Some Psychic Abilities Are Dangerous: Aliens, Telepathy & Discovering Your Gifts | Dr. Dean Radin

October 13, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Some Psychic Abilities Are Dangerous: Aliens, Telepathy & Discovering Your Gifts | Dr. Dean Radin

When people ask Dr. Dean Radin how to become more psychic, his usual response is: "Are you sure you want to do that?" He regularly receives emails from people disturbed by uncontrolled psychic ability—precognitions, telepathic intrusions, information they cannot turn off. "That can easily drive them crazy," he says. Radin is chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where he has spent decades studying telepathy, precognition, intuition, and the possibility that everything in reality is connected. His work sits at an unusual intersection: using rigorously mainstream scientific methods to test hypotheses that mainstream science mostly rejects.

The science of studying what science dismisses

Radin's career includes stints at Bell Labs, Princeton's PEAR lab, and the government's Stargate program, where his mission was straightforward: "Is remote viewing a real thing? Can we identify people who are really good at it?" He describes watching exceptionally talented individuals "describe in great gory detail what was happening on the other side of the planet and be correct." Those experiences changed his belief system.

Continue reading the full summary in the app — free to try.

Read Full Summary →

Free • No credit card required

Listen to Audio Summary Open in App

Never miss an episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown

Get every new episode summarized in your inbox — free, ~5 minutes to read.

No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

What you'll learn

1 (00:04) **The Danger of Uncontrolled Psychic Ability** - Radin warns that asking "how do I become more psychic?" is risky if you don't understand the downside.
2 (05:03) **Defining Noetic Sciences** - Radin explains the term popularized by William James, referring to deep intuition carrying a sense of certainty that the information is correct.
3 (08:08) **Normalizing Psychic Potential and Removing Blocks** - Radin discusses how upbringing and academic training create constraints on worldview that block psychic sensitivity.
4 (10:11) **Magic, Science, and the Disenchantment of the World** - Radin traces how the Enlightenment and the Catholic Church's power split led to a Western worldview that abandoned the study of consciousness.
5 (22:25) **The Scientific Legitimacy of Psi Research** - Radin explains that the methods used to study psi are identical to mainstream science, only the hypothesis differs.
6 (28:02) **Career Background and Bona Fides** - Radin establishes his mainstream credentials (Bell Labs, Princeton, Stargate program) to show that the topic, not the methodology, drives skepticism.
7 (31:11) **Telepathy: From Thought Transference to the Ganzfeld** - Radin walks through the evolution of telepathy experiments, from flawed 1800s designs to modern controlled studies.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

What if telepathy, precognition, remote viewing, psychic abilities, and even “magic” are real, but science has been looking at them the wrong way? Could human consciousness actually be connected across space and time? Could your brain and body be responding to information from the future without you consciously knowing it?

In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Dr. Dean Radin, Chief Scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) & Cofounder of neuroengineering company Cognigenics, explores some of the biggest questions at the intersection of consciousness, quantum physics, parapsychology, psychic phenomena, telepathy, precognition, remote viewing, and the nature of reality.

Dr. Radin explains what Noetic science actually is and why decades of research into “paranormal” phenomena continue to challenge conventional scientific assumptions. He explores evidence suggesting that human consciousness may influence quantum reality and whether the relationship between mind and matter could help explain phenomena like prayer.

Why can’t psychics use their abilities to win the lottery? If precognition exists, is the future actually fixed, or are we simply sensing probabilities? And when you have a powerful intuition or premonition, are you predicting the future, or accidentally manifesting your own fears?

We also dive into the mystery of telepathy, tracing the history of scientific telepathy experiments and how researchers have attempted to test them over the years. What blocks psychic intuition in the first place? Could constant stimulation, distraction, technology, and the noise of the outside world be preventing us from accessing subtle information? Are humans already responding physiologically to “nonlocal” information without consciously realizing it?

Dr. Radin also discusses why AI may be biased against conclusions that validate paranormal phenomena, and the strange history of how Western civilization went from believing in magic to rejecting it, a transformation sometimes described as the “disenchantment of the world.” From his perspective as a scientist, what would it take to make paranormal phenomena more scientifically acceptable to study?

We examine one of the biggest problems in parapsychology: reproducibility. Why are paranormal laboratory results so difficult to replicate? Are the phenomena themselves variable, or are traditional scientific methods running into fundamental boundaries when applied to consciousness?

We explore government research into remote viewing - including how Dr. Radin's interest in the paranormal was influenced by research connected to the U.S. government's Stargate program - and tackle one of the most controversial questions surrounding modern paranormal experiences: Why do certain people seem able to encounter or summon orbs or nonhuman intelligence (NHI), while others never experience anyt