Episode notes
Our latest 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, How to Keep Time, features co-hosts Ian Bogost and Becca Rashid in conversation with Oliver Burkeman to explore what it can look like to let go in a culture preoccupied with productivity. Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How to Touch Grass
by The Atlantic · English · Learning
It may be time to rethink our relationships with our devices.
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Introducing: How to Age Up
Our scientific understanding of the aging process may be expanding, but is our cultural thinking about aging keeping up? In the new season of The Atlantic’s popular How To series, co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan explore the cultural gamification of aging, the obsession with defying this inevitable process, and how we might shift our understanding of aging to embrace the beauty of being mortal. Just as “leveling up” is a positive notion, How to Age Up challenges listeners to consider how we all, regardless of our specific age, might live better. How do you think about aging? Please…
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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 is the last in the collection and is from our fourth season, How to Talk to People. The episode features host Julie Beck in conversation with hairstylists and self-described socially anxious people about how they overcome the barriers to starting conversations and building relationships. Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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S7 · E5 · 23 Dec 2024 · 43 min
Best of “How To”: Identify What You Enjoy
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 first season, How to Build a Happy Life features host Arthur Brooks and the psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb in conversation about how the first step in making room for more joy in your life is learning how to identify it. Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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S7 · E3 · 9 Dec 2024 · 42 min
Best of “How To”: The Infrastructure of Community
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 fourth season, called How to Talk to People, features host Julie Beck in conversation with Eric Klinenberg and Kellie Carter Jackson to explore how both physical structures and cultural habits can better facilitate our connections with one another. Write to us at howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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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 howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…
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S7 · E1 · 25 Nov 2024 · 35 min
Best of “How To”: Spend Time on What You Value
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S9 · E5 · 24 Aug 2026 · 40 min
What It Takes to Reclaim Your Attention Span
Of all the potential effects of using smartphones, the one that seems to inspire the most anxiety is what scrolling could be doing to people’s attention. On social media (ironically), many people express a desire to “heal” their attention spans from the damage they feel technology has done. They’re picking up on something real. In one 2025 study, researchers found that blocking the internet on people’s phones for two weeks led to improvements in sustained attention equivalent to reversing 10 years of cognitive decline. In this final episode of How to Touch Grass, host Julie Beck embarks on…
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Why Learn Something That a Machine Can Do for You?
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S9 · E3 · 10 Aug 2026 · 37 min
The Internet Is More Image-Focused Than Ever
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S9 · E2 · 3 Aug 2026 · 28 min
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Nothing sucks you in quite like the internet. It seems to have a way of figuring out what you’re currently obsessed with and serving you more and more of it, whether that’s cat videos, cookie recipes, or information about your most pervasive and seemingly unshakeable anxiety. (At this point, anyone who’s never spent a late night Googling their worries should be studied by science for their willpower.) But with the rise of artificial intelligence, the internet may be fueling a different kind of engagement. Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, and Ashleigh Golden, a…
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