The One You Feed - The Age of Magical Overthinking: Why Our Minds Keep Doubling Down with Amanda Montell

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

In this episode, Amanda Montell explores the age of magical overthinking and why our minds keep doubling down. She discusses how cognitive biases and irrational thinking shape our perceptions and behaviors in the information age. Amanda also explains shine theory, zero-sum and sunk cost biases, and the allure of manifestation and conspiracy thinking. Through personal stories and humor, Amanda and Eric discuss how understanding these mental patterns can help us navigate modern life more consciously and compassionately. Exciting News!!!Coming in March 2026, my new book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How a Little Becomes a Lot: The Art of Small Changes for a More Meaningful Life is now available for pre-orders!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Key Takeaways Exploration of cognitive biases and their impact on modern thinking. Discussion of irrational thinking in the information age. Examination of the parable of the two wolves and its implications for personal behavior. Analysis of the shine theory and its relevance to social dynamics, particularly among women. Insights into the sunk cost fallacy and its effects on decision-making in relationships. Critique of manifestation beliefs and their parallels to conspiracy thinking. The role of storytelling in human cognition and its influence on self-perception. The relationship between overconfidence bias and self-assessment. Challenges of navigating modern life with evolved cognitive shortcuts. The impact of social media on decision-making and personal narratives. For full show notes,⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⁠ Connect with the show: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@TheOneYouFeedPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Subscribe on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ If you enjoyed this conversation with Amanda Montell, check out these other episodes: Why You Can’t Think Your Way Out of Overthinking with Adam Mastroianni The Purpose of Emotions and Why We’re Not Wired for Happiness with Anders Hansen By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! This episode is sponsored by: David Protein bars deliver up to 28g of protein for just 150 calories—without sacrificing taste! For a limited time, our listeners can receive this special deal: buy 4 cartons and get the 5th free when you go to www.davidprotein.com/FEED ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Aura Frames⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AuraFrames.com /FEED ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠to get $35 off Aura’s best-selling Carver Mat frames – named #1 by Wirecutter –  by using promo code FEED at checkout. This deal is exclusive to listeners, and frames sell out fast,  so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Even smart people totally overestimate themselves. They just do it across maybe like a slightly smaller spectrum of subjects. But people of all intelligence levels and levels of expertise are out here overcrediting themselves with positive outcomes and predicting that they know more than they do. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not

just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep them moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. A lot of modern self-help is basically this promise. If you think the right thoughts, everyone will finally make sense. And when life doesn't cooperate, we don't stop, we double down. In today's episode, Amanda Montel helps us name what's happening underneath that urge. We talk about how manifestation can slide into the same mental machinery as conspiracy thinking,

our need for proportional, satisfying explanations. We also dig into sunk costs, why we stay in bad situations, keep defending old stories, and reach for additive fixes when the real solution might be subtraction. Amanda brings humor, nuance, and a really steady lens for the chaos of the information age, especially if you're someone who overthinks everything and still feels like you're missing the point.

I'm Eric Zimmer, and this is the one. you feed. Hi, Amanda, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to have you on. I've admired your work in your podcasts and your previous books for a number of years, so it's great to finally get to catch up, and we're going to be discussing your book called The Age of Magical Oversinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality. But before we get to that, we'll start in the way that we always do with the parable. And in the parable, there's a grandparent who is talking with their grandchild. They say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other's a

bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops, they think about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Oh. Well, I could take this in a number of different directions. The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that this parable has been memeified so extensively.

I see all the time. And in fact, I do believe that I have shared a meme along the lines of like, within every woman, there are two wolves. It tends to be like pretty feminine coded, the memes that, that I'm. I see. I don't know if that's my algorithm or just, I don't know, the irony of like putting a wolf inside a woman, I don't know. My favorite is you have two wolves inside of you and they're both depressed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I love, was it Walt Whitman who said that like everyone contains multitudes and I love the meme that's like, and most of those bitches have got to go.

So I love taking like a pretty earnest parable and twisting it and, and, and, and, the meme community. I mean, many folklorists that I've interviewed would say that memes are our new legends and parables. And so, yeah, this one has been spread in pretty funny and ironic and hyperbolic ways, which I enjoy. And yeah, and it also makes me think of how oftentimes our legends and idioms and cultural expressions will divide things into binaries. which isn't necessarily how life naturally is, but we do that in order to make sense of it, to make life feel orderly and manageable

and easier on our decision-making skills. I also think about how it is true that we get better at what we practice, and so if we practice feelings of bitterness and greed and lean into cathartic anger, more than positive feelings, then we will get better at expressing ourselves in those ways. And Freud's catharsis theory was wrong. And if you rage about something,

you're not going to get it out of your system. You're just going to get better at raging. And yet, you know, we can't be positive all the time. So it's both and, both and and and sort of overcoming those binaries. And that split between logic and emotion is part of my personal life's, work and my professional life's work and definitely a huge theme in the age of magical overthinking.

