Inside ‘The Telepathy Tapes’: Creator Ky Dickens Reveals The Extraordinary Story Behind The Podcast Sensation

Ky Dickens is the award-winning filmmaker behind "The Telepathy Tapes," the viral podcast phenomenon. This conversation explores the intersection of neurodiversity and consciousness as Ky shares her journey documenting non-speaking autistic individuals with apparent telepathic abilities. We discuss her transformation from pragmatic skeptic to someone witnessing replicable telepathic demonstrations, the concept of "The Hill" (where individuals telepathically gather), and how these discoveries challenge our materialist conceptualization of reality. As I oscillate between wonder and skepticism, Ky provides a steady compass through my conflicted intellectual terrain. Ky's work is a profound invitation to question the crude facsimile we call reality. This conversation is mind-blowing! Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order 👉seed.com/RichRoll Momentous: 35% OFF your first subscription👉livemomentous.com/richroll BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉BetterHelp.com/richroll Go Brewing: Use the code Rich Roll for 15% OFF 👉gobrewing.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:06Speaker 01

  It seems as though my child can absolutely read minds and knows what we're thinking or can see through our eyes. It was person after person thinking they were alone in this unbelievable situation. Telepathy shouldn't be possible. It just shouldn't be possible, right? But if they just come into the classroom, come into the house, you'll see it.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Kai Dickens. Kai is the documentary filmmaker behind the surprise, supersonic hit podcast series, The Telepathy Tapes, which is this deeply immersive, as well as very controversial, seven-hour exploration of the rather audacious proposition that certain non-speaking autistic individuals just might possess powers we've always presumed impossible.

• 1:53Rich Roll?

  Now, if nothing else, it's a compelling X-Files-esque experience. And as somebody who really wants to believe, I will fully admit to being absolutely captivated by this series. The scientific-minded side of me, however, wants to outright dismiss everything extra-perceptory as an egregious offense to basically everything we know and can prove about the material world. At the same time, I just can't stop thinking about it.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  No one should take this stuff at face value. I mean, it's repeatable over and over and over again, as many times as you want it to be. And it's not a question for any of us of like, if it's happening, it's just why and how.

• 2:32Rich Roll?

  Not only is Kai challenging traditional notions regarding the inner lives of the neurodivergent, she's also asking a much bigger and more important question, a question I think we need to be asking that gets to the heart of the hard problem of consciousness, the answer to which, she suggests, just might completely upend the materialist paradigm upon which we define the very nature of reality itself. It's a lie. I get it. Is this just all insane? Or is it possible that there is more going on here than meets the eye? Well, all I can tell you is buckle up, people, because this one is a wild ride.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Out of consciousness came everything else. And if that's the case, then we can account for all these mysterious abilities that we know these things happen. We have no idea how these gifts are possible or how someone gets the knowledge. But you can't unsee it, so then you just have to try to explain it.

• 3:32Rich Roll?

  This is fucking crazy shit.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  It's crazy, yeah.

• 3:40Rich Roll?

  Kai, it's just an absolute delight to have you here. I am obsessed with the telepathy tapes. I was sharing with you a few minutes ago about a road trip that I was on with my youngest daughter, who's...

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  16 and studying filmmaking, super into documentary filmmaking. And I had heard about the telepathy tapes and I knew that it was super popular, but I hadn't listened to it yet. And I was like, Chaya, let's check this out. And we listened to, I think, like the first four episodes over the course of this drive. And we just kept looking at each other. As we were driving, we're like, what? I've been, you know, just kind of riveted by this subject matter ever since. And so I'm very thankful to have you here today to kind of expand upon these fascinating ideas. And you've been on quite a rocket ship with this thing. Let's just start with, you know, what is the telepathy tapes? How did you get into this? And what is the kind of core thesis that you're advancing in this series?

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. So the telepathy tapes has been a multi-year project, looking at non-speakers, which are individuals with autism and apraxia. So apraxia is a mind-body disconnect. So you are very much in there. You're intelligent, but often because you can't speak, people assume you can't think, which is not fair. And so many of the individuals who are non-speakers have been kind of deemed incompetent or have been taught unfairly like they're, you know, children and aren't understanding the world. So there was a neuroscientist by the name of Dr. Diane Hennessy-Powell. She studied at Johns Hopkins. She taught at Harvard for a while. And when she was studying savant syndrome, she came across a few parents who said, look, I don't, I think that some of our children are actually reading our mind.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  It might not be a savant skill, like they've memorized every book on the, you know, shelf. I think actually if I open up to a page in the book, they can see through my eyes or they, they know what I'm thinking. So Dr. Powell started researching this. I heard a podcast with her and I went up and met her. And pretty quickly thereafter, I started meeting a lot of these families who thought they were in a silo all by themselves, that this, you know, miracle was kind of individually happening in each of their households, that their non-speaking children can read their minds. But I think a big question that comes up next is, well, if they're non-speaking, how do you know that? So a lot of these individuals learn to spell, to communicate by pointing to a letterboard. And the reason that's possible is speaking is a fine motor skill, whereas pointing is a gross motor skill. So it takes time, it takes effort, it takes a lot of practice, but you can learn to like,

• 6:04Speaker 01

  you know, create neural pathways that help you spell to communicate. So as pretty quickly thereafter, the subjects in the telepathy tapes, after they started spelling to communicate, they revealed at some point to their parents, or to their teachers, or to their ministers, or rabbis. I mean, we've had a lot of people in the telepathy tapes who've witnessed this, that they're able to read their minds, and that that's often the tip of the iceberg when it comes to their quote unquote "spiritual gifts", for lack of a better word.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  So this idea of spelling is otherwise referred to as facilitated communication. Right? Are these two things interchangeable, or are they different?

• 6:41Speaker 01

  No. So, spelling, I would say is a catch-all phrase. There's been many different types of ways to spell to communicate. The first one that hit the, you know, hit the world by storm in the 90s was called facilitated communication. And that one used some pressure, or push-

• 6:55Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  -on the hand to help someone along. Due to some scandals that happened around facilitated communication, new spelling forms branched out of that, in which there was no touch at all. So one of those was called the rapid prompting method, another was called spelling to communicate. Now there's something called the spellers method. All of those make sure not to touch the individual at all. And so a kind of catch-all that we use in the telepathy tapes is just say "spelling" to refer to this, you know, way of communicating.

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  And so your kind of introduction to this world is through Diane Powell. You hear her on a podcast where she's talking about this work that she does where she is taking these non-verbal autistic individuals, and through this technique of spelling is able to demonstrate and replicate a sort of paranormal activity where these individuals seem to be able to tap into the thoughts of, you know, their mother, their parents, their teacher. And this ignites something in you where you decide like, "I need to understand." I'm like, "What? Wait, what? Like, what is happening here?" And you kind of go on this journey.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was in between projects and looking for something new, you know, and I've always been a social issue documentary filmmaker, working at like broken problems in society, right? Like, lack of paid family medical leave, or, you know, the unaffordable, inaccessible healthcare system that we have for many people, LGBTQ equality and their faith groups, like just all sorts of stuff like this. And, and so, doing something in this, of this ilk was never, was not my, was not of my interest. But I actually had two kind of close friends die. So I was going through my own process of really wanting to understand, like, does consciousness survive the body? Why are we here? These are questions we all ask. And often, as the case with a documentary, you often spend months, if

• 8:47Speaker 01

  not years, reading something, researching something, becoming an expert in it before you even get funded or paid or anything like that. And I thought, if I'm going to be doing that much time and effort and research, I want to make it around this. What is consciousness? Why are we here? And I want my next project to be about these ideas. And I was reading Big Magic at the time. I don't know if you know that book.

• 9:08Rich Roll?

  Sure. I love Liz and I love that book very much.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that was just random, that I was kind of going through this own thing, and I was reading Big Magic, which I think in a nutshell, what I took away from that book is that this idea that the muse or ideas are kind of a disembodied consciousness that you can talk to and say, hey, you don't ask, you tell it, like, look, this is what I'm doing next. Come work with me on it, you know? And what I had said at that time is like, whatever I do next, I don't want it to be about solving the brokenness in society. I want to solve the brokenness in people. I want to make a project that explains why we're here, where we're going, and what it all means. So, let's go, you know? Not knowing what would come of it, I just started reading, reading, reading, and plant communication, near-death experiences, you know, Ian Stevenson's long work around reincarnation

• 9:54Speaker 01

  at University of Virginia. I mean, just reading everything I could, also listening to podcasts. That's when I heard Dr. Diane Hennessy-Powell. And, you know, it struck me like a lightning bolt when I heard this. And I thought, this is it. This is it. And it was just like no stopping at that point. And hopped on Zoom with her, and maybe just like a few weeks later, I was up going flying to Oregon to meet her. And I think for me, when I first felt convinced, you know, obviously, you start to doing, you know, we can talk about this, but we started doing our own kind of homespun telepathy test. But what really convinced me at first was asking her to open up her email. And just reading me some, you know, respecting HIPAA violations, of course, not giving names, but just kind of reading me some of the smattering of the emails she was getting from parents and teachers.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And it was one after the other, saying, "I didn't think this was possible. I didn't believe my spouse when they said this was possible, but it seems as though my child can absolutely read minds and knows what we're thinking or can see through our eyes." And it was person after person, thinking they were alone in this unbelievable situation. And there was such a quantity of parents reaching out to her that it felt just so compelling and convincing.

• 10:59Rich Roll?

  So I'm imagining the audience, like, rolling their eyes right now. So perhaps provide an example or two of these experiments. Like, walk us through what these experiments, you know, do, how they're constructed, and what they kind of demonstrate.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Dr. Powell did a few studies before Ivan came along, you know. So, for instance, the first individual she studied was a young girl in Wisconsin, and she was adopted. And I think she was most telepathic with her father, but she also could read the minds of her spelling-to-communicate partners, you know, kind of like her teachers. And so Dr. Powell put this young girl behind a partition, and on the other side of the partition was the person she was telepathic with. In this case, it was two different, you know, therapist teachers. So they did one at a time. And the girl could not see what the therapist was looking at, what cue was in front of them. However, every time this therapist was shown a cue, this young girl was able to write

• 11:57Speaker 01

  accurately what word this person was looking at, what number they were looking at, even if it was a fake word, a made-up word. So those were the first experiments Diane did. And I asked her to send me the videos of this, you know, right away. And my first thought was, wait, I mean, it was so unbelievable, and these kids were so accurate. So I thought, I asked Diane, "Can I talk to the camera guy who set all this up? I wanted to get his point of view, because I'm a filmmaker by trade, and I trust the people behind the scenes." So I called him and I said, what was this like for you? And he said, this was, it was absolutely unbelievable. I actually left my profession and had like a mind all, you know, his life changed after witnessing it. And he's like, I was listening to the audio feed. There was absolutely no queuing.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  There was no way that this young girl could see the person on the other side of the partition. They were so careful and so thoughtful about how they set this up. She did it with two different therapists. And he's like, there's no explanation for it. There's no way that she could be doing this unless it was truly telepathy. So talking to him was like another just chip in my mindset of like, this, this sounds like this could be real.

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  So you seek her out and you yourself, you know, kind of set up these experiments with a variety of individuals and families and teachers and caretakers, et cetera. And what's astonishing is that the results are, are kind of unanimous, right? Like in science, if you get, you know, a positive result in the, you know, I don't know, 55 to 65% range, like that's significant. And here it's essentially 100%, right? Like this is replicable, repeatable, time and time again, in different situations, with different experimental, you know, kind of paradigms, whether it's like cards or drawings or thoughts.

• 13:44Rich Roll?

