Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - Magical Overthinking with Amanda Montell

00:00:00.000 When I'm looking at the next 12 months of my life, what I do not have on the books and what is

00:00:08.840 impossible for me to have on the books is a trip to Sicily. However, the next best thing to having

00:00:14.920 my own adventure in Sicily was reading Joe Piazza's new novel, The Sicilian Inheritance.

00:00:20.440 It is a vacation in a book. If your vacations were

00:00:24.600 sexy murder mysteries that also dive deep into generational trauma, but not in too heavy of a

00:00:34.060 way. It is the perfect book to take on a plane. It is the perfect book to read next to your public

00:00:41.260 pool while taking breaks to yell at your kids. It is the perfect book to get you out of a reading

00:00:48.160 slump and it is available now wherever you get books.

00:00:54.600 My friend Amanda Montel is a very serious multi-hyphenate. She is. I'd like to call her 1.00

00:01:02.560 a renaissance woman. She's a writer, a linguist, a podcast host. She's just, she's all of the

00:01:09.460 things. Her past two books have given my brain so much to think about. So much. I mean, I reference

00:01:15.740 her a lot on this podcast and in conversation with friends. I do. You guys might know her from

00:01:22.180 Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, or Word Slut, A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English

00:01:28.220 Language. She is also the creator and host of the hit podcast, Sounds Like a Cult.

00:01:34.260 Her latest book has the best title yet. It does. It really does. I mean, look,

00:01:39.800 I thought Word Slut was great, but The Age of Magical Overthinking? That's really chef's kiss.

00:01:45.960 It is. It is. It's a smart deep dive into how we're all massively irrational beings right now

00:01:53.240 and how that's driving most of us crazy. Yeah, yeah. But it's also filled with hope. It's filled

00:01:58.880 with hope for the future, hope that we can overcome our irrationality, or if we can't

00:02:05.320 overcome it, that we can harness it for something good.

00:02:13.840 How do you define modern irrationality?

00:02:18.400 Okay, great question. Really small, innocent, shallow question. No, I mean, I have been

00:02:24.740 defining modern irrationality with this phrase, magical overthinking, in the following way. I

00:02:31.220 I just what's living rent free in my head and what has been living rent free in my head for the past, I don't know, five years is this clash between our innate human mysticisms, our innate pensions toward delusion and jumping to false conclusions and making what are called resource rational, but not perfectly rational decisions and the information age.

00:02:55.520 There is just this explosive conflict between the ways that our minds learned to process the world around us and the present age when we are confronting more information, true and false, and more identities every day than we ever had to in the history of the human species.

00:03:16.020 And that's just causing us a great deal of existential pain.

00:03:20.540 And so that's how I really define it.

00:03:22.240 It's this age-old magical thinking proclivity combined with all of the overthinking of the

00:03:28.540 modern era.

00:03:30.180 Well, absolutely.

00:03:31.340 And I say this all the time.

00:03:33.320 Our brains are not equipped for what is happening right now.

00:03:36.560 They're not programmed for this in any way, shape, or form.

00:03:42.100 Everything has just moved too fast.

00:03:43.880 We are not evolving quickly enough.

00:03:46.020 And there is a reason that there is so much anxiety and depression and angst and worry in the world because our brains can't take it.

00:03:54.760 Someone gave me the best analogy the other day, and I forget who it was.

00:03:58.980 I'll remember it later because my brain is, you know, a big brain fart right now.

00:04:02.700 But it was that their brain, after they spend too much time on social media, or even not even on social media, just like looking at their phone, responding to texts and consuming information,

00:04:14.040 feels like a computer when the fan goes on. That's perfect. That's right. And then nothing's

00:04:21.940 operate. Nothing's operating at full speed. The pages won't load. And like this fan is just

00:04:26.940 blowing an annoying noise at you. Absolutely. But I think that's so true. Yeah. But famously,

00:04:33.480 we are not computers. Right. And yet there is this what I perceive to be almost capitalistic,

00:04:40.980 perfectionistic pressure to know everything under the sun, to be able to clap back with a cogent

00:04:47.560 rejoinder. And at the very same time, there's more mistrust in science than ever. There is

00:04:53.800 actually evidence to support that as science literacy increases, it just makes us better at

00:04:59.380 defending our existing beliefs rather than discerning real facts and discarding fake ones.

00:05:04.560 So there's a lot going on. We as human beings have these deep-rooted mental magic tricks, these imperfect shortcuts that we've always used to make decisions called cognitive biases that are just proving destructive with the modern, ever-complicating, ever-technologically-driven problems.

00:05:25.140 and we're not computers. So, and yet we don't realize that. There is actually evidence to

00:05:30.240 support that we fail to recognize where our knowledge ends and Google's or chat GPT's

00:05:36.300 starts. So these like borders are becoming ever hazy and yet we're not aware that they are.

00:05:42.460 Oh, interesting. I had no idea about that. So we have a very hard time distinguishing

00:05:49.360 between our own brain and what is available on Google?

00:05:52.980 Dude, it's actually called the Google effect.

00:05:56.140 It's fascinating.

00:05:57.220 There are just these incredibly hazy knowledge barriers that we have.

