, but Darryl Trefford he
Speaker 1: witnessed my experiments with Haley, and I mean he went public.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Again, he publicly stated that he had seen evidence of telepathy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I have the videographer who took the footage of Haley,
Speaker 1: which I mean that was like twelve years ago. On
Speaker 1: Hour eleven years ago now also has an interview of
Speaker 1: Darryl Trefford saying what he thought, you know.
Speaker 2: So well, I mean the question it's an interesting that's
Speaker 2: really cool. Thank you for saying Daryld Trufford had a
Speaker 2: very open mind and he was very un going to
Speaker 2: hit a lot of unconditional love for these individuals. He
Speaker 2: was such a he had such a big heart. I
Speaker 2: just want to give a really big shout out to
Speaker 2: Daryld Trefford. He really cared about these people in a
Speaker 2: way that a lot of other people, you know, have
Speaker 2: looked over them. So that's that's a wonderful story. Thank
Speaker 2: you for honoring his memory in that way by telling
Speaker 2: that story. I think that's what's so interesting is like, well,
Speaker 2: how do we define mind reading? Like like what, let's
Speaker 2: like really get into it. That's like because there's the
Speaker 2: kind of mind reading where you know, it's possible that
Speaker 2: every thought we have does influence some really slight body
Speaker 2: tick or jesture or some sort of different way of breathing.
Speaker 2: Every every letter, every letter of a thought, you know,
Speaker 2: and that you know when the person is that these
Speaker 2: these these these these autistic savants are so good at
Speaker 2: pattern recognition at at an advanced level that is far
Speaker 2: beyond it's still human, but it is. It's like Michael
Speaker 2: Jordan's level of you know, everyone looks at Michael Jordan
Speaker 2: dunking from the free throw on and they don't say,
Speaker 2: there's non scientific explanation for it. They're still in awe.
Speaker 2: You know, his talent was three for standard deviations above
Speaker 2: the mean. It's possible that these autistic individuals are three
Speaker 2: you know two three standard usion and above mean and
Speaker 2: implicit learning ability in the you know, in in in
Speaker 2: statistical learning, you know, discovering some of these recur these
Speaker 2: really complex statistical patterns that are associated with thoughts. And
Speaker 2: then there's then there's like straight up mind reading, which
Speaker 2: is like do you do you think there is a
Speaker 2: universe in which they are actually tapping into the consciousness
Speaker 2: of the other person, Like it was kind of ended
Speaker 2: in the telepathy tapes that maybe there is this kind
Speaker 2: of universal consciousness that they all go with. You know
Speaker 2: that these artistic people, you know, all hang out, all
Speaker 2: hang out in this other realm, this other plane. I
Speaker 2: forget what the name of that plane was. Do you
Speaker 2: do you how much do you do you think there's
Speaker 2: there's a real possibility of this kind of they're able
Speaker 2: to to actually see and access a more universal consciousness.
Speaker 2: Because that's a different question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a different question. Well, I mean I
Speaker 1: have several different hypotheses about what could be going on,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's what you do is a good scientist,
Speaker 1: just that you you have to think about, you know what,
Speaker 1: what are all the things that this could possibly be,
Speaker 1: so that you design your experiments accordingly and so so
Speaker 1: one of the you know, I'd say it's a mistake
Speaker 1: to think that a lot of people think that you know,
Speaker 1: because the letterboard moves, they think that you know that
Speaker 1: at the is queuing that way, you know, unconsciously queuing,
Speaker 1: you know, by moving. And if you really, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you study that, you know, I've got hours of
Speaker 1: video of for example, Haley, and she was able to
Speaker 1: type independently into a into a talker. But then what
Speaker 1: happened is when I put a barrier between her and
Speaker 1: the therapist she was telepathic with, then she regressed because
Speaker 1: it confused her and so she reverted back to using
Speaker 1: a stencil board. But if you look at that stencil
Speaker 1: board and you see how she goes from, she'll go
Speaker 1: from here to here to here to hear depends. You know,
Speaker 1: there's twenty six letters there and there there aren't twenty
Speaker 1: six different positions of the board. I mean that it's hard.
