Why You See Things Everywhere After You Learn About Them | Smartest Year Ever (Dec 1, 2025)

Ever notice that once you learn about something, you suddenly start seeing it everywhere? A new word, a new car, a random concept — and now it’s somehow following you. Gordy kicks off Cognitive Bias Week by exploring one of the strangest tricks your brain plays on you: why our minds convince us the world has changed when it hasn’t.

This episode dives into the psychology of perception, pattern recognition, and confirmation bias, breaking down how your attention rewires itself the moment something lands on your radar. From selective attention to dopamine reinforcement, it’s a fascinating look at how your brain rewards you for noticing — even when nothing has actually changed.

Gordy traces this modern illusion back to a 1994 newspaper letter that gave rise to one of the most memorable names in cognitive science — and explains why it’s still shaping how we interpret coincidence, advertising, and everyday life today.

Watch to find out why your brain keeps showing you the same thing again and again... and what it says about how we think.

Music thanks to Zapsplat.

Sources

• Zwicky, A. (2006). Language Log: “The Frequency Illusion.”
  

• St. Paul Pioneer Press (1994). Reader correspondence archive.
  

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
  

• Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” Science, 185(4157), 1124–1131.
  

• Cherry, K. (2023). “What Is the Baader–Meinhof Phenomenon?” Verywell Mind.
  

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