How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane: Matthew Hutson LIVE on Big Think

What is so special about touching a piano John Lennon once owned? Why do we yell at our laptops? What drove the Yankees to dig up the Red Sox jersey secretly buried beneath their new stadium? And what’s up with the phrase “Everything happens for a reason”?

Matthew Hutson, author of The Seven Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane, argues that superstition has been so evolutionarily advantageous to our species that our brains are hardwired to persist in irrational beliefs against all evidence to the contrary. 

Here he talks with Big Think’s Jason Gots about crazy cat ladies, Siri, and the Beanie Baby he slept with for eight years. 

Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd

Interview by Jason Gots