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JBafterJ — Interview Question Set (v1)

An interview with Jerry Michalski about Jerry's Brain, what should happen to it after his death, and the larger vision (Big Fungus) it might seed.

How to use this document

This is the question set for a recorded interview that will become the heart of the JBafterJ project — the documents, decisions, and structures Jerry is creating so that Jerry's Brain (and what it represents) can outlive him in the way he intends.

Format: Six sessions, roughly 30–45 minutes each. Sessions can be done in any order, on any schedule. Skip questions that don't land. Go long on the ones that do.

Reading the questions: A second person (April, Kyle, or anyone Jerry trusts) reads each question aloud while Jerry answers. If Jerry is recording solo, he can read each question aloud himself before answering.

Recording: Zoom (with audio + transcript) or any equivalent. Save each session as its own file, named like JBafterJ_Interview_S1_Origins.mp4.

Pacing: Don't rush. Long pauses are fine. If Jerry needs to stop and come back, stop and come back. The transcripts are the working material; rough delivery is no problem.

After each session: Generate a transcript. Claude will read the transcripts and propose follow-up questions for a Pass 2 round, drilling into things that came up.

Session 1 — Origins and Why

Theme: Why does Jerry's Brain exist? Why has Jerry kept doing this for nearly 30 years? What was he defending against, building toward, or unable to stop doing?

Core questions:

  1. Take us back to the beginning. When did you first start using TheBrain, and what was happening in your life and work that made it the right tool at the right moment?

  2. What did you think you were doing in those early years? Did you have any sense at all that this would become a 30-year practice, or was it just useful day to day?

  3. Most people have notebooks, browsers full of bookmarks, maybe a wiki. You built a 625,000-node externalized cognitive system. What's the difference, for you, between those things and what your Brain became?

  4. When did the Brain stop being a tool and become something else — a practice, a discipline, a part of how you think? Is there a moment you can point to?

  5. What would your intellectual life look like without the Brain? What would be missing?

If you have energy:

  1. Have there been moments when you almost stopped? When the cost of maintaining it felt higher than the value? What kept you going?

  2. What do you wish someone had told you 25 years ago about doing this kind of work?

Session 2 — What the Brain Actually Is

Theme: How should April, the council, and any future steward understand what they're inheriting? Not the software, but the artifact — its character, its commitments, its idiosyncrasies.

Core questions:

  1. If you had to describe Jerry's Brain to a smart person who'd never seen it — not what it does, but what it is — how would you do that?

  2. What does your Brain contain that no other knowledge graph in the world contains? What's irreducibly yours about it?

  3. What are the design principles you've followed, even if you've never written them down? When you're deciding whether and where to add something, what are you actually doing?

  4. Are there things you've deliberately not put in the Brain? Categories, sources, kinds of content you've kept out? Why?

  5. How do you handle ideas you don't agree with — bad arguments, harmful framings, things you find offensive? Are they in there? How do you treat them?

  6. What's the relationship between you and your Brain? If someone said "your Brain is just a reflection of your thinking" — would you agree? If they said "you've been shaped by the Brain as much as you've shaped it" — would you agree with that?

If you have energy:

  1. What are the parts of the Brain you're proudest of? Walk us through one or two specific areas where you think you've done something genuinely good.

  2. What are the parts that embarrass you a little, or that you'd want a steward to handle gently? Old framings, opinions you've outgrown, areas you never got back to?

Session 3 — Preservation and Practical Continuity

Theme: What do you want to happen to the Brain itself, mechanically, after you're gone?

Core questions:

  1. The bare minimum, in your view: what must survive? Imagine the worst case — limited budget, no engaged steward, no Big Fungus. What's the floor?

  2. What does "available openly, as it was the last time I edited it" actually mean to you? Is it the live TheBrain link working forever? A static export anyone can browse? Both? Something else?

  3. If TheBrain (the company) disappears in 5 years, what's plan B?

  4. How do you feel about the Brain ending up in major archives — Internet Archive, university collections, national libraries? Any preferences or concerns?

  5. About donating to AI research: you've said you want to be permissive with attribution, and we discussed being more selective — preferring open research, alignment/safety work, public-commons uses over proprietary training. In your own words, where do you want to land on this? Who would you say yes to without hesitation? Who would you say no to?