00:06:03.080 So, for example, like there's this fascinating 2017 book called The Knowledge Illusion by

00:06:08.700 Philip Fernbach and Stephen Sloman, and it opened with this Yale study in which graduate

00:06:13.780 students were invited to rate how well they understood ordinary everyday gadgets like

00:06:18.860 toilets and zippers. And then they were asked to write thorough bit by bit breakdowns of how

00:06:24.460 those gadgets worked and read their understanding once more. And what the task seemed to do was show

00:06:31.060 the students their own ignorance because after they actually had to break down how these gadgets

00:06:36.400 work, they realized like, oh, I actually don't know. I thought I did and I don't. The reason why

00:06:41.940 we think we know more than we do about how toilets and zippers work is because of other people's

00:06:47.660 specialization of other people's knowledge. We can't tell where the boundary of our knowledge

00:06:54.440 stops and another person starts. But the wild thing is that we can't even identify where search

00:06:59.700 engines knowledge starts and ours drops off. And, you know, obviously AI, which is combining like

00:07:06.700 everybody's knowledge to provide an answer to a question, is making those knowledge pools even

00:07:11.980 more porous so yeah it's called the google effect and it's so troubling and interesting and explains

00:07:18.640 a lot well you know you you are so genuinely good at taking science and distilling it and

00:07:27.440 you know telling us these studies and how like what is really happening to our brains what was 0.93

00:07:35.560 one of the things that like blew your fucking mind when you were researching this book oh my god

00:07:41.120 Okay, so there's one chapter of the book, and by the way, every chapter of the book is kind of dedicated to a different cognitive bias, which I use as a lens to explore some mysterious irrationality plaguing the broader zeitgeist in my own life. 0.96

00:07:53.420 But there's this one chapter dedicated to the sunk cost fallacy, which describes our fallacious penchant to think that resources already spent on an endeavor justify spending even more.

00:08:05.680 So, you know, a classic example is we put all our chips on the table in a poker hand, and even though our hand is really bad, we figure like, oh my God, I've already put so much on the table. I can't fold now. I have to go all in. That is the sunk cost fallacy at work.

00:08:20.040 But it also applies to human relationships. And in that chapter, I document how the sunk cost fallacy caused me to stay in a pretty toxic one-on-one cult-like relationship, if you will, longer than made sense to anyone else and even me.

00:08:35.240 And as I was researching that chapter, I came across this fascinating study about additive

00:08:40.600 solution bias versus subtractive solution bias, which basically describes our tendency

00:08:46.780 to think that problems should be solved by adding variables to the equation rather than

00:08:52.380 taking them away.

00:08:53.560 So the study that I quoted involved participants solving this puzzle involving colored blocks

00:09:00.340 by either adding or taking away colored blocks.

00:09:03.060 And as it turned out, the more cumbersome solution to this like spatial puzzle would

00:09:09.020 be by adding a whole bunch of colored blocks.

00:09:11.360 The much more simple solution was simply taking one block away.

00:09:15.120 But the vast majority of people opted for the additive solution.

00:09:19.640 And I found that I do this in every arena of life.

00:09:23.380 Like in order to solve my relationship problems, I thought, oh, we just need to add a new

00:09:28.840 vacation or we just need to get another cat.

00:09:32.040 I don't regret any of my cats, but they don't, but they didn't solve my relationship problems

00:09:36.340 when really the solution was simply to take that person away. And so I feel like this applies to

00:09:43.540 so many aspects of my life from, you know, how I deal with my junk drawer. I think like, oh,

00:09:49.520 I need to get like some drawer dividers, like organizational apparatus. I would really just

00:09:54.700 need to throw shit away. So that was one that truly lives rent free in my head and allows me 0.99

00:10:00.120 to make better decisions moving forward in so many arenas of life. Less stuff. We just need

00:10:06.140 less stuff. But also, I mean, that perfectly explains why people have saved the marriage

00:10:11.680 babies, right? They're like, oh, if we just have another baby, that's going to fix the fact that 0.62

00:10:17.720 we hate each other. Completely. And it also explains why during the most painful moments

00:10:24.480 in that past relationship, I would just blitz my Instagram with happy looking photos of us.

00:10:30.940 I was like, I just need to like justify this relationship with more evidence that it's a

00:10:35.500 good thing when the reality is that it wasn't. And I was just sort of falling to the sunk cost

00:10:41.540 fallacy. And that was really healing to learn as well, because it meant that I was not just

00:10:46.900 some ding dong who made a bad bet on herself that she couldn't shake. You know, there were

00:10:51.820 these mental magic tricks at play. But yes, that like save a marriage, save a married baby thing

00:10:58.160 is so real. And I think this bias especially affects people who grow up in consumerist

00:11:02.640 societies who are led to believe the false promise that adding a gadget or a baby or a vacation will

00:11:08.960 magically heal your woes. Totally, totally. We are going to take a quick break here. And when

00:11:17.020 we get back, we are going to talk about a chapter called, Are You My Mother, Taylor Swift?

00:11:33.200 I want to talk about the halo effect next, because I think it's really pertinent to a

00:11:37.780 lot of the things that we talk about on this show, particularly influencer culture and celebrity

00:11:43.080 culture. And I mean, those two are the same things at this point. Tell me about the halo effect.

