Episode description

New York Times Bestselling author Amanda Montell visits Google to discuss her book “The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality.”

“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, or thwart the apocalypse by learning to can their own peaches. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brain’s coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to eleven.

Montell’s book delves into a cornucopia of the cognitive biases that run rampant in our brains, from how the “halo effect” cultivates the worship or 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.

Visit http://youtube.com/TalksAtGoogle/ to watch the video.