Yeah, everything you said I relate with so much. I mean, I started this 11 years ago. So if I was starting a podcast today, this is not the way I would start it because I almost avoid binary thinking to such an extreme in the way I process the world that it's almost like a personality tick. And yet here I have this parable. Right behind me, I've got these two wolves. But the other thing that you said there that I had highlighted is somewhere in the book you were just talking about like this idea like of raging gets the rage out. And you say somewhere in the book, there's no evidence to show that you ever feel better for acting badly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I talk a little bit about this in a chapter in the book called the shit talking hypothesis. I guess I'll give like a little bit

of context. The book is about irrationality in the modern age, in the information age. And the way I approach it is that every chapter is kind of themed around a different cognitive bias, some of which are really well known, like confirmation bias and some cost fallacy, and some of which are lesser known but have these cool names like the Halo effect and the IKEA effect. Hundreds of cognitive biases have been described over the years by psychologist, behavioral economist, but I essentially picked my faves and use them as a lens to explore various irrationalities that are a product of the information age, both from the zeitgeist and my own life, whether I'm talking about, you know, the extreme cycles of celebrity worship and dethronement

that we see in society so often, or in the case of this chapter, which is about zero-sum bias, this sort of scarcity-minded, deeply, deeply ingrained intuition that once developed in order to help us survive and hoard important resources like food and mates during a time when those things really were limited. Now we sort of map those zero-sum intuitions on contemporary currencies that our intuitions aren't so savvy about like cloud and followers or beauty, you know, all kinds of abstract forms of currency or resources. And sometimes we attempt to correct that scarcity-minded, urgency or rage by shit-talking people or disparaging them or, you know, finding flaws in them as an attempt to elevate our own clout. And yet, you know, research into gossip and shit-talking and

emotions and catharsis has shown that when we speak negatively about other people behind their back in real life, that accomplishes something called spontaneous trait transference, where we actually adopt the qualities that we're critiquing in that person. And yeah, like, if we continuously shit talk and rage in, you know, unproductive ways, it ends up just kind of negatively impacting our own self-esteem and our own perception by others. Stay with this for a second. Then I'm going to zoom back out to the book, but we kind of dived into one chapter.

But while we're here, I loved something that you talked about in here called the Shine Theory, because you're talking about how you would do this, right? You would shit-talk people who you were perhaps envious of. And I think we all have a tendency towards that. The shine theory is kind of the opposite. Tell me about that. Yeah, well, this term shine theory was coined by Anne Friedman and Aminatuso and a piece that wrote together. They're these two writers and best friends and they're amazing.

But there was this fantastic viral 2013 piece in the cut where, Anne Friedman spoke about how women in particular are famously pitted against one another in society. And there are a number of reasons for that. One of which is that, you know, there are actually fewer positions in public life and powerful rooms for women. And so we often get really, really competitive with one another. And that can apply to, you know, like social situations in high school or, you know, professional situations for adults and it can also apply to social media situations where, you know, I think a lot of people can probably relate to this super uncanny experience where, you know, we're chilling on our phones

and our algorithms serves us an account of someone who makes us feel immediately inferior. You know, it's someone who like literally doesn't have any effect on our life whatsoever. It's a perfect stranger, but it's someone who, you know, has our haircut, but a little shaker or, you know, a similar style to us, but more aspirational or their career seems to be going a little better. And I have had this experience so many times. And at first, my approach to those feelings of scarcity and competition and inferiority would be to like doom spiral and go down a rabbit hole of like stocking this person's background and credentials to see how like I'm actually better than them.

I would sort of, yeah, like word vomit about them to my loved ones and inside of my own head. They would live rent free in my head. And then, you know, I started writing this chapter and learning more about cognitive biases for this book and, you know, embarking on my own sort of psychology journey and journey of self-reflection. And I realized, based on Anne Friedman's Shine theory, which suggests that if you come across a woman who's like smart, cool, stylish, whatever, don't try to beat her, try to befriend her. And she has this great line where she's like, if Michelle Williams knows that she shines brighter because of her proximity to Beyonce and is not instead dimmed by her proximity to Beyonce, then there's hope for the rest of us.

It's like this analogy where, you know, if you turn on a bright lamp and a slightly dimmer lamp next to it, like the whole room gets brighter. So if you come across a woman who, you know, you feel intimidated by try to combine your light with hers. And then it's a win-win, which really sort of goes against our zero-sum intuitions. All these behavioral economists found that we have this really deeply ingrained win-win aversion. Like for some reason, like when we engage in monetary transactions or just like move through life, we tend not to see situations as win-win, even though buyers, or like, buyers, yeah, rarely pay more for things than they really want to. and sellers rarely sell things for more than their worth and, you know, whatever.

So it's just this weird intuition that we have. But we can move past it and that has been really impactful for me in my life. Now, when I come across a woman who I think is doing amazing, instead of shame spiraling about her, I'll slide into her DMs and see if she might want to collaborate or get a coffee or, you know. And it doesn't always lead to anything. but I've actually made some very real friends that way. And that feels a whole lot better. Do you ever do that and then you DM them and they never reply and you end up disliking them even more on the other side of it?

No, oddly, you would think that. But oddly, like when I DM them, there's like an immediate release of that because I've like done something about it. I've like exerted my agency somehow. You know, I've like taken the situation into my own hands. And then it's like, well, if they don't respond, you know, maybe we're really not meant to be. It's led to a successful outcome enough times that my morale is high enough to tolerate no reply. Yeah, 100%. I just had a long conversation with Faith Saly about envy.

And it kind of ties very closely to this. And she talks about something called like inert envy. This is kind of the opposite of that, right? You're moving that envy somewhere in some way. You know, you're doing something with it. And my experience is almost always when I take a small positive action about whatever is spinning around in here, I immediately feel better. It doesn't always solve the problem. It doesn't.

