Missing Scientists: Your Brain Is the Conspiracy | Pt. 2
This Feels Criminal: A True Crime Podcast (Formerly Killer Queens)
This Feels Criminal | Formerly Killer Queens
4.4 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
A Substack post became a federal probe in eight weeks. That's faster than most podcast episodes get edited. So what actually happened — and what does it mean that it can happen again?
In Part 2, Tyrella and Nikita move from the individual cases and start interrogating the system. They break down apophenia — your brain's tendency to find patterns even where none exist — and trace exactly how one influencer newsletter traveled from fringe post to White House press briefing to multi-agency FBI investigation. They also cover the cases that genuinely do deserve more scrutiny, including Amy Eskridge's deeply unsettling prediction about her own death.
The verdict: overwhelmingly apophenia. But the mechanism that got us here? That's the real story.
⚠️ This episode discusses suicide and harassment of grieving families. If you're struggling, call or text 988.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Did you ever hear a story and think, we're not getting the full picture? |
| 0:08.6 | That's where we start. |
| 0:10.1 | On this field's criminal, we unpack crime, corruption, and conspiracy with curiosity, |
| 0:15.4 | context, and just a touch of chaos. |
| 0:17.4 | We step outside the timelines and ask better questions and explore the systems |
| 0:21.9 | behind the story, all in a voice that feels more like a friend than a reporter. Because when you |
| 0:26.4 | identify the patterns, you can't unsee how often they show up. Okay, so there's a word for what |
| 0:34.9 | your brain is doing right now if If part one made you feel like |
| 0:38.0 | there is a pattern, and it's called epiphenia. It's the tendency to perceive meaningful |
| 0:43.2 | connections between unrelated events. And it's not a flaw. It's literally what the human |
| 0:48.5 | brain evolved to do. Pattern finding kept us alive when like that rustle in the grass might have been a tiger. |
| 0:55.0 | Okay. |
| 0:55.3 | The cost of a false positive, assuming a pattern when there is none, is just one wasted moment of fear. |
| 1:01.0 | The cost of a false negative, missing the pattern that is actually there is dying. |
| 1:06.0 | So our brains by design find patterns everywhere, even and especially where they don't exist. |
| 1:12.8 | So that's the bug we're going to talk about today because the missing scientist story is almost perfectly what apophonia looks like at scale, weaponized by the media, and now wearing a federal badge. |
| 1:25.3 | So welcome back to This Feels Criminal. I am Nikita. And I'm Terella. |
| 1:32.0 | And this is part two of the missing scientist's conspiracy. And if you haven't listened to |
| 1:39.6 | part one, go back and do that because that is where we talked about all of the people that are connected to |
| 1:44.9 | this. And today, we're not going to talk about those people anymore. Today, we are going to talk about |
| 1:53.7 | the systems and what is happening. So we're going to talk about how did this go from a substack |
| 1:59.7 | to a federal probe? Why does our brain |
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