  It seems that the non-verbal individual, you know, is able to kind of like execute this, you know, properly, like almost every single time.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so after this, I first met Dr. Powell and talked to her camera guy. I said, I want to set up a test like this for myself. And I asked, who's like a new person who just reached out that you haven't met yet? Because that felt like a good way to keep this like really clear that she couldn't be influencing this at all, Dr. Powell. So it was this young girl from Mexico. So I coordinated flying her up to California, flying Dr. Powell down to California. I asked a bunch of camera guys and audio people I've worked with for a long time for help, you know, to kind of film this. We rented an Airbnb. And I really wanted to take care of like setting this whole thing up myself so there could be no, no funny business going on. I trust Dr. Powell completely. I mean, she's a very thoughtful scientist, but I just didn't know that yet.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  I didn't know her. I didn't know any of this world. So we covered the televisions and took down the mirrors and made sure that our cameras had something over the lens. You know, there's just no way that you could see reflections. We had a petition. We put the young girl behind a blindfold, would show the mom a number, a picture, word, and then we'd take the blindfold off, move the petition away, and the girl would spell the answer. And her name was Mia. And it was riveting to watch. And one of the things that was like, mind boggling when that was done is Dr. Powell said, as accurate as she was, which was like, almost 100% of the time with her mother, it wouldn't count for science because she was being touched, and the people will not allow for touch, you know? And I was like, but, you know, knowing Mia at this point,

• 15:24Speaker 01

  who had just learned to spell, often, individuals with dyspraxia don't know where their body is. So it can really help to be touched on the wrist, and then often moves to the elbow, and then to the shoulder, and then to the tip of the head, and then there's no touch at all. And so Mia, at this point now, there's no touch at all. When we had met her, she still needed like, a little touch somewhere, whether it be on the shoulder or the head. So that was happening, and I talked to other people in the room, and I was like, do you think there's any way the mom was sending Morse code, you know, about a picture or number? And, I mean, it felt ridiculous. I don't think that is possible, especially having, watching her spell this way on Zoom calls and everything. But, for the point of like, high, the high caliber of like, airtightness that these studies need, Dr. Powell was like, this wouldn't be accepted. So, I was marveling at it, but it wouldn't count. And

• 16:08Speaker 01

  so, the next test, she said, go and see this young man, Akil, next. He's in New Jersey, and he doesn't require any touch. And again, I was, you know, kind of, funding all this on my own, and I didn't have the ability to be like, hey, let's send Dr. Powell. So I went up there with my camera guy. And, Dr. Powell didn't come on that test, so this was kind of just like, proof of concept, trying to understand what this was. So these weren't like, airtight, scientific tests. This is just me, we were just like, playing to figure out what's possible here. And it was pretty remarkable, because myself, the camera person, other people in the crew, producers would take turns writing down a word, and we'd show it to the mom. And Akil would be in and on the room.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  And he'd spell it individually without being touched into a talker. Or one time we wrote down a word, crossed it out. He started writing the word that we originally had written. And then as we crossed it out and started writing a new word, he started spelling that word. The thing that was most mind boggling for me on that trip was, you know, we were like, okay, he can do words. We tried numbers and he could do any of the numbers. And we did random word generators. And again, I brought these iPads, generated them myself, so there's no way like, you know, any funny business was happening. But the thing that was the most surprising to me was at one point, we had a random picture generator out. And there was a few pictures where Mother Manisha would see the picture and not really know what it was. Like, one of them, she thought, I think, she was like, oh, what is this? And it looked like a food fight, you know?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  And Akil, who was sitting across the room, typed PAINT. And sure enough, that's exactly what it was. But when you think about what telepathy is, you think, oh, well, that's sending a message or sending something to this person. Nothing was being sent because she didn't know what she was looking at. And that was pretty remarkable because I was like, is she seeing through his eyes? Like, what is happening here? And what Manisha says is, you know, I think she thinks you are all asking the wrong questions. It seems as though him and I can share consciousness and we can just merge in some way.

• 18:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. That gets to the heart of the larger issue at play here and I suspect was kind of the real place of intrigue for you to even like get involved in this. It's almost as if these, you know, quote unquote, like telepathic individuals are just a doorway into a broader conversation about the nature of reality and consciousness. Because I think the docu-series operates on two levels. Like, first, you're addressing the misunderstood capacities of these neurodivergent people that challenges the traditional paradigm of kind of neurobiology, that these people are kind of non compos mentis, right? But are in fact intelligent and have rich interior lives, emotions, just like all of

• 18:50Rich Roll?

  us, desires, et cetera. But the second and larger issue that you're getting at, that kind of comes, you tease it early, but it kind of comes out later in the series, is this questioning of the nature of reality itself, like...

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Positing that our materialist conceptualization of reality may very well be wrong, and that consciousness isn't something that we have, but is something that is. It's like this field that is fundamental to the universe. And so, in the context of telepathy, it's not, "Oh, your consciousness is localized in your brain, and you're sending it to me," or "I'm receiving it," or "sending mine to yours." It's more of a tapping into this field of oneness, in which consciousness is like a unified kind of property of reality itself.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you know, I think when I started meeting more and more families, for them, it's not a question of if this is happening, it's why. You know, like, anyone asking if, in their mind, I think is just 10 steps behind the reality of what's going on in their classrooms, in their therapy rooms, in their homes. And so, that "why" was something I was obsessed with. How is this possible? There's just no room for it in our current paradigm, which is-

• 20:08Rich Roll?

  Or if it is, what does that say about, like, reality?

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Right, exactly, yeah. And so, you know, I started talking to various researchers, reading a lot of books, and, you know, I don't think a lot of people realize that we do live in a scientific paradigm of materialism, which is, it's only real, right, if you can measure it and observe it. And our paradigm, we explain in episode 6 of the Telepathy Tapes, has traditionally been considered, like, if you think of it as a pyramid, right, where there's, like, the base of the pyramid might be, you know, there's physics, and there's biology, and there's chemistry, and, you know, all these things that make up our world. And those things are true. I mean, we shouldn't throw away all the textbooks. But currently, at the top of the pyramid, the result of all these wonderful, you know, scientific fields, if you will, is consciousness. And there's no way to describe where it comes from, or how it works, and why it's there.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  But the other way of looking at it is if we think of consciousness as fundamental, and that's at the bottom of the pyramid. So out of consciousness came everything else. And if that's the case, then we can account for all these mysterious abilities that we know these things happen, right? Like whether it's a precognitive dream where you see something and, you know, or you have a conversation with someone who died in a dream or something like that, or a near-death experience, or telepathy, these things that we have not been able to make sense of, they do make sense if we live in a conscious universe where it's thought and consciousness that is the foundation.

• 21:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah. The problem of consciousness is called the hard problem for a reason. And that reason is that our materialist, you know, pyramid, our way of making sense of reality is flawed in that context and cannot resolve the idea of what consciousness is or is not, right? Within that materialist paradigm. But if you upend that paradigm and say consciousness is fundamental to the universe, it seems to provide a way to resolve that hard problem. Because if it's fundamental to everything and not a product of, you know, complex matter aggregated, like the idea that like, you know, the more complex a biological

• 22:15Rich Roll?

  system, the more complex, you know, it gives rise to a more complex level of consciousness is incorrect. And instead, it's fundamental and, you know, is basically the fabric of the universe itself, right? And is something that we can tap into. And it all sounds crazy and woo-woo, but my sense is that science, physicists, like they're all starting to realize that there is real merit in this idea. I just had...

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Anika Harris on recently, who has an audio documentary series coming out called Lights On, and that she's basically asking that question and goes and talks to all these like fabulously intelligent people in their respective fields to, you know, kind of explore that notion. And I feel like there's a receptivity to that right now that, that from like a timing perspective dovetails with what you're saying and this exploration that you've been on, although you're on, you're on very different kind of tracks with this.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the things, and you even just said it in your question, right? Like qualifying this stuff as woo-woo. And I think that's what has happened for so long, right? Is that like within the materialist paradigm, anyone who entertains these ideas, right? That like a psychic, their psychic abilities, or like maybe mediums actually can't tap into this, or maybe precognition or telepathy is real. That's been kind of thrown out as like, well, this person's gullible, or silly, or not smart, or not educated. And so people who have an experience, it almost feels like coming out of the closet in the 50s or something, right? Like you kind of test the waters, like, oh, is this person going to accept this? Or be open to it? And if not, you're like, oh, no, that didn't really happen. All right. That was just whatever, coincidence. But I think for most people, if they're really honest with themselves, they've had like the two most,

• 23:57Speaker 01

  I think, common forms of psy, which is like psy abilities, psychic abilities, if you will, are telephone telepathy, where you think about someone before they call. And it's like, how did that happen? And often you just wave it off as coincidence. But what's fun is if you look back in history, like Mark Twain was obsessed with this, and he called it mental telegraphy. And this idea that like, people would sometimes send a letter on the exact same day, it was postmarked the exact same day, even though they might have not talked for five or seven years, or something like that. And wow, okay. So that's even like a more concrete example of this, right? Or precognitive dreams, where you dream something and like it happens the next day. But the materialist paradigm has been so great at making anyone talking about this feel silly, or stupid, or uneducated,

• 24:41Speaker 01

  that it's kept these ideas like out of the scientific community, out of, I think, culture. But it wasn't always that way. It's, the materialist paradigm has only been reigning for, you know, a few hundred years. So- You know, I think, you know, people ask all the time, oh, is this something we can evolve into? Is this where we're going? And my answer to that is no, I think it's always been there. I think we've always had these abilities. And if you actually go talk to various native cultures, they would think, why are you even questioning this? Of course, this is a thing. Of course, humans are capable of this. In the telepathy tapes, especially in episodes five and six, we look at animal telepathy. And you have to ask the question, like, how does a school of fish turn on a dime together? Or, you know, a murmur of birds do that? What's going on there? It seems like they share a field of consciousness.

• 25:25Rich Roll?

  Or ant communities, you know, all these, all these sort of cooperative, you know, ecosystems of, of life that seem to kind of behave in a way where it feels like there's a shared consciousness.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, especially with now, with, you know, the quantum, quantum fields of research, quantum physics, there's been such a greater exploration into this weird stuff, right? Like spooky action at a distance and entanglement and how these things happen. And, and also people looking into this anecdotal evidence around near death experiences and things that we just can't explain, but seem to be popping up everywhere. And I think there's enough scientists now who have said, look, there's more than we can explain. And there's actually been something called the Academy of Post-Materialist, you know, science that has kind of sprung up for scientists to say, hey, like, we need to live in a post-materialist society. I don't, or, you know, scientific world. I don't think materialism has all the answers. It sure has many.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  It has many, but it doesn't evolve them.

• 26:25Rich Roll?

  But if you're going to challenge, you know, the core paradigm of science, you're going to get resistance. And I can understand why, you know, kind of what you're saying or what you've observed to be happening is going to be met with, you know, kind of like, you know, it's not going to be exactly welcome.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  But at the same time, like, what is science if it's not, you know, the courage to like, ask crazy questions? Like, you know, maybe the earth isn't flat. Maybe we're not at the center of the universe. Like, these people were pariahs, you know, for proposing those ideas at the time.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:57Rich Roll?

  And then science proves it out gradually. So this is, you know, hard stuff to get your head around. It's not surprising that people are going to be, you know, kind of knee jerk, you know, sort of dismissive of the whole thing. But I think within that, when I think about it, you're talking about people whose brains are wired differently than ours. And that Confronts us with our own assumptions about the way a brain should operate, what intelligence looks like or doesn't look like, and what reality is, right? Like, we assume that, you know, everything that we see is an accurate reflection of reality,

• 27:39Rich Roll?

  but we have a very crude kind of like filtering system of perception that gives us a version of that that we presume to be real. But obviously, it's a poor facsimile of that. There's all kinds of stuff going on that we don't have the perceptual capacity to, you know, perceive or make sense of.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:58Rich Roll?

  And that's for a reason, so we can survive, because it would be too overwhelming. But if you take somebody with a brain that's wired very differently, such that they can't feel their appendages, or they don't know where they are in space and time, just like somebody who is blind, who has to develop like echolocation or finally attune another sense, these are people who have, I would have to believe, a more robust connection with and relationship with consciousness, because they're living in their minds. And so, it makes sense to me intuitively that they would develop like, you know, a different relationship with that than we have, because we're just being stimulated in ways that they're not.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  And they have to find different ways to communicate. And we have such a reductive idea of what it means to be intelligent or to be human. Because you can speak, that means you're, you know, one thing, and if you can't, you're another thing. But like, language is so crude, right? Like, we're like these mouth-breathing creatures. But what is language, other than, you know, kind of waves of energy that come out of our mouth that are received by somebody else? Like, that are, that's invisible.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, it's when you start thinking about it.

