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Writer, linguist, and podcaster Amanda Montell is a whip-smart cultural commentator with a knack for seeing and explaining the zeitgeist as it takes shape around us. Known for her phenomenal breakout bestseller, Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, the critical darling Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language and her hit podcast Sounds Like a Cult, she writes about Virginia Woolf and spray-tanning with equal verve—and she’ll make you laugh while doing it.
In her new book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, Montell widens her keen lens to take on our present paradox: irrationality in the modern age, a phenomenon she’s termed “magical overthinking”. With the totality of human knowledge just a click away, shouldn’t we all be a little more in control of our own minds and our own happiness? Instead, we desperately flock to Instagram therapists for guidance, make plans based on the favorable positions of the planets, and suspect that churning butter in a cabin like a tradwife might just solve all our problems. Whence all the delusion?
Thankfully, as Montell shares, there’s an explanation for the cornucopia of illogical behaviors we see in the culture at large and in our own lives: cognitive biases. Our brains developed this shortcuts to help us make quick and “smart” decisions. It’s just that, unfortunately, evolution could never have anticipated the mind-bending volume and pace of the Information Age. In her sharp, meticulously researched and deeply vulnerable chapters, Montell takes on these cognitive biases and gets to the root of some of our most questionable behaviors.
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Westlake Porter Public Library is an independent public library serving the residents of the city of Westlake, western Cuyahoga County and eastern Lorain County. The library is located at 27333 Center Ridge Road in Westlake, Ohio. Anyone who lives, works, owns property, or goes to school in Ohio can register for a free library card.
