Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown – Premonitions That Came True! Aberfan, Plane Crashes & Death Foretold

Guest: Sam Knight (New Yorker staff writer, author of The Premonitions Bureau)
Released: December 12, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode explores the boundary between madness, genius, and the unknown through the lens of premonitions—extraordinarily vivid dreams or intuitions that accurately predicted tragic events. Neuroscientist and host Mayim Bialik is joined by journalist Sam Knight to discuss his book The Premonitions Bureau, which chronicles psychiatrist John Barker’s 1960s experiment to collect public premonitions in an attempt to identify and potentially prevent disasters. The discussion interrogates both the evidence and the cultural unease surrounding precognition, madness, and the scientific limitations for understanding the human mind’s relationship to time, fate, and consciousness.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Aberfan Disaster: Genesis of the Premonitions Bureau

[00:47, 11:35, 13:32]

• Background: Aberfan, Wales, 1966—a catastrophic collapse of a coal waste heap buried a school, killing 116 children and 28 adults.
• The Aftermath: Psychiatrist John Barker rushes to the village, discovers multiple villagers (especially children) who had uncanny dreams or feelings foretelling the tragedy.
  • Knight: “He starts uncovering these stories, particularly among the children who didn't want to go to school that day and told their mom that they'd had a dream and there was something black that came over the school.” [13:32]
• Two Camps in the Village:
  1. Those who always feared a disaster.
  2. Those who saw it as unimaginable or unprecedented.

“It's the concreteness and the interestingness of those premonitions that then lead on to the forming of the Premonitions Bureau proper.” —Sam Knight [18:01]

2. The Premonitions Bureau: Purpose, Process, and Scope

[09:46, 10:11]

• What Was It? The Bureau was an 18-month experiment by Barker and journalists to collect premonitions/dreams from the public and see which, if any, came true.
• Open Call: A national call, via the London Evening Standard, led to several hundred people submitting premonitions—often specific, sometimes eerily accurate.

“What if we take seriously what we dismiss routinely as the ravings of lunacy... How many of the things that are predicted do come true?” —Mayim Bialik [10:11]

3. Notable Cases: Seers and Dreamers

Alan Hencher

[44:54]

• Hencher had a head injury, after which he began experiencing strong, painful, and accurate premonitions—accompanied by headaches and anxiety.
• Example: March 21, 1967, he told Barker that he foresaw a plane crash with 123 or 124 casualties; a month later, 124 died in an accident on Cyprus.
  • “There are 123 people, possibly 124... 124 people died. I will say two more people later died.” —Mayim Bialik [43:12]
• Hencher was deeply burdened by his visions—experiencing relief only after the predicted event.

Kathleen Middleton

[46:17]

• A music/dance teacher with lifelong premonitions, frequently correct. She shared premonitions with Barker, including suffocating feelings on the day of Aberfan and later, a vision foretelling Barker's death.
• Personal Accounts: Middleton “described it like knowing the answer in a spelling test...she just saw things before they happened.”
  • Knight: “She never worked as a psychic, she never made any money out of this.” [46:17]
• Her legacy survived in a box of her effects, preserved by a former pupil who believed someone would come looking for her story.

4. Science, Psychiatry, and the Placebo/Nocebo Effect

[24:51, 26:22, 30:12]

• Theoretical Framework: Barker’s psychiatric background deeply influenced his openness to extraordinary claims, set against a period of shifting treatment standards for the mentally ill.
  • Knight: “He's trying to get jazz bands in. They're trying to open the windows...This is the hard yards of kind of mental illness treatment that he is doing. And then he turns to his list of premonitions...it's not the craziest thing he's heard in the last 10 minutes.” [26:22]
• Nocebo/Placebo Effects: The conversation explores whether being told negative things (like you will die) can bring about physiological changes and even fulfill the prophecy.
  • “He was following in the footsteps of a guy called Walter Cannon...studying curses and the kind of reactions of the adrenal system...stuff that has been more or less entirely borne out by neurology and modern science.” —Sam Knight [26:22]
  • Bialik: “If someone tells you you're gonna get sick, does that make you more likely to get sick?” [30:12]

5. The Limits of Science: Consciousness and Time

[32:16, 34:41, 35:58]

• Shared vs. Individual Consciousness: Are premonitions isolated to gifted individuals or part of a potential shared/group mind?
  • Knight references communities in the Western Isles of Scotland where “second sight” was normal, an everyday communal experience.
• William James and Quantum Physics: Discussion about whether the unconscious might have access to time in a way the “conscious present” does not, and if physics supports the idea that time is “a field.”
  • “We are living in the most impoverished version of time that we've ever had.” —J.B. Priestley (quoted by Knight) [35:58]

