I listened to the first episode of the Telepathy Tapes, but then I read this article[0] and watched this video[1] of someone using a spellboard with their child and felt like Telepathy Tapes had deceived me.
I hope the people facilitating communication in the podcast aren't faking the communication as obviously as in that Instagram video, but the rest of the article showed specifics of the podcast where it feels like the host is using "sleight of hand" to present evidence in an overly strong way.
FC is always fake even thought the facilitator usually believes earnestly that it is real. It works partially through the ideomotor effect where the facilitator subconsciously makes physical queues to the letter they are thinking of next. There are plenty of tests where the facilitator is blind to a piece of information that the subject of facilitation can see and the FC always fails this test.
Are you serious? That video is nothing like the tests in the telepathy tapes, they have kids who don’t need to be touched at all and spell completely independently.
I hate this whole “skeptic” culture so much, it’s just as religious as the people who believe things without evidence. You have a preconceived agenda about things you were told are wacky and you don’t even bother to review the evidence before drawing a conclusion.
There is more rigorous peer-reviewed, published evidence for psychic abilities than most sociological and biological fields.
The Ganz experiment has been reproduced 78 times by 46 different researchers, but sure it’s all fake and a blogger and an one obviously fake strawman instagram video are suddenly enough evidence for the skeptics who constantly demand the highest standard of academic rigor from the other side.
I haven't watched the TT but anecdote. One of our friends has an autistic child, but fairly high functioning. When he was about 6 or 7 one morning this child complained he didn't want to go to a weekly playground and told his mom the slide was broken and it wouldn't be fun. Mom said what are you talking about - when they arrived, the slide was literally broken. The friend said there was no possible way he should have known that (I don't know the details) but this child does not have a phone and is under non-stop supervision.
They do care to push back though! It's just that there's much more of a market for wishful pseudoscientific bullshit than for careful, history and evidence based sceptical bashing of hopes. Just another example of how broken our information ecosystem is.
I learned about TT from my favorite podcast the SGU, where it was placed in the historical context of the FC controversy and then roundly debunked.
The Ganzfield experiments have been reproduced 78 times by 46 researchers and this review article concludes that anomalous cognition meets the standards of proof: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/
The president of the American Statistical Association has reviewed the evidence for psi and said: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well-established”
Of course you don’t believe it because you listen to a podcast about skepticism so it’s a dogma for you, you’ve drawn your conclusion without even considering the evidence. Skepticism is a religion as much as Catholicism in Galileo’s time.
I listened to a few episodes on a recommendation. The episodes lead you to believe that the host is some agnostic person that's just curious about these reports. They are not as the original lead is from another superstition believer podcast.
They also present the cameraman as a token skeptic, who is of course quickly swayed into belief.
They lean heavily on a host of tricks with long histories of non-reproduction when tested rigorously.
A "scientist" (known crackpot and woo believer) is employed to make the experiments sound. And their terrible academic reputation was explained away using conspiratorial arguments.
I found TT wholly unconvincing and consider it a scam to get people to pay for the actual evidence. I won't pay of course and confidently assume it to be poor based on the publicly available material.
> For months, I was puzzled as to why a great number of listeners wholly ignorant of the autistic experience were so enamoured by The Telepathy Tapes. ... I feel I’m finally starting to understand. Moving forward, the series has expressed a desire to explore the wider nature of consciousness and explore topics outside of the autistic community.
It's right there in the name -- Telepathy. It's not a show about autism, that's just a means to the end. It's a show about the paranormal and it appeals to people that want to learn about the paranormal.
The fact the the author has this 'revelation' about the true appeal at the end is strange. it'd be like having a big breakthrough that "i though people were watching The X-Files because they were all interested in learning about FBI bureaucracy, but it turns out people are interested in aliens!"
I have a pet theory (certainly unoriginal) that humans as a species feel a compelling need to indulge in some form of magical thinking in order to cope with existential horror.
A few things are simultaneously true:
1. We have a truly fantastic level of agency as actors in the world. A single human can build a house out of raw materials, write a book series with hundreds of settings and believable characters, start a war, etc.
2. In order to make the most of that agency, we need a psychological system that makes us feel empowered to use it. Having nature's most impressive brain would be pointless if we all believed everything we tried was doomed to fail anyway so we should just sit in the dirt and eat slugs.
3. We are also corporeal objects made of surprisingly fragile meat and bone subject to the careless whims of physics. Through no fault or intention of anyone, all of your agency can be completely taken in an instant. Just be standing in the wrong place when a tree branch snaps off, have one cell misdivide and become cancerous, choke on a grape.
