Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Deja Vu

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why deja vu is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Deja Vu. Known for being a feeling. Known for being a feeling. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Deja Vu is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie, what is your relationship to or opinion of deja vu? Didn't we do this topic already? Deja vu, it's a long blade used to clear jungle vegetation is the first thing people should know. It's also an art print by a Japanese artist. Going back, going back. Let's see. Yeah, no, I experienced deja vu. Now, it's been like over a decade since

I've been in college, which is disgusting now that I've said that. I hate the slow march of time. I hope that's not true about me. Not going to check. Not going to look into it. Perhaps the understanding about deja vu has changed or updated, so I'm excited to learn about it. you are essentially interpreting new information as the same as recalled information. So your like memory is activated at the same time as you are sort of encoding the new information. So it feels like old information, even if it's new. And I mean, there's probably other types or other causes of deja vu, but that is at least what I learned back then,

purportedly one sort of cause like this, like you're both recording new information and recalling at the same time. And so your brain gets confused and you're like, oh, it feels like this exact, very specific thing happened, which I think is really interesting. But even knowing that when I get deja vu, I'm still relatively convinced that it's already happened. It's a good bit. It's really fun, really good. And yeah, I was sort of looking back at past topics we've done, and I think this might be the vaguest in terms of what we definitely know about it. And what you describe as dead on as one theory about it, it's like somewhat clear, somewhat unclear exactly what causes this, but we know it's an issue with our brains handling something that is familiar or is not familiar in a way

that throws us off. The feeling you get when you get deja vu itself is kind of repetitive, right? Like, like you may have deja vu about different situations, but then the feel that like weird, uncanny feeling you get, for me, at least when I have different instances of deja vu is that feeling itself is repeated almost exactly, which I think adds to the uncanniness of it. Yeah, you're right. It's the same gut or chest or huh? Yeah. Every time, even though it's different stuff. And also going into taping this, I realized I don't remember any specific instances, even though I know I've had it

a lot. Like I just kind of try to let it go or forget about it, I guess. So I have no anecdotes for right now. Like sometimes even as I'm having deja vu, then I start to lose track of what exactly it is that I feel like I'm having deja vu about. It's sort of like trying to remember a dream and you're like, oh, I had this dream and you're starting to remember it. And then that memory is just like slips through your fingers as you're remembering it, as if you're like deleting the memory as you're recalling it. It's super weird. And it's also it's not concerning concerning. It's just like, I don't want to think about this anymore, too. Yeah.

I'm not worried, worried, but I don't like it. And so I'll pretend it never happened until the next time, which will be another time. There's a few emotions or at least emotional states that I would kind of describe as a form of meta level cognition, which are uncomfortable, somewhat like some kind of level of disassociation. For me, I was taking a medication once for my OCD and it was not like a serious issue. It was just like I started to feel this like weird disassociation where it felt like I was just kind of like floating and observing myself doing normal things. And it was very uncomfortable. It was not like,

it wasn't scary, but it was also not pleasant. It was just uncomfortable. And that's how I would also describe deja vu. It's not scary and it's not like upsetting, but it's not comfortable. It's like uncomfortable for me. Yeah. Can I ask how long that lasted and what ended it? Yeah, not very long. The thing that ended it was that I stopped taking that medication because it was clearly not great. But yeah, it wasn't like it was a constant state. It would happen like every few days for like a couple of hours per day. Yeah. Okay. Again, it wasn't so upsetting, right? If it was really upsetting, I would have sought immediate help. But it was just like, well, this is kind of weird because I keep going into this kind of weird, almost meditative state of just kind of seeing myself doing things and things that are normal, right? my behavior was completely normal. There was no alterations in my behavior. Almost like feel like I'm a backseat driver. Like I'm just like watching myself talking. And the creepy thing about that is that I think there is a certain truth to our perception of having this like executive

conscious control over everything. Little pilot in your brain, controlling everything. I think that kind of thing is a little bit of a, maybe not exactly an illusion, but it's more complicated than that. Like when you don't have that sense of like complete, like centralized control of your, with your consciousness, it's like uncomfortable, at least for me. with your consciousness, it's like uncomfortable, at least for me. That's such an interesting story about your medication that briefly induced like a consistent feeling of it over long periods of time, because we'll talk later in the show about some related phenomena. That one is probably one called déjà vécu, which is more French words. But we have some great... I do want to, before we move on though, just say like,

