Alchemy: The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
“To be brilliant, you have to be irrational.”
That line is both awesome and aspirational… and so is this book!
I’ve owned a printed copy of this brilliant book for over five years, but I resurfaced it this year — this time on audiobook (it’s great listening while traveling). Hearing Rory Sutherland read his own work brings the stories (and the awesome humor throughout this book) to life in great ways. (And yes, with almost 25 years since the first Harry Potter movie, anytime someone with an awesome English accent talks about magic, I’m conditioned to love it.)
The premise: humans are irrational. We don’t make decisions based on careful investigation or deductive logic. We rely on emotion, intuition, and unconscious signals.
Why is Red Bull so popular when everyone hates the taste? Why do we prefer stripy toothpaste? Why do countdown boards on train platforms make delays feel less painful?
Because logic doesn’t drive behavior—alchemy does.
The book was first released in pre-GPT times (2019) — a time of celebration for algorithms and machine learning, but not yet in our post-GPT world of AI being sprinkled everywhere. Today, Rory’s book may be even more inspirational and important than when it was first published.
In an era when AI is making everything increasingly algorithmic, rational, and linear, Alchemy reminds us of the irrelevance and irrationality that still matter most.
“To be brilliant, you have to be irrational.”
That line is both awesome and aspirational… and so is this book!
(Amazon)
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