6. Guilt, Secrecy, and the Social Burden of Foresight

[63:12, 74:35]

• Those with strong premonitions (like Hencher) are tormented—if they warn people, they risk ridicule or blame; if they don't, are they responsible for the outcome?
  • Hencher: “We have to undergo the torment of knowing that whatever we say...if we don't and it happens, we cannot be believed and so suffer equally...it creates even greater stress mentally to your nervous system...” [62:09]
• Modern Echoes: Knight, since publication, receives many emails from people not seeking validation but relief—wanting to “be lightened” of their burden and to feel less isolated.
  • Knight: “I do kind of write back...you are allowed to just let this go, you don't have to do anything with it because it's not on you to solve this.” [74:35]

7. Paradigm Shifts: From Prophets to Scientists

[76:00, 78:54]

• Historical Roots: Prophecy in the Old Testament was fundamentally about dreams and visions—historically, cultures found spaces for people with such experiences.
  • “There was a group of people who had dreams so powerful someone thought to record them and call them prophecy...” —Bialik [76:00]
• Barker's Final Days: Both Hencher and Middleton foresaw Barker’s own death; despite skepticism, Barker became emotionally entangled in these prophecies.
  • Knight: “You can sense in this document both his fear and his enormous curiosity.” [59:04]

8. Is Premonition Gifted, Universal, or Trauma-Linked?

[78:54, 81:23]

• Barker convened a group of fortune-tellers and seers, asking if everyone had these abilities. A clairvoyant told him, “it's too late” for him to learn.
• Knight suggests that trauma, loss, or a “life unlived” may unlock this perception, while others believe it’s a latent ability in everyone—tappable through meditation or other means.
  • “Where there is that kind of...life unlived, or a kind of deep yearning, that stuff can kind of arise from that.” —Sam Knight [81:14]

Notable Quotes

• Sam Knight on Aberfan premonitions:
  “I don't know how you sit down in your kitchen and write down that there's going to be a train crash and you put it in the post on a Wednesday and it happens on a Sunday night.” [00:34, 52:17]

• Mayim Bialik on pattern-finding and genius:
  “Making connections in what we see, hear, or dream is actually how we think. Finding a pattern no one ever has is genius...the possibility that people may have abilities to see into time in a way that we do not understand in any materialist way.” [05:44]

• Sam Knight on the collective experience:
  “All these families just hold these secrets in them... It's not an inexplicable knot... This happens over time and over time and over time.” [71:12]

• Hencher’s Burden:
  “It creates even greater stress mentally to your nervous system to constantly be in this place of, if I say something, they'll think I'm crazy. If I don't and it happens, I could have prevented it.” [62:09]

• J.B. Priestley, via Knight:
  “We are living in the most impoverished version of time that we've ever had.” [35:58]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Aberfan Tragedy and Public Premonitions: 00:47–18:01
• What is The Premonitions Bureau?: 09:46–11:05
• Premonitions Bureau Key Cases: 43:12–52:42
• Barker’s Nocebo Research and Death Foretold: 55:50–60:48
• Collective vs. Individual Premonition: 31:07–34:41
• Social Burden and Seeking Relief: 74:35–76:00
• Historical, Religious, and Cultural Context: 76:00–78:54
• The Nature and Accessibility of Premonition: 78:54–81:23

Memorable Moments

• Mayim shares her own strange feeling about her family, reflecting on personal intuition and its slippery accuracy. [65:35–67:01]
• Sam Knight recounts being swamped by premonition stories during a late-night Australian radio call-in. [71:25–74:14]
• Discussion about whether premonitions only warn of disaster, and why positive premonitions are less common (“there is a disturbance in the Force”). [85:51–86:28]

Tone

The conversation balances skepticism, curiosity, and empathy. Bialik and Knight engage in deep, historically informed musings about the boundary between science and the supernatural, validating individual experience without making improbable claims. They approach stories of premonition and prophecy with open-minded scrutiny, neither dismissing nor romanticizing the inexplicable, and invite listeners to take seriously the nuanced places “in between”—where most of us live.

Summary Conclusion

The Premonitions Bureau and this episode offer a riveting, human exploration of the mysterious corners of the mind, collective anxiety, and the timeless question of whether the future can be sensed or foretold. Through haunting stories, careful analysis, and heartfelt confession, the podcast leaves listeners pondering the boundaries of time, community, madness, and the very nature of knowing.