 So far on Think101, we've been trying to give people a better way of seeing the way that their mind actually works. And so we've been dealing with cognitive processes, heuristics and biases that people use to help them navigate the complexity that they see and interact with in the world. Over the last few episodes, we've been applying all of that to different claims. And so a couple episodes ago, we talked about extraordinary claims like psychics and ESP and horoscopes. This week, we're going to be dealing with applied claims. So this is following on from the health claims, which we did last week, homeopathy and cancer clusters. This week, with applied claims, we're dealing with topics that influence the lives and livelihoods of people, where people's lives are literally at stake. And the same sorts of processes are operating here as well. That's right. The first one we're going to deal with today is a technique called facilitated communication. And this is for people who are autistic or who have severe brain damage or mental retardation. Now, these people are non-verbal. They can't communicate verbally with the world. So the idea is, okay, well, let's help them to communicate by tapping letters out on a keyboard or touching pictures, then they'll be able to communicate. But autistic individuals, for example, get stuck when they're typing. They can initiate the movement, but then they perseverate. They persist and they keep typing. So with the help of a facilitator, that is a person helping them by guiding their hand, they can initiate the, help initiate the action of an autistic child and then help pull them back so they don't get caught in that loop and then help them push forward again. So they're just guiding the autistic child to where they want to go. Now, all of a sudden, with the help of a facilitator, these autistic individuals can communicate in ways they couldn't before, in full sentences. It's quite impressive. It is impressive. It almost seems incredible. So previously, you'd have these children. Imagine being a parent of an autistic child and they're non-verbal. They're trapped in a sense, but finding out with the aid of a facilitator that they have this rich inner life, that they can, in fact, communicate, that they want to communicate. All of a sudden, they're telling you about how their day was. Now they can go to school. They can write letters. They can write poetry. Doing complex mathematics. That's right. And a lot of the sort of reports, the communications that come from these kids are extremely elaborate, right? They're telling you about the fact that they've been trapped for years and it's incredible. It's almost too good to be true. And in fact, I talked to Scott Allen about exactly this topic and here's what he had to say.