• 29:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, the more you think about it, it kind, the whole thing kind of unravels a little bit.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, and you know, the things that have been fascinating to me, and I remember just being like, what, when I first started hearing this from multiple parents and teachers, was that many people with apraxia really don't know they have a body, or can't feel their body, or can't find their body. And it can take a lot of like, physical therapy, like, here's your fingers, here's your hand. And that's why in facilitated communication in the beginning, it was like, really helpful to actually put some pressure on a hand and be like, here, this is what you're using.

• 29:43Rich Roll?

  They can locate themselves.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  So you can locate yourself. And for me, it's like, if someone needs to be touched a little bit to locate themselves so they can communicate, like, great, help them communicate. But I think that idea of not being as in your body, then where are you? You're probably living more in a mental space, right? You're probably more in this consciousness world. So when I started thinking about it in that way, I was able to wrap my head around it a touch more. Because for most of us, right, we do have this dissociative boundary, you know, it's like, this is this person, and that's this person, and I'm me, and because it's connected to our body, and our like, little thing. But if we're out of our body, and people are describing that, right, when they try, you know, there's been so much research into psychedelics now, you know, and people who have a wonderful guided, you know, psilocybin

• 30:28Speaker 01

  trip or something, and they realize we're all one, we're bigger, and we're more than just our bodies. And it's kind of a lot, it's really reflective of what these individuals are talking about. And I think the same thing happens when you look into the near-death experience research, these individuals who say they leave their body, they can see it, they can hear conversations happening, that stuff has been validated when they come back down and verified. But what they felt at the time was this like, unbelievable oneness, and connection to everything, and ability to like, be and see more places at once, and this living without fear and separation, that is all about love. And those themes that come up over and over again, when someone has a, you know, a kind of a psychedelic experience, or has a near-death experience, or what the non-speakers have been saying

• 31:12Speaker 01

  to me in working with this, is this overwhelming idea of, at this consciousness field, right, it's all about love, it's about connection, it's about oneness.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  That tracks very closely with those psychedelic experiences, which involve not so much like lighting up other areas of the brain as much as turning off certain areas of the brain. Like, the default mode network gets sort of, you know, reduced, right? And that allows a more expansive experience where you have that feeling of the dissolution of self and the oneness of everything. But I'm imagining like these individuals like arrive at that more naturally and are in some version of that type of experience by default rather than through kind of pharmacological intervention.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And all I can go off of is what, you know, the individuals I've worked with have told me, and that's exactly what they say. You know, they just have access to more and they're much more connected and in this vibe of love and much less connected to their bodies.

• 32:24Rich Roll?

  So the criticism revolves around the touching, as far as I can tell, like, correct me if I'm wrong, but the primary criticism is a function of the spelling, where the nonverbal individual is somehow being manipulated, either through touch or through facial expressions or some kind of, or moving the iPad around so that the finger hits the letter that the person wants them to hit. And this is akin to some version of like mentalism, where it's all a big magic trick and we can't rely upon any of this. When I listen to your show, like, there's just so many instances with different people, none of whom seem to have all that much to gain.

• 33:09Rich Roll?

  Like, they're not grifters who are trying to sell anything, but they are... People who are emotionally connected to these individuals. And I do suspect that there's some level of like, everybody wants to feel like their child is special, or that there's something more going on here. And so, so does that lend itself to a little bit of cognitive bias? But, you know, that is kind of what's been reaped in your direction, right? Like, this is all who we, in every instance, there's some level of manipulation that might not even be perceptible when you watch these videos, but is undoubtedly going on because there is no other explanation other than that for what we're seeing.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think skepticism is important, you know? And I think I walked into this as a skeptic as well. Like, you have to. This like telepathy shouldn't be possible. It just shouldn't be possible, right? But one thing I think first has to be understood is spelling and what it means to have apraxia. And many individuals who are spelling are independent spellers, you know? Like, like Akil is typing into, you know, a spelling device without being touched, you know? And, and we would put like little marks on our monitors when we were filming to make sure the letterboard wasn't moving. And it's not moving this way and that way to spell a word. It's just, it's just simply not, you know? But I do think there are important things to, for people to understand, which is when you are spelling, you need a communication partner who's kind of learned this technique

• 34:32Speaker 01

  because they're helping you support your kind of mind-body disconnect and helping you to try to basically support your motor function and motor mapping so you can get this out. So, one thing is like your hand might get lost in space. And sometimes if you're spelling independently and you've figured out those neural pathways, great, you don't need any support. But like for some people newer into spelling, or maybe who just need a bit more support, you need someone maybe when they see you getting lost, they'll take the board all the way away and then bring it back again so they see, okay, here's, here's where I am. Here's what's going on. Or sometimes for the motor planning, you just have to say, okay, go get it. Like, now get the letter. So it's like your body has that initiative, like, okay, now I should go. And those supports are necessary to help with the spelling. And I use the metaphor sometimes, it's like reading glasses, right?

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Like, just because you use a support to read, doesn't mean you can't read. You just need a support to help you. So, so I think understanding that, that about spelling is really, really helpful. But, you know, once you get to that point and you see that so many of these individuals are spelling, and especially like in the film where people can see it, it's gonna be really helpful, like on a typical keyboard, like a QWERTY keyboard, like you and I might use on a keyboard, like they're typing independently, and Akil can do that too. Or you see the letter board isn't moving around and isn't being shifted, right? Like, at that point, it's like, okay, well, what's happening? If there isn't some manipulation to the spelling, which there's just not. And I think parents and teachers also really want to make sure these individuals are getting their pure voices out. That's really important, right? To make sure that that's happening.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  So, when, once you kind of overcome that hurdle and you understand what spelling is and why supports are necessary, especially in the early stages, then the next question is, okay, so, did the scores of teachers and parents and therapists and rabbis and ministers and siblings and paraprofessionals and principals and, you know, speech pathologists that participated in the telepathy tapes and that I've been talking to and who've been living in this world, are they all coming together in some global plan to like trick the world? No, either they're paid actors, or they're all lying, you know? Or they're telling the truth. And I think when you meet them, there's just this beauty and earnestness and wanting to get to the bottom of this, wanting science to study this.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  You know, Manisha, Akil's mom, always says, Akil is the data. If someone wants to look at this, go look at him. You know, he's the data. So, I just think that's so important, that like, we have to kind of have a rational mind around this a little bit. And there's so many people involved in this world who are experiencing these things, that you can either account for it or not, and that's a choice people have to make. But I think it's a big leap to say they're all deceiving people intentionally.

• 37:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this grand exploitation, you know? I mean, throughout the series, like, there's just so many people that you're talking to, and many of them, like, weren't even comfortable talking about it publicly, like, they felt like maybe they were crazy for thinking that, and you give them this permission, you know, to kind of talk about it. That almost feels cathartic for them. It's not like, oh, you know, I'm here to, you know, convince people that, like, my child is the most special one in the universe. And there's sort of a relief to it, like, there's a joy, and that feels pure, I guess. But... With respect to like spelling, just so like the audience is clear, like for somebody

• 37:48Rich Roll?

  with apraxia who can't really find their their body, the touching piece like in the training, like getting people, these individuals like acclimated around this, like there does, you know, you gotta like kind of do that for a while. Over time, then they start to develop a greater facility for it until you can kind of, then all you have to do is touch the shoulder and they kind of know what's going on. And then you can kind of not touch them at all anymore for some people. Is that-

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Actually, it's way more extreme, I think, for people going through some of these big spelling programs where you cannot touch at all. Like you should not be touching at all. And so I think most spellers aren't being touched at all. There's there's no touch. You should not be touching.

• 38:25Rich Roll?

  But they needed to learn how to do that initially, right?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Well, it depends on the family and it depends on how like deeply committed they are to the spelling program they're in. But I think when it comes like school, major conversations, it's like make sure there's no touch at all. And I think a lot of parents are like, I'm not touching, I'm not touching. That's pretty important. Like the no touch is important. I really care about the individuals who are trapped in their body. And if it helps to be touched, if if someone needs to be touched to start the process, great. I think we should do that. I think we should be giving everyone every support they need to start communicating. But I'd say the vast majority of spellers who are learning to spell in today's world are not allowed to be touched at all. That is like a huge part of the spelling programs.

• 39:05Rich Roll?

  Well, there's also great resistance within the quote unquote like spelling community itself. There's a kind of an institution around this that ironically is resistant to what you have to say. And, you know, this is a confusing thing. So can you shed some light on like what's going on behind the scenes? Because you would think these people, of all people, would be enthusiastic about, you know, what you've discovered and what that means in terms of like spelling and people with apraxia.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I would say all of them know about this as well. You know, I've had conversations with multiple spelling coaches, teachers, people even in part charge these spelling programs who are like, we're fans of celebrity tapes. We know this is real. We know this is happening. However, we can't make a public stance on it because we're fighting to get spelling in schools. And there's this fear that if like telepathy gets gets brought into the equation, the people who are anti-spelling are going to say, oh, look, they're being influenced in some way. These aren't their thoughts. These are the thoughts of their parents. So therefore, spelling isn't independent because there's some influence that's occurring through through mind to mind communication.

• 40:12Rich Roll?

  I mean, there does seem to be some kernel of rationality in that, like, hey, we're just trying to get these people to be able to communicate better. And the minute you bring up telepathy, and then it's like, wait, what do we, you know, you're going to have people like upset, like, oh, this is this is crazy town. Like, what are we doing here?

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, what we can kind of gauge things by is the emails that we have coming in, you know, and like, 99.9% of the stuff we're getting from parents, teachers, speech pathologists is like, thank so thankful that this is finally out, that they've been experiencing it and that type of thing. This idea that mentioning telepathy is going to make it harder to get spelling to schools is making the assumption, one, that, you know, it's it's such a paradox, because it's basically saying that if you hear someone's thoughts, you don't have your own, right? But I can hear someone's words to me. I can read someone's thoughts. It doesn't mean I don't have my own. So why would, you know, hearing someone's thoughts mean you don't have your own? So that's where this like weird leap has has

• 41:11Speaker 01

  entered the equation. I don't know how to rectify that. What I do know is the sheer amount of parents and teachers saying it's so important for this to be out there and non-speakers, most importantly, because, you know, I think people want to be seen and celebrated in their wholeness and in their completeness. And so to ignore a huge part of an individual in any circumstance, I don't think is a good thing to do. I think truth can be extremely difficult, but I usually don't think it's the wrong way to go. I think acknowledging truth, as difficult as it might be, it means changing our institutions. It means changing how we think about education. It means changing how we think and how we've treated these individuals for decades, which has been treating them as though they're not in there and not smart. But most importantly, what I hear from parents, teachers and the like is

• 41:55Speaker 01

  You know, if these individuals can hear thoughts, then the thoughts that you have about them can be really damaging. You know, I even think about just, I have little kids. If I were to be thinking or telling them all the time, "I don't believe in you. I don't believe you're smart. You're making my life more difficult." Whatever might be happening with parents. I mean, it can be a very difficult diagnosis. That can be so damning to an individual's self, right? Their self sense of purpose and self-worth. So, so making sure that we can clean up our thoughts so these individuals can help regulate themselves in a positive way, I think is really important. And every non-speaker that I have worked with has been adamant, keep pushing this message out. This is important. The truth needs to get out. The truth needs to get out.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  And so if you believe that they're competent, then my service is to these individuals who really want the truth about themselves out there. And it might be hard for us to handle. It might require us to change how we think in our institutions and how we operate. But I fully believe in their competence and I fully want to help them get the truth out about themselves.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  The history of humanity is, is, is one in which we don't take kindly or have much of an open mind when it comes to things that we don't understand or that don't look like something that is familiar, right? And when you take a non-verbal autistic individual who can't feel their appendages and is herking and jerking all over the place and, and, you know, is making moaning sounds and all kinds. It's like, it's, you know, it's easy to have a lot of judgment about that or to develop a belief that like, well, they're not like us. And so obviously they don't have the same, they don't have the interior life that, that we have. Clearly that's not the case.

