WEBVTT - Deja Vu 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:04.240 I'm Dessa, the disembodied lady voice of deeply human Why 0:00:04.320 --> 0:00:07.200 we do the things we do? We're about to set 0:00:07.240 --> 0:00:10.240 off on an episode of deja vu? Why do we 0:00:10.280 --> 0:00:13.119 get it? And how could it help you better understand 0:00:13.200 --> 0:00:17.880 the workings of your own mind. I I don't remember 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:20.800 the first time, but I remember when they started happening 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:24.480 really frequently. I would be in math class or something 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:29.400 and suddenly everything would feel kind of off, like I 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:31.479 don't know, if you know, this feeling in your gut 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:35.479 that something's just wrong. I think I was probably fourteen, 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:40.199 and I started getting them on maybe a daily basis 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:44.800 by the time I was sixteen, a daily basis. Mm hm, 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:49.120 can you describe, like, if I met you at fourteen, 0:00:50.000 --> 0:00:52.160 what's your vibe? You know? Do you have like pink hair? 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:56.080 Do you have like thick glasses? What's the vibe? Um? 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.000 Just picture Avril Levine. It's a little bit cringe e 0:00:59.080 --> 0:01:03.720 but a bit of a skater girl, you know. So 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:07.160 that means like dark eyeliner. Did your mama you wear eyeliner? 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:11.560 She did? Yeah, straightened hair, dark eyeliner, band, T shirt. 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:18.840 I start to feel kind of fearful and have the 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.039 sense of dread, and I start to feel really sick 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:25.360 to my stomach, and it starts building like there's there's 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.839 something that's going to take hold of me, and um, 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:29.640 I really don't want it to, so I try to 0:01:29.720 --> 0:01:33.000 focus on what's going on around me, but it starts 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.240 invading my head more and more, and then it I 0:01:36.280 --> 0:01:39.000 get to this point where it feels like everything that's 0:01:39.080 --> 0:01:43.400 currently happening has already happened. And then it sort of 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.200 feels as though I can remember the history of the universe. 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:48.600 Of course I couldn't give any details of what that 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:50.960 even meant, but at the time, I like it, fully 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:54.320 convinced that that's what I'm feeling. I can remember everything 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:56.440 that's ever happened and everything that will ever happen, and 0:01:56.480 --> 0:01:59.840 it's all tied together, and there's this like extreme sense 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:03.080 of oneness with the universe, which is also quite sickening. 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.160 And then it's gone. And if I had been, you know, 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.160 sitting beside you in math class and I looked over 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:16.000 at you during one of these experiences, what would I see, Like, 0:02:16.040 --> 0:02:17.920 what was your body doing, what was your face doing? 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:20.799 I mostly wouldn't show it. Sometimes I would like put 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:22.160 my head in my hands, and they're like, oh I 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:25.040 feel sick. I'd say to my friends all the time, like, oh, 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.800 I have deja vu. It's just the worst. And I 0:02:27.840 --> 0:02:29.920 thought like maybe I was just really poorly adjusted to 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:36.000 it and everyone else could handle this much better. Okay, 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.320 So for years Anna is suffering from these debilitating episodes 0:02:40.440 --> 0:02:44.400 of deja vu, and she assumes that's normal, Like, that's 0:02:44.480 --> 0:02:48.560 just what being a person feels like. Deja vu is 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:51.960 French were already seen and most of us know. It 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.440 is the eerie feeling that you've lived this very moment already, 0:02:56.120 --> 0:02:59.320 but usually it isn't so intense that it jettisons you 0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:01.720 to the edge of I'm in space. If you're like me, 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.359 the standard response to deja vu is to start tugging 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.720 on your friend's sleeve to announce I have davu. Hey, 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:11.919 I need everyone here to acknowledge that I am deja 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:16.760 vuing right now. But it's a solitary experience. You can't 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:20.040 share it. You can't even articulate the moment without sounding 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:22.519 like a palm reader in a panic attack. I knew 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:26.160 you were going to say that deja vu doesn't happen 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:28.400 too often, which I think is why I sort of 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:33.360 like it. It's an