I am not, even though I had that bad experience with the medication, I'm not in general anti medication. I think it's just important to listen to your brain and your body, especially when you're doing something like an SSRI or something like if it's not working for you, it's not working for you. But I think it can also be really helpful. I still take an SSRI for my OCD and I don't have any side effects from that. So it really just depends on the medication you're taking. I don't want to scare people away from medication. Agreed. Yeah. And that fits. Research will pull in today and a lot of stories of people basically having a lot of deja vu and then stopping or changing something they're doing just to figure out what's going on. We have stats and numbers that start with kind of the science of

this and at least what we know about it. So let's get into that segment. And this week it is in a segment called Never had to do numbers But I know someone who has Their names are Alex and Katie That's the statistics that I get I feel like I've heard that song before. Where have I heard it before? It was another suggestion for the stats song

of our Ska music episode a few weeks back. And I thought it would be fun to deja vu it since we hadn't used it yet. So thank you, James Amaz, for your prior joke and also for that stats song. It's great. There's never too much ska, I think. I guess like deja skavu is the pun I... That's beautiful and perfect. Yeah. That's the whole show. We'll just stop there. That's the peak. We have a lot of numbers here. The second step is you consciously think,

no, this hasn't happened before. And then the third step is you decide to go with your conscious feeling. You say, okay, I'm agreeing with myself that this situation I'm in has not happened before, even though my mind is giving me a feeling of familiarity about it and of some kind of repetition. That tracks with my experience of deja vu is that first you're like, oh, this has happened before. Then you think about it and it feels, it's like through this reasoning of like, no, no, I don't have any clear memory of this ever happening before. Also the recognition that this feels like every instance you've had of deja vu and that it's a different feeling from genuine recall. Like sometimes I feel like, oh, I've done this before.

And it's like, yeah, I have done this before. I don't remember exactly when, but this feels familiar because I think I'm recalling something. And it's a distinct feeling. Deja vu is almost like, and then I put my hand down, and then I lifted my hand, and then I blinked, and then my tongue felt weird in my mouth. And you're like, wait, this isn't really a memory. This is just what is currently happening that feels like a memory. Exactly. And metacognition, as you said, it's so much zooming out from yourself and saying,

okay, I know a feeling is washing over me, but the little pilot in my head says the feeling doesn't make sense. And then the third step is I'm making a decision of going with the pilot. The pilot is right, not the wave of feeling. Right. Exactly. I really like that. It's from a few sources here. One of them is Dr. Akira O'Connor, senior psychology lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, who got interviewed by BBC Science Focus magazine. And they say that, quote, deja vu is basically a conflict between the sensation of familiarity and the awareness that the familiarity is incorrect. And they also say that this is a relatively unique memory and psychological

phenomenon because we pretty immediately question it and do a lot of kind of arguing with ourself. It's sort of similar to, I don't know, like, I know that panic attacks aren't like a general experience that people have. I've experienced them. And I think a lot of people have, that people have. I've experienced them. And I think a lot of people have, even though not everyone has. And one of the interesting things about a panic attack is that even if you learn what a panic attack is, the physiological processes that are happening with your body, your heartbeat increasing, you becoming sweaty, your breathing increasing, these kinds of things contribute to giving you this feeling that something is very wrong. And it's really hard to ignore. So even if you know exactly what a panic attack is, and even if you have awareness that you're having the

panic attack, you still can sometimes go through these same mental processes of like, am I dying? Is something bad happening here? The understanding of what a panic attack is helps, but you still have this argument with your brain because the information that your brain is getting is so strong that it's like, oh, this really feels like there's a bear nearby. And you're like, well, but there isn't. So let's think about this. And to me, that's pretty similar to that experience of deja vu, where it's like, it really feels like this has happened before. And you're like, yeah, but no, because this doesn't make any sense. Yes, it makes as much sense as a bear being in the room when it's not.

The reason the argument with ourself always goes the same way is either we decide it's deja vu or we decide like like I'm reliving my entire life on a loop and some kind of weird reincarnation that, you know, you have to really take a supernatural leap for it to not be deja vu. And so that's why the argument's so patterned. It's very weird. Like we could be living in a simulation, but ice cream still tastes good. So who cares? simulation, but ice cream still tastes good. So who cares? We're going to talk about the matrix later. I'm really excited. And we don't have a number for the next thing here. It's just too many theories to name about exactly what causes deja vu. And also multiple theories could be true. There could be a lot of triggers. They're basically all some kind of issue with how our

mind reads familiarity. And another key source this week, it's a scholarly write-up of the history of deja vu research, which is really interesting for what we know and don't know. It's by Professor Elizabeth Marsh of Duke University and Professor Alan S. Brown of Columbia University. Couple theories they list. One of them is that deja vu might be a result of split perception, which is that we briefly glance at something and then take a next mental step of actually looking at it. And then that interim, our brain picked something up and perceived it from the glance. And so then that feels weirdly familiar when we actually pay attention and look closely.