• 43:46Rich Roll?

  You know, we know now that many of these people are deeply intelligent and you're advancing this idea that they have capacities that we lack, you know, and might have these super intelligences which normalizes kind of how we relate to these individuals. It's a different frame, it provides a new frame, right? It's one thing to say like, oh, you know, we know these examples of, you know, individuals like this who have, you know, a facility for math or, you know, photographic memory or what is it, calendarism or whatever, where they can remember, yeah, like they can, they know, you know, what the weather is on every single day of their entire life, et cetera. It's another thing to take the leap to telepathy, like that's asking a lot of people. So of course, people are going to be like, whoa, right?

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's interesting, and you know, I love this, is one of Dr. Diane Hennessy Powell's theories is that ESP should be considered a savant skill, and this is where she's coming from, is that science tends to accept that some of these skills that we can't explain where they come from, right? Like, you might be really great at math, or music, or language, or calendar computation, like you noted, but, I mean, a savant skill, right, is you haven't been exposed to it or trained in this, yet you have like an expert level of knowledge. Well, she was like, okay, science accepts these, even though we can't necessarily explain these. And what's even more fascinating is there's, you know, accidental or acquired savants, where someone has a head injury and suddenly they can see math everywhere, or they have a head injury and suddenly can play the piano like a, you know, full-blown composer when they couldn't prior.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  So we accept that these gifts can come, even though you should have no reason to know them. So her, I think, you know, idea is like ESP should be considered a savant skill. We have no idea how these gifts are possible, or where, how someone gets the knowledge, but it, just like these other savant skills, we also can't explain them.

• 45:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Savantism, for me, is kind of the way in to getting your head around this, because when you see these individuals, a young person who can just play Beethoven without having been trained, or the person who, you know, like, I know there's that guy who, who had an accident and a head trauma or whatever, and then he could do incredible math, et cetera. There's so many stories like this. We have zero explanation for how this happens. To your point, we accept it as true, but science has no way of explaining it, other than, oh, well, well, this is. But there's no extrapolation on that, like, well...

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  Should we try to figure out why this might be the case? Like, we're just sort of astounded by these things and the inquiry seems to stop there. And again, this is something where upending the materialism pyramid kind of allows you to, you know, understand that there might be something more going on. And you have all these examples in the docu-series, particularly with language, right? Like, talk about that a little bit.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, I think some of the best cases, to your point of like, let's remove parents who might want to attach, you know, my kid is special, which I think, again, I want to say, none of the parents that I've worked with in any way, I think, are doing that. I think they all are just so grounded. But anyway, one of the best examples of this was an individual, a little girl in Wisconsin, and she was not with her mom. She was with her, you know, her spelling coach and two other people, I think a pair professional. It was like three people in a kind of educational atmosphere. And she started spelling in Portuguese one day. And then she was also able to spell in Spanish, you know, and it was like, what?

• 47:22Rich Roll?

  And had never been...

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Exposed to either one. And, you know, her mom and dad don't speak Spanish or Portuguese. And, you know, she lives in, you know, outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so not like a huge, you know, Spanish or Portuguese speaking population. And, you know, it was a bit of a mystery as to how this is possible. And one of the things I really enjoyed is when that episode came out, I was getting so many emails, not just from new families, but also some of the families I met, saying, "Oh, my kid does that too." Or, "Did you not know blank and blank blank can do this? Like, John Paul can speak multiple languages." And I was like, "What? No, you never told me that." So it felt as though this ability to communicate or understand or spell different languages is like one of these, again, what I would call spiritual gifts.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  And one of the things that was super interesting to me was when I first met Mia, who was the young girl, the first non-speaking individual I'd ever met, first person I'd ever see kind of demonstrate telepathy. Before we tested, did our tests, I met her family. We had dinner after, you know, they arrived. It was lovely. And, you know, even at the table there, she was kind of doing some like homespun telepathy. I was like, what am I thinking of? And she would do it, you know, and spell it out. But one of the things that was most amazing is I remember asking her a question and we had a translator there because the whole family speaks Spanish except for the aunt. So I was asking a question and waiting for the translator to translate it, but I think the translator was ordering or something.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  So I asked a question and immediately Mia starts writing back the answer in English. And, and then we all were just marveled, like, how did she write it back in English? She wrote back the answer in English. And it was just wild. So I'd seen this for myself, this like language ability. I certainly can't explain it. I'm not a scientist. Yeah, I mean, what do you make of it? Well, okay. So, you know, again, like I've been banging my head against the wall for years trying to figure out what a lot of this means. And a few neuroscientists that I've talked to have a theory around consciousness that I was able to really, it was able to help me understand this. So the idea is, it's like, if you think of our brains, kind of like a TV set, right? Or maybe a better metaphor is like a smartphone.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Like, your brain might have certain apps that mine don't, right? I have certain apps that you don't. But either way, like, it doesn't work without the signal. Like, you have to have a signal coming in from somewhere else and that will animate the phone. And if the phone is broken, it's not going to work too well, right? But maybe if it breaks a certain way, like, it will work better. Like, you know, so, so, but you need both to animate, like, a functioning, operational, amazing experience with this phone or brain. And so, from that point of view, it makes sense because what if you have a head injury and you're able to better tap into a signal because maybe one of the safeguards in our brain that keeps us from being overflow, you know, over flooded with information is turned off? Yeah. Right?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  So that idea that consciousness is something we tap into and not something that we generate helped me make sense of all of this.

• 50:21Rich Roll?

  Right, so you might have certain apps on this phone that that prevent the other apps from working as well as they could. So if you delete those apps from your phone, maybe the other apps work better, right?

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:35Rich Roll?

  And give this different frame.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:37Rich Roll?

  This is fucking crazy shit.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 50:39Rich Roll?

  You know that, right? Do you ever like go, wait, what am I talking about?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is wild to think about all of it is wild, but I think the thing that like you can't unsee these gifts, if you will, at work. And once you sit next to, I mean, now at this point, it's with scores of individuals and talking to scores of teachers and parents who who are like, this is happening and you see the telepathy, it's just, you can't unsee it. So then you just have to try to explain it. And that's where I'm at right now. And I think a lot of scientists and the parents are at too, it's just like, well, how do you explain this?

• 51:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, again, like back to me being Mulder and wanting to believe, but also, okay, maybe there's some fuckery going on in these experiments. Like, I wasn't there, I don't know. And, you know, that guy at McGill, he's got a lot of, you know, choice words about what's happening here. But the savantism, that's the thing where it's like, there's no getting around it, right?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:33Rich Roll?

  And we just kind of go, oh, yeah, well, yeah, but, you know, don't make too much of that. But you're like, wait a minute, hold on.

• 51:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:39Rich Roll?

  And to your point about animals, bird migration patterns, and then, you know, the work of Rupert Sheldrake, you know, who's who was, he's like the OG, right?

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:50Rich Roll?

  Like, he was looking at this stuff for a long time, you know, many decades ago.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Can I share his story?

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, please do.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Because it's really cool.

• 51:57Rich Roll?

  Explain who he is and why he's important to this narrative.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Right. I think it's important that Diane Hines-Powell, you know, started this research around telepathy and non-speakers. But there was someone right before her, Bernie Rimland, who'd also said, look, I think ESP is a gift in some autistic people. So that's kind of been like valeted around for a while. But beyond that, I started looking at other people who'd been studying telepathy, because I wanted, again, to understand what this is and how this could be possible.

• 52:23Rich Roll?

  Like, are there a lot of people out there who are studying it?

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:26Rich Roll?

  Do they have to do it kind of quietly, or they've already been, you know, kind of pilloried by the institutions?

• 52:32Speaker 01

  I think. What's been really damning to scientists is not being able to have a freedom of inquiry. I mean, that should be like the baseline for science, right? You're free to ask any question, explore where it takes you, look at the research, have it peer reviewed, have it replicated. Does it bear out? If it bears out, wow, let's do more research. And so I think what's been happening with a lot of scientists is they get punished for even asking the question. But then there's the rebels who have been like, no, I'm going to ask this question.

• 53:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And then there's like the CIA also, right? Like the manure stare at goats and all that kind of stuff.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we can talk about that for sure in a second. So Rupert Sheldrake, he's a biologist from Cambridge University. I mean, that's a very prestigious school. He's an incredibly smart man. And I loved his story about how he fell into this. He didn't believe in telepathy or that psi abilities could be real. He was in the tea room at Cambridge and there was, you know, I think he was a young graduate student or something at this point. I don't exactly remember, but I know he was early in his career. And there was a scientist at the school, Sir Rudolph Peters. So he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth for his contributions to the scientific field within England. So this is a very prestigious professor.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And Rupert was in the tea room with Sir Rudolph Peters, who said, I have just come across a blind boy who was able to read an eye chart when his mother was looking at it. And that's fascinating. Well, how is that possible? And it sounds very similar to what we're talking about right now at this, in this interview. Sir Rudolph Peters thought, well, this is fascinating. It seems like either this boy is seeing through his mother's eyes or somehow has a telepathic link. So they ended up doing like a telepathy test, I think where they put them, you know, in rooms far apart and they did like, you know, a telepathy experiment between the two. And the, it was statistically relevant. It was pretty remarkable. And that changed Rupert's life. It changed his perspective and it changed the questions he was asking.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  So he has written a ton of books on animal telepathy in particular, the sense of being stared at, testing whether or not dogs know when their owners are coming home.

• 54:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, explain that one. This is my favorite study.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's quite wonderful because I think a lot of us who are animal lovers have had that feeling, right, that your animal knows what's going on. And so he tested, they would page, I think this is before the part-time of cell phones, they would page an animal owner when it was time to head home. And they would have them take different routes, different cars, taxis, whatever it be, so that the dog wasn't used to the sound of the engine, or the, you know, the rumble of this particular gravel on the road. And they would make sure that person was coming home at different times. So when they did this experiment, they were trying to account for all these variables. And statistically relevant amount of cases, the dog would come and wait by the door the second that their owner's mental, you know, was, mental state was like headed home, when they were going

• 55:22Speaker 01

  home. And of course, there's a few moments where a car got a flat tire, or someone got called back into work. And when that happened, they had the cameras up, the dog would go back and lie down, and go back to, you know, whatever it was, sleeping. And then if the owner turned their minds toward coming home again, the dog would come back up and wait. And so that was a really enjoyable study, and it was, it was statistically relevant in dogs, and even in some cats, which I thought was great. So he's been studying this for a long time. And one thing that he postulated that really helped my, get my mind around this, is that the mind has a mental field. And this is not uncommon in science, right? We know that the earth has a gravitational field. You can't see it, you know it's there, you know it's powerful. You know the magnet has a magnetic field.

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  Electromagnetic field.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. We don't see the magnetic field, but we know it's there. We know it's powerful. And so why wouldn't the, I mean, it's not uncommon idea to think that our brain might have a mental field that extends outside of us, that might help us to understand when we're being stared at, or overlap with someone when it comes to, you know, telepathy or precognition or that type of thing.

• 56:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We do have that intuition when

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  Somebody is behind us, looking at us, don't we?

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:35Rich Roll?

  It's pretty undeniable. We're dismissive of it, but I think we can all relate to that. I just know, I have two big dogs, our yard is fenced, our dogs are out, they just kind of like roam around out in the yard. And when I'm driving home, I have an electric car, it doesn't make any noise at all. And if I have the windows down, as I get, you know, close to our driveway, well before anybody can see anything, the dogs are like right at the, right at the gate, and they're barking, like every time. Like, they know when I'm coming. And I'm like, they have this incredible sense of smell, maybe they can smell something about it. I don't know what it is, but like, I've had my version of that experience.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, for me, I'd be like, I wouldn't trust that that's telepathy or something, unless you were to try it in different cars.

• 57:19Rich Roll?