00:11:48.500 Yeah. So the halo effect is the cognitive bias that I tackle in the first chapter of this book,

00:11:54.460 which is called Are You My Mother, Taylor Swift? And it describes this very simple but illuminating

00:12:00.380 idea where just because we admire one single quality in a person, say their fashion sense

00:12:07.280 or their intelligence or their vocabulary or their pop music, we jump to the conclusion that

00:12:13.020 they must be perfect overall. And this bias stems from the ways that we used to find role models

00:12:19.320 in ancient human civilization for survival purposes. We used to see someone with big

00:12:24.280 muscles and we jumped to the conclusion that that person must be a skilled hunter and a really good

00:12:29.680 survivor and someone that we would want to align ourselves with so that we could live longer as

00:12:35.020 well, even if those muscles didn't indicate that exactly, it was a good enough conclusion to jump

00:12:40.360 to. But now we're displacing that bias onto modern parasocial relationships, and that's causing these

00:12:46.900 ever-intensifying cycles of celebrity worship and dethronement.

00:12:51.820 Yeah, and though, I mean, those cycles are really, really intense. For our listeners who don't know

00:12:58.660 what parasocial relationships are, it's funny, I thought everyone knew what they were, but I was at

00:13:02.680 a wedding in Mexico this weekend and someone stopped me when I said the word parasocial and

00:13:07.760 they were like, can you can you define that for me? And I was like, huh, what rock have you been

00:13:11.700 living under? But define it just in case. Huh. I generously would love to believe that someone

00:13:17.480 who doesn't even know what a parasocial relationship is. They're either so entrenched

00:13:22.260 in one that they like have never even thought to Google if it was a problem or they're not in one

00:13:28.420 at all and have never even heard of it and don't own an Instagram. No, they were totally in one.

00:13:33.220 That's the thing. I described it. And she's like, oh, that's the exact relationship I have with

00:13:37.520 this influencer. And I was like, bingo. Yeah, totally. OK, so a parasocial relationship is

00:13:43.200 basically this one sided intimate relationship where one person in the equation is extending

00:13:50.280 all this emotional bandwidth, interest, time in the other figure who doesn't even know they exist.

00:13:58.420 So the reason why I call that chapter, Are You My Mother, Taylor Swift, is because we are really

00:14:05.020 seeking connection from celebrities in today's society. And of course, I would put influencers

00:14:09.800 in that category. We are longing for a type of intimacy and role models, and we're longing to

00:14:17.100 trust someone in a time when we've lost a lot of trust in authority figures like the government

00:14:23.280 and the healthcare institution. We're looking for another kind of paragon. And basically,

00:14:28.420 ever since the 1980s, celebrities have been positioned as this type of figure that's not

00:14:34.660 just there to entertain us, they're there to save us. And we can really trace that back to

00:14:39.040 Ronald Reagan's presidency, our first celebrity president. He really swerved way far out of his

00:14:45.140 lane to provide this new kind of authority figure for society. And obviously, there are still people

00:14:52.180 who really worship him and lionize his presidency. And basically, ever since then, we've looked to

00:14:58.120 celebrities as our political paragons, our spiritual authorities, our political higher

00:15:04.960 ups, and in a way, our mothers. Like we are seeking this intimacy from them that simply

00:15:11.520 cannot be fulfilled, that simply cannot be returned. But again, those fuzzy brain boundaries

00:15:19.040 that i was describing earlier deceive us totally totally they really do and i i think that this

00:15:27.600 gets dangerous in with the world of influencers and i say this a lot so i'm curious if i'm just 0.96

00:15:33.720 spouting bullshit out my ass or what you think of it but for a long time we did look up to 0.97

00:15:39.680 celebrities like this and there is a certain danger in having those parasocial relationships 1.00

00:15:44.980 But influencers feel more dangerous because they're with us all the time.

00:15:48.720 They're like on this device that's literally attached to our body.

00:15:53.320 And I've been thinking a lot lately when I pick up my phone to like go to the bathroom

00:15:58.320 or pick up my phone to just go up the stairs for a minute.

00:16:00.380 I'm like, why do I have to touch this thing all the time?

00:16:04.760 Like, why has it become an appendage?

00:16:08.200 And it has.

00:16:09.400 And these influencers are literally right there with us all the time.

00:16:12.400 And that feels dangerous in some ways to me.

00:16:14.980 Right. Well, I think it's really a product of the medium. And I almost don't even blame the

00:16:19.800 influencers as much as I blame these tech companies who are exploiting. Right. Yeah.

00:16:25.660 Causing us to form quite literally addictions to these devices. But the difference between an

00:16:31.440 influencer and a celebrity is that if social media disappeared tomorrow, we would still have an

00:16:35.960 awareness of celebrities like Taylor Swift or Beyonce or Charlie XCX. We would still see them

00:16:40.560 on our televisions. We would still listen to their music on Spotify or our listening platform

00:16:44.920 of choice. But influencers only exist on platforms that are psychologically addicting. And I am

00:16:51.920 totally resentful of the psychological dependence that I have on Instagram. I really try to take

00:16:57.860 detox breaks. Of course, I use Instagram as a marketing tool, so it becomes really difficult

00:17:04.220 Yeah, for my livelihood. But I do aspire to a day when maybe I can absorb maybe one lumen of Taylor Swift's halo and defect from social media and not suffer any monetary gut squits from it.

00:17:21.920 But yeah, I think influencers only exist on these platforms that are really screwing with our dopamine. And that's why they seem more insidious than celebrities.

00:17:34.220 Absolutely. Absolutely. I aspire to a day when I can fully quit the Instagram for and I'm not saying I have to quit it forever. I just I really, really don't want to be on it for for a chunk of time. It's it's actually impossible right now, but mostly because I'm using it almost as like an email platform.