Speaker 1: And also, these children, a lot of them don't have
Speaker 1: very good vision. So if there's queuing going on, I
Speaker 1: don't think that it's a visual queuing.
Speaker 2: And so are are they seeing? Do you do you
Speaker 2: do walk them off from from visually watching the parent?
Speaker 1: You know? Well I did with with Haley so that
Speaker 1: she couldn't see them, you know. But a lot of
Speaker 1: the that the kids that uh Kai has witnessed, there
Speaker 1: weren't the visual barriers between there, and I feel that
Speaker 1: that's essential that there be a visual barrier there. And yeah,
Speaker 1: but the other the other confounding factor, and I think
Speaker 1: this is a more likely thing than than that, is
Speaker 1: that if you look at studies uh on sub you know,
Speaker 1: sub vocalizations, you know, what what you what you learn
Speaker 1: is that when we read silently to ourselves, that there
Speaker 1: actually is a little bit of vibration of the vocal cores.
Speaker 1: That's not it's not audible, but there is a little
Speaker 1: bit of that. And so my question is, since so
Speaker 1: many of these kids have like an amazing hearing, you know,
Speaker 1: perfect you know a lot of them have perfect pitch.
Speaker 1: Some of them seem to have really sensitive hearing, so
Speaker 1: they can hear somebody at more at a distance. So
Speaker 1: if they're subtle queuing and going on, you know, that's
Speaker 1: just the forum. I think it would be take. You know,
Speaker 1: it would take that's think you put my money.
Speaker 2: I love I love this. I'm finding this conversation exhilarating.
Speaker 2: For what it's worth. I really want to, I really
Speaker 2: want to, like really nerd out with you, Like let's
Speaker 2: talk about all the possibilities, including the most miraculous ones,
Speaker 2: but let's talk about the others as well. So with Haley,
Speaker 2: just so I understand, correctly, when you put the barrier up,
Speaker 2: she did revert back to another way of communicating, but
Speaker 2: still she got the answer correct.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, I mean she was, she was phenomenal. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, I have got six hours worth just random
Speaker 1: number after random number after random number, or you know,
Speaker 1: random word or you know, randomized picture.
Speaker 2: I mean she's mentalist. Like I'm I also took up
Speaker 2: a hobby as a mentalist. I became a professional mentalist
Speaker 2: last year. So I you know, I love doing I
Speaker 2: can do all those things Halely can do, but I
Speaker 2: won't I won't say that. I'll say they're they're tricks.
Speaker 2: But and and uh and and ethical mentalist what is
Speaker 2: most mentalists would say that that is as well. But
Speaker 2: but she's obviously not a mentalist. So she's not like
Speaker 2: consciously trying to figure out how to game, you know,
Speaker 2: how to full no no no, yeah, yeah yeah. And
Speaker 2: I think that's that's important to recognize and to also
Speaker 2: give her a humanity about it. So and I think
Speaker 2: we also can like say objectively, like, you know, she
Speaker 2: has an extraordinary talent there, whatever that is, and whatever
Speaker 2: it turns out to be is no less an extraordinary
Speaker 2: talent as someone who can play a beautiful sonata, you know,
Speaker 2: Like it's a talent. And the question is what is
Speaker 2: that talent? And I think that's what I want to know,
Speaker 2: what is that talent? Because some I mean some people,
Speaker 2: but some, but you have a lot of people listening
Speaker 2: to telepathy tapes who are not interested in science and
Speaker 2: immediately go to the other accessing a universal consciousness, which
Speaker 2: I don't fully understand how that would work. And but
Speaker 2: it seems like you you put forward some in your
Speaker 2: in your book which I just ordered. I can't wait
Speaker 2: to get it. But it looks like in your book,
Speaker 2: correct me if I'm wrong, you put forward some pretty
Speaker 2: interest I'll say, out there. But but really fascinating quantum
Speaker 2: theory idea is that could maybe explain a tapping into
Speaker 2: a universal conscience? Can can you? Can you kind of
Speaker 2: double click on the most out there idea that you have?
Speaker 1: The most out there idea that I have?
Speaker 2: Well, what could be going on here? About? What could
Speaker 2: be going on here?