  I've never thought that much about it.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  But like, well, no, it could be, but I'm saying like, if you test it in different cars, right? You test it coming home a different way, you test it putting on like, I don't know, trying to get like your smell off your body. Like, try everything you can, and if it's still working, then there's something going on.

• 57:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Like, I think that's so important that like, no one should take this up at face value. I mean, that's ridiculous to take it at face value. We're not going to advance anything. We're not going to become smarter as a, as a human race. We're not going to become more educated or more thoughtful about anything if we just take any of this at face value. Like, you have to ask the questions, you have to do the science, you have to research it, you have to peer review it, you have to analyze it. And I think, I mean, that's been my whole hope with the Telepathy Tapes podcast, is just to try to get research funded for these scientists, where so often, it's hard to get a grant to study ESP, or telepathy, or clairvoyance, because it has been historically seen as woo-woo, or impossible.

• 58:12Rich Roll?

  Well, it should be hard to get a grant, because you're, it's a big leap, right? So, you better have an incredibly well-constructed study.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:20Rich Roll?

  In order to, you know, put yourself in a position where that even begins to make sense.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  But if it's well-constructed, it doesn't seem fair, right? That researchers should be like shut down before they even get a chance to do the-

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  Experiment that you would like to see constructed. Like if funding wasn't an issue and you could have any of the experts or, you know, scientists of your choice to conduct that bulletproof experiment that would put all of the, you know, kind of hand wringing to rest.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, okay. So I think this is a great question. And it's one of the hopes that we're gonna try to tackle on the film is doing a few telepathy experiments, you know, and so much has come up around this, right? Is that like we are being emailed by a lot of scientists and they all have differing opinions of like how to make this airtight. Like if the parent needs to be in the room to help the child stay regulated, can we just put like white noise in their ears so they can't hear any audible cues, right? Or can't see the parent themselves? And or some people have said, wait, who cares if the kid is being touched? Like we can measure if the parent is like doing some sort of thing with their hand or putting Morse code in. If touch is helping them, isn't telepathy still cool if they're being touched? Like who's deciding telepathy doesn't count if you're not being touched?

• 59:33Speaker 01

  So scientists are kind of in disagreement with themselves. So, you know, what we're gonna do in the film is actually kind of bring a roundtable of scientists together, but also with the non-speakers because they have a right to be in this conversation, of course. This is them and their experiments as well, you know? To talk about, okay, what's possible with with the, you know, with the sense of maybe having an extreme level of autism and being really sensitive to different environments or different things, like what's possible that feels comfortable for them and what's gonna advance the science? And then we hope to construct like two to three studies around that. I'm not doing the studies. I'm relying on brilliant scientists to help with this. And I know Dr. Diane Powell is doing some research on her own that's getting ready to be peer reviewed

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  and, you know, through the University of Arizona that she thinks is gonna be really airtight. And so I'm trying to figure out if it'll be ready to film for the movie or not. Either way, she thinks that this particular test, which I don't know if I'm privy to, yeah, if I can give the details of, will be pretty conclusive, which is great. But then I've had some very interesting conversations with the parents as well. Okay, so we were planning to do a big experiment in a classroom and a bunch of the parents for the non-speakers in this classroom were like, yep. Every single kid who was participating was like, the parent was like, yes, they're telepathic. Yes, they can do this. They can also remote view. They have precognition, like test anything. You'll pretty much be able to see it all. So. These were really easy to see on the fly. You walk in a classroom, it's easy to see.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  So we started being like, okay, well, let's separate rooms and let's separate this and let's do this and adding more and more, you know, kind of like parameters around how to make this air tight. And it started really stressing out a lot of the non-speakers where they were able to do it, but it started becoming like a lot of pressure, a ton of pressure. And then the question was raised to me, which was, you know, why can't scientists just come into the field the way that Jane Goodall would go into the jungle and study chimps to understand their communication and their culture and whatever? Or if you're studying fireflies or lightning bugs, you know, in Vietnam or something that all light up at the same time, like you wouldn't necessarily bring them into a lab. You'd go watch them in their natural habitat. So, you know, quite a few parents have said, can't we just have these people take off

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  their lab coats, walk into our living room and do the experiments in a way that's just like here? Because if they just come into the classroom, come into the house, you'll see it. You'll see it every time, if you're open-minded, you know?

• 1:01:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, the problem with that is then you're not controlling for all the variables and, you know, there's all these subtle manipulations that could be taking place that are influencing the answers and the questioning and whatnot. So if your goal is really to, you know, create a bulletproof situation that will sufficiently rebut all of the criticism, that becomes problematic, right?

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  I don't think so, because you can still put those parameters in a house.

• 1:02:21Rich Roll?

  And if this is really real, why can't it take place in a clinical Skinner box-type environment?

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Well, I don't think that's true, that you can't have those parameters in a house. Because you could have white noise headphones, you could have, you know, a divider, a partition. You can make sure that they can't see each other. So I just think it's really important that, I mean, the non-speaking individuals are human beings, you know? And I think it needs to feel comfortable for them.

• 1:02:44Rich Roll?

  But the replicability aspect of it, like, would then come up, would it not?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't think so, because I think you could have replicated it two or three times, you know? There could be scientists there and researchers there. It's not like waiting for a unicorn to appear. It's very easy to see. I think for any individual that I've met that I've been in communication with around this, it's repeatable over and over and over again, as many times as you want it to.

• 1:03:07Rich Roll?

  But it's also something that is fragile in that like it doesn't work for everybody all the time. Like they're, oh, well, this person can do it with their mother, but not with their father. And, you know, if the energy is bad, or they're, you know, like in a certain state, like the field gets interrupted, like, you know, all of those kinds of things are are true and real as well. Yes.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that that's important, right? I mean, what most non speakers I've been in contact with will say is that their their telepathic link is strong with, you know, a few people. So it might be this teacher, it could be a sibling, it could be, I mean, that's often a sibling, a parent, it might be both parents. So I think that the question, right, is finding who they're most telepathic with and and doing the test with that person and repeating it with that person. That makes sense, right? And then making sure that who is seeing the cue is not able to be, you know, obviously visually or physically or audibly influencing the speller. I think all that is pretty easy to achieve, you know,

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  with the right funding and just having the resources there to do it. So I think we'll be able to test this out pretty easily in the field. And I also think that more researchers are now willing and excited to do their experiments around this. And for the families, the non speakers, it's up to them if they want to participate in experiments with different scientists. But I think that at least the research is moving in the right direction.

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  Are you ever like, I can't believe I'm talking about this, what just came out of my mouth, what happened in my life?

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, that happens all the time.

• 1:04:48Rich Roll?

  I'm like, listening to you and I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I'm like, wait a minute.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Rich Roll?

  Like, we're just way off the reservation here.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, and that's the thing is like, I've learned for a while, I'd say for the first three years, I was always operating on the baseline of like, Okay, this can't be possible, like, maybe it's the first year and a half. Like, this, what's the loophole? Like, how can this be catering to the skeptic in the room? I mean, that was like, kind of my baseline. And then it just got to the point where I'd seen it so many times that it's like, I have to operate from the perspective that this is true. So to talk about it with me...

• 1:05:23Rich Roll?

  And I've heard you talk about how it just became like, routine. Like, it wasn't exciting anymore because you had seen it so many times. Which is wild.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. In fact, there was a gentleman, Dr. Jeff Tarrant, who was doing the QEG scans in three of the studies we did. And again, like, the studies I was doing, I'm not a scientist. Like, I didn't have, like, oh, we don't have, like, Faraday cages and, like, partitions. I was going out with a film crew to decide if I should put my reputation, my money, my time behind this project. Like, I just needed to know, is this worth it? Is this, is all of this worth it? It will only be worth it if it's true. So that's why, you know, the experiments I was doing that we were covering, the telepathy tapes, was just my, like, proof of concept work, right? But for some of this, I did bring a QEG specialist, his name is Jeff Tarrant, to do brain scans. And so he was witnessing all this, like, as an outsider.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  And it's really fun to hear him talk about it because he, you know, he will know, like, we were really cautious about covering screens and doing all this and having partitions and making sure no one could see it. And, you know, I have loaded up the raw data for very scientists to watch the tests from all the camera angles so they can write their own papers about it. So I think there's like, four or five scientists who have the access to all my raw data right now. And, you know, it's, you hear us in the raw data being like, whoa, did she see it? We have to do it over. We didn't see it. Okay, hit that three more times to make sure that, you know, we're always trying to muddle it up to make sure there's no possible way that there could be cheating. So Jeff really talks about observing all that, which I love. But then one of the things he talked about as well is how, pretty quickly after seeing

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  the telepathy in these tests that we were doing, 10, 15, 20 times in a row, being accurate, it was just like, alright, let's go to lunch. Like, it did just become second nature after a while.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  You just normalized to the whole thing.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  And now, it is normal to me. It's like the water in which you're swimming, I think, if you're a part of these families in classrooms where this has demonstrated itself to be true, which is quite a few.

• 1:07:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I mean, imagine traveling back in time and going to the, you know, great library at Alexandria in Egypt and telling the librarian, like, my library's better than yours. And guess what? It's invisible. It's in the ether. It doesn't actually exist anywhere in three dimensions, but it's fully accessible if you have a thing that can pull the frequency in. It's called the internet.

• 1:07:43Rich Roll?

  And it gives you access to like everything. Like, that would just be unfathomable, right?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:49Rich Roll?

  And this is something like, oh, yeah, this is just part of our life. It's not really a mystery. We have science to, you know, science created it. We can make sense of it and the like. But that would just rewrite that person's notion of like, what is real and what isn't.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, and that notion has been completely rewritten for me. And I think, again, like, you talk to the parents, the teachers, the paraprofessionals, the speech pathologists, the occupational therapists, who've witnessed this over and over and over again. And it's not a question for any of us of like, if it's happening. It's just why and how. And just people take it seriously and just answer these questions. Like, everyone wants to know how and why and what it means. And that's the world in which I'm now swimming. So it's kind of, for me, it's been a transformation of terror around talking about it. Like, super nervous to talk about it when I was working on my other films or, you know, working on projects or even with family members, friends, being so nervous about being judged, being judged for believing it, being...

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  And then it got to a point where it's like, I can't stop. I have to acknowledge what I'm seeing here. And I just have to just surrender to the fact that like, with everything I've thrown at this to try to find a hole or a loophole, it's real. And I think that's where the parents are. And so now I'm at the point where it's like, someone can be skeptical and they don't have to believe it. That's fine. You can't reach everyone. But like, we all know our own truth, right? Like, if you saw a rhinoceros and no one had ever seen one, and you came back and said, no, there's these huge animals with a horn on their head and they look like a dinosaur, but they're not, blah, blah, blah. Like, someone could tell you, that's not true. It doesn't exist. But if you saw it, like, what are you gonna do?

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I'm a child of the seventies, you know, like I grew, when I grew up, when I was a kid, like ESP, like all we talked about was ESP all the time. There was a TV show called That's Incredible, like I'm older than you, you wouldn't remember, but it was like a network TV show and they would just have like, it would just be all paranormal stuff all the time. So I kind of grew up in an era where, you know, me and my friends, that's what we talked about. And then that kind of went away, you know, other than in the weird kind of like tabloids at the supermarket about UFOs and aliens and stuff. And maybe that's why it's like, that's part of like, I want to believe like my whole life, you know? And you make such a compelling case. And then I'm like, yeah, but like, am I just being, you know, like she, she's got me right where she wants me. But time and time again, there's so many

• 1:10:12Rich Roll?

  examples, like the, the stories of, of the parents and the kids where it's not just like, hey, you know, what's the word I'm thinking of? It's like, I know my kid likes sweets. And so when I come home from the grocery store, like I have to hide them in this special place.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Rich Roll?

  And the kid always knows where it is because the kid is like, either seen through the mother's eyes or like vibrating on that frequency. Like you have a bunch of stories like that, too.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, and those, again, like the anecdotal stories from parents are really fascinating.

• 1:10:44Rich Roll?