exotic condition of mind, like getting 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:36.560 an egg with two yolks or something. It's also one 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.600 of the few occasions where you're acutely aware of your 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.560 own perception at work. It's like getting to taste your 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:46.080 own tongue, or that bit that David Foster Wallace does 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:48.960 about the fishes where the old fish asks the young 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.640 fish how's the water, and the young fish says, what 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:55.720 the hell is water? Are there any dumb jokes that 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:58.119 you have to endure? Like as soon as you tell 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:01.400 someone you're a day's researchers? Ever, like, however that before 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.000 all the time? That's and clearly she's a professor of 0:04:06.080 --> 0:04:10.200 cognitive psychology or cogsi if you are both a snowboarder 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:13.920 and a PhD student. Years ago, and and her colleagues 0:04:14.000 --> 0:04:17.920 designed a series of ambitious experiments. We were attempting to 0:04:18.080 --> 0:04:21.839 induce stay Chevoo through virtual reality. How do you even 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.960 start to do that? I would spend hours and hours 0:04:25.000 --> 0:04:28.000 playing the SIMS basically at my house on a laptop 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:30.599 in the lab. I'd close my eyes to go to sleep, 0:04:30.600 --> 0:04:33.400 and I'd be dreaming about moving objects around within the 0:04:33.440 --> 0:04:38.400 SIMS to create environments, because so Anne is building an 0:04:38.400 --> 0:04:43.120 experimental laboratory inside the game, the sims when you create 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:47.560 the characters and design the surrounding the possibility got it, 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:51.720 That sims that weirdly successful video game, where you pretend 0:04:51.800 --> 0:04:54.680 to be a person in a universe that's just like ours, 0:04:56.360 --> 0:05:01.520 you can actually create entire neighborhoods. She builds an aquarium, 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:05.360 she builds a museum, She builds courtyards and residential structures. 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:10.479 She's on a construction spree, and although these spaces look different, 0:05:10.880 --> 0:05:13.839 some of them are built on identical floor plans, with 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.719 major features in exactly the same places, Like a desk 0:05:17.960 --> 0:05:20.920 is in exactly the same position is a bed is 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.719 in another scene. Let's say An sends a bunch of 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.600 people into this virtual neighborhood. She hands them a pair 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.640 of goggles, revs up the stems, and now her research 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:33.680 subjects can look all around the universe she's built, just 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:38.200 by turning their heads. She hypothesized that visiting places that 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:42.000 looked really different but had identical floor plans might induce 0:05:42.120 --> 0:05:45.919 deja vu by triggering what's called a memory retrieval failure. 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:50.040 A memory retrieval failure is exactly what it sounds like 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:51.840 you've got a bit of info and storage, but you 0:05:51.880 --> 0:05:54.280 can't fish it out for reference. It's like the search 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:57.240 function in my email. Sometimes it just can't find minutes 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.000 from Tuesday's meeting, even though they're in an email tie 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:03.680 minutes from Tuesday's meeting. So let's say you're all goggled 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.240 up in Anne's virtual world. If you visit the Bowling Alley, 0:06:07.320 --> 0:06:12.800 you might get the sense, oh, this feels familiar, but 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.320 your recall might not pull up the fact that, uh, 0:06:16.360 --> 0:06:19.520 this Bowling Alley is laid out just like the museum. 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.800 So you've got this inexplicable sense of having been here 0:06:22.839 --> 0:06:29.040 before and bang deja vu and calls this digital universe, 0:06:29.560 --> 0:06:34.359 wait for it, deja ville. This stuff about memory retrieval 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:38.160 failure is bigger than just deja vu. Sometimes it happens 0:06:38.240 --> 0:06:43.920 in a really common phenomenon called the it's the um. 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:47.480 It's a feeling of being right on the verge of 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:51.479 accessing a word from memory. You feel pretty confident that 0:06:51.520 --> 0:06:54.440 it's there, and it's it's right about to come to mind, 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:56.640 but it's not quite there yet. The tip of the 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.640 tongue thing, thank you, Anne, thank you. This is crazy 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:02.800 when you think about it like there's a memory I 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:06.560 can't access, but I know exactly where it is. It's 0:07:06.560 --> 0:07:11.200 always almost here. Ant's work is based on this fallibility 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.920 of recall, the fact that our memories don't always come 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:17.440 when called. But there are other ways to understand deja vu. 