Speaker 1: Well? I mean the most the most out there idea,
Speaker 1: which is one that actually a lot of scientists have
Speaker 1: come to, is the idea that consciousness does not it's
Speaker 1: not confined to the you know, the cranium. You know
Speaker 1: that that. And what's interesting is that if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you ask these children, they will tell you that
Speaker 1: they have they have a hard time staying in their body,
Speaker 1: so they spend a lot of time in a disassociative state.
Speaker 1: And in fact, it's you know it, It's interesting because
Speaker 1: if you think about it. They they really have poor proprioception.
Speaker 1: They have really poor you know, they have a really
Speaker 1: there's a disconnect between their mind and their body because
Speaker 1: their body doesn't really cooperate very well. And they they're
Speaker 1: very they've got very high anxiety levels. And I know,
Speaker 1: being an expert on I work with a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were traumatized, and you know, and they are
Speaker 1: moren't prone to disassociation, okay. And and one of the
Speaker 1: things that you see is common to a lot of
Speaker 1: the literature and parapsychology for some of the people who've
Speaker 1: been from the best psychics, you know, for example, trained
Speaker 1: by the military or whatever, is that they'll oftentimes say
Speaker 1: that they have out of body experiences. You know, they
Speaker 1: would do you know, something called astro projection where they
Speaker 1: would they would basically you know, focus their conscious attention
Speaker 1: outside of themselves and could see things from a perspective
Speaker 1: outside of themselves. And so so you know, so I
Speaker 1: find that very interesting that these children, you know, report
Speaker 1: that on a regular basis. And in fact, there was
Speaker 1: a book written by this boy who's Japanese that was
Speaker 1: translated into English where he was answering the questions that
Speaker 1: were posed to him, and the name of the book
Speaker 1: is the reason I jump. And when asked why do
Speaker 1: you jump, he said, I jump because it feels like
Speaker 1: my soul is leaving my body.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating. The one sticking point, the thing my mind
Speaker 2: keeps going back to this over and over and again.
Speaker 2: Maybe you have found in your studies an exception to this,
Speaker 2: But why only the mother, like why like if? Okay,
Speaker 2: because the tapes kind of only presents it that way.
Speaker 1: Okay, No, no, no, it's not just the mother. In fact,
Speaker 1: strangers though, well, well it's it's usually somebody with whom
Speaker 1: they have a close bond, Okay, you know. So for example,
Speaker 1: one of the people who contacted me about, you know,
Speaker 1: about their autistic child was actually someone who is a
Speaker 1: retired medical doctor, male medical doctor, who adopted a child,
Speaker 1: so it wasn't even his, you know, biological child. And
Speaker 1: he's the one who you know, discovered this and he
Speaker 1: was shocked because he was trained medical doctor, same training
Speaker 1: as me. That where from the standpoint that you're you're
Speaker 1: very much immersed in the you know, the materialist you
Speaker 1: know model that neuroscience teaches us.
Speaker 2: Yes, why not that complete stranger?
Speaker 1: Well, there there are some of these Some of these kids,
Speaker 1: you know, report being able to read the minds of
Speaker 1: some you know, somebody that they don't really know. But
Speaker 1: I've never studied that. I mean, I can't say that
Speaker 1: it's actually true. I mean, you know, how do I
Speaker 1: know that it's not just auditory hallucinations. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: always you know, one of the things that one has
Speaker 1: to think about. And and there's this, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of these children have an expressive aphasia, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, basically there's an area of the brain that's
Speaker 1: involved in the expression of language, and then there's an
Speaker 1: area of the brain involved in the understanding of language,
Speaker 1: and that the latter one is weern't the case. And
Speaker 1: so if you if you have a if you have
Speaker 1: damage of some sort too Broca's area, then then you
Speaker 1: you you end up having problems with speech. But you
Speaker 1: can also end up with problems with the hand because
Speaker 1: if you look at the the homunculus and you know
Speaker 1: of the brain, you see the hand is very close
Speaker 1: to where the mouth is. And and when children are
Speaker 1: learning how to speak, they they they they're they're babbling,
Speaker 1: but they also do babbling with their hands, which is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why you can teach sign language,
Speaker 1: and and and so, so that's the area of their
Speaker 1: brain that's problematic, you know, and and and so they're
Speaker 1: so So I have every reasona believe that when the
Speaker 1: parents say this, kids really still understanding what people are saying,
Speaker 1: comprehending language. I think that that's probably true. And one
Speaker 1: of the things I want to do is to do
Speaker 1: studies on them to to show, you know, what, what
Speaker 1: is their wiring in their brain? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: do we see wiring that is consistent with a brocus
Speaker 1: type aphasia.
