The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell
From the bestselling author of Cultish and host of the podcast Sounds Like a Cult, a delicious blend of cultural criticism and personal narrative that explores our cognitive biases and the power, disadvantages, and highlights of magical thinking.
Utilizing the linguistic insights of her “witty and brilliant” (Blyth Roberson, author of America the Beautiful?) first book Wordslut and the sociological explorations of her breakout hit Cultish, Amanda Montell now turns her erudite eye to the inner workings of the human mind and its biases in her most personal and electrifying work yet, The Age of Magical Overthinking (Atria/One Signal).
“Magical thinking” can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world: Think of the conviction that one can manifest their way out of poverty, stave off cancer with positive vibes, thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches, or transform an unhealthy relationship to a glorious one with loyalty alone.
In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in The Age of Magical Overthinking, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven.
In a series of razor-sharp, deeply funny chapters, Montell delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “Halo effect” cultivates worship (and hatred) of larger-than-life celebrities, to how the “Sunk Cost Fallacy” can keep us in detrimental relationships long after we’ve realized they’re not serving us.
As she illuminates these concepts with her signature brilliance and wit, Montell’s prevailing message is one of hope, empathy, and ultimately forgiveness for our anxiety-addled human selves. If you have all but lost faith in our ability to reason, Montell aims to make some sense of the senseless. To crack open a window in our minds, and let a warm breeze in. To help quiet the cacophony for a while, or even hear a melody in it.
“This book was born out of a deep curiosity and urgent personal need to understand why, in the ‘age of information,’ the world only seems to make less sense. We’re living in a time of such intense delusion, from celebrity worship to conspiratorialism. I wrote this book for anyone who feels like it’s just incredibly hard to exist as a human in the world right now but can’t quite put their finger on why,” says Montell, in Publishers Weekly’s Endnotes.
About Amanda Montell:
Amanda Montell is a writer, linguist, and podcast host living in Los Angeles. She is the author of three nonfiction books, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language, and The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality (forthcoming April 9, 2024 from OneSignal). She is also a creator and host of the hit podcast, Sounds Like A Cult. Amanda’s books have earned praise from The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Kirkus Reviews, and more. Cultish was named a best book of 2021 by NPR, was shortlisted for several prizes including the Goodreads Choice Awards and getAbstract International Book Award, and is currently in development for television. Sounds Like A Cult won “Best Emerging Podcast” at the 2023 iHeart Radio Podcast Awards and was named a best podcast of 2022 by Vulture, Esquire, and others.
Amanda’s essays and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, and elsewhere. She was born and raised in Baltimore, MD and holds a degree in linguistics from NYU.
Photo Credit: Kaitlyn Mikayla
