The human brain generates 3kJ of electrical current every millisecond, 10kJ if we’re thinking really hard. That’s not even including the amount of electricity pulsing through our nerves to wiggle fingers and toes, to enable us to lift a cement block to build a house, or to carress a loved one’s thigh. It’s not even including the times our body talks to us: the butterflies in our stomach, pins and needles on our arm when our high school crush touches it.

In reality, 3kJ is not all that much current, but it’s enough to create an electromagentic or EM field. We can measure, isolate, and plot this field with instruments using sophisticated equipment: EEG sensors, ECoG maps on our brain’s surface, MEG machines, or neurologic diodes. But then there are those very few people that don’t need such primitive instruments. There are those that can listen, decode, and in some rare cases influence brain activity.

Meet Joe Smith. Don’t let the name fool you; it’s an average name for someone who has an IQ of 255.