Speaker 2: That's a great question. What a great question. So is
Speaker 2: There's so many, so many unanswered questions. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I keep going back to what what is talent? You know? Anyway,
Speaker 2: I have a friend who a colleague who studied gifted
Speaker 2: children and profoundly gifted children and prodigies. So the prodigy phenomenon,
Speaker 2: to me is not irrelevant to this discussion. A lot
Speaker 2: of these To define as a prodigy, you have to
Speaker 2: show some adult like full form of fully fledged expertise
Speaker 2: before the age of ten, and a lot of these kids,
Speaker 2: you know, with these prodigies, they are able to do that.
Speaker 2: And it's without formal training, and they're able to do that.
Speaker 2: And and my my friend who studies prodigies, found that
Speaker 2: usually there is some family member who had this talent
Speaker 2: if you go far enough back, you know. And so
Speaker 2: you start to think about genetic transmission. You start to
Speaker 2: think about, well, what what's encoded in the genes, and
Speaker 2: then what what exactly you know, does that cold for
Speaker 2: that allows for some exceptional talents And and then I
Speaker 2: start to think about telepathy, what what what are the
Speaker 2: what's the genetics of the talent for telepathy?
Speaker 1: You know? Yeah, well, I you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's very interesting. I mean, you know, like I
Speaker 1: come from a family of pattern pattern recognizers. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a pattern recognizer, and I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I think so out of the box.
Speaker 1: And you know, and when I spoke with Temple Grandon
Speaker 1: about it, you know, about my pattern recognition, she said, well,
Speaker 1: you probably come from a family of mathematicians and musicians.
Speaker 1: And I do. I mean, my, I mean, everybody everybody's
Speaker 1: a mathematician or a musician. I mean, you know, my
Speaker 1: my I have a brother who's a theoretical physicist and
Speaker 1: a brilliant mathematician. My father was, you know, a brilliant
Speaker 1: mathematician and scientist, and my mother was a brilliant musician.
Speaker 1: And I took up musicians on both sides of the family,
Speaker 1: that math petitians on both sides of the family. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, there's something about in our genetics that that
Speaker 1: predisposes us towards that pattern recognition as opposed to being
Speaker 1: verbal thinkers, and that the problem is that most people
Speaker 1: are verbal thinkers, and and and and verbal thinking can
Speaker 1: then get you caught up in these kind of you know,
Speaker 1: endless doo loops, you know, and you can and you
Speaker 1: can stray from what you know what you can stray
Speaker 1: from seeing things as they really are, because you know,
Speaker 1: we we can talk ourselves into believing a lot of
Speaker 1: different things using words. But but with with something that
Speaker 1: like pattern recognition, it's it's more of a it's more
Speaker 1: of a sensitivity to how things fit together, and and
Speaker 1: and and because of it, you can recognize when something is.
Speaker 2: Off absolutely absolutely, So there's a real talent there, you know,
Speaker 2: for for pattern recognition that probably a lot of these
Speaker 2: autistics savants have. By the way, Dowd treffor Dowd Treffor
Speaker 2: didn't like using the phrase autistics savan He just wanted
Speaker 2: to call him savants.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if we.
Speaker 2: Should do that. But yeah, no, so there there's something.