We need 2 in order to make the most of 1. But the more we believe ourselves in control, the more horrific contemplating 3 becomes.
I often wonder if we evolved magical thinking and all of its manifestations like religion, parapsychology, destiny, fate, etc. in order to hold these three realizations in some sort of stable configuration.
“A tendency to superstition is of the very essence of humanity and, when we think we have completely extinguished it, we shall find it retreating into the strangest nooks and corners, that it may issue out thence on the first occasion it can do with safety.”
Blocked & Reported (the podcast) did two episodes on this [1] and [2] that breaks down most of the controversy. This has completely ruined me on anything even adjacent to this, like whether Koko the gorilla could actually communicate.
I can chime in to say: the scientific method, so far, cannot explain consciousness, and that the whole materialistic basis for physics is facing a crisis in the face of quantum mechanics, etc. Most of us have utmost confidence in a method that so far has nothing to say whatsoever about the most important quality of our existence: that we are aware.
An ideal listen for anyone looking to sharpen their critical thinking. The reasoning moves are subtle, and it’s easy to miss the small leaps and omissions that reveal how persuasive but unsound arguments work.
If you want to test your logic radar, keep a Reasoning-Error Bingo Card handy — here are some of the most common moves to watch for:
- Anecdotal Evidence as Proof – moving personal testimonies presented as sufficient evidence.
- Cherry-picking – highlighting the few “hits” or successful moments and ignoring null or failed sessions.
- Facilitator/Ideomotor Bias – unacknowledged influence of helpers who already know the answers.
- Lack of Experimental Control – demonstrations without blinding or verification procedures.
- Equivocation on “Spelling” and “Communication” – shifting definitions of what counts as independent expression.
- Over-extension/Universal Claim – extrapolating from a handful of cases to “all nonspeakers.”
- Appeal to Emotion and Narrative Framing – using distressing or inspiring stories to disarm skepticism.
- Appeal to Authority – invoking credentials, research funding, or famous supporters in place of data.
- Confirmation Bias/Omission of Counter-Evidence – excluding decades of research debunking similar methods.
- Shifting the Burden of Proof – implying critics must disprove telepathy rather than producers proving it.
- Quantum-Language Hijack – invoking “quantum entanglement” or “energy fields” as pseudo-explanations.
- False Dichotomy (“open-minded vs. materialist”) – framing skepticism as moral or emotional failure.
- Paradigm-Appeal Fallacy – claiming we’re witnessing a scientific “revolution” instead of providing data.
- Ambiguous Success Criteria – redefining what counts as a correct answer or “connection.”
- Halo Effect through Compassion – moral halo from helping disabled children transferred to truth of the claim.
Ironically, in trying to transcend “materialism,” the series repeats Descartes’ old mistake — treating mind and matter as mutually exclusive instead of as aspects of a single natural order. That move saddles them with the same impossible burden Descartes faced: explaining how an immaterial mind could causally interact with the physical world on top of everything else they need to prove.
28 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 61.9 ms ] threadI hope the people facilitating communication in the podcast aren't faking the communication as obviously as in that Instagram video, but the rest of the article showed specifics of the podcast where it feels like the host is using "sleight of hand" to present evidence in an overly strong way.
[0] https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/the-telepathy-tapes-...
[1] https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_-ln0iO6i6/
I hate this whole “skeptic” culture so much, it’s just as religious as the people who believe things without evidence. You have a preconceived agenda about things you were told are wacky and you don’t even bother to review the evidence before drawing a conclusion.
There is more rigorous peer-reviewed, published evidence for psychic abilities than most sociological and biological fields.
The Ganz experiment has been reproduced 78 times by 46 different researchers, but sure it’s all fake and a blogger and an one obviously fake strawman instagram video are suddenly enough evidence for the skeptics who constantly demand the highest standard of academic rigor from the other side.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/
They do care to push back though! It's just that there's much more of a market for wishful pseudoscientific bullshit than for careful, history and evidence based sceptical bashing of hopes. Just another example of how broken our information ecosystem is.
I learned about TT from my favorite podcast the SGU, where it was placed in the historical context of the FC controversy and then roundly debunked.
https://www.theskepticsguide.org/
Our escape to reality indeed
The Ganzfield experiments have been reproduced 78 times by 46 researchers and this review article concludes that anomalous cognition meets the standards of proof: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/
The president of the American Statistical Association has reviewed the evidence for psi and said: “Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well-established”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/202...
Of course you don’t believe it because you listen to a podcast about skepticism so it’s a dogma for you, you’ve drawn your conclusion without even considering the evidence. Skepticism is a religion as much as Catholicism in Galileo’s time.
They also present the cameraman as a token skeptic, who is of course quickly swayed into belief.
