Age of Magical Overthinking

I was drawn To Age of Magical Overthinking because I am a HUGE fan of Amanda Montell’s work. Her podcast Sounds Like A cult is the one podcast that I never miss. 

This book outlines different forms of cognitive biases we all have. Montell gives each one a devoted chapter. The topics she explores are the halo effect, proportionality bias, sunk cost fallacy, zero sum thinking, recency illusion, illusionary truth effect over confidence, confirmation bias, declinism and the Ikea effect. Montell uses her own life and examples from popular culture to flesh each of these ideas out.

In her deeply personal approach to the topic, It was hard not to read my own narrative into the content presented. I know that I often struggle with detecting survivors bias in narratives about people making writing or other art forms as their main job.  I am constantly telling myself that another person's career success is not my own failure, which is an example of zeo sum thinking. When I get overwhelmed with technology I see how I can fall into declinism (the idea that society is progressively getting worse). The book really did help highlight some of the issues that contribute to my insecurities.

Montell's approach to these topics embody the mind of a scholar and communication style of a gossipy girlfriend. This makes it addictively readable. I'd describe the book as an introduction to logical fallacies meets memoir. The content is pretty basic yet it really makes the reader examine what is going on in their head.   Amanda is so entertaining that the reader will laugh at the examples that are used.

 I did have the opportunity to hear the author speak live in Minneapolis! She truly is a rock star linguist! A burlesque rendition of Pinnochio opened for her presentation. The first part of Amanda's portion was a presentation based on the first chapter of the book "Are You My Mother Taylor Swift" and she used the opportunity to interview a local writer/podcaster on opinions like should celebrities use their social media platform to bring awareness to pressing issues. The second part felt more like watching a live podcast recording as she had a conversation with one of the burlesque performers on numerous facets of overthinking.

I was fan girling really hard at the opportunity to hear her speak! When it comes to the halo effect, I am pretty good at identifying that I really admire someone's work or I have a crush on them but know nothing about their life that they do nor share on social media. However Amanda presents herself in a way that makes me imagine that if I had the opportunity to interact with her on a personal level that we could easily be besties.