Oh, that's interesting. we actually pay attention and look closely. Oh, that's interesting. Another theory is that we feel deja vu when there's one familiar element in a new situation. So then our perception is like, I definitely know about that one thing. And then that feeling spills over and sort of takes over the whole event. And we just start reverse deciding that we know about the whole thing and then wonder why. Obviously, there's a lot of familiarity every time we see something novel. You see a new cat, you're like, I've seen cats before. But you don't necessarily get deja vu every time you see a cat, even though you know the general like cat shape. But then that somehow activates your I am having a memory sort of thing, like some kind of memory recall that shifts it from just like, oh, this is familiar. I know what a cat looks like to like I have seen this exact cat doing this exact thing, you know, like on this exact type of street with the same exact weather.

And I was wearing the same pants, you know, that kind of weird sensation you get from deja vu. Yeah. And there's even that idea and this theory, but sort of reversed where another theory involves gestalt familiarity. And gestalt is the combination of a sum of things. Take that French. We're getting some German in this episode.

Oh, all the Schmitz cheering in my ancestry. They're so happy. And with the gestalt of a situation, the other theory here is that if you're in a scenario that broadly feels very familiar, even though all the details are different, you might then do some kind of reverse justifying of, oh, I must have been here before. Martian Brown's example is if a college student visits their friend at another college. Like you've been to a campus and spent a ton of time on a campus, but then the details of your friend's campus are different. Oh, they have all the food hall stuff and they have the quad kind of stuff and they have the science building named after somebody I've never heard of stuff. And then you just, that might set it off. They've got the squirrel with rabies and the cereal and so on. And like all the naked people

running around in the square once every winter, you know, typical college stuff. Yeah. But yeah, so whatever is exactly causing deja vu, we think it's a familiarity error. And every source I read agrees that occasional deja vu is totally healthy. Like Dr. O'Connor describes it as almost the opposite of something going wrong. It probably indicates that your brain and its functions are perfectly active and doing all the different processes they're supposed to be doing. That's good. Like your brain's on the ball.

That's why you're having deja vu. It's like a hiccup. It means that you're not dead. He hiccups, dig him up. Sorry we buried you. There's also a thing where we have some doctors to cite in terms of the basically medical advice on when you should get your deja vu looked into. And the Cleveland Clinic says you should talk to a doctor if you have it more than a few times per month, or if you lose consciousness

afterward, or if it's accompanied by abnormal dreamlike memories or visual scenes, or if it's accompanied by abnormal dream-like memories or visual scenes, or if it comes with symptoms like unconscious chewing, fumbling, racing heart, feeling of fear. So basically, if you have deja vu for an extended period of time or in an extreme way or frequently or just some huge other symptom involved, then go talk to a doctor. That advice leads us to a very, very interesting takeaway here. And the number to lead into that is 50 million. Because 50 million is the estimated number of people with epilepsy in the world. It's a World Health Organization estimate.

And takeaway number one. Deja vu has a prominent relationship to epilepsy. That is so interesting. And to be clear, not everybody who has déjà vu is going to have epilepsy or something. Regular déjà vu is regular déjà vu. But it just turns out that some people with epilepsy also experience a strong and persistent and extreme déjà vu before or after their seizures. There might be a relationship between the broad brain functions during deja vu and during epileptic events and seizures. And the community of epilepsy patients is kind of our biggest source of a lot of actual scientific study of this phenomenon, mostly because we're just looking

at their brains so closely and sometimes operating on them. I've had deja vu since childhood and I never knew this part about it. I think most of us have no idea that that community has a very different experience of it. That's what's interesting. I mean, I think that it's really important to recognize not only are there very different types of brains, you know, like neurodivergent people, people who have different types of brain physiology that can both enhance and cause issues in life. But like, also that it's not so like learning about the differences in our brains can actually help us also learn about commonalities, right?

Like it's, they're not like learning why certain things make brains different can actually also teach us about things that we all share in common. Like, like how someone who has like a different type of brain, you see like, oh, well, yeah, but all of these things, like these are things that all of humanity has in common. When you look at how it can function differently in some people, you actually see how like all of these things are stuff that we actually share just functions differently in this person. Yeah, totally. And I found learning about this very uplifting, even though epilepsy is a disease that I did not know much about before researching. And I think partly because I find it scary.