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:20.080 And for all the time that an spends trying to 0:07:20.120 --> 0:07:23.840 induce it, some people are desperately looking for help to 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.200 get out of it. I started my deja research while 0:07:27.240 --> 0:07:29.760 I was in the memory clinic, and this man came 0:07:29.800 --> 0:07:32.040 in to have his memory tested, and he had a 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:34.560 very unusual complaint because he said that he had already 0:07:34.560 --> 0:07:38.000 been tested before, which was pretty strange because most people, 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:40.600 if they've been to a memory clinic before, they've tended 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:42.720 to forget about it. But he was complaining that he 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.560 had already done it before. That's Chris Moulin. He's a 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:50.560 researcher and a cognitive neuropsychologist, which means he studies the 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:53.520 structures of the brain to better understand how we think. 0:07:54.080 --> 0:07:57.360 He's talking here about one of his seminal patients, a KP. 0:07:58.320 --> 0:08:00.080 Taking a walk in the street. He would see the 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:03.320 same bird singing the same song in the same tree 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:07.040 every day, and he stopped watching the television because he 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:11.160 said he had seen it before. He stopped reading the 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:13.920 newspaper because he had already read it all. And his 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:16.600 wife was saying that, Yeah, this is typical of him. 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.160 He does this all the time. Chris's work with a 0:08:20.280 --> 0:08:24.920 KP led him to other patients with similar symptoms. We 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:28.560 presented in the scientific literature a young man who had 0:08:28.600 --> 0:08:33.120 a history of anxiety, some substance use, and he was 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:35.959 stuck in what he described as like a Donnie Darko 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.120 time loop. He was acutely aware, and he said he 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:43.319 had to really spend a long time reasoning with himself 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.160 that life wasn't repeating and that he wasn't going mad. 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:53.120 I remember driving four hours to meet with a patient 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.160 just had two emails with her daughter we've not met before, 0:08:56.240 --> 0:08:58.800 and I turn up and she opens the door and 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:04.760 she greets me like she she knows me. Chris understands 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:07.440 deja vu to be caused by a glitch in the 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:11.160 memory system, where the feeling of recalling a memory becomes 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:15.760 disassociated from the act of actually doing it. According to Chris, 0:09:15.800 --> 0:09:19.199 we can have the strong sensation of remembering something even 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:22.920 when there's no memory there like pushing a needle through 0:09:22.960 --> 0:09:26.320 fabric feels like sewing, even if I've gotten no thread. 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.199 The glitch account of deja vu is very different from 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.240 the idea behind Anne's Deja Ville, where we've got a 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:35.960 memory we just can't retrieve. But I'm gonna tell you 0:09:36.080 --> 0:09:38.560 right now, this is not a show where we picked 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:41.440 to deja vu scientists against each other to fight to 0:09:41.480 --> 0:09:44.560 the death like post dot gladiators in the colosseum of 0:09:44.600 --> 0:09:49.440 my podcast Let's keep It, Let's keep it classy for 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:52.600 the record, and thinks that some deja vu might be 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.160 caused by glitches too. Okay, a lot of the memory 0:09:56.240 --> 0:10:00.320 patients that chris se'es are older, some suffering from the NHA. 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:05.280 Brain scans have revealed some subtle atrophy in particular regions 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:08.880 of their brains in the frontal lobes and the temporal 0:10:08.920 --> 0:10:11.800 lobes at the side of the skull. So just to 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:14.560 get like the the anatomy right, you know, So if 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:20.320 I'm sitting right now with my my index finger against 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:24.840 the spot on my skull that's right above my right ear, 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:27.920 how deep would I sink that finger until I hit 0:10:27.960 --> 0:10:32.280 the region that we're talking about, Like first knuckle, second knuckle, Okay, 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.600 so it would be your second knuckle. The memory center 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:38.440 is tucked into the very middle, so you're almost going 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.680 right into the center of the space between your ears. 0:10:42.320 --> 0:10:45.240 But it's not like there's a discreete little memory cottage 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.240 in your brain. Apart from all the rest, there's a 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:53.080 