They lean heavily on a host of tricks with long histories of non-reproduction when tested rigorously.
A "scientist" (known crackpot and woo believer) is employed to make the experiments sound. And their terrible academic reputation was explained away using conspiratorial arguments.
I found TT wholly unconvincing and consider it a scam to get people to pay for the actual evidence. I won't pay of course and confidently assume it to be poor based on the publicly available material.
It's right there in the name -- Telepathy. It's not a show about autism, that's just a means to the end. It's a show about the paranormal and it appeals to people that want to learn about the paranormal.
The fact the the author has this 'revelation' about the true appeal at the end is strange. it'd be like having a big breakthrough that "i though people were watching The X-Files because they were all interested in learning about FBI bureaucracy, but it turns out people are interested in aliens!"
A few things are simultaneously true:
1. We have a truly fantastic level of agency as actors in the world. A single human can build a house out of raw materials, write a book series with hundreds of settings and believable characters, start a war, etc.
2. In order to make the most of that agency, we need a psychological system that makes us feel empowered to use it. Having nature's most impressive brain would be pointless if we all believed everything we tried was doomed to fail anyway so we should just sit in the dirt and eat slugs.
3. We are also corporeal objects made of surprisingly fragile meat and bone subject to the careless whims of physics. Through no fault or intention of anyone, all of your agency can be completely taken in an instant. Just be standing in the wrong place when a tree branch snaps off, have one cell misdivide and become cancerous, choke on a grape.
We need 2 in order to make the most of 1. But the more we believe ourselves in control, the more horrific contemplating 3 becomes.
I often wonder if we evolved magical thinking and all of its manifestations like religion, parapsychology, destiny, fate, etc. in order to hold these three realizations in some sort of stable configuration.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Notably, entering as our supernatural folk heroes started to fade in the mass communication age.
> "Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
> ɴᴏ
> "Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."
> ᴛʜᴇ sᴜɴ ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ɴᴏᴛ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ʀɪsᴇɴ
> "Really? Then what would have happened, pray?"
> ᴀ ᴍᴇʀᴇ ʙᴀʟʟ ᴏꜰ ꜰʟᴀᴍɪɴɢ ɢᴀs ᴡᴏᴜʟᴅ ʜᴀᴠᴇ ɪʟʟᴜᴍɪɴᴀᴛᴇᴅ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ
Seriously. This post is like 2 months at therapy
[1] https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-210-facilitatin...
[2] https://www.blockedandreported.org/p/episode-242-the-telepat...
It was telling us names, giving us addresses, and all sorts of serious stuff you wouldn't expect adolescents to make up.
and ITT many of us agree, it's not perplexing, it's just humans engaging in the same magical thinking and coping strategies we always to.
The "telepathy" is 100% a fabrication of parents desperate to believe their situation and kids are something other than they are.
If you want to test your logic radar, keep a Reasoning-Error Bingo Card handy — here are some of the most common moves to watch for:
- Anecdotal Evidence as Proof – moving personal testimonies presented as sufficient evidence.
- Cherry-picking – highlighting the few “hits” or successful moments and ignoring null or failed sessions.
- Facilitator/Ideomotor Bias – unacknowledged influence of helpers who already know the answers.
- Lack of Experimental Control – demonstrations without blinding or verification procedures.
- Equivocation on “Spelling” and “Communication” – shifting definitions of what counts as independent expression.
- Over-extension/Universal Claim – extrapolating from a handful of cases to “all nonspeakers.”
- Appeal to Emotion and Narrative Framing – using distressing or inspiring stories to disarm skepticism.
- Appeal to Authority – invoking credentials, research funding, or famous supporters in place of data.
- Confirmation Bias/Omission of Counter-Evidence – excluding decades of research debunking similar methods.
- Shifting the Burden of Proof – implying critics must disprove telepathy rather than producers proving it.
- Quantum-Language Hijack – invoking “quantum entanglement” or “energy fields” as pseudo-explanations.
- False Dichotomy (“open-minded vs. materialist”) – framing skepticism as moral or emotional failure.
- Paradigm-Appeal Fallacy – claiming we’re witnessing a scientific “revolution” instead of providing data.
- Ambiguous Success Criteria – redefining what counts as a correct answer or “connection.”
- Halo Effect through Compassion – moral halo from helping disabled children transferred to truth of the claim.
Ironically, in trying to transcend “materialism,” the series repeats Descartes’ old mistake — treating mind and matter as mutually exclusive instead of as aspects of a single natural order. That move saddles them with the same impossible burden Descartes faced: explaining how an immaterial mind could causally interact with the physical world on top of everything else they need to prove.