Speaker 2: So I think without a doubt pattern recognition plays plays
Speaker 2: a role. But but is it the complete explanation? I
Speaker 2: think is the interesting question? What did you think you
Speaker 2: could find using q ee G analysis of both telepathic
Speaker 2: pairs talking to each other? What do you think could
Speaker 2: be some like if if you start to go in
Speaker 2: that direction and you start looking at that, what what
Speaker 2: do you think you could find? Like what what are
Speaker 2: some potential hypothesis there?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, and that is my intention to be
Speaker 1: getting on them. Yeah, well, I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: I mean I you know, as I said, you know earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, I would love to see what the wiring is,
Speaker 1: you know, do like you know, you know MRI, you know,
Speaker 1: to see that. But you know that that's that could
Speaker 1: be traumatic for some of these children to you know,
Speaker 1: go into a machine like that. And and so you know,
Speaker 1: the the q e G gives you a you know,
Speaker 1: some information, you know, and so one of the things
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in is, you know what what brain
Speaker 1: waves are they you know, are they operating on you know,
Speaker 1: you know what what deviation is there from you know
Speaker 1: that are normative data, you know, and so uh, you
Speaker 1: know they do, they have a lot of data. You know,
Speaker 1: which data is a frequency that we associate with the
Speaker 1: hippocampus and with dreaming sleep, and it's also been associated
Speaker 1: with you know, some of these psychics like Englo Swan
Speaker 1: he had to hit a seven hurt signal that was
Speaker 1: you know, unique and and so yeah, so looking for
Speaker 1: things like that, looking for I mean, I would anticipate
Speaker 1: that you're going to see a right hemisphere dominance, you know,
Speaker 1: but that you know that doesn't you know, prove things
Speaker 1: one way or the other. What by doing simultaneous recordings
Speaker 1: of each individual, then I want to see is there
Speaker 1: some kind of synchronization that occurs? So is it is
Speaker 1: it that they're you know, can can we detect that
Speaker 1: in the in the signals? And that requires you know,
Speaker 1: fairly sophisticated ee G equipment, But that's that's the equipment
Speaker 1: that we're getting. We're also getting, uh, we're getting caps
Speaker 1: that are you know, very user friendly for for children
Speaker 1: with sensitive scalps. You know, they're more expensive, but it
Speaker 1: would enable us to you know, put the cap on
Speaker 1: without having to poke their poke all of the electrodes
Speaker 1: with you know, a needle to put the gel in there.
Speaker 1: They they've got caps that don't use a gel.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to hear that you're going to do this.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy. There is some research and maybe you
Speaker 2: could adopt some methodologies. But they do have research showing
Speaker 2: couples in love and how synchronized their brains are. And
Speaker 2: I wonder if you know, you often find couples who've
Speaker 2: been with each other over a certain number of years,
Speaker 2: they say they feel like they can start reading each
Speaker 2: other's minds. I just think that there's it could be
Speaker 2: something similar like like I know, earlier I was really
Speaker 2: belaboring the point about why just the mother or why
Speaker 2: just someone that you're familiar with, because I do think
Speaker 2: there's something there that familiarity with someone allows these children
Speaker 2: to pick up some regular patterns that you know, make
Speaker 2: them more predictable. I mean, they like predictability people with autism,
Speaker 2: and if you spend enough time with someone, any human,
Speaker 2: you start to realize, God, humans are actually pretty predictable.
Speaker 2: They there we get we all get caught in her,
Speaker 2: you know, mother always when when when when mother, you know,
Speaker 2: really wants her coffee, she always goes to this spot.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not like your red mother's mind. You've
Speaker 2: spent enough time with mother.
Speaker 1: That's well. Yeah, I mean you could say the same
Speaker 1: thing about you know, like for example, my dog. You know,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't have a dog right now without
Speaker 1: a dog, but you know, but I've lived with dogs
Speaker 1: a good deal all the time. And and yeah, they
Speaker 1: they get to the point where they just know your habits.
Speaker 1: They mean, I I used to have a dog as
Speaker 1: a as a co therapist. And and she she knew
Speaker 1: that when a patient handed me a check that it
Speaker 1: was the end of the session. You know, she would
Speaker 1: immediately jump off of the she'd jump off of the
Speaker 1: sofa and and and you know, because she she was
Speaker 1: ready and because she owed always see them to the
Speaker 1: door with me. And uh so, but you know, I
Speaker 1: really started to wonder if she was was telepathic. I
Speaker 1: mean a lah you know Rubert Sheldrake's research. And here's
Speaker 1: the reason why was that she developed surfers here from
Speaker 1: we we lived in San Diego and the water down there,
Speaker 1: you know, gets you know, pretty contaminated, and so it's
Speaker 1: a it's a real problem for people that surf in
Speaker 1: the ocean there and and so and she she was
Speaker 1: a springer span and you couldn't keep her out of
Speaker 1: the ocean, and so she developed these untreatable air infections.
