Julia Mossbridge

The conversation opens with a self-description of an unusual research path. The speaker says they were trained in cognitive neuroscience and computer science, did some AI work, and studied how time works in the human brain. From there, they say, the interest turned to "how funky time works in the human brain, like precognition," which they describe as predicting future events in ways we don't normally think about.

The speaker presents these capacities as things that are "in us" and "can be developed." Some people have them naturally, and the speaker says they have some of them naturally, though not all. The research question becomes how these different gifts work. The other side of the conversation praises the approach: gather data and find out what can actually be shown, because so many people report intuitions, a sense of knowing about events in advance, or thinking of someone just before that person calls.

The researcher answers with doubt about whether evidence changes anything: "I'm not sure it matters." They say that however long they study the phenomena, and however many controls they test to rule out other explanations, the science world still tends to ignore the results, or actively suppresses them. As evidence, they say some of their peer-reviewed papers are missing from Google Scholar while other articles in the same journals are listed. The claim is the speaker's own account. The conversation does not name the papers or explain how the omission was checked.

I mean, there's some papers that I've published that just won't get listed in Google Scholar, even though they're in peer-review journals with other articles that do get listed in Google Scholar.

The speaker downplays the complaint as academic grumbling and changes direction. They describe themselves as someone who wants to build things, not only as an academic. If people have these capacities and they are useful, the practical question is what to do with them. The speaker argues that a lot can be done "if you feel like you are allowed to have them," and names the cultural obstacles: the sense that the subject is forbidden, shameful or, as the other speaker adds, foolish.

Before getting to the questions they brought, the researcher offers an impression of the host as a sensitive, careful listener who seems to be assembling "a map of knowledge of the world." The host takes that as a cue to argue that long online conversations give people a deeper understanding of many topics than has ever been available through "the mainstream media."

The host's diagnosis of higher learning centers on ego. People who don't want to look foolish, or who won't accept ideas that contradict what they have taught and written, turn ego into "a wall to gathering more information or getting a better detailed map of the landscape." The host connects this to careers. If advancement depends on following certain lines and narratives, pursuing topics like psychics and premonition works against your own interests. The host imagines colleagues reacting with "oh, Julia's a fucking loon" and calls the researcher courageous for pursuing the subject anyway.

Reach is the second part of the argument. Teaching a class, or selling a book that reaches "a few thousand people," is contrasted with a conversation that "10 million people are going to listen" to. Those listeners may then tell coworkers that a familiar feeling of knowing something will happen "might be real." The host says this lowers the fear of looking like a fool, and compares it to how hard it once was to talk about aliens and UFOs.

The host describes a personal immunity to that fear. They have long been fascinated by UFOs and aliens, were fascinated by Bigfoot "forever" before mostly moving on, and say they don't need to be taken seriously because they are "literally a comedian." The host argues that this freedom to discuss everything, "from quantum computing to alien life to international politics," has changed how the world discusses reality, and calls themselves "an antenna for that." The researcher applauds and links it to why they fell in love with science: "It's about discovery. It's about not knowing. It's about being foolish."

The researcher recalls a high school biology teacher who sent students outside with note cards. On one side, students wrote a question about their surroundings that they thought Einstein would ask. On the other, they wrote a question a two-year-old would ask. The researcher preferred the two-year-old side. The teacher's point was that Einstein "was more like the two-year-old": "full of wonder and confusion and uncertainty."

Graduate school and academia, the researcher says, rewarded the opposite. They describe a grant system in which discovery is mostly staged, because the work is largely finished before the grant application is written.

you write your grant after you've done about three quarters of the work so that as soon as you get the grant, then you can publish the papers that go with the grant. So you're not really discovering anything.

The researcher says there was pressure to follow accepted lines of thinking for both funding and career reasons. Well-meaning supporters told them that "if I took this stuff about psychic stuff off my resume, I would have a perfectly good resume for academia." They refused, calling it "the stuff that's actually interesting," and say this is what pushed them partly out of academia and toward building things.

Speed is the second complaint. The researcher describes academia as learning something, then asking "do you think it's true?" ten years later, and asking whether something can be made from it twenty years later. They add a limit of their own: "you have to be careful. You don't get to just say, well, I just know people are psychic and therefore, you know, screw it." They call this balance between openness and rigor "this dance."

On the fear of looking foolish, the researcher wonders whether growing up in "a family of very foolish, eccentric people" helped, and says: "I just know that I am." The host answers that intelligent, kind people don't mind someone who occasionally says things that could seem foolish. Such people are willing to take chances on obscure topics without worrying about the stigma that keeps people who want to be seen as serious from discussing them.

The researcher admits that their own small laugh at the mention of Bigfoot was "a reflex laugh from academia." They say they have friends who study Bigfoot and other cryptids "in a scholarly way" and had to learn not to laugh. They describe that laugh as discomfort combined with wanting to be taken seriously.