But there's some relief in doing something useful. Yeah, because I think in part it's because it makes us feel like we're a little bit more in control of our destiny and that life isn't just happening to us. And yeah, we're like building, we're building who we are. And like, I want to be a person who makes lemonade out of lemons or whatever. So even if, you know, the lemonade comes out, tastes a little weird or I don't yield like a big delicious carafe of lemonade, then it's still worth it. I'm still on that journey. So let's zoom back out for the book for a second because you talk about magical overthinking. And you say basically we simultaneously overthink trivial matters and underthink complex ones.

Say more about that. Yeah, well, the sort of thesis of the book is predicated on this idea that our once-useful cognitive biases, these deeply ingrained decision-making shortcuts that developed in earlier human brains to help us understand the world enough to survive it, are now clashing with the information age and this hyper-capitalist age, our consumerist age, the age of social media, when we're forced to contend with more ideas in a day than most humans would ever encounter in a lifetime and more human beings. And it's just a really, really psychologically overwhelming time. And we don't even realize that these mental magic tricks, these cognitive biases that helped us for so long are at work.

And we certainly don't notice how damaging they can be. They're helpful, too, you know, moving through life with no confirmation. bias or, you know, even no zero-sum bias wouldn't be realistic or good. We would, you know, agonize over every decision and probably just, like, act really strangely and not very human. But I think becoming more aware of how these biases are creating conflicts in our lives where conflict need not be or are, you know, causing us to lose our critical thinking. I feel like critical thinking is such buzzword now. But it's been really helpful to me. because it's helped me feel less confused about my own irrational behaviors and less angry at other people's irrational behaviors.

But yeah, I think one side effect of this clash between our cognitive biases in the information age is that sometimes we overthink small matters to death, but we like blitz past complex deliberations that really deserve more care. Getting enough protein every day is really important to me and it's harder than it sounds. I'm pretty confident I'll get it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but that afternoon gap is where things fall apart. I need one more good amount of protein as a snack, and that's almost always a David protein bar. And when I'm traveling, like right now in Atlanta recording my audiobook, and I don't know what I'll be eating, I always pack a stash of David bars. David now has two bars, gold and bronze, and they're genuinely different. Gold is the hero line, 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, zero grams of sugar. That's 75% calories from protein, which is the best out there.

Bronze is newer and a little more decadent. 20 grams of protein, 150 calories, zero sugar. And they are both the best tasting protein bars out there. Don't just take my word for it. Try it for yourself. David is offering our listeners a special deal. Buy four cartons and get the fifth free when you go to Davidprotein.com slash feed. That's Davidprotein.com slash feed.

And if you prefer to shop in person, David is available at leading retailers nationwide, including Target, Walmart, Kroger, Wegmans, and the vitamin store. Just check out their store locator to find a location near you. I love what you said. You talk about some of these irrationalities. How did an evolutionary benefit at one point? Maybe not so much now. And you call them a cognitive wisdom tooth, which I think is so funny, because that's exactly what it feels like. Or the other you said is it's a legitimately useful trait that came along with or inconvenient side effect. Scientists who say call these a spandrel?

I'd never heard that. I'd never heard of that either. But yeah, spandrels are just like leftover evolutionary quirks, I guess. But I think there's a footnote that says the human chin is one example. Like when we used to have like larger jaws that needed to be capable of like chomping on harder material, Um, we, we were, you know, our skulls were shaped differently. And, uh, there's no longer a need for this like little piece of bone that makes up the human shin, but we have it anyway. And yeah, it's to say that like our bodies and minds and those are the same thing as I need to keep reminding

myself. Um, yeah, they're not perfect. You know, there are these like Darwinistic experiments that are just kind of like reacting to our environment. But our environment. But our environment, has changed technologically and psychologically so much in recent history that we have more spandrels than we know. And sometimes they can affect us in invisibly detrimental ways. Yeah. And I've always thought cognitive biases are interesting to look at because once you understand them, you can see them, right? Like if you just asked me right now, like, what is not correct about the perspective you're taking? I have no idea. I don't, there's no place to answer that question because I'm seeing. through what I see through. I can't not do it. But a cognitive bias gives me a chance to say, well, hang on. Is that happening here? Is this happening here? Because obviously, our brains take huge shortcuts. And what we're perceiving as reality is, not that there's not reality out there, but we are constructing an enormous amount of it. It's true. So you always are taking some perspective. There's no view from nowhere. But cognitive biases allow us to look at that perspective.

from different angles more effectively, I think, than just wondering what we might be missing. Yeah. And the cool thing about learning about these cognitive biases is that it allows me to feel more curious and skeptical about the way that my mind works as opposed to defensive and judgmental. That goes for me and other people as well. And I was humbled by the process of writing a lot of these different chapters. For example, when I wrote up my book proposal for this book, because nonfiction books are so long proposal, not fully written manuscripts, one of the chapters I thought I wanted to write was about the Dunning Kruger effect, which is this concept where, you know, the people who know the least about a subject think that they know the most. It's like

this thing that pundits always like to call upon to make themselves sound smart. It's like, oh, that person just is falling to the Dunning Kruger effect, that doofus. But then I started looking into it and I came across a piece of reporting in like a McGill University publication that went and revisited the original Dunning Kruger study and found that it actually didn't say what we thought it said. Because in fact, like even smart people totally overestimate themselves. They just do it across maybe like a slightly smaller spectrum of subjects. But people of all intelligence levels and levels of expertise are out here overcrediting themselves with positive outcomes and predicting that they know more than they do. And so instead, I rejiggered