  It's all anecdote, but like it kind of adds up after a while.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  Because that was a funny thing that parents would say was like, I would watch a show or a movie and my child would be like downstairs with their earplugs on, watching a totally different thing on YouTube. And I'd go find them. I'd be like, you not believe what I just read or what I just watched? And the child would be like, oh yeah, blah, blah, blah. And like completely reveal all the plot lines or whatever was happening. Or one individual who, who knew like the characters and plot points in, in a book. I forgot if it was like The Hobbit or Harry Potter or what it was. And the mom was like, how? We've never read that to you. And she was like, no, he was like, no, what my sister did. And I was like, hearing her as she read it. And I know all the facts about these books. That's just wild. But one of my favorite calls around this was for the film, we're

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  filming a young individual in Atlanta who's not learned a spell yet because we want to show the whole process of like someone who's completely trapped inside, who learns to communicate. And then see what happens on the back end. And I started meeting this family long before the telepathy tapes was out. I didn't know if she really knew about the telepathy. So I felt completely bonkers asking her on a Zoom call, first meeting her, is there any way your son might be telepathic? I mean, how stupid do you feel asking that to someone you've never met? And she was like, yeah. And I was like, oh, okay. Why do you say that? And she's like, well, you know, he'll lick the salt off of the chips. So we started putting locks on all of our snack cabinets. And the second I think of where the key is, he's down there, he's grabbing the key and unlocking it. So then we've changed the key

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  the key locks with like, um, combination locks. And sometimes I'll be thinking, oh, I'm gonna go get that. Like, what's the combination again? And the second I think about the combination, he's doing it. And she's like, or if I give him a directive in his in my head at night, like, he'll be bouncing on his bed and I'm trying to sleep and I'll say, stop bouncing on your bed. He'll stop. So she's like, there's been enough experiences in my life. Or I'll be craving orange juice or something and all of a sudden he'll come into the room with like, the cold jug of orange juice. Where she's like, it's just uncanny. And I've always just thought, oh, we're super duper duper connected. But she's like, I never would have thought of it as like, the T word, right?

• 1:12:51Rich Roll?

  All of the test subjects are young. They're all like teens or, you know, kind of like, young people. And I was wondering why there aren't any adults or older people as part of this?

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they are older now. I think in the film now, a lot of them are 22, 25, 28, 32.

• 1:13:09Rich Roll?

  A 65 year old or a 40 year old?

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't met those people. I mean, I think what's so, what's so awful to actually think about what's happened, I think, to so many non speakers of previous generations. I think so often they've been put into institutions. And I don't want to judge parents. I mean, it can be extremely difficult. And sometimes you have absolutely no options, right? You have no support, you have to work. Like, I want to be super compassionate to what parents are going through. But I also think for a lot of those individuals that were institutionalized, the lifespan of people who are, um, you know, labeled severely autistic and have apraxia is much, much less than ours. And for a lot of those people, spelling, learning to spell, learning to communicate was just simply not even an option. So I think spelling, let's say, it really came about in the 90s is when facilitated

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  communication first was, you know, hit the scene. And these other spelling techniques which require no touch came out later, right? In the early aughts and stuff. So if you think about that, most of the people who are spelling to communicate, whose parents discovered this in a concrete way about their kids, it's because they're spelling. And those people are going to be in a younger bracket, just due to when spelling and this idea of presuming competence hit our social ether.

• 1:14:18Rich Roll?

  So we've sort of hit an inflection point where at least we're caring for the younger generation of these people in a different way. That then creates openness for the bond between parent and child such that like these ideas are starting to like percolate up.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:37Rich Roll?

  Is essentially what you're saying.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:14:39Rich Roll?

  We've got to talk about the hill.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  Explain what the hill is.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this was another thing that was just such a mystery. And I didn't know how to formulate an opinion on it at first. So it wasn't until I met Katie Asher in Houston, who are based in Atlanta. And they told me that Houston, you know, Houston said he can telepathically, kind of like enter a chat room, if you will, for lack of a better word, with other non-speakers, that they can find each other through telepathy and hang out. And they can do this on an individual thing, but that there's also this like big group chat or hangout. And he named it, Houston named it the Talk on the Hill. And so when I first heard this, I couldn't dismiss it because I just watched Houston do like 20 telepathy tests, but, or more. But it was pretty wild.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  And then I met one of his really good friends, John Paul. And while I was at the house, John Paul like went to the hill and his mom brought me upstairs. And John Paul had put all these pillows on his head to block out all the sounds and noises of the house to really concentrate. And she's like, he does this, like when he comes home from school, he can be there for hours. Sometimes he's laughing, sometimes he's crying. And he talks about going to this hill, this group chat. And he has a girlfriend, Lily, and they both will go there and communicate. And sometimes like instantaneously at the same house, they'll come off the hill and be like, I want to go see the other one, or you know, say the same thing. And so when I was leaving Atlanta, after first experiencing this, I thought, okay, maybe this is like an Atlanta thing, you know? And I didn't know how to. Explain it, but I just knew what the parents were saying to me, which is like,

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  they don't have to be in the same zip code. They don't have to be in the same room. They can do this. And it was astounding. And I just like put it into a bucket in my brain of like, I don't know what to make of this. I can't discount it because the parents seem so clear that this is happening. The non-speakers are so solid in saying that they do this. So it's just going to sit there and I can't make a judgment. Before the sloppy tapes came out, before any mention of Hill was out there, I met a minister in Arizona and he, he has like one of the largest youth ministries for special needs kids in the country. And I got connected with him because he was experiencing telepathy and precognition in

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  his non-speaking ministry kids and was baffled and wanted to write a book about it and didn't know what this was. And we were talking about it and we had a really animated Zoom call where I'm like, you're not alone. This is, just so you know, this has been reported on before. And then he kept trying to tell me things that like I might not know about. And one of the things he talked about was the Hill. And he's like, you know, one of the boys I'm closest to, my group talks about this place called the Hill. And I've actually heard him asking other kids from other youth groups in other states about the Hill. And he's like, do you know what that is? And I, you know, it was just like,

• 1:17:25Rich Roll?

  Called the Hill.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Wow. I mean, yeah, called the Hill. And it like shook me to my core. And then I remember talking to a teacher, again, who I met later in the version, sloppy tapes weren't out yet. And she said, there's individuals in my classroom who talk about going to the Hill. And she's like, but they seem to have different roles there or go there for different reasons. One wants to talk about bee colonies and one wants to talk about this. And there's people from, I think she said like Finland that they like to talk to and different countries. And I was like, what? And so there were people from pockets who didn't know each other, who, who were talking about this place. And then I met another teacher and she was saying, it's not only that they talk about the Hill. But often they'll start sharing words that like we don't use, that I've never heard,

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  but they'll start to, and she's like, spellers that I teach that don't know each other and aren't in the same class or aren't in the same session, will start using certain words. Like one word was poinc, which means play, that she's like, they all said that they talk about poinc on the hill, and these individuals who didn't know each other were using the same word. And she's like, what do you make of that? And I was like, I have no idea. I mean, some of this, I just, I can't make, I don't know what to make of it. I don't know how to answer it. It's wild. But how do you account for it when people in pockets who don't know each other are all saying the same thing?

• 1:18:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, either everybody's lying and made it up, or they've all kind of been on the same, you know, real internet chat room where this was discussed and, you know, there's some kind of consensus amongst this community to like, adopt the, you know, like this idea, which, I mean, come on, like, really? Or there's something real and legitimate about this that gets to the nature of consciousness itself, and also sort of upends the idea that telepathy is like a, like a peer-to-peer thing. Like, I am volleying my consciousness to you and you back to me, in that materialist way, but is rather this field that you can

• 1:19:20Rich Roll?

  kind of tap into and enter as a collective, right?

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:24Rich Roll?

  Like, it's just like, again, like, I want to believe, like, it's so crazy, like, I, you know.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  It is so wild. Again, I remember the day I first met John Paul, and he was on the hill. He was talking about how kind of like dysregulated he was feeling, because there were so many people on the hill that day. And he, and we wrote, like, how many? And he said, thousands. And we were like, why are there so many? And he's like, everyone wants to talk about the project, like, the documentary. Like, they're excited that the word is getting out. And I have that, like, I play that for myself quite a bit. One, because John Paul has since passed away, but also just this idea of that, like, was there really this collective excitement about this truth getting out? Like, that's the only thing that will keep me moving forward, because this is a, it's a really weird path to be walking down, you know?

• 1:20:05Rich Roll?

  The relationship between John Paul and his girlfriend also, you know, is is super interesting in that it gets to not only, you know, the rich interior emotional lives of these people, but also kind of like the higher consciousness with which they approach their relationship that gets at this idea of like, love in a more expansive way than we kind of define it and think about it.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, the relationship was beautiful. And I think it was as much part of the world, like they would physically kind of like be together and go on their dates, you know, but also it was telepathic from both of their accounts that they were able to communicate anytime, any place, mind to mind. And to know someone in that way, I mean, how intimate.

• 1:20:56Rich Roll?

  Like, yeah, the intimacy of having merged consciousness.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:00Rich Roll?

  Right. Like, is a level of intimacy that we, I don't think that we can fathom.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:21:04Rich Roll?

  Like, so you can make the argument that they had a deeper and more profound love than, you know, we kind of experience in our three dimensional lives.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I don't want to be a like spoiler. People should listen to all nine episodes in order, but, you know, I think one of the things that I think made the series so meaningful to the grief community that I was not expecting at all, you know, this has really become,

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  the amount of emails we're getting from people who are grieving has been really, really powerful. This idea that, you know, after John Paul passed, he was still able to communicate with people on the Hill and communicate with people telepathically.

• 1:21:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Which was so astounding.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you start with like, hey, look, these people are telepathic. And hey, not for nothing, like they go to the Hill and there's a shared consciousness. And maybe everything we think about death isn't real. And oh yeah, our whole scientific paradigm based on materialism is upside down.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:06Rich Roll?

  Do you get like crazy hate mail?

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 1:22:09Rich Roll?

  Has anybody like threatened you or anything like that? Like?

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  I mean, every once, but it's so rare. I mean, I had to hire two assistants to go through the mail and they can't even keep up. Most of it is just like me too, me too, their own personal stories, um, deep accounts of their own experiences with their own non-speaking children. A lot of emails from speaking autistic individuals who've said, hey, this was my experience as well, like there is a heightened awareness. I have these abilities, but they were gaslit out of me and, and so I don't talk about them. You know, every once in a while, it, but it's seldom we'll get something that's like mean spirited, you know? But I think the only thing that can, can keep you on your ship right is just that knowing that like why you're doing this and what it's for and that it's truth, you know?

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  I mean, for me, it's truth because it's something that we've seen in the best thing that's happened in my life, I'd say in the past, like few months is bringing on staff to start helping with the film. Forever it was just me in this world with the families, you know, and Dr. Powell, when she did her tests and stuff, but like, that was it. And so now having producers and associate producers experiencing this stuff, seeing the stuff, hopping on a Zoom call where suddenly a non-speaker, um, knows their name, knows their kids' names, knows this, knows that, like, and they are like, what just happened?

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  Cause they're just coming at it from.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  They're seeing it.

• 1:23:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then there's been so many accounts of my kid can do this too, blah, blah, blah. And videos that have been so sounding that I'm like, I can't, I don't even have the bandwidth right now to go meet these individuals and film it. But one of my assistants is going to go out now and start meeting some of these individuals and film the telepathy tests and, you know, try to like get more of the footage, or even if it's just for a podcast episode. So it's been beautiful to watch other people have their world completely shifted because walking into this hiring process, I was like, I don't know what they believe. I don't know if they're, where they stand on this process, but they're going to soon see it for themselves. Um, and that's been really fun.

• 1:24:08Rich Roll?

  So you're a documentary filmmaker. You've made a bunch of films. You're well-known in that area. And now you're making the documentary film version of the telepathy tapes while you've already made an audio documentary. Why did you begin with an audio documentary? Why didn't you just make, do what you know how to do and come out of the gate with the film documentary?

