The Telepathy Tapes podcast tells provocative stories about consciousness. Why it's so popular

The Telepathy Tapes is one of the most successful new podcasts of the last couple years. The show tells provocative stories about consciousness.

In its first season, host Ky Dickens introduced listeners to families of non-speaking autistic children who claimed that their kids were able to communicate telepathically. The second season explores spiritual questions like life after death and clairvoyance.

The podcast is undeniably successful — it’s been downloaded over 12 million times. And it’s also also drawn criticism for the questionable science behind the experiences its subjects claim to have had.

But that doesn’t seem to have slowed its growth. Dickens said she didn’t have any budget for advertising when she started. She attributes the show’s success to simple word-of-mouth — listeners discovering the show and feeling compelled to share it with people.

So why is the Telepathy Tapes resonating — and what are the stakes of telling stories like this? Dickens joined The Show to speak about all all that and more.

Full conversation

KY DICKENS: I do think there's a cultural moment where people are kind of tired of binary thinking. For a long time there's been this binary of this very materialist paradigm that we live in that says, you know, the only things that are real can be measured and observed.

But a lot of people have had a strange dream or a simple experience or ... something that happened when they had a near death experience that they can't explain. And so we try to talk to really credible scientists, you know, and thoughtful thinkers and people exploring consciousness and lived experience. And in order to give this a thoughtful inquiry so people have a space to explore these in a way that's not, you know, we're not out there like looking into Bigfoot and fairies.

And I think that's the fear, right? If you believe in something, you believe in everything. Or that you believe in nothing. And there's no spiritual world, there's no metaphysical world, there's no God. And we say no, maybe there is a space in between. And that's where most of us live. And what we've learned from the success of the show is I think that's where most people are at.

Ky Dickens

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Handout

SAM DINGMAN: You talked about the idea that this is a time when people are challenging what you called binary thinking. And I mean, we're obviously in a moment when it comes to medicine and science, in particular, which are worlds that come up a lot in your show. Legacy medical wisdom is being called into question at the highest levels of government.

You know, it was only a few weeks ago that we had the president of the United States on television repeating unproven claims about a link between Tylenol and autism. And that shocked a lot of people. But I think the calculus of the administration, probably, was also that there were gonna be a good number of people who welcomed that kind of challenge to traditional medical thinking.

Do you think there is an attendant interest in the sorts of subjects that you talk about on the Telepathy Tapes that stems from that environment, the rise of things like the MAHA movement?

DICKENS: Yeah, I mean, we try to only put stuff out there that is, you know, peer-reviewed research that is scientifically ... grounded. And I think especially when it comes to health care and psychology and consciousness, there are a lot of explanations that we don't have answers to yet. And I think we're very careful being like, this is a theory. This is what happened. These are all these lived experiences. This is what the researchers who've been spending, you know, years studying this say.

But we're very careful to not make a claim, especially around medicine, that can't be proven. And in fact, like right now, the thing I'm editing this week is our upcoming episode on energy healing.

And one of the most groundbreaking studies to come out of that field recently was done at MD Anderson, a cancer research institute, extremely well respected. And they had an energy healer working on pancreatic cancer cells, which is one of the cancer's most difficult to heal or cure or even diminish in any way. And the energy healer was able to create extremely positive impacts on the pancreatic cancer cells in a lab. And that research, which is going to be published in a mainstream journal probably in the next year, is remarkable.

We also talked to a Cambridge biologist who thinks that comes down to the mitochondria and maybe linking to our consciousness or greater consciousness or information. It's unclear yet. But we really try to take a scientific approach to this so that it is grounded. Because this show only works if it's grounded in science and experience and saying we can learn things all sorts of ways, through observation, through talking, through experience, through looking at research — all of that together.

DINGMAN: This makes me think about something that you're actually doing in the literal narration of the show in the second season, which — unless I missed it — I feel like wasn't as present in the first season.

And it's an interesting evolution to me, which is you say to the listener often: What if this thing that we're going to talk about in this episode could be true? What if there was some truth to these experiences?

DICKENS: You know, I think we want to present questions and try to bring in not just the most seasoned, credible researchers and authors and people who've investigated this, but also those who've experienced it. And sometimes I think that's missing.

DINGMAN: So, I have to ask you, though, Ky, because, I mean, you've brought up this idea of credibility a couple times. And as I know you know, the principal scientific source in your first season, Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, has had her medical license suspended in the past. And one of the folks that you feature in the second season, who's a neurosurgeon named Dr. Eben Alexander, has been sued a number of times for medical malpractice.

And those things are not — unless I missed it — something that you necessarily disclose in the show.

DICKENS: Yeah. So Dr. Powell, we do disclose that in the first season that, you know, when she first released her book called "ESP Enigma," she had her license revoked. And, you know, she thinks that it was because you cannot dare, you know, do this, you know, say things that are kind of outside of the current accepted scientific paradigm.

And they made her actually go through some psychological evaluations to see if she was sane. And then she got her license back. Of course she got her license back, because she is sane and, you know, she is credible. And that book, you know, is in many university libraries. And, you know, that's one of the things we look at at our show is there's a lot of scientists who get, you know, diminished or ridiculed for saying things that might be outside of the paradigm or are, you know, kind of purposely attacked.

So we do, you know, like to talk about that.

DINGMAN: But did it give you any concerns about these folks as reliable sources? I mean, like, did you feel like you had to do any parallel vetting when you, you know, found out about these incidents in the past of these folks?

DICKENS: Yeah, for sure. I mean, absolutely. My reputation was on the line as well.

DINGMAN: Right. Of course.

DICKENS: I think Diane, really. Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, I think she really took unfair punches. That was because she was challenging the paradigm. What I started hearing from many scientists is, "Look, this is not always free and fair when it comes to the work that we're putting out there." There's a lot of tightly controlled special interests that don't want certain things out there.

DINGMAN: That's interesting, though, Ky, because, I mean, that language that you were just using, the idea that there are these special interests who are trying to control the flow of information. I mean, those are a lot of the talking points that we hear from folks in the MAHA movement. Specifically when it comes to, you know, alleging conspiracies about Big Pharma and, you know, agriculture companies and these sorts of things.

Earlier you said, you know, we do not want to feed into any kind of medical misinformation. Do you ever worry that a project like this is feeding a beast, shall we say, unintentionally?

DICKENS: I don't think so, you know, because, like, even in our energy healing episode, never in the show do we say only do this. .... This could be a component along with Western medicine or radiation or chemotherapy. You know, like, talk to a doctor. Like, you have to be very responsible with this stuff.

You can't just — you have to always be think. I think that's a big thing about it, especially now with algorithms that only encourage you to believe what you already believe.

And, you know, I try to hire skeptics who really come in to this, like, with an eyebrow raised. I think all of that is so critical just so that we can keep a very level, grounded, thoughtful approach to questions that have often not been able to be asked.