  6. What would constitute a misuse of the Brain that would actually upset you, even posthumously? Try to be specific.

If you have energy:

  1. Are there parts of the Brain that should be withheld from public archives or donations — anything personal, sensitive, half-formed?

  2. If April or the council got an offer that was financially generous but vision-misaligned (e.g., "we'll preserve everything if you give us exclusive rights"), what would you want them to do?

Session 4 — JerryBot and the AI Layer

Theme: What role should AI play in JBafterJ? Specifically, what is and isn't acceptable for a JerryBot built from the Brain + interviews + writings?

Core questions:

  1. The "docent, not director" framing: a JerryBot that helps people navigate the Brain, explains why nodes are where they are, surfaces connections — but that doesn't make consequential decisions, doesn't pretend to be you, and doesn't get treated as a continuing Jerry. Does that match your intent? Where would you adjust it?

  2. What should JerryBot be allowed to say "yes" to? What should it always decline?

  3. What's the failure mode that would most concern you? If a JerryBot existed and was being used in a way you wouldn't approve of, what would that look like?

  4. How should JerryBot handle things you never addressed in your lifetime? Topics that didn't exist yet, questions you weren't asked? What's the right behavior — refuse? Speculate carefully? Defer to the council?

  5. If JerryBot exists, how should it model the Big Fungus practice itself? What kind of conversational partner should it be?

If you have energy:

  1. Should JerryBot ever be paywalled, or is openness non-negotiable for it too?

  2. Imagine a future where JerryBot is the most accessed part of your legacy — more than the static Brain, more than your writings. Is that good? Worrying? Both?

Session 5 — Big Fungus

Theme: The largest aspiration. What would it actually mean for Jerry's Brain to be a starting inoculation for something bigger?

Core questions:

  1. In plain language, for someone hearing it for the first time: what is the Big Fungus? What would it look like if it existed?

  2. What's the practice you're trying to spread? When you imagine many people doing what you've been doing — externalizing their thinking publicly over decades — what does that change about the world?

  3. Where does Jerry's Brain fit specifically? Why is it a useful seed, and what's its role once others join?

  4. The Bannon scenario you've used as an illustration: walk through it again. What does it model that other approaches don't?

  5. What would the council and a future steward need to protect about Big Fungus from drift, capture, or premature commercialization?

  6. What would it mean for Big Fungus to succeed without you? What does "success" even look like — a software platform, a movement, a practice, a network? Or something you don't have a name for yet?

If you have energy:

  1. Who do you imagine, today, would be early Big Fungus participants if it existed? (This is also a recruiting list — keep it in mind.)

  2. What's the part of Big Fungus you're least sure about? Where do you most want help thinking?

Session 6 — Letters

Theme: The most personal session. Direct messages to specific people who will be reading or hearing this.

This session can be deeply emotional. Take breaks. Stop and come back. There's no version of this that isn't worth doing.

For April:

  1. What do you most want April to know about why this matters to you, in case it's not obvious from everything else?

  2. What do you want her to feel free not to do? What would you absolve her of?

  3. What kind of help do you want her to ask for, and from whom?

  4. Anything else — practical, emotional, between the two of you — that should be in this recording for her?

For Kyle (if Kyle takes the council chair role):

  1. Why are you asking him specifically? What do you trust him to hold?

  2. What do you want him to push back on, including about your own past framings?

  3. What would you not want him to do?

For future council members (people April recruits later):

  1. What should they know that won't be in the documents?

  2. What's the practice you want them to commit to, even when it's inconvenient?

For someone you don't know yet — a future Big Fungus steward, an AI researcher, a kid who finds your Brain in 30 years:

  1. Whatever you most want to say to them. No prompts.

After the sessions

Once the six sessions are recorded:

  1. Generate transcripts (Zoom does this; otherwise use Whisper or similar).
  2. Share transcripts with Claude for Pass 2 — follow-up questions on places worth digging deeper, contradictions worth probing, things you skipped.
  3. Pass 2 sessions are typically shorter (15–30 minutes each) and more targeted.
  4. Final transcripts get woven into Jerry's Brain as nodes attached to relevant topics. Audio links go on those nodes.
  5. The transcripts also become source material for: the JBafterJ succession document, the recruitment letter for council members, and (eventually) the JerryBot charter.

Document version: v1, April 2026 Project: JBafterJ — Jerry's Brain after Jerry Conversation thread: companion to JerrysBrain_BigFungus_Conversation_April2026.md

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