S1: Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman on today's show. Mental telepathy and autism in children. Documents reveal Jeffrey Epstein funded some of that research at UCSD. We'll unpack that and talk about how his research interests connect. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. So earlier this month on the show , we talked about the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Deepak Chopra , San Diego based wellness guru and author. Well , thousands of documents revealed Chopra's longtime correspondence with Epstein over the years , and UC San Diego has said that Chopra's affiliation with the university will end in June. But still , Moore files reveal that Epstein provided funding for a UC San Diego lab led by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran. The research in question whether autistic children have telepathic abilities. Well , Lucas Robinson has been covering this for the San Diego Union-Tribune , and he joins me now. Welcome to midday Edition , Lucas.
S2: Thank you. Jane , good to be with you.
S1: Glad to have you here in studio. So there's so much to talk about in this story , but let's start where you did with the major release of Epstein Files in January. How did you discover the San Diego connection there ? Sure.
S2: So I was it was a Friday when those files came out from the Justice Department. And like a lot of people , I was quote unquote working and looking at Twitter and reading what people were finding. And over the course of that day , I started to see people mention , as you mentioned in the intro , Chopra's connection. And then I saw other folks mentioning his connections to UCSD. And I'd already known from following the Epstein story that he had a lot of ties with academics. So from there , I just started punching , searching UCSD San Diego into the Justice Department's database and kind of , from there , started pulling the thread on Epstein's connections to faculty at UCSD , which go well beyond a Chopra. Wow.
S1: Wow. Well , okay. So , like people unfamiliar with the neuroscience world may be unfamiliar with the name V.S. Ramachandran. Tell me about who he is. Sure.
S2: Sure. So I did not know who he was before we started reporting. But he is a titan in the field of neuroscience. It kind of people refer to him as almost the Marco Polo of neuroscience. So a very serious person. And I was working with my colleague Gary Robbins on this story , who is our covers a lot of higher ed for the UT. And when I mentioned Ramachandran involvement , he immediately was like , oh , he's famous. And so I kind of early on realized that we were , you know , maybe not someone who's a household name , but someone who is very , you know , well known and regarded in this field.
S1: What would we know maybe what some of his research has led to.
S2: He did a lot of research , I think in the late 90s , early 2000 about phantom limbs and kind of explaining neurologically how that phenomenon works. He also did a lot of research into autism , also kind of over in that period of time in the early aughts. Interesting.
S1: Interesting.
S2: As far as how they first meet , it's kind of unclear. Reporting on these files is interesting because you only can kind of get from them almost like a photograph in time of what information was being shared with Epstein himself on his email. So you kind of got to , like , piece together all these disparate parts to kind of build a build a picture. But but we do know Chopra started working at UCSD in 2016 , and we do know not long after that , him and Ramachandran started discussing a shared interest in studying autistic children and savant ism , uh , autistic children with kind of exceptional abilities , so to speak. And from there , they kind of branch down even further into this interest in the supposed telepathic abilities of autistic children. So him we do know , at least , that him and Chopra started collaborating pretty much immediately after Chopra arrived to campus.
S1: And Epstein enters. The story went. Again.
S2: Again. Another thing I think some people have kind of figured out , well , let me go back. So we do know in the files that Epstein has some sort of relationship with Chopra as early as 2010 , because in Epstein's emails , there was a funding request addressed to Epstein from the center at UCSD that Ramachandran was in charge of the center for Brain and Cognition. So Epstein and Ramachandran knew each other as early as 2010 could be earlier ? We don't know. And then his relationship with Chopra started sometime in the 20 tens. And kind of all three coalesced around 2016 , 2017. And Epstein was in San Diego for a conference in mid 2017 that all of these different characters attended. So we kind of were able , through the reporting , to put them all in the same room at one point around this time , I see.
S1: Well , let's talk about the research at the center of this story. Um , my understanding is that they were looking into whether autistic children have telepathic abilities. Tell me about the research.
S2: So I think it would be helpful to start that this idea didn't really come out of nowhere. It's something that's a popular idea online. And there's a podcast from a couple of years ago called The Telepathy Tapes that's apparently really popular. I'd never heard of this until I started doing this reporting , but as I've kind of just brought it up to people in my lives , a lot of people have listened to this podcast , and it follows this researcher who has these alleged case studies of autistic children demonstrating telepathy. So , uh , this research that Epstein was affiliated with. It kind of started early with Chopra studying a child based out of new Jersey. And the way it. Their research or their study worked is imagine the child is put in like a corner of the room , and then the child's mother is in another part of the room , and the mother has a series of numbers in front of her , and she's kind of reading them to herself in her head and from across the room and out of sight. The child is kind of able to write down exactly the numbers that the mom is seeing , and that was how the research was explained to us by another UCSD faculty member named Paul Mills , who was involved in it and was there at the time. So a lot of these cases of telepathy involve some sort of exercise or study like that , where a parent of a child is kind of off to another side and the child is allegedly spitting back out the words or numbers that the parent is seeing. Wow.
S1: Wow. So these are this is a real situation that they've been researching. You spoke with a health policy professor about this type of autism research.