complex set of interlocking parts, and understanding healthy memory function 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.240 could allow Chris and his colleagues to better serve people 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:59.720 who come looking for help who are really suffering. Chris 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:03.079 thinks deja vu might provide real insight into just how 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:07.680 this system works in normal circumstances during like regular vo 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:11.800 deja vu is just another one of the kind of 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:16.080 quirks of memory that helps us understand what the memory 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:20.439 system is. Not only is there kind of memory performance, 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:23.240 memory function, but there is also the relationship we have 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:26.040 with that memory. The beliefs about memory, the feelings about memory. 0:11:26.440 --> 0:11:29.959 They're relatively automatic and they don't usually go wrong, but 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:34.800 when they go wrong, they are They are strange, striking experiences, 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.320 and the people who contact me are often in great distress. 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.920 My second year in college was the first time I 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:51.880 fully lost consciousness, and it happened like maybe two or 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:56.120 three times during college. Um, and I mean one time 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.360 was really scary because I had twisted my ankle while 0:11:59.400 --> 0:12:03.040 walking down one step and the next thing I know, like, 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:07.320 I wake up on the ground. One of my friends 0:12:07.320 --> 0:12:09.840 is standing over me, completely panicked. She said that my 0:12:09.920 --> 0:12:11.960 eyes rolled into the back of my head and I 0:12:12.040 --> 0:12:18.040 was shaking. It actually took until grad school for me 0:12:18.120 --> 0:12:21.360 to realize truly that these things weren't just how some 0:12:21.400 --> 0:12:25.160 people experienced deja voo. And I just remember talking to 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.640 my boyfriend about it because I had just lost consciousness 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.360 during class and it was very embarrassing, and I was saying, oh, yeah, 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.720 I get that feeling, you know with deja vu, where 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.280 you feel this kind of oneness and it's really sickening 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.000 and scary. And he was like, what he's got to 0:12:41.040 --> 0:12:43.240 be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:48.800 So maybe a couple of hours later, I pull out 0:12:48.840 --> 0:12:50.280 my phone and I'm like, there's no way and the 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:53.959 only one who experiences this, you know, what did you Google? 0:12:54.360 --> 0:12:58.160 I put in I think like nausea, deja vu and fainting, 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:03.880 clicked search and it was like epilepsy, epilepsy, brain tumors, epilepsy, 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:09.080 neurological disorders, and it's like, oh my god, I needed 0:13:09.120 --> 0:13:10.480 to get an m r I in case I had 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:12.160 a brain tumor and needed to get an e G. 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:15.400 So it went from like zero to sixty on how 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:26.679 severe doctors perceived this as being for my e G. 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.600 I had to stay up all night. I guess your 0:13:29.640 --> 0:13:33.040 brain is more prone to seizures or whatever disorders are 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.880 lurking there when you're low on sleep. I stayed up 0:13:35.880 --> 0:13:38.200 all night watching The Fresh Prince of bel Air because 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.160 I love that show. Now, this is a story all 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.240 about how my life got swip turns upside down, and 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:46.840 I'd like to take so I did one of those, 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:48.800 and they saw some weird stuff going on in my 0:13:48.840 --> 0:13:52.959 temporal lobe. Um. So, when I finally went to see 0:13:53.280 --> 0:13:55.640 an actual neurologist and talked with her about it and 0:13:55.640 --> 0:13:58.320 she was like, yeah, this is definitely temporal lobe epilepsy, 0:13:59.120 --> 0:14:03.000 it it was like, that's good. That's good to just know. 0:14:03.840 --> 0:14:07.559 In temporal lobe epilepsy, deja vu can actually be part 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:12.200 of the seizure, sometimes called an aura. For some people, 0:14:12.679 --> 0:14:15.640 deja vu can serve as a storm warning that things 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:19.840 are about to get much much worse. Of course, deja 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:22.680 vu isn't always linked to epilepsy, but for a lot 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.160 of people, it is linked to feelings of precognition, the 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:29.960 ability to predict the future. We had hypothesized that maybe 0:14:30.000 --> 0:14:33.960 people can, and maybe there's a scientific explanation for why. 0:14:34.320 --> 0:14:38.720 And seriously, what are you talking about. If you've been 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:42.440 through a situation that's very much like the current situation, 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:45.880 maybe you do