Speaker 1: And so she was she was stone deaf. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could fire you could set off fireworks right in
Speaker 1: bront of her and she wouldn't flinch, you know. And
Speaker 1: she and and so stone deaf. And I didn't really
Speaker 1: lies how deaf she was, because she would she she would.
Speaker 1: It was like she understood what I was saying to her,
Speaker 1: and so I thought she was hearing me. And so
Speaker 1: then one day I thought I'd test it by just
Speaker 1: calling her by thought, instead of actually you know, calling
Speaker 1: her out, you know, and she'd come and I thought.
Speaker 2: Well, that's wow, you know interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, so you know, so it's you know,
Speaker 1: who knows what?
Speaker 2: You know? Well, it's not just who knows, it's like
Speaker 2: let's find out like exactly, We're not just like, oh
Speaker 2: who knows what? No, We're like, let's design an experiment here.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: And it seems like like the phenomenon of mind reading
Speaker 2: is a different category of mind of future predicting. So
Speaker 2: you said earlier there were two things in one, you
Speaker 2: got a two in one. Earlier you said this individual
Speaker 2: was saying all these things about where your husband was
Speaker 2: going to go and what choices, but it turned out
Speaker 2: to be eventually true. And I think I feel like
Speaker 2: that's a separate thing, Like that's another thing, another thing
Speaker 2: we need to study, which is fortune reading. I don't
Speaker 2: think that's the same thing as mind reading, whatever it
Speaker 2: turns out to be. I think they're both gonna be separate,
Speaker 2: maybe correlated, related, but not completely the same talent. I
Speaker 2: don't know, what do you think?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I agree, I mean, I you know, I
Speaker 1: think that it's you know, it's interesting. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you're familiar with the research that Daryl
Speaker 1: Baum did on presentiment.
Speaker 2: Of course, of course, legend, legend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so you know, so you know, even though
Speaker 1: it's you know, just as you know, a fraction of
Speaker 1: a second or whatever, you know that that it still
Speaker 1: is beforehand, you know, And so that that really does
Speaker 1: challenge our concept of time.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you make of the replication attempt
Speaker 2: that didn't find the founded chance levels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, there's so much of that in science.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know that that I you know, I'd
Speaker 1: have to try it myself and see if I could
Speaker 1: repeat it for me to comment on other people's science,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you know, there's I mean, you
Speaker 1: know there there have been all kinds of things that
Speaker 1: have you know, had difficulty with you know, replication, but
Speaker 1: they didn't get that, you know, they don't necessarily get
Speaker 1: tossed out, and so right, yeah, I just I just
Speaker 1: think it's worthy of further study. But yeah, and and
Speaker 1: there's you know, what's interesting to me is that there
Speaker 1: is is there's such a a connection with one of
Speaker 1: the things that precognition and telepathy share in common, is
Speaker 1: that both of them seem to be more likely to
Speaker 1: happen and people who don't ordinarily experience them if there's
Speaker 1: a crisis involved.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, you you get more of these
Speaker 1: precognitive dreams when it's like a disaster that you know,
Speaker 1: or you know, or somebody that's going to die. You know.
Speaker 1: One of these autistic children, she she had a she
Speaker 1: had a you know, a dream that her father was
Speaker 1: going to slip on ice and break his hip and
Speaker 1: then and they live in Arizona and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, what are the chances of that? And then
Speaker 1: and then, you know, I don't know, a month or
Speaker 1: so later, he's on a business trip and he slips
Speaker 1: on ice and freaks his hip up in the and
Speaker 1: so so it's it's one of those things where it's
Speaker 1: like a warning system, you know that. I mean, there
Speaker 1: were a lot of people who reported, you know that
Speaker 1: like nine to eleven was going to happen before it did.
Speaker 1: You know, there's the book that was there was a
Speaker 1: book called, uh, there was a book that was written
Speaker 1: about a ship called the titan like a decade before
Speaker 1: the Titanic sank, and and I write about that. When
Speaker 1: you read my book, you'll you'll you'll you'll read about
Speaker 1: that and and it's like the details are unbelievably similar.