It turns out we've learned a lot from people with it specifically in all sorts of ways, but partly about deja vu. And there's a lot of sources here. One of them is a Vice News piece by Shayla Love, which interviews Adam Zeman, a clinical neurologist at the University of Exeter. Also a piece for Smithsonian Smart News by Marina Koren, piece for Mosaic Science Magazine, now part of CNN by Pat Long. And then medical resources, World Health Organization, US CDC, Johns Hopkins. Because real briefly, what is epilepsy? It's a disorder of the brain causing seizures in a frequent and consistent way.

It's a disorder of the brain causing seizures in a frequent and consistent way. And seizures are bursts of uncontrolled electrical activity between brain cells. There's many types. There's many results. People are considered epileptic if they have recurring seizures and if it's relatively early in life. So to put it in perspective, everybody has electrical conduct between brain cells. That's how we think in our life. So that's normal. And in fact, it's the pattern of activation of our neurons that produces thoughts, emotions, body movements, everything. But with a seizure, it is a disorganization of that process, right? Instead of an organized process where there are patterns

of activation that make sense given what the body should be doing, what the brain should be doing, it's like a very disorganized, like you said, an uncontrolled activation of neurons that can result in physical manifestations that can be dangerous for the person. Exactly. Yeah. And this relationship to deja vu, it seems to be clear, but also pretty accidental. It's a thing where during a seizure, the mind is firing electricity pretty chaotically. the mind is firing electricity pretty chaotically. And so some, but not all epilepsy patients, that electricity touches some deja vu center some way. And I know that sounds very vague, but that's pretty much as clear as the scientific consensus is. We have brain anatomy guesses exactly where, but all of that is pretty new science and pretty vague. So that's the relationship to it. It's not that deja vu is a signal of more or less epilepsy in a person. It's just that

the people with epilepsy sometimes have extreme deja vu in a way we've proceeded to study. In people who have brain surgeries, sometimes they'll do stimulation of the brain, either for research purposes or for making sure they are conducting the surgery properly and everything's okay. And like, sometimes when you like stimulate the brain, it actually provokes a memory or a smell or something. So, you know, like, because like, you know, obviously, like, we naturally through the use of neurotransmitters produce electrical signals between neurons. So if you have something that's like naturally occurring through like a seizure or, you know, medically through like just poking it with a little electric stylus, it makes sense that that could provoke, say, an experience, right? Like emotion, memory, smell.

But it is really interesting that it specifically can provoke that sense of deja vu. Yeah, this whole thing is so neurologically interesting. Like one of those verses here, it's a writer named Pat Long, who has epilepsy. He developed it as part of developing a brain tumor in his mid-30s. And they've removed the tumor and medicated his epilepsy. But he says that most people experience what's called an aura before they're going to have a seizure. It usually lasts a couple of minutes. And there's a huge variety of ways those auras can go. Some people have an experience of synesthesia. Some people are flooded with dopamine, feel a lot of euphoria. Some people have a sexual response and have an orgasm. But he says for him and a lot of

people, their aura might involve an extreme feeling of deja vu and for more than a few moments for the entire period of it. They also might have pervasive and powerful deja vu and for more than a few moments for the entire period of it. They also might have pervasive and powerful deja vu for a week or more after the seizure events. Oh, man. Where they have that thing where they're walking through life and it feels like a movie that they've seen before. And I definitely sympathize with that feeling of like prolong, this like prolong. It's not quite an out of bodybody experience but it's similar where it's just like everything feels weird and and that feeling of it being like a movie

is interesting because that was my feeling with the um drug-induced um disassociation but not like a movie i'd seen before like a movie movie I had never seen, but I was currently watching, but it was me and I was just eating cereal. So not a very good movie. Not going to enter the Criterion Collection probably, but still. I shouldn't have bought us tickets to Serial Quest 7 in theaters. That was such a misread of what movies you like. Stupid. Depends on the cereal cereal to be honest i could be into it um but what the first six just cheerios i think it'll be cheerios and seven i love cheerios that's how the franchise does it yeah um no but what what was like did did he talk about how that

felt like emotionally because uh was it like, was it upsetting or uncomfortable or neutral? But like, or does it depend on the person? That's a great question. He said it was upsetting, but also kind of less upsetting than the tumor and epilepsy. You know, like in his case, he kind of had clarity on why it was happening and had bigger problems. But for other people, this sudden and persistent deja vu feeling will be the first sign that they've got something going on. One of the articles here, it's Vice News. They talk about a patient called Shona who woke up one morning and felt like she was, quote, acting in a film she had seen before and felt that way for several entire days. And then that led her to check into a psychiatric hospital, look into it, and doctors discovered she had nonconvulsive status epilepticus,

which is a form of epilepsy that doesn't present with seizures. And so she had no idea she had epilepsy because there had never been any seizures. It's a really rare type where your brain is still sort of epileptic. Right. And so then when they treated her for epilepsy, the feeling went away. It was fine. So they must have like diagnosed it by sort of measuring the activity in her brain. Like hunting for it.

