What if precognitive abilities could actually save lives?

Sam Knight (New Yorker staff writer, author of the widely popular The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold) joins Mayim Bialik's Breakdown to unpack some of the strangest, most unsettling questions in human experience: Can we really be scared to death? Do premonitions give us access to other timelines? Or are they evidence of a hidden, collective consciousness?

Sam takes us inside the real story behind the deadly coal mine collapse that dozens of people eerily reported before it happened: a wave of psychic warnings so compelling it led to the creation of the British Premonitions Bureau, an experimental project designed to collect premonitions and prevent future catastrophes.

We explore why people in the past seemed to understand extrasensory abilities better than we do today, and how head injuries have triggered sudden psi abilities in some truly bizarre cases. Sam also breaks down the most common types of premonitions, what separates accurate warnings from noise, why there aren't premonitions about positive things, the implications of so many different families and cultures sharing these inexplicable accounts, and why it’s actually anti-scientific to dismiss reports of precognition altogether.

Do people who experience premonitions have a moral responsibility to act on them? Could these uncanny glimpses be messages from alternate timelines, or something emerging from the depths of the unconscious mind? And the biggest question of all: Do we all have the ability to receive premonitions but we just don’t know how to listen?

If you’ve ever felt a strange sense of déjà vu, had a dream that came true, or wondered whether the future is already whispering to you…this is the episode of MBB you can’t miss.

Sam Knight’s book, The Premonitions Bureau: https://www.samknight.net/books

Subscribe on Substack for Ad-Free Episodes & Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Hardest Part of Podcasting