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Hi, it's Doug Fabrizio here.

And today we have two different ideas on Radio West, two different conversations.

One is about how and why we humans overthink things.

The linguist Amanda Montel says our brains aren't so good at processing all the information. One is about how and why we humans overthink things.

The linguist Amanda Montel says our brains aren't so good at processing all the information coming at us.

And so we came up with these shortcuts that helped us make sense of the world.

These were cheats. They were cognitive biases.

And she says they kind of worked for a very long time, but Montel says internet culture

has made the machine malfunction. So then on the show, we'll have a conversation that may

provide a coping mechanism for all of that. We'll hear from the journalist Oliver Berkman,

whose latest book is a series of daily meditations he's come up with to show how incredibly productive

you can become when you give up the quest of trying to become productive.

Join us for Radio West after this.

Support for the Radio West podcast comes from Harmon's Grocery, committed to excellent service and friendly smiles.

Your food is our passion.

The writer and linguist Amanda Montel says in her new book that in moments of fierce uncertainty, even reasonable brains start to buckle.

But when this happens, she says, we have evolved these shortcuts or cheats to help us cope,

like magical thinking.

It's the belief that our internal thoughts can influence and change external events.

The first time I think I ever came across the phrase, magical thinking, was in

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