Joshua Schmude wants you to do something unusual: record yourself speaking, play it backwards, and listen carefully. What you hear, he argues, might reveal something your conscious mind never intended to say—and possibly hint at what’s yet to come.
His book, Reverse Speech in Theory and Practice, makes a bold claim wrapped in an even bolder challenge. Rather than asking readers to believe in reverse speech analysis on faith, Schmude—a K-12 educator and certified analyst trained by reverse speech founder David John Oates—presents it as something anyone can investigate at home. All you need is a recording device and patience.
The premise sounds fringe at first: that human speech, when reversed, contains hidden messages called “reversals” that may express unconscious thoughts or even predict future events. But Schmude isn’t promoting mysticism. He’s pitching replicability. His approach frames reverse speech not as spiritual doctrine, but as a testable hypothesis grounded in qualitative research methods.
A Method Anyone Can Try
What separates Schmude’s work from typical speculative writing is the invitation to verify his findings independently. The book walks readers through step-by-step processes for recording, reversing, and analyzing speech. One Amazon reviewer praised this accessibility: “Very good and well written. The author takes you step by step into the method.”
Another reader, initially doubtful, noted: “I went in skeptical, but I can’t deny the patterns I’m hearing. Something is definitely going on here.” These aren’t glowing endorsements of belief—they’re descriptions of experience, which is precisely the point Schmude seems intent on making. Don’t take his word. Take your own recordings.
Bridging Education and Unconventional Research
Schmude’s background as an educator teaching English and math to students from kindergarten through high school adds an interesting dimension. He’s not a fringe theorist working in isolation—he’s someone who communicates complex ideas to young minds daily. That skill translates into his writing, which readers describe as approachable and methodical.
His certification under David John Oates in 2009 also grounds his work in a lineage of reverse speech study, lending structure to what might otherwise seem like wild speculation. Through educational courses and private tutoring, Schmude is working to expand understanding of these techniques beyond the book itself.
What Comes Next
Schmude’s larger ambition appears to be opening a door rather than closing an argument. He’s written what he describes as the first replicable scientific test of the unconscious mind’s precognitive abilities using speech reversals—a claim that invites scrutiny, debate, and experimentation.
One verified Amazon purchaser summed up the effect: “This book opened up a whole new world for me. I’ve already begun doing my own recordings and I’m hearing things I can’t explain.”
Whether reverse speech holds water as a predictive tool remains open to interpretation. But Schmude’s insistence on making the research accessible means readers don’t have to rely on his conclusions. They can form their own. For those drawn to frontier ideas about consciousness, language, and perception, exploring reverse speech analysis might be worth the experiment.
In a media environment saturated with noise, Schmude asks a simple question: are we listening closely enough? For anyone willing to press record and reverse, his work offers a starting point to find out.
