The subject line of the email read “[So-and-so] said I should talk to you,” but the so-and-so was not a name I recognized. Nonetheless, I opened the email and discovered it was an invitation to record an audio course. I had never done anything like that before, but I ultimately agreed to do it. I had spent almost thirty years teaching psychology to undergraduate students, and now that I was no longer teaching, it seemed like a good way to memorialize my work and make a course available for a general audience. I was to prepare fifteen twenty-minute lectures, and I would have to travel to a studio in Rockville, Maryland, to record the courses.
In designing the audio course, I drew material from two of my most popular courses. Irrational Behavior covered superstition and belief in the paranormal and made use of material from my book Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition. I also included some material from a behavioral economics course that drew on my book Going Broke: Why Americans (Still) Can’t Hold on to Their Money. Topics in the audio course include: logical fallacies and baloney detection, conspiracy theories, flat-earth belief and other odd beliefs, heuristics and biases, irrational consumer choice, magical thinking in children and adults, and the origins of common superstitions (e.g., the evil eye, the number thirteen, and astrology).
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