Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • Magazines

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Biographies
  3. Autobiographies

Read and listen for free for 42 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
3.7(23)

The Age of Magical Overthinking : Notes on Modern Irrationality

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A BookPage Best Nonfiction Book of 2024

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.

“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.


Author:

  • Amanda Montell

Narrator:

  • Amanda Montell

Format:

  • Audiobook
  • E-book

Duration:

  • 6 h 5 min
  • 177 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Biographies
  • Autobiographies
  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Society
  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Psychology

More by Amanda Montell

Skip the list
  1. Cultish : The Language of Fanaticism

    Amanda Montell

    audiobook
  2. Wordslut : A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language

    Amanda Montell

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. On Immunity

    Eula Biss

    audiobook
  2. 10 Women Who Changed Science and the World

    Catherine Whitlock, Rhodri Evans

    audiobook
  3. The Exceptions : Nancy Hopkins and the fight for women in science

    Kate Zernike

    audiobookbook
  4. Chase the Rainbow

    Poorna Bell

    book
  5. The Good Ally

    Nova Reid

    audiobook
  6. There's Nothing Like This : The Strategic Genius of Taylor Swift

    Kevin Evers

    audiobook
  7. We Were the Universe : 'Full of dark wit and feral delight' Jenny Offill

    Kimberly King Parsons

    book
  8. ON THE RECORDs : Notes from the Vinyl Revival

    Graham Sharpe

    book
  9. Speak : Find Your Voice, Trust Your Gut, and Get From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be

    Tunde Oyeneyin

    audiobook
  10. Easy Beauty: A Memoir

    Chloé Cooper Jones

    audiobook
  11. What's Your Pronoun?

    Dennis Baron

    audiobook
  12. Come Fly The World : The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am

    Julia Cooke

    audiobook

  • 3 books

    Amanda Montell

    Amanda Montell is a writer and reporter from Baltimore with bylines in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Woman's Day, The Rumpus, Byrdie.com, and WhoWhatWear, where she is the staff features editor. As a pop linguist, Amanda's insights have been featured in Glamour, Bustle, Refinery29, Hello Giggles, and Bust Magazine. Amanda graduated from NYU with a degree in linguistics. She lives in Los Angeles. Find her on Instagram @amanda_montell.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5