Michelle: A 1981 study found 93% of American drivers believe they are better than average. A more recent study found 98% of middle schoolers want to be internet famous. Mark: Okay, hold on. Ninety-three percent think they're better than average? That's mathematically impossible and also describes every single person I've ever shared a highway with. Michelle: Exactly! And that's the point. This isn't just confidence; it's a glitch in our thinking. A fundamental, often invisible, irrationality that shapes how we see the world. And it's a glitch we're exploring today. Mark: I'm intrigued. It feels like our brains are running on some very old, very buggy software. Michelle: That is the perfect way to put it. We're diving into the brilliant book The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell. And what makes her perspective so unique is her background. Mark: Right, she's not just a psychologist. Michelle: Not at all. Amanda Montell is a linguist and the host of the wildly popular podcast Sounds Like a Cult. So she comes at this with a deep understanding of how language and group dynamics literally build these strange realities we live in. She’s an expert in how we get trapped. Mark: So where does this magical overthinking show up most? I'm guessing it's not just about thinking you're a good driver. Michelle: Oh, it's so much deeper. And Montell argues one of the most dangerous places it shows up is in our own relationships. She has this brilliant, chilling phrase for it: a "cult of one."

Mark: Whoa, a 'cult of one.' That sounds incredibly dramatic. Is she just being poetic, or is there a real mechanism at play here? It feels a bit extreme to compare a bad boyfriend to a cult leader. Michelle: It does, but the psychological mechanics are shockingly similar. It’s not about a charismatic leader in a compound; it’s about being the lone member of a belief system centered on one other person. Montell shares her own story with a man she calls 'Mr. Backpack.' Mark: Mr. Backpack? I'm already nervous. Michelle: You should be. She was 18, he was 29. The relationship lasted seven years. And from the outside, the red flags were everywhere. He was controlling, he was moody, he’d punch elevator walls next to her. He convinced her to abandon her dream of moving to New York and move to L.A. for him instead. Mark: Okay, so classic toxic behavior. But why did she stay for seven years? That’s the part that’s always hard to understand from the outside. Michelle: This is the core of it. It wasn't just about love or hope. It was about a powerful cognitive bias called the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Her brain couldn't handle the idea that the seven years she had already invested—her time, her youth, her emotions, the entire story of her young adulthood—was all for nothing. Mark: Ah, I see. It’s the same reason you finish a terrible movie you’re two hours into. You’ve already spent the time, so you might as well see it through, even though it’s making you miserable. Michelle: Precisely. But apply that to seven years of your life. To leave would be to admit that the central narrative you’ve built your life around was a mistake. So you keep investing. You double down. You think, "If I just try a little harder, get a bigger apartment, go on one more vacation, I can salvage this investment." You're trying to fix the problem by adding things, not by removing the one toxic element: the relationship itself. Mark: Wow. So you're not staying because you're weak or foolish. You're staying because your brain is desperately trying to protect the story you've told yourself. It’s a defense mechanism. Calling it a 'cult of one' suddenly makes a terrifying amount of sense. It’s a belief system you can’t afford to let collapse. Michelle: Exactly. It’s a self-created prison of logic. And that’s a very internal, personal battle. But this kind of flawed thinking also shapes how we interact with the entire outside world. Mark: That makes me think about the world online. It feels like a constant, invisible competition. A different kind of trap.

Michelle: You’ve just hit on the next major bias Montell tackles: the Zero-Sum Bias. It’s this false, deeply ingrained belief that someone else's success must come at your expense. That life is a fixed pie, and if they get a bigger slice, yours must be smaller. Mark: That feels ancient. Like, caveman-level thinking. There's only so much mammoth meat to go around. Michelle: It is ancient! Our brains are wired for a world of scarcity. But now, that wiring is plugged into the infinite, algorithm-fueled world of social media, and it just short-circuits. Montell talks about her time working in the beauty industry, where this was on full display. Mark: Oh, I can only imagine. Michelle: She describes it as being paid to feel bad about herself. Her job was to write about products that promised to fix flaws she didn't even know she had. And then she’d go on Instagram and see an endless scroll of other women who seemed more successful, more beautiful, more put-together. It creates this vicious cycle of comparison. Mark: I've totally been there. You see a friend post about their promotion, and for a split second, your first thought isn't "Good for them!" It's "What am I doing wrong with my own career?" It’s an involuntary flinch of inadequacy. Michelle: Right! And Montell points out our common, but flawed, coping mechanism for this feeling. She calls it the "shit-talking hypothesis." Mark: I think I know what that is. You see the perfect post, and to make yourself feel better, you find something to criticize. "Oh, her vacation looks nice, but I bet she's in massive credit card debt." Michelle: Exactly. It’s a little dose of venom to soothe your own ego. But it doesn't actually work. It just reinforces the negative, competitive mindset. It keeps you locked in that zero-sum game. Mark: So we’re trapped. What’s the way out? Michelle: This is where the book offers a really beautiful and actionable alternative. Montell champions an idea called 'Shine Theory,' coined by Ann Friedman. The core principle is simple: "I don't shine if you don't shine." Mark: Okay, I like the sound of that. How does it work in practice? Michelle: Instead of seeing someone who intimidates you as a threat, you treat them as an inspiration. You actively befriend them. You publicly praise their work. You choose collaboration over competition. Montell quotes Friedman, saying, "If Kelly Rowland can come around to the idea that she shines more, not less, because of her proximity to Beyoncé, there’s hope for the rest of us." Mark: That’s a fantastic way to put it. It’s about consciously rewiring that scarcity mindset into one of abundance. Her success doesn't take away my light; it can actually make the whole room brighter. Michelle: It’s a powerful reframe. And this idea of rewiring our thinking is so crucial, because so many of our biases come from looking at the world with incomplete data. We're constantly making judgments based on a skewed picture of reality. We only see the winners.

