Episode 12 of The Book Drop features a conversation with bestselling author of Cultish and Wordslut Amanda Montell to talk about her new book, The Age of Magical Overthinking. “Magical thinking” can be broadly defined as the belief that one’s internal thoughts can affect unrelated events in the external world. In all its forms, magical thinking works in service of restoring agency amid chaos, but in her new book, Montell argues that in the modern information age, our brains’ coping mechanisms have been overloaded, and our irrationality turned up to an eleven. In conversation with author and researcher Kristin Keane.