S2: He said telepathy doesn't exist. You know , I think a lot of more established folks in this field are very quick to dismiss this as pseudoscience. I think for obvious reasons. However , though I don't think that minimizes the fact that someone like Ramachandran , someone like this other professor I mentioned named Paul Mills and Chopra. They are not people on the fringes of academia. I mean , these are very established people in their field. So I think it's obviously there's a lot of people who would dismiss this out of hand. But I think it is just interesting to note that fairly serious academics were entertaining this idea that a lot of people would just consider pseudoscience , and not only that , they were using their position and clout at UCSD to pursue this kind of research.
S1: Right ? Well , this UC San Diego example , I mean , it's one of many instances where Epstein built relationships with researchers across the country. I mean , we're talking about well-respected institutions where he made these connections like UCLA , Harvard , Yale , Stanford , and a lot more.
S2: I mean , there are people at the most respected , regarded institutions in the United States who had very close , friendly relationships with him. And all the evidence seems to suggest that they could not faint ignorance , that they knew who he was and the things he had been convicted for in the past , etc. , of his , you know , reputation. Uh , I mean , I have a list here. There was a computer science professor at Yale , Ill. Who in the files like discuss the appearance of female students with Epstein ? There were some other physics professors at places like Harvard. Uh , the academic Noam Chomsky. Chomsky , the linguist who was at MIT , had a very close relationship with him. But to your question , uh , Epstein was interested in science and funded a lot of programs looking at neurology , physics , mathematics , even artificial intelligence. The files show he was really in on AI stuff , even in the mid 20 tens , when a lot of us , you know , didn't really have an idea of what it was beyond what was in movies. So he really put a lot of financial resources into propping up kind of his pet science projects that were being done by very serious , uh , well-established academics.
S1:
S2: Well , he gave money to it. He gave $50,000 to this research , a lot of it from the at least what we can see in the emails. Him and Chopra were regularly sharing news items or other internet posts about this idea of autism and telepathy and autistic children. So we don't really have anything showing that he was directing the research , but he was very much constantly kept in the loop. Chopra was regularly forwarding him emails about how the research was progressing and that they had , you know , identified children locally in San Diego and Southern California , and there were plans to bring them to UCSD for this research. So Epstein was very much kept in the loop by the by Chopra about what was going on.
S1: But he didn't have direct access to the children.
S2: Not that we don't know. Okay.
S1: Okay. Um , you know , what does all of this reveal about , like scrutiny and research funding and even the ethics of some of the research. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. Well , we that was a question we wanted to address in the story. And I spoke with a professor at UC Riverside who looks at a lot of kind of , I guess , the economics of research and higher education. And , you know , I think it's important to note that academics are kind of in this constant chase for dollars , whether that be from the federal government , the NIH , very established foundations. You know , I'm sure anyone will tell you it is a very time consuming part of their job. However , though , when you're trying to secure funding from something like the NIH , they put you through a very rigorous battery of testing , so to speak. I mean , the people that are looking at these grant applications are experts in the field that someone is seeking funding for. So there's a lot of peer review that goes on with it. However , though , when you my understanding from what you're talking to people is when you kind of go through the root of what they were doing of a private individual , a private individual. That might be Jeffrey Epstein. You know , he's not going to put you through the kind of serious peer review and have the strings attached to getting the money.
S1: Well , you know , we know that Epstein was fascinated with eugenics and other fields like cryonics , low temperature preservation of the dead.
S3:
S2: Make it into the story , but I was talking to an autism researcher out of Boston about this , and she made that connection that a lot of autism research historically going back to Nazi Germany , for instance , kind of blended eugenics with the study of autistic people , especially children. So it it's , you know , he's nowhere in the emails. Epstein isn't saying , I'm interested in this because I'm a eugenicist. But when you kind of start to connect the dots , it brings up a lot more questions of like. I mean , it strains credulity to say that Jeffrey Epstein had the best interest of artistic children in mind when he was doing this stuff. So you kind of you're left to make the connections yourself. But there's a lot of things swirling around that raise questions about how these two things might be connected. Yeah.
S1: Yeah. And even how his island is connected to all of this.
S2: They told us very little about what that consisted of , what when it might be done , that sort of thing. So I think that is something we'll want to follow when this review comes out , if it's released publicly. What they do find in it. Um , and I think I'm also just kind of like to your previous question , just this question of why Epstein seemed to be interested in gifted children. Uh , you know , whether that be , you know , Epstein went to Interlochen , which is a art school in Michigan , because he was very good at music as a child. So he kind of had this lifelong interest in gifted children and children with exceptional abilities. It's hard. We may never know what that was all really about , but it's something in the Epstein story that is very disturbing and kind of was really on my mind a lot as we reported this. Yeah.
S1: Yeah.
S3:
S2: Keeping an eye out to see what might come down from UCSD with their review , but I , I'm not the UCSD reporter. I kind of just stumbled upon this story. And it was it was a very rewarding story to publish , so I was happy to work on it.
S1: Well , thanks for your work on that. I've been speaking with Lucas Robinson. He is a reporter with the San Diego Union-Tribune , and you can find his full story linked on our website , KPBS. Lucas , thank you so much for for this conversation.
S2: Of course. Thank you.
S1: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition.
S4: Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