that topic or that chapter to be about this phenomenon of overconfidence bias. And that was really humbly because at first I was like, oh my God, overconfidence bias. I surely, that does not apply to me. I'm a normal person. I hate myself. I'm an idiot. But As it turns out, most people exhibit some level of overconfidence, even if it's just moral overconfidence or, you know, we watch reality TV characters on screen and we think like, oh, my God, I would never behave that way in that environment. But really, we have no idea. And, you know, there have been really fascinating studies conducted. There's this great book called The Knowledge Illusion. And there was a fantastic study in that book. And I also cited where study participants,

were asked if they knew how simple objects worked, like zippers and toilets. And they were all like, yeah, I'm not an idiot. Of course I do. And then they were asked to write these like step-by-step breakdowns of how the objects actually worked and asked to reevaluate their level of knowledge of those objects. And they realized like, oh, my God, I actually don't know how a toilet works or like, I don't know how a zipper works. And so they were kind of like shown their own tuchesses.

And I think that happens all the time. And that happens to me too. And it definitely happens more in the information age because there's just more to know and more to convince ourselves that we know. And so, yeah, it was a humbling experience writing this book. Yeah, there's so many things in what you said there that I relate with. The last piece is, I don't know what I was reading, but it referenced an essay from the 50s called I Pencil. And the person in it basically said there's no human alive that can tell you how one human can tell you how to make a pencil. because there are so many different subsets of knowledge that go into all the stuff that has to come together that no one person has it all.

And that's a pencil. I mean, you know, that's a very useful and humbling way to see the world. A hundred percent. And I remember while writing that chapter, I also learned that ironically, it's actually other people's expertise that makes us feel like we know more than we do because, humans are so good at learning from one another and collaborating. That's one of the reasons why our species has, I want to say thrived. To put it optimistically, I'll say thrive. Grown. So much. And yet it sort of like blurs these cognitive boundaries where like because, you know,

I might work so harmoniously. My husband's a film composer. And I have collaborated with him in the past. And our collaborations have been so close. and so intimate that sometimes I think I know about film composing because he does. And, you know, sometimes we think we know things just because we've Googled them, but we've, like, forgotten everything we learned when we Googled them. So it's actually like that very thing where, like, it takes, you know, a hundred different types of expertise to put a pencil together. But all of those people think they know how to put a pencil together because they helped do it. When my partner and I, when she and I listen to an audiobook, she is frequently stopping and asking questions.

And it's stuff that I'm going right by because I think I know. But when she asked the question, I'm like, well, I can't do you. I don't really know how to, I don't know exactly. And if I'm not, I've shared it with her that like sometimes I get irritated by that because I think as a child I was prey,

I think we all are to some degree by knowing you know the answer. Yeah. I was a smart child. I was supposed to do that. And so when I don't know the answer, I don't like you. it. Right, right. It affects our self-esteem. Exactly. And so I've kind of noticed this, like,

why am I getting irritated with her asking questions? And I'm like, oh. And so now it's kind of an open conversation between this. You'll be like, am I asking too many questions? And I'm like, yeah, I'd just like to listen to the book. It opens up that idea of knowledge. And then the other thing that you were saying I was thinking about is that our brain spins up stories so fast that we're convinced we were right. And I was able to watch this in Jenny's mom who had Alzheimer's and we took of her for six years. And what I watched was she has no idea about a whole lot of things. But when you would ask her a question about something, she would spin up a story that had no relation to reality because you could see it. But she believed it instantly and completely.

And it was just wild to watch it. Sometimes when you see something in the extreme, you're able to be like, oh, look at that process and know that I'm doing the same thing. My brain works a little bit better than hers. But it doesn't work perfectly. I don't, you know, like, I'm doing that all the time, too. I just think it's fascinating. Oh, definitely. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I mean, I say in the book, and this has been said so many times by so many brilliant people, but human beings are like the only species that makes up stories about the world in order to understand it, you know? Like, we are narrative people. We tell ourselves stories in order to remember things, in order to make sense of things. in order to convince ourselves that we understand,

even if the nuts and bolts of those stories are like totally fictitious. Like, stories make us feel like we know things. Before we dive back into the conversation, let me ask you something. What's one thing that has been holding you back lately? You know that it's there. You've tried to push past it, somehow it keeps getting in the way. You're not alone in this, and I've identified six major saboteurs of self-control, things like autopilot behavior, self-doubt, emotional escapism, that quietly

derail our best intentions. But here's the good news. You can outsmart them. And I've put together a free guide to help you spot these hidden obstacles and give you simple, actionable strategies that you can use to regain control. Download the free guide now at one you feed.net slash ebook and take the first step towards getting back on track. So I'd like to move to a chapter called I swear I manifested this. Because A, this sort of thinking kind of drives me a little bit crazy. But I'd love to talk about it because the thing that you were really talking about is that even this concept of manifestation is a form of conspiracy theory. And you describe conspiracy theories as a sense-making narrative that offers satisfying explanations for confounding turn of events. Talk more because framing it like that

changes a whole lot of ways of thinking about. Yeah. Well, as I was thinking about the topics that I wanted to cover in this book, because I could have written, you know, 200 chapters, about 200 biases. I kept coming back to this story that I had done some reporting for a few years ago when I was promoting my second book, cultish. And the story was about this kind of cult-followed manifestation guru, sort of new-agey pseudo-therapist on social media. And I was really fascinated by this because her popularity was really on the rise.

during COVID and during a time when the conspiritualist movement was really emerging. And that's a portmanteau of the words spirituality and conspiracy theorist. And it describes this sort of unlikely crossover of believers who subscribe to both the idea that were on the brink of a paradigm shift in consciousness, which is this like new agey concept, and also the conspiratorial idea that there's this like evil cabal of elites that is secretly controlling the sociopolitical order. And so the conspiratialists are the sort of people who, like, I don't know, you might see wearing boho clothing, but also like marching shoulder to shoulder with hardcore, you know, MAGA Q&Hors. And again, it seems unlikely, but they like share some ideology.