know exactly how it's going to unfold 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:48.800 because you've been through it before and you're just forgetting 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:52.480 or you've been through something very similar. And so we 0:14:52.600 --> 0:14:57.200 had hypothesized that if we could somehow put people in 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:59.960 the middle of a memory, so to speak. So here 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.760 and changes her protocol this time when you put on 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:05.600 the goggles instead of turning your head and looking around 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:09.440 deja Ville. She's cued up several little videos, like virtual 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:14.560 tours that maneuver through the places she's built. Let's say 0:15:14.640 --> 0:15:17.560 you enter the bowling Alley and then you go left, 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:20.360 and then you go right, when you hit the first 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:26.120 wall and you go left, and you go right one 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:31.640 more time, and subjects watch a bunch of these virtual 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:35.239 tours through all sorts of different places, and some tours 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:39.640 go through spaces with identical layouts following exactly the same route, 0:15:39.800 --> 0:15:42.880 a fact that Anne hopes her subjects won't consciously realize, 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:47.480 but that might trigger deja vu. This bowling alley is 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:52.000 laid out just like the museum. And now here's the 0:15:52.040 --> 0:15:55.240 moment of truth because Anne pauses one of these videos 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.600 in the middle of the route, right before it's about 0:15:57.600 --> 0:16:00.120 to take a turn, and she asks her subjects if 0:16:00.120 --> 0:16:02.480 they're feeling deja vu at the moment, and if so, 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.320 do they have that I can predict the future feeling? 0:16:05.560 --> 0:16:08.280 Do you feel like you know the direction of the 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:12.440 next turn? And some people said, yes, I do have 0:16:12.520 --> 0:16:15.520 deja vu? Yes, I do feel like I know what's 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:19.040 going to happen next. This tour is going left, man left, 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:22.720 let's unpause the thing and let's go left already. So 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:28.320 when an unpaused it, were they correct? We were really bombed. Actually, 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:32.120 the first time we ran the experiment, we found no 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:37.080 predictive ability at all. This poses a new question. If 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:40.800 people aren't actually able to foresee the future during deja vu, 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:44.720 why do they have such a strong impression that they 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:49.280 can well during a deja vu episode in regular life? 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:52.440 Like the action doesn't stop to allow us to test 0:16:52.440 --> 0:16:56.160 our predictions. The tape just keeps running, so we're never 0:16:56.240 --> 0:17:00.960 confronted by any evidence to disprove that overwhelm feeling of 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:05.919 I knew that would happen and thinks deja voo doesn't 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:11.160 allow us to make predictions. It's actually something called postdiction, 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:14.679 and it gives an illusion of having predicted after the 0:17:14.720 --> 0:17:17.320 fact is there was some tension. You know, when you're 0:17:17.320 --> 0:17:20.200 talking to somebody, there has to be who's like, yo, 0:17:20.680 --> 0:17:25.280 I am clairvoyant and I have predicted the future, and 0:17:25.320 --> 0:17:27.119 I bet they're not going to drop that easily. When 0:17:27.160 --> 0:17:29.160 you're like, oh, actually, it just feels like you can 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.399 predict a few like that is not a satisfying response. No, 0:17:32.560 --> 0:17:36.840 people people hate it. Um. I commonly hear from members 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:40.560 of the public that I'm wrong, that deja vu is 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:45.119 not a memory phenomenon. And when I started publishing work 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:50.359 on dejavoo being associated with illusory feelings of prediction, of course, 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.119 people started to push back at that to say, no, 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.120 when I feel like I can predict, I actually do predict, 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.680 and it's not just a feeling still and says it 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:03.159 is just a feeling. She sure because she tested for 0:18:03.200 --> 0:18:07.160 exactly that. But anyone who's had it knows how real 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.840 DejaVu can feel. It descends like like a little private 0:18:11.880 --> 0:18:16.000 tornado to lift you out of your everyday perceived continuum 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:21.280 of time and space. Do you ever get like the 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:25.280 pedestrian run of the mill version of dejava? I don't 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.159 think i'd recognize it, Like, I think I would just 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.600 dismiss it as so ordinary that I wouldn't even think 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:36.199 