Mark: What do you mean we only see the winners? Michelle: Montell explains this with one of the most brilliant and famous examples of a cognitive bias: the story of the WWII fighter planes. Mark: Oh, I think I've heard this one. Remind me. Michelle: During the war, the American military wanted to add armor to their planes to protect them, but they couldn't armor the whole thing or it would be too heavy to fly. So they looked at the planes that came back from missions and meticulously mapped out where all the bullet holes were. The wings, the tail, the fuselage—they were all riddled with holes. Mark: So the logical conclusion is to reinforce those areas, right? Put the armor where the planes are getting hit the most. Michelle: That was exactly their plan. It seems perfectly logical. But a statistician named Abraham Wald stopped them. He pointed out the critical flaw in their thinking. He told them to put the armor where the bullet holes weren't. Mark: Wait, what? Where they weren't? That makes no sense. Michelle: It makes perfect sense when you ask the right question. Wald asked: where are the missing planes? The planes that got shot down and never made it back? The bullet holes on the returning planes only showed them where a plane could be hit and still survive. The planes that were hit in the cockpit, or the engine—the areas that came back looking clean—were the ones that crashed. They weren't seeing them because they were at the bottom of the ocean. Mark: Wow. That is... that gives me chills. They were about to reinforce the parts of the plane that were proven to be non-fatal, while ignoring the parts that were. They were focusing only on the survivors. Michelle: And that is Survivorship Bias. We do this all the time. We hear about the college dropout who became a billionaire, but we don't hear about the thousands who dropped out and went broke. We build our entire model of success on the handful of stories that survived, ignoring the silent majority of failures. Mark: It completely distorts our perception of risk and reality. Michelle: Completely. And Montell applies this to a very modern and emotional context: the phenomenon of "dying girls on YouTube." She talks about these young women who vlog their battles with terminal illness. They often become incredibly popular because they offer a narrative of hope and positivity in the face of tragedy. Mark: We crave those stories of resilience. Michelle: We do. But that creates a form of survivorship bias. We focus on the inspiring narrative, the positive attitude. But as one cancer survivor in the book says, "A positive mental attitude does not cure cancer—any more than a negative mental attitude causes cancer." The stories of those who weren't as camera-ready, who didn't have a positive message, or who simply didn't survive, are the missing bullet holes. Their stories are just as true, but they're not the ones we tend to see or share.

Mark: So, the Sunk Cost Fallacy, Zero-Sum Bias, Survivorship Bias... they're all different flavors of the same core problem, aren't they? We're telling ourselves a story based on incomplete or flawed information. We're trying to 'make it make sense' in a way that protects our ego or fits a narrative we desperately want to be true. Michelle: That's the perfect synthesis. Our brains are narrative machines, but they're building these stories with faulty materials. We're trying to rationalize our past choices, our social standing, and our view of the world, but the logic is full of holes we can't see. Mark: So what’s the solution? We can’t just turn these biases off. They’re baked into our operating system. Michelle: You can't. And Montell is very clear about that. The book isn't a "how-to" guide for perfect rationality. Its power lies in a different goal. The ultimate message isn't to eliminate these biases, but simply to become aware of them. To develop, as she says, a "healthy skepticism" about your own thoughts. Mark: To become a better observer of your own mind. Michelle: Exactly. She quotes the writer bell hooks, who said, "The most basic activism we can have in our lives is to live consciously... You will face reality, you will not delude yourself." That's the takeaway. The goal isn't to be a perfect thinker, but to be an honest one. Mark: I love that. It’s not about winning the game, it’s about realizing what game your brain is actually playing. So the question for all of us listening is: what story are you telling yourself right now? And what missing bullet holes are you not seeing? Michelle: A perfect question to end on. This is Aibrary, signing off.