And some of those types of believers were really subscribing to this manifestation guru online. and I was so curious as to what was going on psychologically with them. And then I came across this cognitive bias called proportionality bias, which describes our tendency to think that big events or even just big feelings must have had a big cause. The only way for an epic tragedy to make proportional sense would be for it to have had this really big, on-purpose-purpose. cause. It's this misattribution of cause and effect in order to make sense of the world. So, you know, it's when conspiracy theorists say that Princess Diana's death had to be on purpose by the British government or the royal family. It couldn't have just been the result of this, like,

freak accident or, you know, COVID had to have been engineered on purpose. It couldn't have just been the result of like this accident or small misfortunes or whatever. It just, it doesn't feel good to imagine that the universe doesn't operate. in this proportional way. We like harmonious proportions as human beings. Again, we tell ourselves these stories. And proportionality bias is the bias that is most commonly used to explain traditional conspiratorial thinking. But I couldn't help but notice that it also completely justifies ideas of manifestation or, you know, the law of attraction, this idea that like you were once, you know, financially struggling and romantically unlucky and now you're,

you know, thriving financially and have a spouse was because you, you know, vision boarded your way to it or, you know, you kind of did like a reverse conspiracy theory. Like you, you know, attracted this positive outcome on purpose. And so, yeah, I kind of, I made this argument in, the book that these misattributions of cause and effect can be helpful in a way of psychologically managing the world, but also can be taken too far and exploited by, you know, capitalistic, selfish gurus online to a cultish end. And conspiracy theories aren't always exactly the sort of like weird guy on 4chan in your mom's basement stereotype that you might think. Right. I mean, I think it's all bound up in this.

idea that everything must have a reason or a purpose. Yeah. And it's deeply disconcerting to think that's not true. Totally. I don't know if you know Brian Klaus and his book called Fluke. I've heard of it, yes. Yeah, you would love it. You would love it.

He's a great writer. But he starts off with the, and I've told this on the podcast about eight times now, he starts off by telling the story of Hiroshima and the bombing. And originally Kyoto was on the list. I know the story. Yeah, you know the story. And it didn't happen because the guy who had just been elected to be minister of the war went with his wife there like 20 years ago.

That is a deeply disconcerting thing to think that that is the reason that one group of people were bombed and another was like, I think that's the way the world actually works. But he says that there's a way that that offers peace. And I think in some ways it does, but I also think it's deeply disconcerting. Yeah. It feels unjust and disproportional. It's like how can this massive calamity have come about in this place, this very specific, important place for all the people who live there because of this sort of capricious decision that does not feel good to us. And so so many belief systems are actually predicated on making, you know, proportionality bias front and center, unconsciously, of course.

I really wanted to share some of that reporting that I had done on that particular guru and discovering how this bias applies to not only traditional conspiracy theories, but also ideas of manifestation felt like the right way to do it. And what's really interesting is the flip that you make is that traditional conspiracy theory points outwards, right? It's somebody else did this thing. But some of this manifestation and law of attraction stuff flips it inwards. Right. That's right. You're the cause of things. And you talk about how trauma has been one of those things. It has a useful frame. It has some value. And it's been, you know, used kind of way out of proportion. But it's an explanation. That's right. Yeah. Something that this figure that I was reporting on, but also so many sort of like new agey pseudotherapist types online will say is that the reason why you're suffering is because you have.

unresolved childhood trauma, you have not done enough to heal yourself. And it really connects to this kind of toxicly positive meritocracy myth that has existed since the dawn of this nation. You know, like these law of attraction kind of self-help ideas really resonate here in the land of the American dream for a reason. But yeah, it can be empowering to a point to know that that like we do, I mean, we can have a debate about free will, but we do have some control of our lives and things like mindfulness meditation and reframings and taking action. Those things do work, of course.

But to a point, some of these figures will exploit people's victim blaming and will communicate things like, you know, only you and your internal metaphysical journey can change, change your circumstances, and I am the only person who can shepherd you through that journey. And that's what I think is exploitative and problematic. And it's, again, this clash between this once-useful cognitive bias, a proportionality bias, which, you know, developed for a sensible reason. Like, there was once a time in human history where, like, yeah, big things were caused, you know, it's like a big rock falling from a cliff was probably because there was a big storm,

me, you know, like it was that simple. And things aren't so simple and physical anymore. So, yeah. Things are definitely not simple. Is there a bias for just wanting a simple answer? In general, across the board, seems to be a default thing. Like, give me the easy answer. Yeah, definitely.

And the weird thing is, is like, sometimes the easy answer is the answer. What, what by the answer? is that? I'm going to look it up right now. What cognitive bias can explain our desire for easy explanations? Yeah, I mean, it's a combination of like availability heuristics, simplicity bias, confirmation bias. It's very rare that any of these biases will work solo. There's normally like a lot of them going on at once. They travel in packs. They do. They do. They do their pack animals, these biases. And there's like a domino effect too.