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, this is one of my favorite stories, I think, of my life because it just, it just shows how you never know what's gonna happen, right? So of course I wanted to make this a documentary first and started filming it as a feature and putting a lot of time and effort and energy into making sure this was real, that this, that I could put my mind, my heart, my reputation, my money behind it. I started seeing that this was a huge world, way bigger than something I could ever put into a feature documentary. So I, you know, started talking to different production companies, partnered with one, and we took it out to pitch as a docu-series, a four-part docu-series. We took it all around town, pitched it to various networks and streamers, you know, and it was met with

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  often tears. People saying like, "This is such an incredible story. Pitch, we haven't heard this before. We love it, we love it, we love it." And we got no's across the board. It didn't fit the mandate. What was it? It's not paranormal, it's not high celebrity, it's not true crime, it's not family necessarily. It's like, what was this? It didn't fit the algorithm. And my heart was like, broken after that happened because I felt like this was the biggest news in the world. And I've worked on five previous feature films. I've all found them to be important, but I didn't think it was like, the biggest news in the world. This one, I felt, this is different. This is so important. And how could no one see that? And then it's just, I went through my own cognitive dissonance of like, could I be wrong? Or does no one care? Like, am I just do not have my pulse on anything that's important? Like, what's wrong?

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Felt pretty devastated because when you get a no and you know how much money, you know, making a film takes. And so I was just like, I can't get this out. There's no possible way. There was just that kind of voice in my head that was like, but you could make a podcast. And then it just kind of was like screaming at me one time a day, which is like, you don't need anyone. Just get it out there. You don't need someone to green light it. Green light yourself. And I remember like running downstairs like, I'm making a podcast, you know, and like my whole family's like, you don't know how to make a podcast. And even talking to the families, a lot of them were like, that's a terrible idea, Kai. You know, spelling is stigmatized, telepathy is stigmatized. You have to see both to believe them. You can't do this with just audio. You have to see it to believe it. And my mind

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  is like, but this could be like the big nine hour pitch to the world. Someone will hopefully hear it and fund the documentary. Like this, this is the pitch. And like, that was my hope, that it would get to like the right ears somehow. I did not anticipate that the podcast would become, you know, a global sensation.

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  That never occurred to me.

• 1:27:00Rich Roll?

  It's wild. And now it is the, the series, the podcast series is the ultimate pitch for the documentary.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:08Rich Roll?

  Because of how widely it's been received.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I will say, we got our funding.

• 1:27:13Rich Roll?

  You would know how to do a podcast like this because you're a storyteller. And it's basically, you're making a documentary just without the visual part.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Once I started it, I was like, this is so much easier than making documentary. You don't have to have visuals, which is like just audio storytelling. Plus you can insert yourself as like a VO, like a, the glue. So for me, I thought, wow, this, this like medium, things we've seen online or emails we've gotten have been people saying like, I've had to pull over my car and just start crying, you know? And I was like, I don't know if that happens if you're watching television next to someone. It's different when you're processing something individually.

• 1:27:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a profoundly parasocial relationship that you develop with your audience. And, you know, I had the same experience. Like, I was very moved by aspects of, of the story in a way that maybe I wouldn't have been just watching it on a screen in my house. But

• 1:28:08Rich Roll?

  The visual image is a very powerful thing. And I think you're right to still pursue doing the documentary. But I think it speaks also to the shifting landscape of media. Like, as much as the tools of production and the democratization of access to filmmakers has been economized and made more accessible, they're still gatekeepers. It costs a lot of money to make a movie. You still need distribution on a certain platform. And podcasting really removes all of those and allows you to tell your story unfiltered. And I think we've seen, I'm interested in what you think about this as a filmmaker.

• 1:28:47Rich Roll?

  We have seen, at the same time, a seismic shift in what the platforms are open to in terms of documentary content. When I think back on the early days of Netflix, that was the greatest place in the world for documentary filmmakers. All these incredible movies that otherwise would have never been seen suddenly were like on the homepage and people were falling in love with documentaries. And watching like edgy content and, you know, sort of contrarian content or, you know, all these kind of like really interesting ideas, like that was the place for it.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:20Rich Roll?

  But now, these companies are so huge, they're interested in subscriber growth in foreign territories. And it doesn't matter how good a movie is, if it is even in the slightest bit controversial, it's just not worth the headache if it's gonna create a controversy or kind of threaten that arc of subscriber growth. So they're just not gonna take them. And I've seen amazing filmmakers, Oscar-winning filmmakers, have issues with their next film, like the platforms are not interested, like, no, no thank you. And then they're like, what are you talking about?

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:56Rich Roll?

  There's nowhere to go, right?

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a real issue, I think, because I think algorithms are making decisions more than people. And I think if you were to go back 10 or 15 years ago, there was a lot of like insight in the heart to like, this has, I see the story here, like it will resonate, right? And at a core level for people and like, okay, yes, I'm gonna throw my heart behind this. And I think now there's a lot of reliance on algorithms, on what has worked, what hasn't worked. Like, how do we fit this into that?

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  We know if you tell this story that at minute 4:30, like everyone's gonna tap out. You know, it's crazy how much data they have.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't think any amount of data and computerization can replace like that human instinct for like a good, knowing a really good story or a really good moment. And I deeply hope that people can be back engaged in making these decisions. And of course, they are to some degree, but I definitely think there's a big reliance on the algorithms and mandates. And I think that can be pretty limiting to, I think, some brilliant storytellers and creatives and visionaries at these streamers and networks who probably want to greenlight more, but just feel, they feel limited, I think, by the algorithms and the mandates.

• 1:31:03Rich Roll?

  I think the pendulum is always swinging, and when it goes too far, there's always a, there's always a reaction. You know, I think we're increasingly more and more attuned to like what's real and what's manufactured. And when a piece of content is the product of what the algorithm favors, we kind of, you know, we have our own spidey sense or intuition or telepathic, you know, kind of like sense like, hey, this isn't quite real, I'm craving something real. And when I watch the Oscars and a $6 million independent film, like, you know, basically is the biggest winner of the night, to me, that's like, that's a vote for humanity, right? Like, there was something authentic about that story and the way that it was told

• 1:31:48Rich Roll?

  that resonates deeply with us as human beings.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a big truth to that. And, you know, storytellers should be able to tell their thing and do it in their own way. And I think that the best stories will bubble up from that. But when you're trying to take a circle peg and jam it to a square hole because the algorithm says square, square, you're gonna ruin it sometimes.

• 1:32:12Rich Roll?

  And at the same time, you being somebody who's never done a podcast before,

• 1:32:17Rich Roll?

  isn't somebody that has like a gigantic digital, social media footprint. You create this thing. I mean, there's a narrative, it's too late for podcasting. There's millions of podcasts out there. It's just gonna get lost. Like, there's too much noise out there. You do this thing, and then it just goes right to the top. Like, people are craving, you know, this type of storytelling. And there's something about what you did that obviously like touched us as a species in a way that, you know, made it go viral in the way that it did. Like, how fast did that happen? Like, what do you attribute that to?

• 1:32:55Speaker 01

  I mean, what's so wild, right? It's like, I'm not big on social media. I even have other people now handling my social media. Like, I've never been into social media. And like, so we had, when we started the podcast, people like, you should probably have a Telepathies TikTok and Instagram. And it was like, okay, we put up one thing. It was like the Telepathies trailer. So we did not have any presence on social media. There was no budget, there was no money. I made this in a pillow fort in my bedroom. I mean, it was like really bespoke. And then beyond that, I didn't want any ads the whole first, like during the whole rise of last year, no ads, because I wanted to make sure people understood this was pure. We're not trying to profit on this. This is not like, oh, we're trying to make some money here and like pull these stories together. Like, it was like, let's keep it pure.

• 1:33:39Speaker 01

  And I don't know if that had made a difference, but maybe it did. Like, not having ads on right away so people understood, like, they can spread this and share it, and no one's gonna profit on it. I don't know if that made a difference or not. But I don't know what happened. I think it was like, I think TikTok at some point made it shift, you know? And I do think that like, a story that resonates, people will go tell other people to listen to. But I think it has to really resonate. And That's what I started seeing right away was we were getting text messages or emails from people I knew first, like, oh, my gosh, I heard this. I just listened to it because it was you. I didn't know you. But now I'm telling people like they can't talk to me until they listen to it, or like, everyone has to listen to it before it gets to Thanksgiving,

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  or my whole family has to listen to it. And mind you, this was during the heat of an election season that was extremely polarizing. And here's a show of story about love and unity and how we all matter and the connectivity of all of us. And I think that that was probably really refreshing and how damaged and effed up our world is right now, you know. But I think more than anything, then those people who heard it were telling their loved ones that you have to listen to this. And that was what I was hearing back is that people were saying like, you just have to listen to this. And people were getting it from so many different sources. And then I just think there was that critical tipping point. But I'll never forget, like, I can't emphasize enough how much I don't really go on social media. And my brother one day wrote me and he's like, I think you need to know that

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  there's been like over a million posts or whatever about your show on TikTok. And I'm like, what? It was like, what? And went and opened it. And, you know, there's the woman on the chairlift and the woman like with her big gulp and the woman here and the man here and the guy here and people doing PowerPoint presentations. And my eyeballs were like pinging out of my head because I just had no idea that that was happening. And that was, I'd say, like around November. And then by December, I think it was on Christmas Eve, when the telepathy tapes topped Joe Rogan as the number one show in the world.

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  And it created like a media cycle.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  It was so wild. I can't even, I mean, I just, it doesn't feel real to me. But it was, it was a fun thing for me to watch the families and teachers going through because here's individuals who've been experiencing this for decades without anyone believing them or listening to them.

• 1:35:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  And then finally, they're being listened to in the most profound way. And that, that was the takeaway. That was the most stellar.

• 1:36:02Rich Roll?

  I went on Reddit and just searched telepathy tapes just to see the various threads and, and commentary and.

• 1:36:10Rich Roll?

  You know, it's one thing for you to say, oh, all the emails from, you know, all these parents or whatever, but I saw a lot of that, like a lot of people who are like, I finally feel seen and heard. I've been having this experience with my child or whatever, like again and again and again and again.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:36:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's wild. How many people have listened to it? Do you know? Are you allowed to say?

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  Over 10 million.

• 1:36:30Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  I mean, that's like the total downloads. I think I know it's over. Yeah, I know it's over 10.

• 1:36:35Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  I don't know the exact number.

• 1:36:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And had you just made the documentary and, you know, it premiered at Sundance or whatever and ended up in an arthouse theater for a week and then on VOD on Amazon Prime, like you would have been thrilled to reach, you know, maybe 100,000 people.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:36:53Rich Roll?

  Or something like that.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Isn't that wild?

• 1:36:54Rich Roll?

  It's crazy, right?

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  I mean, and that's just, and this is why I love this story so much. And not because it happened to me, I would love it, like when searching for Sugar Man, like it's the same type of thing, right? Like just a story where like how you think something should go and will go, right? Like this docu-series is gonna get bought as a docu-series, you know, and streamed and people are gonna watch it. Like that to me was like, this is how it has to be. So people, it reaches people and blah, blah, blah. And when that didn't happen, I was just devastated, you know, but like what, what was in store was so much bigger than anything I could have ever imagined. And it went the right way. Like the podcast had to go first. There needed to be nine hours of describing this and the behind the scenes stuff and crew having their mind blown and conversations with crew and what they witnessed and parents and teachers and blah, blah, blah. Like all those things that you

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  can't put in a documentary, you can't put in Zoom calls. That looks terrible, you know? I mean, you can a little bit, but like not to the extent that we use them or like side conversations. Like a lot of that stuff that's breaking the fourth wall doesn't really work in a documentary, a little bit, but not

• 1:37:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  totally. So it's like having this forum, it just felt like, my goodness, this is always how it needed to go.

• 1:38:00Rich Roll?