Yeah. Yeah, because you could have that random activity in the brain if it's not actually sending messages to your muscles, your spinal column that is causing these randomized movements, then you can still be having the random brain activity and not have a physical seizure. And we're lucky that mainly because of epilepsy patients, we've had a lot of study of deja vu through them. because of epilepsy patients, we've had a lot of study of deja vu through them. According to Marina Cora in writing for Smithsonian, she says that the first recorded observations of deja vu in connection with epileptic seizures date back to 1888. So more than a century, 1888. There's been a lot of study of these kinds of patients ever since that time. Vice News says that in the late 1950s, researchers found that through electrical stimulation and recording of seizures, the temporal neocortex was primarily involved. And then in the late 1970s, it was shown you

could provoke deja vu through electrodes in the medial temporal lobe. There's a theory that the perirhinal cortex in the medial temporal lobe might be involved in deja vu. That brain area, we think it helps us determine whether things are familiar. And whether that theory is true or not, it's one of many insights come and go. But people with epilepsy might have persistent deja vu, and they also might be undergoing extensive brain observation or surgery. The rest of us are not willing to undergo brain surgery to look into our deja vu. But if they're already working on somebody's epilepsy, they can attach electrodes and observe things. Man, that periwinkle rhino cortex, always causing problems. Man, that periwinkle rhino cortex, always causing problems. Yeah, but that's sort of like when people, sometimes when people are getting brain surgery, there's, if they have agreed to, they can kind of do research simultaneously. Life's given them some lemons, and then they make science aid out of it. Yeah. And people with epilepsy, that 50 million estimate would be less than 1% of the population.

It's still a lot of people. Like for comparison, Canada is about 38 million people versus 50 with epilepsy. So that group's gone a long way. They've been analyzed a lot and given us more information and theories about this basic deja vu process. more information and theories about this basic deja vu process. And some researchers have compared deja vu to a seizure just in a way that's harmless and leaves no lasting damage. It's just something that happens to most of us and is just what it is. Moving us away from epilepsy a bit, there's a few more numbers here and these numbers are so powerfully

vague. I just love it in terms of this thing of who's even experiencing this or not and how the number I kept seeing in a lot of sources is 30% to 96%. Okay. Those are some good air bars there. Yeah, that is a study in 1990 from a Dutch university. And that was their estimate they came up with for how much of the human population experiences deja vu. And that is the least informative statistic I think I've ever seen. Yeah. In general, we think a lot of people experience this, but we don't know how many. And it's not everybody. We should do our own poll. I feel like

we could advance science by doing a poll of CIFF listeners if you've experienced deja vu. Highly selective sample, though, for the most awesome people out there. Right. They oversample for awesomeness, so it's tough scientifically. Sorry, guys. Yeah. And the other thing I really, really want to hear from, again, I hope folks know all the recent episodes have a direct link for our Discord in the description, our free Discord. And at least a few people never experienced deja vu. And that's totally healthy too. That seems to be fine. But that population is really interesting, especially with this topic and with the experience of hearing a whole podcast about it, because it probably sounds supernatural. It probably sounds made up, if not for the fact that so many people you trust and believe

say it happens. Yeah, because I'm trying to think of how you would describe it to someone like when I'm describing, I'm just assuming everyone's like, you know, like how you experience it, but it is, that's obviously an assumption. So how, cause you'd have to, I feel like you'd have to go into more detail than you normally do. Like even the sort of scientific description of it, like the three stages, it's like, is that, that doesn't seem enough to really convey what it feels like. Yeah, the soul of it is not there. And I really love this Vice article.

They talked to another expert, Chris Moulin, who is a cognitive neuropsychologist at Université Grenoble Alpes. at Université Grenoble Alpes. And he says that he researches deja vu, but then that means that in his life, he frequently meets the people who've never had it. And he says, quote, to them, I might as well be researching ghosts. Millions and millions of people in the world do not have this and they're fine. That's also healthy. It's just a weird little divide that we don't think about, sort of like the epilepsy population having their own experience. It's like trying to explain what is the experience of seeing the color green to someone who has never seen green before, right? It's like, well, it's very greeny. It's like, that's not helpful. And I mean, there are people, there's a lot of really interesting differences that I think

we assume everyone has like sort of the same, like all of us have like a little narrator in our brain that's like saying thoughts or like we visualize things. And that's actually not true. There's something called aphantasia where there are people who can function as much as anyone else. It does not necessarily interfere with functioning, generally speaking, but they don't have the type of imagination where they can visualize things like objects. And for some people, it takes the form of not having thoughts that have sort of a linguistic narration.