Or like if your zero sum bias kicks in, then your confirmation bias will enter the picture. And it's a whole big unfortunate party of irrationality. Yeah. Yeah, the point you make in there that I think is a really important point. And you just said it a little bit. I'm going to read what you wrote just to really kind of drive it home because I think it's important. You said, you know, you're talking about these mental health influencers. most of them mean well enough

and they're right about a lot of things. Beliefs about yourself do influence outcomes. Spirituality is shown to increase resilience. You can alter your reactions to certain stressors. You then go on to some big pharma things. I don't need to go. But I really like that because yes,

yes, there are definite ways that we can change and improve our mental and emotional health. And there's a whole, lot sometimes that you can't change. There's a whole lot that there are bigger forces happening. You talk about this a little bit too. There's a systematic factors, right? And this show has been guilty, I would say, to a large degree of we talk about the systematic factors, but then we come back to practical things that a person can do because I feel like there's something you can do with

that. But people like actionable takeaways that they can do. Like tonight. But I think what I at least hope to do is continue to stress like none of it's easy, none of it fixes what it is to be a human, none of it solves the human condition. There's no fix for life. Exactly. And sometimes when I come across these like little self-help nuggets of wisdom or even share them, because I do my magical overthinker's podcast, which is kind of like an extension or a spin-off of the book. At the end of every episode, I always like to provide a little, you know, piece of evidence-based advice for how we overthinkers can get out of our own heads that week. And sometimes it feels a little silly to share a study about how, like, looking at trees helps,

you know, like, slow down your heart rate or whatever. I'm just kind of making that up. But there are similar studies out there. Anyways, that is not going to cure systemic issues, medical racism, like all these deeply, deeply problematic things that are keeping so many people unwell and unsafe and unhappy. And yet, I would venture to say that, looking at a tree never hurt. And so it's both, you know, it's both at once. Yeah, it is both. And I feel conflicted about this sometimes because I look at like someone like, you know, we are drawn to people like Victor Frankl, right, who shows that even in the worst circumstances, the way he approached the world did make a difference in his experience of it, in the worst conditions, and he's a little bit of

an outlier, right? Totally. And we love those outlier stories. Exactly. Yeah. They give us hope. I mean, it's interesting because my earlier work is about cults and identifying cultish influence in everyday life.

and part of the inspiration for that was that my dad grew up in a cult. And he has this, like, totally epic, like, rags to riches, oppression to enlightenment type of story that I think is fascinating to hear and, you know, maybe inspiring to some, but his story is not, like, replicable.

You know what I mean? Like, he had this, like, totally just, like, amazing tale. And I don't think anybody can like vision board their way to what my dad experienced. And yet I don't want to not share his story just because it isn't easy to replicate. So these things are tricky. Yeah. I mean, my own story has a little bit of this because the narrative. And, you know, I've got a book come out. So we're talking about the narrative more is, you know, at 24, I was a homeless heroin addict. I weighed 100 pounds. And now I'm in a very, very, very, different place. And so there's something there. And I also know that I got offered diversion

instead of prison because I was a white man, right? What difference would that have made? When I came out of treatment, I had places to go that weren't back to a house full of drugs. I didn't have children that I needed child care for, on and on and on and on, right? There are reasons we know that people recover. That helps. And of course, we see people who have all those things not recover. Right.

And we see people who have none of those things recover. And so there's an element in there of, okay, yeah, a person is doing something. It's not like I didn't do anything. But I also, I like what you said. It's not replicable exactly. Yeah.

Because my situation is different. This is why I take such issue with some of these cult-followed self-help gurus online because they're selling a system or like whatever, yeah, a bespoke manifestation practice that, I mean, it's not the answer. And when someone is feeling vulnerable and is hoping that there is that simple answer, that, you know, magic bullet or whatever it is, sometimes the people who have the most knowledge and nuance, their message is.

not rewarded by the algorithmic overlords and whoever else. And so, yeah, we have to be kind of vigilant out there. Yeah. Well, I'm the living proof of it doesn't work. Nuance doesn't work. It's not an, it doesn't work on algorithms. I've tried. And yet, got to be who you are. I'm curious, your book cultish made me think of Alcoholics Anonymous because I got sober in a 12-step program. And I didn't have time to read your whole take on it. So I did what modern people do. And I asked ChatGBTGPT what you believe about AAA. Would you like to hear? Yeah. What do I believe about AA? Yeah, let's hear what Chad GBT thinks I believe about AA. I don't even know how it would know, but okay. Chat GPT believes that you've had conversations with people about some of the aspects of

AA appear a little bit cultish. There's the jargon that is used all the time, the oversees, simplification, all of that. And yet that it does turn out to be a relatively useful thing for people, certain people. For some people. Yeah. Oh, this is a tricky one because on sounds like a cult, my other podcast years ago, we did do an episode on the Cult of 12 Step programs. And it was really hard to find a guest because, you know, these are like anonymous programs.

