How to Know What's Real: How to Keep Watch

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1. 

   S7 · E2 · 2 Dec 2024 · 35 min

   Best of “How To”: Rest

   This new season of How To is a collection of our favorite episodes from past seasons—a best-of series focused on slowing down, making space, and finding meaning in our hectic lives. This episode, from our fifth season, called How to Keep Time, features host Ian Bogost in conversation with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, the author of several books on rest and a director at 4 Day Week Global. The two explore how varied understandings of rest can affect our ability to gain real benefits from it. Write to us at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…

2. 

   S7 · E1 · 25 Nov 2024 · 35 min

   Best of “How To”: Spend Time on What You Value

   This new season of How To is a collection of our favorite episodes from past seasons—a best-of series focused on slowing down, making space, and finding meaning in our hectic lives. This first episode, from our third season called How to Build a Happy Life, features the Harvard Business School professor Ashley Whillans in conversation with host Arthur Brooks. The two explore how to think differently about the time you crave and the time you actually have. Write to us at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

3. 

   S6 · E7 · 4 Sep 2024 · 24 min

   How to Know What's Real: How to Know What’s Really Propaganda

   Peter Pomerantsev, a contributor at The Atlantic and author of This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, is an expert on the ways information can be manipulated. For this special episode, Megan talks with Peter about the role of propaganda in America and how to watch out for it. Looking for more great audio from The Atlantic? Check out Autocracy in America, hosted by Peter Pomerantsev and staff writer Anne Applebaum. Subscribe wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

4. 

   S6 · E6 · 17 Jun 2024 · 37 min

   How to Know What's Real: How to be Immortal Online

   With digital spaces regularly evolving and updating, and the infinite scroll beckoning to us at all times, this episode questions if we have, as a culture, fully embraced the end of endings. Hanna Reichel, an associate professor of reformed theology at Princeton Theological Seminary, helps illuminate how the emergence of godlike AI and the rise of creator culture compare with the reformations and transformations through which people lived (and died) in the past. Write to us at [email protected]. Music by Forever Sunset (“Spring Dance”), baegel (“Cyber Wham”), Etienne Roussel…

5. 

   S6 · E5 · 10 Jun 2024 · 32 min

   How to Know What's Real: How to Win at Real Life

   Games can serve as an escape from reality—but they can also shape our understanding of trust, collaboration, and what might be possible IRL. Megan Garber talks with C. Thi Nguyen, an associate philosophy professor at the University of Utah, to better understand how games can help us safely explore our current reality and shape new realities, too. Write to us at [email protected]. Music by Forever Sunset (“Spring Dance”), baegel (“Cyber Wham”), Etienne Roussel (“Twilight”), Dip Diet (“Sidelined”), Ben Elson (“Darkwave”), and Rob Smierciak (“Whistle Jazz”). How to Know What's Real…

6. 

   S6 · E3 · 27 May 2024 · 33 min

   How to Know What's Real: How to Trust Your Brain Online

   This episode explores the web’s effects on our brains and how narrative, repetition, and even a focus on replaying memories can muddy our ability to separate fact from fiction. How do we come to believe the things we do? Why do conspiracy theories flourish? And how can we train our brains to recognize misinformation online? Lisa Fazio, an associate psychology professor at Vanderbilt University, explains how people process information and disinformation, and how to debunk and pre-bunk in ways that can help discern the real from the fake. Music by Forever Sunset (“Spring Dance”), baegel…

7. 

   S6 · E2 · 20 May 2024 · 28 min

   How to Know What's Real: How to Live in a Digital City

   While the vibrance, innovation, and cacophony of online life can feel completely unlike anything humanity has ever created before, its newness isn’t wholly unprecedented. Humans reckoned with many similar challenges to life as they knew it while navigating a different kind of social web: the city. In this episode, Danah Boyd, a partner researcher at Microsoft Research and Distinguished Visiting Professor at Georgetown University, explains how the sociological work conducted during a time of rapid urbanization in the United States reveals a lot about human behavior and what we need to feel…

8. 

   S6 · E1 · 13 May 2024 · 29 min

   How to Know What's Real: How to Know Who’s Real

   Social media has made it easier to build more parasocial relationships with celebrities and influencers. What impact are those connections having on our relationships IRL? And how do they shift our understanding and expectations of intimacy and trust? Florida State University assistant professor Arienne Ferchaud defines parasocial relationships and discusses how new technologies are changing the role of entertainment in our lives. Music by Forever Sunset (“Spring Dance”), baegel (“Cyber Wham”), Etienne Roussel (“Twilight”), Dip Diet (“Sidelined”), Ben Elson (“Darkwave”), and Rob Smierciak…

9. 

   S6 · E1 · 22 Apr 2024 · 2 min

   Introducing: How to Know What's Real

   What is “real life,” now that the internet and AI are integrated into so much that we do? In the new season of The Atlantic’s popular How To series, co-hosts Megan Garber and Andrea Valdez explore deepfakes, illusions, and misinformation, and how to make sense of where things are really happening. How to Know What’s Real examines how technology has altered our sense of connectedness and how to determine what is authentic and true. Write to us at [email protected]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

10. 

    S5 · E6 · 15 Jan 2024 · 42 min

    How to Keep Time: Can We Keep Time?

    It can be tough to face our own mortality. Keeping diaries, posting to social media, and taking photos are all tools that can help to minimize the discomfort that comes with realizing we have limited time on Earth. But how exactly does documenting our lives impact how we live and remember them? In this episode, diarist and author Sarah Manguso reflects on the benefits and limitations of keeping track of time, and Charan Ranganath, a professor of psychology and researcher at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, discusses what research reveals about how memories work and how we can better…