00:17:55.120 Like people talk, people send me messages on the Instagram and how it's how I reach readers.

00:18:01.360 I'm sure you experience this, too.

00:18:04.040 You know, more people buy the book when they see it on social media than they do in a magazine article now.

00:18:09.040 I know. I know. That's what makes it so impossible to leave as like, I mean, I would consider an author like a small business owner, you know, like we have our business.

00:18:18.860 Yeah. And it's it's you know, this is the double edged sword of social media is that, you know, there's there's such a low barrier to entry and it's really democratized a lot of information.

00:18:29.240 And it really has, you know, stuck to its original promise of allowing us to socially connect.

00:18:35.460 But the fallout is so damaging to our mental health and to our society and to our political system that I've kind of come to the conclusion at this point that it's a bit of a net negative, while also realizing that it provides such an important platform for us to engage in grassroots activism and discourse that we might not otherwise be able to engage in and community solidarity.

00:18:59.140 But it's, oh God, a double-edged sword is like the most innocent way to put how I feel about it.

00:19:03.620 It's the most innocent way to put how I feel about it, because, you know, people did engage in civic activism before these things existed, too.

00:19:14.940 Like, you know, we did. The world was the world is always going to be a mess and the world is also always going to be fine, I guess, is the way that I put it.

00:19:23.100 Right. Like, yeah, I don't I genuinely don't believe the benefits outweigh the costs, but also I can't get off the train right now.

00:19:30.780 i'm with you it's funny because as i write novels as i write novels these days

00:19:36.580 i'm kind of desperate to set everything in 1993 that's funny what was happening in your life in

00:19:45.180 1993 well i was i mean i was i was an awesome 13 year old um but in 1993 or even 1998 i want to set

00:19:54.020 it on the pre-internet because that's definitely pre-social media. It's pre-smartphone. I had a

00:20:01.600 flip phone around 99, 2000. But I think it's so much more fun to be able to write when you don't

00:20:08.960 have to write technology into the book. And also to go back to the first chapter of your book that

00:20:13.900 we talked about when we don't have to write characters who have access to all knowledge.

00:20:19.300 right yeah I was actually going to ask you because as a novel writer you must have to

00:20:26.040 enter like a dreamier headspace than most and and I I find that social media really threatens my

00:20:34.060 ability to dream like when I'm always consuming it inhibits my ability to create at least for me

00:20:40.360 and so I I was curious about like how you are able to stay in that dreamy headspace that's

00:20:46.660 so important for novel writing while at the same time being so very online well it's tough and

00:20:53.260 I will say I'm trying I'm working on two new novels right now even though every time I write

00:20:58.440 a book I say that I'm gonna quit because I hate the I hate the marketing process so much yeah

00:21:03.100 I'm like this is it this is my last one and Nick is like that you've said that for seven books Joe

00:21:08.620 No, I'm like, this is it. That said, I'm working on two other novels. And I've been online so much for the promoting phase of Sicilian Inheritance that my brain is so fried that I'm not writing well right now.

00:21:26.240 I will have to be off before I can pick them back up and that will be fine.

00:21:31.300 For me, the problem with writing books in the space of when, you know, everyone has all knowledge of everything, it's that plot points are harder to hash out.

00:21:43.300 Sicilian Inheritance is a thriller, right?

00:21:45.900 So we need to have gaps in knowledge.

00:21:49.300 And I think thrillers are a lot harder to pace when you can find out everything with the click of one button.

00:21:55.400 Totally.

00:21:56.240 Totally. Yeah, I love that notion. And I actually aspire to write fiction next. I do have a novel

00:22:02.520 idea that I've been outlining for about a year, but it takes place actually in the near future.

00:22:10.180 And so I feel like that's a way to kind of get around technology as well, because I can kind of

00:22:15.620 play fast and loose with what that will look like. I really like how movies like Her and

00:22:22.500 arrival treat the future because it's like very sort of like high end sci-fi that doesn't need

00:22:27.720 to get like too in the weeds of how technology is working, but use it as a kind of vehicle to

00:22:33.240 create meaning in a new way. But what I will say about your attraction to that just just before

00:22:39.900 like smartphone era is I have an op-ed coming out in the LA Times about creating nostalgia for the

00:22:46.500 present. And for that op-ed, I interviewed this guy named Clay Rutledge, who studies nostalgia.

00:22:54.620 He wrote a book called Past Forward. He's a psychologist. Interesting dude. And he cited

00:22:58.780 this 2023 Harris poll, which found that Americans across generations, even Gen Z, are all nostalgic

00:23:06.900 for a time before smartphones, which doesn't mean that we earnestly wish to time travel backwards

00:23:13.540 or that we even want to give up on these phones.

00:23:16.440 It's rather that no matter what our age is,

00:23:19.940 no matter when we were born,

00:23:21.920 we are recognizing that there's something in these phones

00:23:24.580 that's making us stressed,

00:23:27.120 that's like ruining the plot,

00:23:29.120 not just our novels, but of our lives.

00:23:32.120 And that they're preventing us from like

00:23:34.640 maintaining the kind of deep personal relationships

00:23:38.080 that we truly find meaningful

00:23:39.780 and that we truly have nostalgia for later.

00:23:41.880 So, yeah, that nostalgia for like the early to late 90s is omnipresent, really.