Speaker 1: And the person who wrote that book said that it
Speaker 1: came to him in some kind of you know, reverie,
Speaker 1: you know, and so you know, so it so it's
Speaker 1: like there's there's something you know about disasters, crises, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And the same thing is reported about telepathy. But you'll
Speaker 1: have you know, for example, to siblings, they're you know,
Speaker 1: really really close. They're different parts of the country, and
Speaker 1: one of them gets in an accident, the other one,
Speaker 1: you know, simultaneously has a dream about it dies and
Speaker 1: somebody else, you know, somebody dies and you and the
Speaker 1: other person's aware of it. But otherwise they don't tend
Speaker 1: to help those experiences.
Speaker 2: Wow, this whole, this whole connection of dreaming and prophecy
Speaker 2: is so interesting and it leads me. It makes me
Speaker 2: wonder if that's a talent too. So is that is
Speaker 2: everyone equally as good at having their dreams become a prophecy?
Speaker 2: You know? Maybe not? You know? And then and then
Speaker 2: the question is, well, what makes those who are good
Speaker 2: at what's going on there? So so that that's a
Speaker 2: whole To me, that's just that's that's another layer of
Speaker 2: fascinating with the work that you do. In addition, it's
Speaker 2: not exactly the same thing as mind reading, all right.
Speaker 2: And I also want to uh, just return this thing
Speaker 2: I said earlier, because I made the point about like
Speaker 2: being with someone you're familiar with could help explain a
Speaker 2: lot of it, seeing their patterns. But I just to
Speaker 2: be skeptical of my own self for a second when
Speaker 2: I for saying that a lot of these things. They're
Speaker 2: coming up with random strings of letters, right, they're they're
Speaker 2: they're thinking, right you you come like random like like
Speaker 2: like any word in the dictionary, right, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I've I've even because of
Speaker 1: the fact that words, once you get the first few letters,
Speaker 1: I mean, then you know, there's only so many combinations
Speaker 1: of what the rest of the word is going to be,
Speaker 1: and so it stops being as impressive as a random number.
Speaker 1: And so I've even generated nonsense words.
Speaker 2: Whow. And I mean it's that wow, it's not wild?
Speaker 2: Are you do you are you still wild?
Speaker 1: I've been doing this. I've been doing this for you know,
Speaker 1: you know, like twelve thirteen years more, you know, so
Speaker 1: you know it. I mean I do find it remarkable,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, but but it's it's not the
Speaker 1: same as somebody for whom it's a really recent experience.
Speaker 2: For you, it's like, yeah, tell up, these real you
Speaker 2: know what epps, Whereas people listening to telepathy tapes for
Speaker 2: the first time who are encountering this phenomenon for the
Speaker 2: first time are just riveted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know, and you have to
Speaker 1: also realize, I mean, that there's lots of people before me.
Speaker 1: I mean, for over you know, one hundred and fifty years.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people who have done studies
Speaker 1: on things like telepathy and precognition. And so that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I became the interested in coming
Speaker 1: up with the theory to understand it, because it's not
Speaker 1: that this is just the first time anybody has observed
Speaker 1: something that they would call lepathy. It it's just that
Speaker 1: in these children, if that's what we're observing, it's the
Speaker 1: most consistent and it's the most act you know, accurate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you're right. There's a long list of
Speaker 2: yes of paranormal psychologists. Going back to one of my favorites,
Speaker 2: probably my favorite, jb Ryan, who wrote The Reach of
Speaker 2: the Mind, and I have that on my bookshelf. Really
Speaker 2: did a lot of experiments that left a lot of
Speaker 2: unanswered questions. So I guess to wrap up our interview today,
Speaker 2: thank you for the skeptical open mind as do you have,
Speaker 2: and for keeping at it, for not giving up, and
Speaker 2: for the new terror tories that you're going into. And
Speaker 2: I would like to help you in any way I can.
Speaker 2: In my colleague at Cambridge we'd love to do some
Speaker 2: sort of controlled study or something, but regardless, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for the work you do. It's really incredible.
Speaker 2: Thank you.