And the podcast was like smaller then. And it was just so hard to find a guest. And then we finally did find someone who. was willing to come on and talk about his experience. And his personal experience was quite favorable about the particular program that he was in, which like is valid for him. And that's great. But we received feedback from people who, who certainly did not have that experience in AA or other 12-step programs who felt like they were sexist and like all of the, I mean, there's no like unifying organizations. So every group is.

going to have like a different vibe and a different hierarchy and, you know, like different unspoken rules and rituals and whatever. And so we ended up doing a part two that brought the kind of counter argument. But yeah, I think AA is culty for sure. And it's, you know, soft theology and certainly in the lingo. I mean, A.A. Lingo was like the impetus for me writing my entire book about whole language. So, you know, it causes those like culty, spidey senses to tingle in me. But I also know that it has had a wildly positive effect on people that I know in my life and that there are others who had a totally opposite experience. Is that what was represented in that chat? Pretty much. I don't know. Yeah. Pretty much. I guess. I talk about it a lot because I don't go to

12-step programs anymore, but they saved my life twice. And so they were very beneficial. But in my book, I even have a little bit where I'm writing about like the cliches, like, oh, God, having to sit through it just again and again, the repetition. And yet, some of them turn out to actually be pretty useful, which makes the intellectual in me hate. But the alcoholic and addict in me that needed to stay alive, they were good for. And I think that the problem with trying to say anything about something like AA is that, as you said, it's this huge thing. Every group is autonomous, which stops it ultimately from being a true cult. Yeah, yeah. Every individual group is this. Within a group, you can get the cultiness. But the organization...

I mean, a cult can just be two people, like, from the way I see it. Like, it doesn't... So if there's an AA group that, like, really goes off the rails, then, then, yeah. I mean, again, I conceive of cults as, like, on this spectrum and, like, something can be culting. without being, you know, the Manson's. And that might be a group that, you know, you don't want to be a part of. But exactly, A.A. is a wiggly concept and very sensitive. And I don't remember the statistics that we found on, like, what its actual success rate is.

But it is curious to me and unfortunate it, I guess, just reflects, like, the taboo that addiction still is in our society that it's kind of like the only mainstream option for people who want to get sober. I know myself, if I were in that position, I would really struggle with AA, just like the God stuff. I would, but, but if my life was on the line and this was my option in front of me, I guess I would just have to freaking bite the bullet. So it's tricky. There's a whole lot more, I think, is the way that culture as a whole has become more spiritual, not religious. I think AA, the same thing has sort of started to happen. But I'm not defending AA, actually, because I do think it's nuanced. I think,

Part of it also is that there's just no one thing that's going to fix an addiction. It is a complex multivariant syndrome that's caused by so many different factors and so many different things to think that one organization could solve it. Has the answer. That's right. Yeah. That's a really good point. And the world's come a long way in that there are more alternatives. A.A. is still the one. It's free. It's everywhere. But compared to me getting sober in 19- I mean, it's a different world out there right now. Yeah, yeah, and I hope it continues to improve. I mean, especially with the fentanyl epidemic and everything.

It's just so unfortunate. And yeah, I had just a thought fly out of my head. It was a good one, and I don't remember it. I don't recall it. Maybe it'll come to me. Oh, I was going to say, do you want to know a fun fact? I do. It's actually not that fun.

When I wrote cultish, when I was drafting that book, which was in like 2019, 2020. It was true that traditional religion was declining in the United States, but spiritual proclivities were as high as ever. But more recent Pew Research has found that actually there's been this sort of chilling reembrace of traditional religion, which can be chalked up to, I don't know, any number of factors from just like the increasing rise of conservatism and like the Manosphere, and specifically, young men are more, young men are more religious than young women,

which is like a curveball because historically that's not been the case. Also, like, people who had atheist parents might be, like, rebelling against their atheist parents and an ironic turn. And then, yeah, just like the longing for community in this loneliness epidemic. It's weird. It's weird how, like, you know, there are like hipster Catholics and Mormons and evangelicals and Protestants now. It's like, what's happening? That is very interesting. There's always been hipster evangelicals. They've been, they've been lurking, you know, for, I bump into them very often.

Don't I know it. But I do think it's very interesting. Okay, before we're running out of time, though, I want to turn to a chapter called A toxic relationship is just a cult of one. Back to your point about a cult can be two people. It's about the sunk cost fallacy. And I want to hit a particular part of this, even though I'd love to hear you. Why don't you tell the basic story and then I'll get mine. point in. Sure. Yeah. Well, this is probably the most sort of memoiristic, vulnerable chapter in the book that attempts to understand through the cognitive bias of the Sont-Coss fallacy, my decision to spend seven of my formative years in a romantic relationship that was quite cult-like and that I knew logically was not serving me and not making me happy or fulfilled in any way whatsoever, but I kept doubling down and hoping that the win that I had invested in was coming in just around the corner. And I came across a philosophy paper about the sunk cost fallacy, sort of defending it by this philosopher named Ryan Doody.

We won't laugh too hard at his last name. But he was defending that the sunk cost fallacy is actually not that fallacious when you think about human beings as social creatures who want to create, you know, a positive impression of their decision-making track record. And if you're constantly, you know, going back on decisions that you made, it might make you seem like this erratic loose canon. And yeah, there might have been benefits to me staying in that relationship for so long and seeming really stable, even though I really wish I hadn't. And I, yeah, I sort of move through the story of that relationship, referencing that study and others about related concepts like additive solution bias. And yeah, that chapter

has really helped me process my own personal experiences. Yeah, it's beautifully written. It's sad that you went through that. And I think you worked your way through a lot of the pieces of it here. That idea of the sunk cost bias being, it goes back to what we talked about before, narrative creatures, right? And so you say we're each tasked with a creative challenge to weave the many choices we've made over the years into a cohesive and flattering story about who we are. We do this almost automatically. We can't help ourselves. Come to think of it, I do it throughout the whole book, which I love. But I never thought of the sunk cost theory in that way. And I do think there's a social benefit, but I also think there's an internal benefit. Like, it's very hard to