00:23:49.620 It really is.

00:23:50.600 And I think that there's a lot of misplaced nostalgia.

00:23:53.940 Is there a cat back there?

00:23:55.100 Yeah, I'm going to let her out.

00:23:58.940 That's so funny because we were on a plane coming back from Mexico and someone had two cats right behind us.

00:24:05.040 But I wasn't sure if it was a cat or a baby at first.

00:24:08.120 Some of their cows are like really human.

00:24:10.180 And I'm like, I'm like newborn baby or angry cat.

00:24:14.500 It could have gone either way.

00:24:19.660 Yeah.

00:24:20.240 No, I think about this all the time because, you know, I cover trad wives a lot.

00:24:24.080 And I think there's a lot of misplaced nostalgia for what the world was like in the 50s.

00:24:29.400 It's like a 1950s society that never really existed.

00:24:33.300 A hundred percent.

00:24:34.380 Absolutely.

00:24:35.000 And maybe I have a false nostalgia for the 90s.

00:24:37.080 But I'll tell you, I do think that life was better before smartphones.

00:24:40.180 I will say this. There is a lot of very weaponized nostalgia right now. I think trad wives and

00:24:46.800 political figures take advantage of the nostalgia that we very innocently and positively lean on

00:24:53.400 during difficult times. They will harness that by creating these fantasies that the past was

00:24:59.840 better in every way, a past that, by the way, absolutely did not exist. And even if it did,

00:25:04.580 would not have been better. And they do that for their own personal gain by then being able to

00:25:09.440 catastrophize and say like, you know, life is worse now than it was then. And I have the answers to

00:25:14.660 make it better either through my political policies or by following me and adopting my

00:25:19.760 Shroud Wave trends. But I will say more encouragingly that the kind of personal

00:25:25.460 nostalgia that we might feel for our own real memories, not memories that have been like

00:25:30.340 implanted by these nefarious figures, actual nostalgia for our own memories as sort of

00:25:36.600 Delulu as it might be at times does help us generate hope for the future. Like when we sink

00:25:42.320 into that warm bath of like fuzzy feelings about prior years, we're able to better cope with what's

00:25:49.500 to come. Studies consistently find that. So it's really when others are weaponizing and capitalizing

00:25:54.760 upon what's called historical nostalgia or for nostalgia for a time that we never knew,

00:26:00.080 like that's when it really gets dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I 100 percent agree. I do.

00:26:06.060 And I would also like to note that I probably don't want a beeper again.

00:26:10.080 Like, is there was there any more useless tool than a beeper?

00:26:15.140 So it's anything to just like beep aimlessly at them.

00:26:18.340 It's like, I don't know what to do.

00:26:20.260 Then it was also like, oh, now I've got to find a payphone while I'm drinking 40s in the parking lot of the mall.

00:26:25.920 That's annoying.

00:26:27.880 Oh, God.

00:26:28.360 beepers just make me think of that seventh heaven episode where like the eldest son matt gets his

00:26:33.740 beeper confiscated and gets suspended for being a fake drug dealer i don't even know wow what a show

00:26:39.120 that was what a show that was what is you know there were so many shows in the 80s and 90s about

00:26:44.720 children whose mothers died um and they were like taken in by other people full house my two dads

00:26:52.140 oh basically every mary kate and ashley movie ever all of them all like dead moms all around

00:26:59.800 dead moms all around dead moms yes so many dead moms that mom yeah so many yes family stone

00:27:07.020 oh my gosh yes yes yes with diane keaton dying i can't even i um we don't watch julia roberts

00:27:13.460 movies in our house because um she did she did bail on charlotte walsh uh likes to win the tv show

00:27:21.600 at a very late stage in the process. 0.99

00:27:24.620 And so I've banned Julia Roberts' movies in our house.

00:27:27.020 But it does make me sad sometimes

00:27:28.360 that I'll never see Stepmom again.

00:27:31.720 Well, sometimes it's our prerogative

00:27:33.920 to cancel people and stick to our guns,

00:27:36.260 even when it doesn't really make sense.

00:27:38.300 No, because I'm not a quitter.

00:27:39.680 Not like Julia Roberts.

00:27:40.860 Julia Roberts is a quitter, and I am not. 1.00

00:27:42.940 Yeah, dig those heels in. 1.00

00:27:44.200 Dig those in.

00:27:45.280 Totally irrationally.

00:27:46.600 Totally irrationally.

00:27:47.240 Again, we're irrational beings.

00:27:49.620 Okay, we are going to take a quick break here.

00:27:51.820 And when we get back, I'm going to ask Amanda about ways we can feel better about this dumpster fire.

00:28:08.280 So in the book, let's not give any spoilers, but do you have solutions?

00:28:12.740 How can we feel better?

00:28:15.340 Yeah, I mean, I am not your self-help guru, famously.

00:28:18.580 I really like to present the information about these subject matters, whether it's cognitive

00:28:24.660 biases or cult language or language and gender, and then kind of personalize them and make them

00:28:30.020 fun to learn about. Maybe sprinkle some actionable advice in here and there, but kind of leave people

00:28:36.880 to draw their own conclusions. But what I will say is this. Some of the things that have helped

00:28:40.760 me are, first of all, just merely the awareness, like becoming aware of these mental shortcuts

00:28:46.060 that we don't even know we're making has helped me push back against them in moments when I

00:28:51.660 would otherwise truly allow them to take over. And then it has also helped me generate compassion

00:28:57.280 for other people's irrationalities. When I kind of want to write off other people as these like

00:29:01.480 Delulu evil ding-dongs, I'm able to recognize, oh no, that's, you know, that is say zero-sum 0.91

00:29:08.080 bias at play, or that is the Ikea effect at play. And that allows me not to make too many enemies

00:29:14.880 because I'm able to recognize these biases, not only in myself, but in other people.

