Transcript
Kylie Lowe (0:00)
Hi, I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast unlike any other. Why? Because every case I cover comes from the heart of my home, New England. From the rocky Maine coast to the historic streets of Boston to the quiet corners of Vermont and beyond, I investigate stories filled with untold twists, enduring questions, and voices that deserve to be heard. So if you're ready to explore the darker side of New England, join me every week for Dark Down East. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.
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Maya Lau (0:56)
In 1920, a broke immigrant in Boston became one of America's richest, most infamous men practically overnight. He swindled the modern equivalent of a quarter billion dollars and etched his name into history as the mastermind behind one of the most notorious scams ever, the Ponzi Scheme. Hosted by Maya Lau and featuring award winning comedian and actor Sebastian Maniscalco, this is easy money. The Charles Ponzi Story, an Apple original podcast produced by At Will Media. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.
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Want the same expert advice from the pros at a discount tire store while shopping for tires online? Meet Treadwell, your personal tire guide. Treadwell is an online tire buying guide that gives you personalized recommendations. Shop for tires with Treadwell@discounttire.com youm've been here, right? You're somewhere new, maybe somewhere familiar, but doing something you're sure you've never done before. For me, it can be as dull as a meeting about an upcoming project, which I know we have not done before. But then I keep having this eerie feeling that I've done this all before. I mean, to the point where I can almost predict what the person I'm meeting with is going to say next. The experience is called deja vu. The phrase is French and translated into English means already seen. It's pretty common for people to feel it. I mean, I always thought everyone out there felt this. But it turns out about 60% of folks around the world have experienced deja vu at least once. And while some might have a fleeting sense that they're doing something they've done before, it can be very intense for some individuals. And here's the wild thing. Nobody knows for sure what what causes deja vu. Scientists have been studying it for over a century and they still haven't nailed down the definitive answer yet. And you Guys, I am obsessed with this topic, which is why I had to commandeer this episode for myself to try and figure it out with you. Because this phenomenon could be explained by some faulty wiring in our brains, or it might reveal some fundamental truths about the universe, maybe even be the key to a secret sixth sense that humanity isn't aware of. Spoiler alert. I think it's the second one. So let's dive in, shall we? I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is so supernatural. Okay, so I want you to consider yourself in this hypothetical scenario for a second. You've just walked into a friend's house for the first time, and the layout is so familiar. Like, you can almost predict where the door is going to lead to, or what color the couch is going to be, or that you've smelled the exact candle here before. But you know that's not the case. It's impossible. You tell yourself that it's just a quick bout of deja vu. It'll fade soon. Only it doesn't. With every second that passes, you are more and more convinced that you have been here before. Even after you go home, fall asleep, and wake up the next day, that familiar sensation is still there. What about if you went to work thinking that you'd already finished the projects you were tasked with, but when you check your files, there's no evidence that they're done? Or how about if every time you sit down to watch a TV show, you can predict where the story is going? Like, more than you're just good at TV plot lines. Like, that's my husband, but his is a true guess. This is different. Like, you know what you're watching, like you've seen it before, even if you haven't. At a certain point, this constant stream of inescapable deja vu makes you feel paranoid, like you're losing your grip on reality and you have no way of knowing what's real about your life and what's not. It's one thing to have one of those happen in isolation, but all of the things all together? That would be pretty terrifying, right? Except for one young man living in the uk. It's just a fact of life for him. His identity isn't public. So for simplicity, I'm going to call him Jason. In 2012, Jason is 20 years old, and he's just taken a break from college due to his intense anxiety. But that's when he develops a case of what's known as chronic deja vu. In other words, he has deja vu almost every single day. And it Lasts for minutes at a time. It'll wash over him and be too intense for him to ignore. After a while, this becomes unbearable for Jason. He begins to question his reality, like he's some kind of character in a psychological thriller. In his words, he says it's like being trapped in a weird quote time loop. And this chronic deja vu doesn't just last for a few days or weeks. No, Jason has it on and off for years. And while I don't know if he sees any doctors in the meantime, I know it gets so bad that he eventually self medicates after he starts back at school. School, he tries lsd, hoping that will make him feel better. Instead, his symptoms get worse. From that point onward, he has deja vu pretty much non stop. Like it doesn't fade after a few minutes and then come back. It's just always there. Soon he's actually getting deja vu about his deja vu. Like he literally thinks, I've been here before, remembering being here before. And you guys, I have gotten that one. It is freaking weird. And mine only lasted for a brief moment. Not Jason's though. He even compares himself to Donnie Darko. And this isn't some sci fi movie though. This is his life. Eventually, Jason is at the end of his rope. He just can't keep going on like this. So he finally goes to a doctor to see if they can figure out what's wrong with him. They give Jason a ton of tests, including brain scans, and all of the results come back pretty normal. There's nothing physically wrong with him as far as they can tell. So in the doctor's mind, that leaves one possibility. If the problem isn't physical, it must be psychological. Their guess is that Jason is suffering from severe anxiety and it's somehow causing his deja vu. And I know that sounds vague, but at this point, the doctors only have theories