So the, I think for me, I just kind of had always assumed like, well, everyone can like imagine like an apple or a horse and everyone like has that like weird little voice inside them. That's always like, well, I'm walking to the store, da, da, da, da, da. You know, who's like. To get an apple from my horse. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Taking my horse to get an apple from the store and I can see the apple and the horse and I have a voice telling me I'm going to the store.

And for other people, that is not the case. Man. But their life is completely full, functional. They can take their horse to the store and get an apple too and they enjoy life just as much. But it's just a different experience. Yeah. much. But it's just a different experience. Yeah. And then the other weird thing with deja vu is there do seem to be some pretty clear commonalities in terms of when it happens in our life, if it happens at all. The first number there is 10, because apparently most people who will

ever get deja vu start getting it around age 10, specifically like not a lot younger or older than that. We also think it peaks in your mid-30s and then it also tapers off slowly after that. So apparently also most people hit an advanced age where suddenly their deja vu becomes rare and then just kind of stops happening. I think most people don't even notice that because you aren't like looking for deja vu in your life until it happens. No. Well, I'm 34, so I'm in peak deja vu season. I'm excited for it.

We're in our deja vu era over here. Pretty good. I feel like I've had a deja vu era before. Pretty good. I feel like I've had a deja vu era before. Yeah. There's also like guesses about things that can increase the frequency of it. It might happen more often at night than during the day.

It might be associated with higher levels of education. It might be associated with traveling more frequently. But all these beliefs, they vary in terms of how much they're studied. They're mostly based on self-reported observations because we're still kind of guessing about a lot of this, except for what we've pretty directly observed in people with epilepsy. Yeah, because with those things, like it being more common at night, I mean, I think the thing with night is it just might be you're less busy. So you're more aware of those kinds of passing thoughts and you remember them better. Whereas like you may experience it just as much during the day, but you get distracted and busy. And then you don't remember experiencing it as much as like at night where you're lying there and nothing's going on. Right. Travel.

lying there and nothing's going on. Travel, I think that's interesting because maybe it's like it could be linked to like, say, sleep deprivation or the disturbance of the circadian rhythm. Level of education, maybe that just you think about it happening more, right? Because you like hear about it and then you think about it happening more and so you remember it better, but maybe it doesn't have as much of an effect. So there are all sorts of like, you know, kind of different and also education level tracks with wealth, which could have something to do with like nutrition, right? So it's just, it seems really difficult to separate out all the confounds. And like, I know you're not saying this, Alex, but it's just like when I hear that, I would caution people not to say like, oh, like travel causes deja vu.

Like it's not enough information to know that. Yeah, totally. And I I'm excited we're making this because a lot of sources I read were just real cavalier about like, yeah, if you fly a lot, you're going to get deja vu all the time. Like, I don't know that not really, but maybe. Yeah, this is one of the coolest unknowns in the world. So thank you, folks, again for picking it as a topic. And we're going to take a quick break before returning with one more mystery about it and also The Matrix. So stick around.

I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the

school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Folks, welcome back. And we have two more takeaways about Deja Vu.

The next one is takeaway number two. We have so little solid information about Deja Vu. The next one is takeaway number two. We have so little solid information about Deja Vu, we're not totally certain who coined the name other than French speakers in general. The French, man, they have all sorts of saying like Deja Vu, Je suis la pamplemousse, etc. Right. I am the grapefruit. That's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a theory here, and a lot of the internet will tell you it's just a fact,

like Wikipedia will tell you that. Please don't send us the Wikipedia article. But according to Scientific American, we're only guessing that the name Deja Vu came from Émile Boirac, who was a French philosopher and pseudoscientist. And in 1876, he used that term Deja Vu in a book to describe it. We do know he wrote that. Okay. But maybe he didn't coin it. It could be from other people before him. Look, I write lots of stuff, and I don't have as many coins as I write stuff. So writing something down doesn't mean that you coined it.