00:29:19.580 And then in terms of like more concrete advice, there are some fun facts in the book.

00:29:24.200 Like, you know, knitting is shown to increase happiness in depressive patients.

00:29:30.780 We really, really benefit in material ways from experiencing senses of awe whenever possible.

00:29:38.320 Awe is this sort of humbling wonder that you experience when you're presented with phenomena

00:29:43.660 that you don't quite understand. So it's something that we experience when beholding nature or

00:29:48.940 beautiful life music or even spiritual rituals. I have all kinds of thoughts on the range of

00:29:55.460 spiritual rituals and how good or bad they might be. But anyway, but experiencing awe really helps

00:30:00.620 us sort of dampen our self-focus. All the self-focus in modern society is, I think,

00:30:06.780 really destructive to our mental health. And so being able to be in that humbling state of awe

00:30:12.380 sort of sets us aside from ourselves and is shown to make us feel less materialistic,

00:30:17.620 is shown to expand our sense of time so we don't feel this panic that we're running out of time,

00:30:22.840 we're running out of time. And so, you know, those are some experiences that I try to

00:30:28.180 prioritize, you know, sort of like physical DIY experiences. I am a terrible crafter,

00:30:34.320 but doing things with your hands, I feel like really is meditative and has that same effect

00:30:38.460 of getting you outside yourself and then experiencing awe truly whenever possible.

00:30:44.400 Oh, you know, you're right. And I just I read that recent book about experiencing awe and it

00:30:50.500 was great. What was it called? Everything blends together. Well, there's a great one called Awe

00:30:54.820 by Dr. Keltner. His book is one that I reference in mine also. And he's like an awe scholar,

00:31:00.380 which is a great thing to pursue. I know. Could I be an awe scholar? Maybe that's my next job.

00:31:05.740 we are a household that prioritizes awe seven years ago or six six and a half years ago we

00:31:12.720 went to go see the total solar eclipse of the sun uh in we went to eastern oregon a town called

00:31:19.360 fossil and camped in an old rodeo ground with a seven-week-old baby by the way wow i know i know

00:31:26.640 and it was so awe-inspiring that we were like we will be people that travel for eclipses now that's

00:31:31.460 who we are that's who we are absolutely love that and i totally co-sign that i similarly am obsessed

00:31:38.500 with space like my partner and i watch so many space videos we just i'm not recommending this

00:31:43.860 i'm just telling a personal tale we love to take edibles and watch space uh explainer videos like

00:31:50.860 science explainer videos on youtube because it makes us feel so small in a good way in a way

00:31:56.620 that takes us outside of ourselves. I fucking love planetariums. I always fantasize that if I 0.96

00:32:02.280 were like fabulously wealthy, I would build one of those like float tanks, you know, all those

00:32:07.040 like sensory deprivation chambers or float tanks. But instead of it being true sensory deprivation

00:32:12.660 where it's perfectly dark, I would build it in a domed room with a planetarium on top and I would

00:32:18.240 float through space when feeling sad. Totes my goats. Like that is good. I have dismantled my

00:32:24.440 entire Sicilian Inheritance book tour because of this eclipse. Because I promised seven years ago

00:32:32.100 in a postpartum and also champagne-induced haze that I would be present for the next one.

00:32:37.640 We'll be in Cleveland the week after my book comes out for the total solar eclipse of the sun.

00:32:45.780 But because I'm me, I've planned a book event in Cleveland to coincide with the solar eclipse

00:32:52.400 with the Italian-American community there.

00:32:54.480 So if you're in Cleveland, come hang out with me.

00:32:58.020 Come hang out with me in Cleveland.

00:32:59.140 You know, Sicily is the most mystical place ever.

00:33:03.380 And to kind of tie our books together,

00:33:06.060 you might have noticed that in literally like the first paragraph

00:33:09.700 or at least the first page of my book,

00:33:12.180 I actually reference something that a Sicilian farmer told me

00:33:16.840 when I was there last year about space.

00:33:19.720 i was i was picking i was i remember when you were there on that trip i remember watching your

00:33:25.080 instagram oh it was so awe-inspiring i just had to share it i mean that that's like when i feel

00:33:30.140 like i'm using instagram for good is when i'm just kind of like using it as a kind of like

00:33:34.780 tumbler-esque diary um and not using it to socially compare myself into misery but anywho

00:33:41.380 um i was instantly picking herbs and i does i pick herbs all the time well you know

00:33:47.960 like so many herbs just grow like on the side of the road there like there's so much wild parsley

00:33:54.320 and thyme and yeah i mean it's there's there's a reason they're olive oil their olive oil is the

00:34:00.760 best i brought a whole suitcase back for the trip i just got back to two weeks ago 10 days ago i

00:34:05.600 don't know what is time um i took an extra suitcase and filled it with olive oil i absolutely respect

00:34:12.140 that and you should have done that you should have you should have life lessons from yeah life lesson