to work off of, which means they can only guess at how to treat Jason. They come up with a lot of different remedies that may or may not work. Like at one point, they think maybe hypnotherapy will do the trick. Shocker, it doesn't. But they think if they could trigger his deja vu, then they might be able to study it while it's happening. And that could give them a lot more answers. According to the BBC, there's this one technique they use to try and trigger deja vu called caloric stimulation. Typically it's used to test for vertigo. But since people with vertigo also commonly report deja vu, they figure that there might be a connection. It works by squirting water into the patient's ear. This disrupts the vestibular system, which we use for balance and spatial orientation. And once that happens, doctors think that sensation might trigger deja vu, Though from what I can tell, it doesn't work, at least not for Jason. And since any methods to try and trigger the sensation don't really work, Doctors can't study the brain's reaction while it's happening. There are some exceptions which we'll get into later, but they require a lot of technology that didn't even exist until a decade ago. So all that to say everything we know about deja vu Comes from self reporting people coming to doctors and claiming, I felt it in this situation or at that place or whatever. But to give scientists some credit, they have figured out a few things about deja vu. Studies show that deja vu is pretty common. Lots of people have experienced it. It's hard to estimate exactly how many people, but most of the data says it's around 60% of the population worldwide. Oddly enough, doctors have found that you're more likely to report deja vu if you're well educated. In fact, the more degrees you have, the more likely it is. The phenomenon is also more common among people from higher socioeconomic classes and among people who've traveled more. People who watch movies are also very likely to experience it. Apparently, it's seen in younger people more than older folks. And if you're someone who always remembers their dreams, you, might be more likely to experience deja vu as well, which is all interesting, but it doesn't tell us much about what actually causes it or why it happens. I mean, people have been trying to unravel the secrets of deja vu for more than 200 years, and they are still basically clueless. The first written record of it might be from an 1815 novel, though the term deja vu didn't even exist at the time. But the novel is called guy mannering, or the astrologer. At one point, there's a sequence where the main character is exploring an old castle he's never been to before. But the whole time he's there, he gets this eerie sense that it feels familiar. Now, this book is a work of fiction, so it's not like this is a documented example of a real person experiencing deja vu, but you've got to imagine that the author had to be familiar with the phenomenon to write about it. Plus, that's not the only literary reference. Over the next century or so, there Are shout outs to deja vu in other novels and works of fiction, too. However, I will say it seems like the people in that era were really eager to investigate it. Because in 1896, a group of French psychiatrists and other researchers hosted a conference in Paris. Their entire goal was to study this yet unnamed phenomenon and figure out how it works. They do not solve the mystery. The conference ends, and they are no closer to understanding it at all. But they do accomplish something. They are the ones who coined the term deja vu, or already seen before. Then no one could even agree on a solid word or phrase to explain what was going on. That conference triggers a number of studies, papers, and investigations into deja vu. People come up with a lot of different theories and hypotheses. Some of them are viable, Some are totally off the wall. Like, one explanation is that people who experience deja vu are just lying to themselves for some reason. Like, we want to believe that we've been here before, so we convince ourselves that we feel that way. Not the best theory, but they were just getting started, okay? And over time, people come up with more compelling ideas, like the more modern possibility that deja vu might be a harmless mental glitch. The idea is that whenever you do anything, your brain processes the event as it's happening and then stores it in your memories. You don't need to be a scientist for that to make sense, right? But sometimes the process doesn't go how it's supposed to or doesn't go as smoothly. Like, one part of your mind says this is happening right now, and then the other area which is forming the memory says, this happened in the past and now you're remembering it, which in turn makes it feel like you've been through this before, like you're recalling it while it's happening, AKA deja vu. Another theory says it happens when we remember something similar. Similar to what we're going through now. For example, say you go visit that friend at their new house, Somewhere you've never been before, but you have been to a house with a similar layout, with the furniture arranged in basically the same way. The idea is you can't quite recall that memory of the other house because it's not exactly the same, but it's close enough to trigger deja vu. Pretty straightforward, right? Mystery solved. But here's the none of this has been proven. It's still nothing more than a theory, Especially considering there's a lot about our brains and memory that science can't even explain. Plus, there's a lot of people who've experienced deja vu in circumstances that don't fit those examples. Which may be why scientists who've studied deja vu have treated it like a supernatural event, literally. There is an old journal article that talks about deja vu alongside ghosts, ESP and magic. There's also a book the CIA referenced while studying Project Stargate. It's written by a researcher named Vernon Neppe, who, when talking about deja vu, claimed in some cases the feeling of familiarity conceivably could stem from an unrecalled prior instance of of precognition, extrasensory perception, or out of body experience, or from largely accessible memories of a previous incarnation. End quote. Which may be why today, when people try to study the science of deja vu, they get a lot of criticism and not a whole lot of support or funding. But that's a very weird way to handle a normal biological phenomenon, right? Unless, of course, it's not just biological. Because under the surface, there's a lot of evidence suggesting deja vu could be mystical after all.