live in a state, and I've done it, where you know you're making the wrong decision all the time. Yeah. I mean, I've got years of this in different domains in my life. There's a deep knowing, and yet on the surface, there's a whole lot of scurrying to try and make the story make sense and why and justify it to myself. Yeah. We human beings do not like to look our bad decisions in the eye and are clearly willing. and eager to do a lot of psychological gymnastics to justify our choices. It was interesting writing that chapter because most of the literature that I came across

about sunk cost fallacy talked about it in sort of an economic context. But it so obviously explained this decision to stay in this relationship that had never made sense to me before. I would like kick myself for staying for so long in this clearly bad thing that was like, cause it actually causing other people to judge me in certain ways or be confounded by my behavior. You know, that's one of the chapters in the book that like I felt most healed by. And even in a, you know, lower stakes context, I now think about the sunk cost fallacy and additive solution bias all the time. The definition of sunk cost fallacy is the tendency to think that resources already

spent on an endeavor justify spending even more. And it's related to this additive solution concept where we as human beings naturally, but especially growing up in consumer society, think that in the face of a problem, the solution often involves, like, adding stuff, like a person or a gadget or a new outfit or whatever, when sometimes the much more efficient solution is just to take something away. And, you know, like, as I was going through the most painful parts of that relationship, it, like, literally never occurred to me to just, like, take the relationship away. I look at end it in a lower stakes context. You know, now when I'm, I don't know, say, like, cleaning my house or like doing a little spring cleaning or a decluttering, whatever, sometimes I'll, like, look at my junk drawer and be like, oh, I just need like, I just need to go to the container store and like buy some drawer organizers. It's like, no, you just throw some things away. Yeah. And I think there's even more of an incentive to double down on our decisions in the age of social media when like so many people are watching. us make decisions online. We might feel more social pressure to stick by that story that we're

weaving with our decisions. Yeah, I spent a lot of years in a really bad marriage, and I'm not blaming anybody. It was just objectively a bad marriage. And there were a lot of complicating factors. There were children involved. There was all sorts of stuff. There was me back into alcoholism, a whole lot of things. But when you had this part about the sunk cost bias, I was like, ah, that makes sense, right? Because the whole time, again, like I said, there's a part of me that knows this, no, no, no, no. And yet I'm working really hard. And there's also this idea that, this goes back to the self-help Western idea. There's a fix for this. There's a way to fix this. And you say, in one of my favorite parts of the book, you'd say, what I'd say to my teenage self, though, is that no one in history ever transformed from an asshole to a dreamboat just because their girlfriend. friend really wanted them to. And that's the magical thinking, right? That's the magical thinking, which is that something is going to change. Yeah, I mean, all these concepts are related, you know, the sun cost fallacy, manifestation, zero some bias, you know, like, oh, if there's like a scarcity

of love, you know, it's been amazing to understand or to be on this journey of understanding how imperfect our decision-making shortcuts are and how badly they sometimes mix with the pressures of today. But on a positive note, you were recently married, right? Oh, yes. Yes, I was. Congratulations. Thank you.

This past summer, the Sun-Kazalsi was not a factor in this decision, despite the fact that he and I have known each other for 20 years. Wow. We met in middle school doing community theater together, and then we had like a little fling in high school that was very controversial because he was my brother's best friend. And it just wasn't meant to be. So we parted ways. But then we reconnected in an unlikely way as adults. And life had brought us, you know, closer.

And we, yeah, we got married. And that has been a very nice thing. And had you been dating in a long time again now? Before we got married, yeah. We were together for six years before we got married. That's not terribly long. Meaning, like, if you had said to me, like, we've been together 20 years and we decided to get married, I'd be like, why?

Like, what prompted a marriage at this juncture? My partner and I, Jenny and I are kind of at this point. We're like 11 years and we can't. Neither of us really thinks it's something we particularly care about doing. Oh, my God. I mean, I have a whole, I have made many podcast episodes, including a magical overthinkers, episode about weddings and like me working through my thought spirals about marriage and weddings and problematizing it and then finding my way back to it but in a bespoke way I've I it has been a

whole it has been a process like wrapping my head around why this needed to happen and or not needed to why we wanted it to happen um but it ultimately the way that we did it and the way that we have done it it has ultimately been a really good thing and has meant a lot to my partner specifically. I actually proposed to him, and he was kind of like the bride, if you will. That was like really key in making this whole thing feel right. I've told the story of this whole thing on a couple podcasts in the past. So it was not a decision made on a whim. I'll put it that way.

You wouldn't happen to be an overthinker, would you? No, I don't know why you would ever think of that about me. Before we wrap up, I want you to think about this. Have you ever ended the day feeling like your choices didn't quite match the person you wanted to be? Maybe it was autopilot mode or self-doubt that made it harder to stick to your goals. And that's exactly why I created the six saboteurs of self-control. It's a free guide to help you recognize the hidden patterns that hold you back and give you simple, effective strategies to break through them.

If you're ready to take back control and start making lasting changes, download your copy now at one you feed.net slash ebook. Let's make those shifts happen starting today. One you feed.net slash ebook. Well, thank you so much for coming on a show. I really did enjoy the book. It's beautifully written and it's very insightful in a lot of places. We only got to touch on a very little of it. But thank you.

Appreciate that. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. This has been such a great conversation. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought-provoking, I'd love for you to share it with a friend.

Sharing from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don't have a big budget, and I'm certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better, and that's you. Just hit the share button on your podcast app or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the love. world and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one you feed community.