00:34:16.980 next time but I uh yeah so I was on this farm and the farmer was a woman I feel the need to call

00:34:22.460 that out and she was giving us a tour of her farm and at one point she showed us this like stargazing

00:34:28.460 area that she had recently constructed and she said the following which was so poetic I nearly

00:34:34.280 fainted the second it left her mouth she went here in Sicily the stars they are so close they could

00:34:41.680 fall into your mouth i was like oh my god because there's so little light pollution there the stars 0.53

00:34:48.260 are so close they could fall into your mouth i was like all into your mouth god like hell yeah 0.66

00:34:56.700 lady that's the all i'm looking for that's the all i'm looking for i've got one more so when i

00:35:02.260 the sicilian inheritance was mostly written when i went back last summer with my three children

00:35:07.300 under the age of seven which was intense oh my yes but but what I really wanted to do with that

00:35:13.340 trip is make the food come alive even more so I would sit with my laptop and and just eat and

00:35:19.440 write while I ate and then I would walk around the restaurant and ask people to describe their food

00:35:23.780 and you might think that this is strange but no one there did they were totally okay with it and

00:35:27.680 I was like what does that squid ink pasta taste like to you and someone was like it tastes like

00:35:33.460 eating the ocean. Yes, I love it. Fuck yeah, it does. Fuck yeah. Dude, like the way that it is

00:35:42.680 a perfectly acceptable conversation topic to just like talk about food for two hours in Italy,

00:35:48.840 you don't talk about anything else. You don't have to, you know, pitch yourself as cool or

00:35:52.840 having amazing ideas about society. In Italy, you can just talk about food for two hours and

00:35:59.240 that's like delightful and acceptable. And I just love that it like sets everyone up for success

00:36:04.740 because there's no such thing as being right or wrong. No, it's like, what do you eat? You know,

00:36:09.320 so much in America, the first thing you ask someone is one, how are you today? Which is a

00:36:15.560 fraught question. Or you lie when you answer it. Or, you know, when you're meeting someone new at

00:36:21.120 a party, it's like, what do you do? And in Sicily, they're like, what do you eat for lunch?

00:36:24.800 Exactly. 1.00

00:36:25.540 I know this to be so, so true.

00:36:28.540 It's wild.

00:36:29.600 Yeah.

00:36:29.820 Like every time I would greet someone who I already knew or literally just meet someone

00:36:34.020 for the first time in Italy, they would be like, what'd you eat?

00:36:37.200 What'd you eat today?

00:36:38.140 What'd you eat today?

00:36:38.940 And I'm like, oh, let me tell you about this cannoli that I had for breakfast.

00:36:43.160 Oh, God.

00:36:43.980 I, yeah.

00:36:45.080 You know what?

00:36:45.960 Scrap everything I'm saying about like, oh, nature.

00:36:49.220 Just eat tortelloni every day. 0.97

00:36:51.360 every fucking day okay yeah i know yeah i love it i love it so much and i love i love your book 0.93

00:36:59.680 i do i want everyone thank you it just it it gave me so much reassurance about the irrationality 0.89

00:37:07.280 of the world right now and you know i think it's the warm bath that we all need to jump into

00:37:14.040 i appreciate that that means so much for me i like admire you and your writing and everything

00:37:19.680 you do on the internet so much it's like really inspiring and encouraging to see someone like

00:37:26.020 just be so enthusiastic all the time in the way that I feel like sometimes I feel like a try hard

00:37:31.880 and I feel like overly earnest and then I see someone I feel like is cut from the same cloth

00:37:36.960 who's doing it so well and it makes me feel really reassured so thank you oh no I I love following

00:37:45.040 you and I love all of your writing and your podcasts and all the stuff and we just we need

00:37:48.480 to go to sicily together one of these days we gotta get good what's your favorite where's your

00:37:53.940 favorite town in sicily it's really interesting so i my family is from caltebolota which is a tiny

00:38:00.380 village um closer to the western coast so i spend a lot of time on the on the west coast and i know

00:38:06.220 like you know terramina and the east coast is much more popular but there's a little island

00:38:10.420 called Maretimo, which is one of the Agadi islands. And you get to it. You can go from

00:38:18.240 Shaka. You can go from Trapani. And it's an island with no cars. It's teeny tiny. There's

00:38:22.980 two restaurants on it that you have to stay in someone's house. And it's just it's and you,

00:38:28.280 you know, you get on a boat to do the Giro de Esala, the ride around the island with a man

00:38:33.240 named Pipo. And his company is literally called Pipo. And yeah, it's just it's a perfect place.

00:38:41.300 And but I love all of the towns over there. Cultabalota is so cool. In so many ways,

00:38:46.040 there's only 500 people left in the town. But the people in our generation are really trying.

00:38:52.560 So Giuseppe, whose parents own the one restaurant in town, is now opening a vineyard and a winery.

00:38:58.240 and it's cool to watch people like help these help these towns come alive because for a long

00:39:03.860 time a lot of people left and didn't come back yeah yeah no there really is oh my gosh i saw

00:39:09.300 some funny meme the other day where it's like my sicilian grandparents like broke their backs to

00:39:14.660 come to america only for me to long for nothing more than to return to sicily i know but i do love

00:39:21.120 but i do love that people are embracing their roots particularly there um yeah even just talking

00:39:26.800 about Sicily feels really soothing to me I don't know if you've ever been to Siracusa oh yeah yeah

00:39:32.680 yeah yeah yeah yeah that place is so fucking mystical I mean I remember the first time I

00:39:39.660 stumbled from one of those little tiny skinny Greek style alleyways into the main piazza there 0.51

00:39:46.880 I nearly lost my life I remember being like it was like wandering into cafes being like

00:39:53.240 Yeah, it's really cool here.

