S2E23: It’s Never Too Late | Talk Tracks
episodePreviously titled “S1E23: It’s Never Too Late | Talk Tracks” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 5, 2026
Transcript
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What is the significance of communication for nonspeakers?
Hi, welcome back to the Telepathy Tapes Talk Tracks. Today we have Betsy Hicks Russ and her son Joe, who just started to learn spelling at the age of 30.
How did Joe start spelling at the age of 30?
And around that time is also when truth around telepathy and presuming competence and everything came out. Joe's going to be up and down, in and out as he feels comfortable. And I'm so excited to share your story today. Hi, everyone. I'm Kai Dickens, and I'm thrilled to welcome you to the Talk Trax. In this series, we'll dive deeper into the revelations, challenges, and unexpected truths from the telepathy tapes. We'll feature conversations with groundbreaking researchers, thinkers, non-speakers, and experiencers who illuminate the extraordinary connections that may defy explanation today, but won't for long. If the telepathy tapes changed the way you see your non-speaking child, but left you wondering what to do next, we made a show just for you.
The Telepathy Tapes Now What is a new companion series hosted by two parents of non-speakers who've been there.
What is presuming competence and why is it important?
They offer guidance, resources, and real conversations about how to move forward once you know your child is truly in there. You don't have to figure this out alone. Find Now What on the Telepathy Tapes YouTube channel and wherever you listen to your podcasts. Today we have an incredible mother and son, Betsy and Joe. So why don't we start by introducing yourselves?
Hi, I'm Betsy Hicks-Russ, and I'm the mother of Joe, who's 32 years old. We live in the state of Washington, and we have a lot of fun being very, very active, cycling, hiking, and we bring the world around with us as we do it.
And Joe, do you want to start by weighing in on anything at all? Minutes.
H, I, and get there, get there, K. I know. There you go. Hi, Kai. And is that it? Yeah, that's it. There we go. We're excited to have you here. There we go. There's a lot of enthusiasm in that.
Yeah.
Do you want to start by kind of giving your backstory and what led you on this couch today?
I'd love to do the backstory because it's really interesting how it all unfolded. So Joe's 32 and I was in the autism industry through my late husband who was a pediatrician and so we worked with a lot of autism and I did that for 16 years. He passed away 10 years ago and I really thought I knew all there was to know and I had resigned. You know, he's not in there. I'm never going to communicate with him. He doesn't understand.
How has Joe's ability to express himself changed family dynamics?
And how old was Joe when you were feeling that way? We're talking sadly like three years ago. We're not talking a long time ago. We're talking of an entire like almost 30 years of me thinking that my son did not understand anything. or very little, and really resigning to severe autism and all the words that they use. I just thought he had IDD, intellectual developmental disability. I just didn't think he had any abilities. And one day, I made a post on social media, which still haunts me, that I said, somebody asked me, how much do you think Joe knows? And I'm like, eh. You know, I think it's like a foreign language where you understand some of the words and you don't understand the rest. And somebody had reached out and said to me, you know, I thought that about my son too, and now we have spelling.
And I had heard about it before, but I just didn't know how accessible it would be for us to be able to get somewhere. We lived in not a huge city. So I looked into it, and it was five hours to get to a practitioner, and we started to go. And just like every parent, you hope that first one is going to be like, hi, mom. You're going to say something really incredible. And he fell asleep during the first one and probably the second one and probably the first five after that. No indication that he understood anything. And I was kind of laughing at my commitment to it. Like, why am I even doing this? But I did it and I just kept going until one day the practitioner said to me, hey, I'm moving to Bellingham where I live.
And I'm like, well, that's a sign. So we started going every week and I could see that he was now starting to understand the lessons and he was still falling asleep and he was still having meltdowns and he still would only attend for like 10 minutes.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the significance of communication for nonspeakers?
0:00–0:11
2
How did Joe start spelling at the age of 30?
0:11–1:04
3
What is presuming competence and why is it important?
1:04–2:38
4
How has Joe's ability to express himself changed family dynamics?
2:38–10:10
5
How does nature influence Joe's well-being and communication?
10:10–17:40
6
What is Joe's message to families regarding late communication?
17:40–35:57
7
What insights does Joe have about spirituality and connection?
35:57–57:34
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The Telepathy Tapes
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S2E46: The Languages of Intuition | Talk Tracks
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