Yeah. Yeah. And the other reason we don't know if he coined it is that in the French language, déjà vu is almost not even a term. It's just the words for already seen in French. And so like it's almost just a plain description that he kind of applied to this thing. But then in English, we're like, oh, that's so far outside of our usual words. What a great term for this thing. So wait, in French, do they use déjà vu to

say déjà vu? You know what I'm saying? So in French, is the word deja vu used for what we consider to be deja vu in English? Yeah, it's come to be that way. And if somebody used those words in another more normal way, you could figure it out from context clues. So yeah, they've adopted it. It's like saying whodunit then, because like you do say whodunit all the time. At least I do. Like whodunit. Whodunit.

Right. You could use it outside of the context of like, Agatha Christie. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Like, when I'm talking to my two cats and one of them has thrown up. Like, hey, whodunit. Whodunit. Whoever coined it, deja vu became the popular global term for this experience.

Because without that term, you're just sort of doing a long description of what it feels like. And that's also led to French being the language for some names for related phenomena. We've talked about people experiencing persistent déjà vu for extended periods of time. And the common name for that is déjà vécu, which is the French words for already lived. Another French word here, there's a phenomenon that's sort of like the reverse of déjà vu. The three steps are you're doing something that is familiar, but your mind gives you a feeling that it's new. And then you consciously decide, no, it is familiar.

I can rationally figure out that this is familiar. That's interesting. I've never felt that before. Yeah, me neither. The one like loose do-it-to-yourself version I've heard of is when you say one word over and over again until it just feels weird. But that's not quite it either. And it starts feeling weird, like germane. Germane. Germane.

Germane. Germane, yeah. This reverse of déjà vu has been given the similar French name of jamais vu, which is the French words for never seen. We're just kind of evolving that name. Right. Why do the French get their hands on all these words? That doesn't seem fair. They just get all the words now just because déjà vu was in French. It's like, well, they get all the words now.

That's what they're doing. Because the one other example is kind of a separate phenomenon. It's people experiencing intense and vivid recollections of dreams after they wake up, which is kind of separate at that point. It's not really a déjà vu thing, but it's been called déjà rêve, which means already dreamed. This coining really had a big impact. Why didn't we do all this in Italian? I feel like the French are already smug enough. We should take some things away from them. Right. First, they tried to do all the world's fairs, and now they're trying to do all the descriptions of familiarity errors in our minds. And at that point, what's left?

They've got sauces and pastries. Do we really need to hand more stuff to them? Right. The mother sauces are deja sauce. They keep coming back. The mother sauces. Deja rue. Deja-roo Perfect cooking joke Now, pivoting completely to pop culture One last takeaway for the main show Takeaway number three If you have seen The Matrix a lot

You might get a vague Deja- Vu-ish feeling from Sydney, Australia. Hmm. That's specific. It turns out they made a point of filming the movie and most of its sequel scenes, too, in Sydney, Australia. You can go and see the places where there's the Deja Vu cat and the Deja Vu pretty lady. And if you're a super fan of those movies, Sydney, Australia might make you feel like you've been there before. It's not psychologically the same as Deja Vu, but it's fun to me that they're kind of inflicting this on a specific set of people. That's interesting. So like, is there sort of a noted phenomenon of people who live in Sydney

getting Deja Vu or some kind of like weird sensation because of the matrix? I could only find people like saying this could happen to you. I didn't find reports of somebody bringing it up or writing it up as personal experience, but it's also probably such a vague and specific feeling that why would you even write it up? Sort of like most actual deja vu. up, sort of like most actual deja vu. Yeah. There are things where it's like you see stuff repeated or in film or on TV, and then you encounter that in real life. And then that's a weird feeling, especially when you can't put your finger on where you've seen it. Exactly. And even more than most movies and shows, The Matrix went out of their way to try to make that happen. Key sources here are the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, as well as writer Keith Phipps for Vulture.com and writer Kimberly Wadsworth for Atlas Obscura.

Because The Matrix, it was filmed almost exclusively in Sydney, which I think most people don't know. The interiors were at a Fox studio there, and then exteriors were on the city streets. They did it partly for tax break reasons. They also partly did it for Australian talent. Actor Hugo Weaving is there. Also, a lot of their Australian crew, like sound mixer David Lee and visual effects artist Steve Courtney, won Oscars for how good of work they did on The Matrix. There's really talented people there. The Oscars are upside down in Australia. Right. You win reading it backwards as fast as I can. Raxo. That's okay. Feels weird.