The researcher then compares the two fields. In their account, UFOs entered "the mainstream land of things that possibly exist" before psychic phenomena did, even though psychic phenomena have been studied by the intelligence community and others "since openly, since like the 50s." UFOs, by contrast, were officially dismissed and came to the fore only recently. The researcher calls the two topics related, each with "their own processes of disclosure." The conversation does not cite specific programs or documents for these historical claims.

The researcher connects scientific culture to politics. Mentioning a PBS convention at their hotel, which they describe as "still largely very left-leaning," and their own left-leaning upbringing, they criticize the left for "wanting to be smart and proving that you're smart" and the right for "wanting to be right." They argue that both fail because neither allows people to discover what's next and solve real problems "instead of just wanting our team to win."

The host also describes a very left-leaning upbringing and parents who remain "very left." They argue that the country is so polarized that it is split into a right and a left, while most people sit "kind of in the middle somewhere." The host calls themselves "probably like middle left" but says media descriptions place them on the far right, which they find "very weird." The researcher says they are now officially independent and that people need to be clear they can say something different from either side.

The host, referring to a bit from their last comedy special, argues that joining a team means believing "all the things" and performing them: saying the right words, or getting canceled for the wrong ones. Both agree this happens on both sides. The host says the right used to complain about the left doing it and now does the same thing.

Citing Mark Andreessen, the host says these groups display cult behavior: excommunication, "extreme following of doctrine with no deviation whatsoever," and performances of being more loyal to doctrine than others. Both speakers agree that academia is "a lot like that." The objection is about truth-seeking: you can't get to the truth if you have decided that someone's question is "an inappropriate question."

The discussion turns to people who act as gatekeepers of information and answer disagreement with their credentials, as in "I am a PhD in the subject." The researcher says it bothers them when interviewers defer to them as a scientist. They propose other standards that apply "regardless of your degree": whether the person does good work, has interesting thoughts, seems reasonable, and seems to be "moving towards the good."

The researcher also limits the critique. They are worried about putting too much reverence in experts, and equally worried about the opposite view that "experts are all full of shit." When you need brain surgery, they note, you want "a really good neurosurgeon." The host agrees that both are true and names human ego as the underlying problem.

The host objects to experts who want total deference, as if they had "the entire database" on a subject and could call it "settled science." The host argues that "there's very few things that seem to be completely settled." The host prefers experts who say, in effect, that they have studied the subject for a long time, this is what is known, they might not know all of it, and this is why they think so.

The host calls the dismissive, enforcing style "a very male ego thing" and argues that humility matters most for anything involving consciousness or the human mind. Those subjects are "so complex" and "so biologically variable," and different people think differently. As evidence, the host offers their own experience. One of the most illuminating parts of doing the podcast has been meeting so many unique people who are "all different."

The researcher describes the host as a sponge "tasting from all the different" flavors of humanity, and wonders what kind of world model the host is building. They half-jokingly suggest the host should run for president. The host refuses: "I'm not interested in any job, in any government whatsoever. I like doing this."

The researcher then revises the host's earlier "male thing" remark: "it's a really insecure male thing." Their argument is that the expectation that everyone should be "alpha" falls more heavily on men than on women. Because not everyone can be alpha, and nobody knows "what the heck is alpha," the result is more insecurity.

An open disagreement follows. The researcher calls deep listening "a deeply feminine trait" because listening requires humility. The host rejects this and says they have never thought of listening as masculine or feminine. When the researcher says women are generally better listeners, the host replies that it "depends on who you're talking to." The host's alternative is that "genuinely curious people are better listeners," and neither sex is more curious than the other.

The researcher concedes ("You're right") and narrows the claim. Constantly trying to prove you're alpha makes you a poor listener, and men may be more susceptible to that because of "those standards that are ridiculous." They agree they can think of both men and women who are good and bad listeners, and settle on insecurity and emotional maturity as the real variables. The host adds that the urge to display intelligence and dominance is also learned, and makes conversations unpleasant because people "aren't really talking to you."

The host says they enjoy talking to people much smarter than themselves, mentions being friends with Elon, and says they are "definitely not the smartest person." The host says the world would be better if more people were curious and squashed the insecurity that makes them puff up. The researcher disagrees with the word "squash": "I don't think any squashing anything works." Their view is that you have to work through insecurity, because suppressed feelings "come up later." The host accepts the correction: "you said it better."

The host argues that for many men the core problem is physical insecurity, and that martial artists are among the least insecure people because they confront insecurity "literally on a daily basis." The main example is jiu-jitsu. Going from white belt to black belt means getting "humiliated thousands of times," and a white belt facing a black belt "will lose" and has "no chance."