twice about, oh, this is real deja vu? Do you 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:41.040 think that you know this history of having profound and 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:46.719 unpleasant dejavue experiences shaped your personality in any way a 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:51.560 little bit? Um. I got really into philosophy when I 0:18:51.640 --> 0:18:56.040 was a teenager, and I think that was pretty much 0:18:56.080 --> 0:18:59.480 mostly due to these seizures that I had. I remember 0:18:59.480 --> 0:19:03.680 reading different philosophers who talked about everyone experiences the world 0:19:03.840 --> 0:19:06.479 very differently, and that rang true to me because I 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.840 was like, I think the way that other people experience 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:15.320 like deja vu is very different from me. The idea 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:19.199 that people experience consciousness differently, I think that fascinates a 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:22.200 lot of us. Like if I could test drive someone 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:26.080 else's mind trade consciousness is for a day, would it 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:30.280 feel disorienting like driving on the left, or would it 0:19:30.320 --> 0:19:32.840 feel like trying to drive a baked potato or trying 0:19:32.840 --> 0:19:36.000 to drive yellow? Could I even recognize it as a 0:19:36.080 --> 0:19:39.600 mind and find all the pedals to make it go? Oh? Yeah? 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:41.000 Can I ask, like, what do you what do you 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:44.840 do for a living now? Oh? I'm a PhD student 0:19:44.880 --> 0:19:49.840 of astrophysics. Okay, dang dude. Do you think that your 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:58.159 experiences of deja vu might feel like the experiences of 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.320 astronauts when they look at the world through the window 0:20:01.440 --> 0:20:07.359 and it's just conceptualizes how how small a place in 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:11.480 the universe that they occupy. Yeah, that's a really great 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.360 way of thinking of it. I mean with astrophysics, it's 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:18.600 sort of like we are looking at the universe without us. 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:23.399 It's like seeing something outside of of how you normally 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:31.520 experience it, very far away. If you could rewrite your life, 0:20:32.000 --> 0:20:38.359 would you write these deja vu experiences out of it? No? 0:20:38.840 --> 0:20:44.040 I don't think so. These episodes felt like they cut 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:48.439 to the heart of existence. A lot of how I 0:20:48.520 --> 0:20:51.240 understand the world comes from, like the way that I 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:55.399 sort of experienced time. In these seizures, you're you're seeing 0:20:55.400 --> 0:21:03.440 the passage of time. We don't get to experience time directly, 0:21:03.720 --> 0:21:06.720 don't have a dedicated sense organ for it, and I 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:09.720 think that's why even the occasional deja vu is sort 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:12.760 of thrilling, because it brings our sensation of time to 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:15.560 the four. We get a moment where we can really 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:21.439 feel it moving around us. Usually time is just the 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:25.879 invisible substrate that we maneuver through. We're like the fish 0:21:26.000 --> 0:21:31.200 asking what's water, But of course I can see what's 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:34.399 in the bowl that holds the goldfish. Maybe on I 0:21:34.480 --> 0:21:38.399 can see the bowl full of time that's holding me, 0:21:42.359 --> 0:21:46.000 And that's deeply human on deja vu a sensation we 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:48.840 can experience in grade school, but takes a doctorate degree 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:57.240 to begin to explain. Our next stop on deeply Human 0:21:57.359 --> 0:22:00.480 is a terminal. The topic is death and why it's 0:22:00.520 --> 0:22:03.640 time to talk about yours. There's been lots of conversations 0:22:03.680 --> 0:22:06.480 around this idea of a good death. I've never been 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:09.359 big on that terminology because then it suggests there's a 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:14.120 bad death. Once you start to create expectations around dying, 0:22:14.400 --> 0:22:16.160 people can start to feel like they're doing it wrong. 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:20.119 And that's always been one of my big concerns with 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:24.359 a lot of the discussions around death and dying in 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:27.440 all different kinds of facets society, which has been going 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:29.719 on for like the last twenty years. It's never not 0:22:29.800 --> 0:22:31.920 been a hot topic as it were. But I think 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.080 that what happens is families, and usually families more than 0:22:36.119 --> 0:22:38.439 the dying, but sometimes the dying they can feel like 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:44.240 they're doing it wrong. Deeply Human is a co production 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:47.320 of the BBC World Service and American Public Media with 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:51.440 I Heart Media and it's spoken into a microphone by Medessa. 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:53.200 See you next question.