Doesn't sound good. My favorite reason they shot in Australia was a creative choice. They wanted to make especially American, Canadian, European viewers feel a little bit alienated by the cities and the places in the movie. Because if you haven't been to Sydney, none of us know what it looks like, really, except for the one opera house there. looks like really, except for the one opera house there. And so they wanted a city that looks like a place where a white English speaking person like Neo would live, but not somewhere you've ever been, not somewhere where you have any landmarks that feel comfortable or normal. Seems like they don't care whether their Australian audience feels comfortable though. It's like Australians are like,

I feel really comfortable with this movie, actually. Seems very normal. They did write off that audience. They were like, they get the least cool experience. Forget them. Yeah. People in New South Wales don't get to enjoy The Matrix. And yeah, and so today, if you walk around Sydney, you will see Matrix shooting

locations a lot, especially downtown. And The Matrix is also one of the most famous movies for bringing up deja vu. They don't quite use the word right, I feel like. They use it to describe just an event immediately happening a second time, which is not quite it. Yeah, that's not it. Yeah. But the training program where Neo sees a pretty lady twice is on the corners of Martin Place and Pitt Street in Sydney. And there's also the old hotel where he sees a cat twice, and that's a sign that the agents are coming. That's a West End brand hotel on the site of Sydney's old general post office. It's just a bunch of Matrix stuff in Sydney. Does Hugo Weaving still live there?

Does he go around? Because that would be neat. You're seeing Matrix stuff and Hugo Weaving. Right. He's like, hello, it's me, Hugo Weaving. And you're like, boy, this psychological phenomenon is so weird. He's like a chimney sweep in the UK from like the turn of the century is Hugo Weaving. It's exactly the voice I did. I was working fast.

Let me throw some Oscars on the Bobby. There we go. Let me throw some Oscars on the Bobby. There we go. Yeah, so I just love that huge Matrix fans, because they kept filming the sequels at like power stations and botanic gardens and other locations in Sydney. They made the franchise more and then goes to Sydney, there could be this weird sense when you're in town of isn't that where Neo used to work or do I just feel that's familiar? So one of the most famous Deja Vu movies is doing it to a very specific group of tourists. That's interesting.

I like trolling in movies. I like using a movie just to troll people and make them feel weird when, say, they visit Sydney. Yeah. That's true. They made the Australian audience not like the movie as much, and then they made Sydney tourism more difficult. They really did a number on Sydney when they filmed there. A real F you to Australia. A real F you to Australia. It's me. You go weaving. Do I play the hero? No, you don't.

You're the worst villain in like the entire era of movie making. I'm sorry. The worst Australian accent I've ever heard other than my own. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I think like there was a thing in The shining which is kind of a fun kubrick has uh jack nicholson break the fourth wall a bunch of times but do it really quickly so like he looks directly at the camera like at the viewer but really briefly so you don't notice it so that you get the subtle sort of creep factor ickick factor from him throughout the whole movie. But like just these really brief glances that he does to like directly to the camera,

which usually, right, like you try to avoid. I love trolling in movies to enhance the feel of uncanniness in the movie. Yeah, me too. That's so great. uncanniness in the movie. Yeah, me too. That's so great. And I love how ordinary the Matrix's approach was to making us feel weird. They just used a major city that is not in the United States. They knew Australia is weird. I'm sorry, Australia. They called you out. They're like, you're weird. We're using you in our weird movie. Right. And it's not like it's full of kangaroos or something stereotypical. It's just a regular city. And we're all like, I don't know that city. Don't like it. It's very funny to me.

The Matrix would have been a better movie with more kangaroos, qualls. It had some bandicoots. Can you imagine instead of seeing a cat twice, just seeing the same bandicoot one after another? I have deja coot. Oh, wow. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Deja Vu has a prominent relationship to epilepsy. Takeaway number two, we have so little solid information about Deja Vu,

we're not totally certain who coined the name, other than French speakers in general. And takeaway number three, if you've seen The Matrix, you might get a vague déjà vu-ish feeling in Sydney, Australia. Plus tons of examination of theories, estimates, and educated guesses about this little understood experience. educated guesses about this little understood experience. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists. So members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the bizarre web of connections between Deja Vu, Yogi Berra, and Yogi Bear.

Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost 15 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of experts. Clinical neurologist Adam Zeman of the University of Exeter, cognitive neuropsychologist Chris Moulin at Université Grenoble Alpes, Professor Elizabeth Marsh of Duke University, Professor Alan S. Brown of Columbia University. And those

expert takes come to us from their writing, but also from media interviewing them, such as Vice News, Smithsonian Smart News, and lots of other sources. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadagoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life.

There is a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 14. That's about the topic of American Gothic. The painting, American Gothic. It's our first ever episode about fine art.

We talk about whether the painting might be kidding or not, among many interesting things. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Talk to you then.