00:39:57.940 They're like, we know, we know.

00:40:00.160 Oh, God, it's delish.

00:40:03.520 I mean, I love Sicily so much.

00:40:05.440 I've been probably like a dozen times at this point.

00:40:08.000 And the goal of the book is just to make everyone want to go there.

00:40:11.360 I'm like, the Sicilian tourism board should really be sponsoring me because...

00:40:15.800 Wait, so are you a citizen?

00:40:18.020 I'm working on it right now.

00:40:19.300 So when I was over there last time, I got all of the documents that I need to be able to apply for Italian citizenship.

00:40:25.980 I'm making my appointment at the consulate here.

00:40:28.620 And it seems like it's going to work.

00:40:30.500 One of my cousins just got her passport.

00:40:32.820 And once I get it, it then extends to my husband and my three very blonde, non-Italian-looking children.

00:40:40.880 I love that.

00:40:42.160 I really want to try to pursue it for myself.

00:40:44.740 I had a great grandfather from a tiny town.

00:40:48.260 You know, my last name actually is supposed to be Maffetone.

00:40:52.340 Oh, my God, I love that.

00:40:54.840 Maffetone, yeah, which is a lot.

00:40:57.620 And it's funny because that suffix, one, means like big and I'm five one.

00:41:02.240 And you're a tiny person.

00:41:03.400 You're a small person.

00:41:04.480 But, yeah, there's like a tiny southern Sicilian town where actually the current mayor, their last name is Maffetone, which is very funny.

00:41:12.160 Oh, my God.

00:41:12.420 But I really want to pursue that also because I, well, my favorite place to be in Italy is in Bologna.

00:41:19.500 I love Bologna.

00:41:20.360 Yeah.

00:41:20.700 Oh, God. 0.94

00:41:21.200 I just, I fucking love it there. 0.95

00:41:22.600 And so, yeah, I want to, you know, be a little here, a little there. 0.97

00:41:26.660 Well, let me know if you need help because, so when I was working on the true crime podcast that's the companion to the Sicilian inheritance where I solved the actual murder of my great-great-grandmother because I'm a psychopath.

00:41:37.880 path. We hired a researcher named Laura Lee and her company is digging up roots in the boot.

00:41:44.340 And I know, right. I'm like, that name is genius. And she helped us do so much archival research.

00:41:50.800 She's a genius. But her other business is helping people get citizenship. So she she will she can

00:41:57.340 tell you immediately one if it's possible because she knows all the weird rules. And then two,

00:42:02.400 you can hire her to actually go get the documents for you, which is very helpful.

00:42:07.580 Oh, I love a delegation. I love an outsource. Keep her in your little back pocket,

00:42:12.200 finding the roots in the boot. Yep. Find the roots in the boot. All right. Tell everyone

00:42:16.280 where they can find you. Well, you can preorder my book, The Age of Magical Overthinking,

00:42:21.280 wherever books are sold. It's also on audiobook and I recorded it myself, which was such a joy.

00:42:26.500 And then I'm also going on this kind of extravagant book tour where half of the events are actually this live variety show podcaster extravaganza where there will be special guests like Kelsey McKinney from Normal Gossip and Kira and Griff from the Petty Crimes podcast.

00:42:44.320 And, oh, my God, Joe, I would love for you to come because I'm doing one in Philly.

00:42:47.320 Oh, when is it?

00:42:48.360 It's on April 16th.

00:42:50.580 I'll be back.

00:42:51.280 I'll be back from my book tour.

00:42:52.220 I'll come.

00:42:52.820 I will put you on the comp list.

00:42:54.600 I would love for you to come.

00:42:55.720 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:56.040 gonna be a hoot. It's gonna be like a PowerPoint presentation and drag performances. It's gonna be 1.00

00:43:01.720 like such a party. So I would love for people who live in LA, Boston, Philly, New York, Portland to

00:43:10.260 check out my book tour at amandamontel.com slash events. And then of course, I have my podcast

00:43:15.320 Sounds Like a Cult. And I'm actually launching a new podcast in conjunction with the new book

00:43:19.640 called Magical Overthinkers, which will be out in May. So that's all my stuff. All your stuff.

00:43:25.380 I love it. I love it so much. Thank you for coming on Under the Influence. Always a pleasure.

00:43:31.520 And that is all we have for today. Talking to Amanda just makes me feel smarter.

00:43:37.800 And I love people that make me feel smarter. It's just the best. Because frankly,

00:43:43.540 there's too many people who make you feel dumber in this world. That's a cheery thought. 0.99

00:43:48.240 go grab yourself a copy of The Age of Magical Overthinking. The cover is real good. It looks

00:43:56.000 real good on Instagram. It really does. It does. Grab some Sicilian inheritances for you, your

00:44:01.740 friends, your barista at Starbucks, and then go do something nice for yourself, because you deserve it.

00:44:07.500 Bye!

00:44:18.240 Transcription by CastingWords

00:44:48.240 Thank you.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - March 26, 2024

Magical Overthinking with Amanda Montell

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