Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of I Heart Radio.

Hey Brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum here.

Let's pretend you have, oh, say, $40,000 to spare.

And you're out shopping for a shiny new ride.

You've never really cared about cars that much before,

minus perhaps a cerebral hate for the car commercials you see every seven seconds during a televised sporting event.

But now you're invested.

And when someone mentions a certain kind of car, one you've never heard of before, but maybe

that gets high ratings on a consumer review site, you're interested.

Suddenly, that car is everywhere.

It's parked on your street. Your boss's husband has one.

You see two of them next to you in traffic on your way home from work.

The car is even popping up in those ubiquitous commercials during the game and you

swear up and down they came out of nowhere. So what exactly is happening here?

Do this car suddenly come to dominate the cultural consciousness or is your consciousness playing tricks on you?

Welcome to the batter-mainhof phenomenon, otherwise known as the frequency illusion or

recency illusion.

This phenomenon occurs when a thing you've just noticed experienced or been told about

suddenly crops up constantly. It gives you the feeling that or been told about suddenly suddenly

it gives you the feeling that out of nowhere pretty much the whole world is talking about this subject

or that it's swiftly surrounding you and you're not crazy You are totally seeing it more. But the thing is, of course, that's

because you're noticing it more. A couple of things happen when the batter-main-huff phenomenon kicks in.

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