  And you had to get out of the way. It's sort of like you were incarnated for a reason. Part of that reason is to help tell this story. Self-will enters. I know better. I know how this is supposed to go. Consciousness is like, hold my beer, like, get out of the way. Like, you know, you're interfering with the flow of how this is supposed to go. And when you kind of like relinquish your, um, your like need to control it in that way that your limited mind is telling you, this is the way it has to be. You create that space for, you know, mystery and magical outcomes, like in a way that you could have never predicted.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  I love that you said that because no one else has like picked up on that. But there was that moment where, I mean, I was like praying, praying, praying, like thinking, manifesting, like things all over my house. Like, it was like incredible how dedicated I was to making sure that this four-part film version of the docu-series.

• 1:38:53Rich Roll?

  But with a certainty that like, I'm here to tell this story. I don't know why, you know?

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  But it was like, and so when it didn't happen, it was just like a tumbling down of the whole tower of cards. But then to what you just said was so interesting because I almost forgot about this until you said that. I remember saying to God, to the universe, you know, like, okay, I surrender. Like, I thought that I was shepherding the story the way I was supposed to. And clearly I wasn't. So I surrender. However, if it's, if I'm supposed to work on it, great. If I'm not, fine. If it should be in someone else's hands, do it. Just you make the shots now, I surrender. If you want me to be a vessel, I will. I'm done. I'm surrendering. And that was like a conversation I had that was just like, I clearly was not right, doing

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  this right in the driver's seat, like obsessed with it being a four-part docu-series. And I think it was like literally two days later that I woke up and ran downstairs. Like, it's gotta be a podcast. And it went so fast then. It was just like all summer long. I mean, I was working like 60, 70 hours a week, just writing, recording, writing, recording. And then, you know, listening to it over and over. And then, okay, this episode's done, like the next one. And, and it was just, it was like a insatiable craze, like that just carried me for like the next six months of my life, hours a week. And then it was just out, you know, but it's like when I got out of the way, when I truly got out of the way and I was like, I surrender is when

• 1:40:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  everything happened. And then more money than any documentary that I've ever had as far as budget flowed in from, from donors, you know, just like with such love, just like, keep the story your own, no strings attached, rock and roll. And it's been like, what? You know, this just doesn't happen.

• 1:40:38Rich Roll?

  There's an incredible life lesson in that. That has nothing to do with telepathy or documentary filmmaking and everything about like your relationship to life. Like, it's good to have goals, ambition, passion, you know, this trajectory or this thing that you're trying to put out into the world. But when you hold on to it too tight, you constrict it, you suffocate it. And it's the courage of the surrender, you know, I think it gets confused with cowardice, but like, it's a very courageous thing to say, I'm willing to let this go, you know, and let's, let's let, you know, whatever it's meant to be, let's be in a state of allowing it. And that's where, you know,

• 1:41:18Rich Roll?

  in my, you know, life, like, that's where all this stuff comes in, you know, when you inhabit that space.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's funny because I think back to like, my friend Rebecca, who was the translator for the Mia episodes, she was there, she saw this with her own eyes and, you know, she's an animator and a director for animated projects. So this was kind of out of her world. And when all this was unfolding, I remember just like with the devastation of it all, when everything let go, I think like she was one of the few people that I was just like, man, I'm crushed. Like I'm heartbroken. Like there's no way to go from here. And she would be like, what's in store for you is so much bigger than what you have in your own mind. And I was like, come on, man.

• 1:41:57Rich Roll?

  Fuck off. No one wants to hear that.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she would be like, what you are planning is so limiting compared to what the universe has in store for you. And it was, I just like, wasn't a place to hear it. And it was just like, oh no, I don't even know what it means. Like stop. And like, it's so funny in retrospect to be like, gosh, like that like philosophy is so true and reigning, you know, if you just let go.

• 1:42:20Rich Roll?

  But it's sort of doubly ironic because Of the subject matter that you were covering, like of all people, like you've just, you know, you're talking to these people who are like on the hill, you know, I'm like, it's consciousness and all of that. And then when you're, when you're confronted, you know, with your own kind of, you know,

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Ego.

• 1:42:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, ego, right? Like, you can't see the story that you're actually trying to tell.

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:42Rich Roll?

  You're in your own way.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:44Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:45Rich Roll?

  And the idea that the universe could, you know, maybe provide something that you couldn't imagine is something you couldn't hear, despite the fact that that was the entire story that you're trying to tell.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really weird. Because Rebecca's like, let go of the steering wheel, dude. Like, it's gonna be bigger and better if you're not driving. And I was just like, what do you mean? Like, I'm the driver, you know?

• 1:43:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  And then it was just like, I did. And someone was like, forget it. Okay, I'm getting out of the car. Whatever. It's over. I've tried, I failed. Like, that was my mindset, so I surrender. And then, anyway, it was, it's a really, yeah, for me, that was, it was the lesson I needed to learn, I think. Right? Like, you have to completely let go of ego. And I keep telling that to all the non-speakers and families that I'm involved with. Like, there's two things. Like, I want to tell it the right way by you, or not at all. Like, if this, we'll never sell out, this will never be exploited, like, this is, you know, we need to keep the independence. And then two, if any of it ever gets too much, or it becomes too big, too fast, too wild, too overwhelming, pencils down. Just we'll walk away, over, you know, just dropping it. And I think, that's nice, because it

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  keeps the non-speakers in control, you know? And we're constantly checking in with each other, like, how are we doing? How are we feeling here?

• 1:43:55Rich Roll?

  Because you're just in service to them and this story. And in whatever way, like, you need to show up or recede into the background, you know, for their benefit, your willingness to do that is what allows the story to like, have life breathed into it.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  I mean, they don't have a voice, you know? So it's like, there has to be such a...

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  Just, you know, they're just, they just have to be front and center. And I'm actually really excited because on the documentary, we've hired five non-speaking members of the production team. So it's more than our speaking members of the production team. Two will be in charge of like graphics, helping depict with the GFX house what the hill looks like, what the realms look like, what these, what it means.

• 1:44:35Rich Roll?

  And they can go to the hill to make those decisions and have those meetings?

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they probably can. You're right. And we've been trying to find like a metaphorical film to hill. And like, I've been sending some pictures and, you know, I think sometimes the two non-speaking advisors are kind of like, I mean, it will work. Like, it's like, we're so far off the mark probably.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  You hire like Alex Gray or somebody to conceptualize it.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And then two non-speaking story consultants, and they're actually a couple, and that's great. And both type independently into like a keyboard, which is really helpful. And then one non-speaker who is like in his 30s, and he is going to be like our science consultant to kind of be like, does this feel great? Is this possible with the physiology? You know, kind of helping that we keep the good ethical guardrails around the testing from the non-speaking point of view.

• 1:45:23Rich Roll?

  How has this whole journey impacted your life on a day-to-day basis? Like, do you catch yourself thinking more expansively about life and death? And you're like, like, what is a tangible kind of product of having, you know, walked this path? And like, how does it show up like when you're at the grocery store or just doing mundane tasks and being in a body?

• 1:45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think two things. I don't doubt now that consciousness survives the body after death. Like, that to me has been the biggest gift in this that I was not expecting. For me, it's a certainty. Like, I don't feel afraid of dying. I don't even feel afraid of other people dying. I'm just, I mean, I hate that you hate to say goodbye to people you love. I don't want to live life without my spouse, my kids, or my parents, or, you know, but, but there is a certainty that like, it's okay. And that is really a calming thing to have, that peace. And I think too, just this overwhelming sense of love, like always trying to tune to love and really seeing individuals as yourself.

• 1:46:28Speaker 01

  And I think I've always sort of been a kind loving being, you know? It's not like a big reach, but really trying to be like, what matters most is how we make other people feel, how we, how we care for others. Doing right by other people is like the most important thing to me now, more than anything else.

• 1:46:47Rich Roll?

  As we kind of wrap it up here, like, what is the core thing, if there's any additional ripple to what you just shared, that you want people to take away from, from the telepathy tape series?

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I've always had three goals, like, one is, I hope people presume competence in non-speaking individuals. It just, because someone can't control their body or can't speak, doesn't mean they can't think, you know, trust that they're in there, assume they're in there, you know, and proceed that way. And with that, I hope the education system changes. The second thing is to validate spelling. I want spelling to be in schools, in our workplaces, in our communities, so non-speaking individuals can be active members of society, and that we're meeting them where they're at, instead of asking them to come to where we're at, you know, and I think that will change so many lives. And the telepathy was almost like a Trojan horse to get people to care about the non-speakers, you know, it's all real, but, but I think that's the most important thing. And then third, of

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  course, is the shift in the paradigm. I do think it's ridiculous that people are made to feel silly, or foolish, or gullible, or not smart, if they believe this stuff. And I think it's, I think it's unfortunate that scientists are made to feel like they're not real scientists if they're asking these questions, because what if we are wrong? What if the earth isn't flat? What if the earth isn't the center of the universe? What if disease is caused by germs? What if genetics does cause how we look? Like, all these things that have been dismissed throughout the course of time as wild scientific ideas when they first appeared, like, this could be another one of those ideas. And I would love to see scientists and researchers and just individuals be open to this idea, and proceed to, you know, and just follow where it goes, and see what happens, because our paradigm might be wrong.

• 1:48:29Rich Roll?

  I love it. You're in the early days of the documentary, so obviously, it's gonna be, it's, this is not like on the immediate horizon, right?

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Next spring, I think.

• 1:48:37Rich Roll?

  Two years or something? Oh, that soon?

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, cool.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:40Rich Roll?

  That's pretty soon.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  We're gonna be done filming by August.

• 1:48:42Rich Roll?

  Do you have a distribution partner already?

• 1:48:43Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:48:44Rich Roll?

  Or you'll deal with that when it comes?

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, not yet. Yeah. Right now, we're like, super focused on just keeping the family safe, right? Keeping this tight and loving and effective. And then we hope to have filming done by August, September. We've got an editor working full time, starting this month. Yeah, and then we'll worry about the next steps.

• 1:49:02Rich Roll?

  Amazing. Was there any story or occurrence that you experienced, you know, over the course of the projects that you're on with respect to this? That was just too crazy? Like, you're like, this is amazing, but like, I can't quite prove it, or it just doesn't, I'll get attacked, or whatever. So I'm just not gonna put it in.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  Yes, and I think it's just like, we can't even end without saying this. Like, non-speaking individuals are like, they're not like oracles. They're human beings. They have teenage interests.

• 1:49:30Rich Roll?

  They're not precogs like in Minority Report.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, not at all. Like, Lily, like, we're filming in Atlanta, like, wants to go like, go-kart racing and biking and like, you know, these individuals have their age-appropriate interests and ideas and wanna watch silly stuff on YouTube and have friends and get married and they have romantic interests. Like, all the things that make a person a person are all there. Like, this is just like a tiny little bit of also who they are. So people focusing only on that is like a fear because, you know, these are human beings first.

• 1:50:03Rich Roll?

  Well, it's incredible stuff. Like I said, I was riveted by the series. Everybody should check it out. And it was a delight to talk to you. And I can't wait to see the documentary. This is all like, mind-blowing shit. It's crazy. Like, I don't even, I don't even know, like, I don't know what to say. Like, I'm literally like, I don't even know how to end this. Like, my mind is spinning. But it was really a pleasure to talk to you. And I'm a fan. Can't wait to see the doc.

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:50:28Rich Roll?

  Thanks, Kai.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Thank you so much.

• 1:50:29Rich Roll?

  If people wanna find you, check you out, all your stuff, obviously, the Telepathy Tapes, wherever you enjoy podcasts, but anywhere else? You have all this bonus content, videos and things like that as well.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  That's on telepathytapes.com. Yeah, and all my handles are just Kai Dickens, K Y Dickens. And the Telepathy Tapes has its own, own everything now TikTok, Instagram, Twitter as well.

• 1:50:49Rich Roll?

  Cool. Well, when the doc's done, please come back.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  I will, for sure.

• 1:50:53Rich Roll?

  Cheers.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Peace.

• 1:51:05Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as The Plant Power Meal Planner at mealplanner.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful.

• 1:51:49Rich Roll?

  This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors, who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae, with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shanice Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created, all the way back in 2012,

• 1:52:34Rich Roll?

  by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.