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

More from How to Touch Grass

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 howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. 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 howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. 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 · 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 howtopodcast@theatlantic.com. 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…

5. 

   S6 · E4 · 3 Jun 2024 · 28 min

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

   With smartphones in our pockets and doorbell cameras cheaply available, our relationship with video as a form of proof is evolving. We often say “pics or it didn’t happen!”—but meanwhile, there’s been a rise in problematic imaging including deepfakes and surveillance systems, which often reinforce embedded gender and racial biases. So what is really being revealed with increased documentation of our lives? And what’s lost when privacy is diminished? In this episode of How to Know What’s Real, staff writer Megan Garber speaks with Deborah Raji, a Mozilla fellow, whose work is focused on…

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. 

   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…

8. 

   S9 · E4 · 17 Aug 2026 · 33 min

   Why Learn Something That a Machine Can Do for You?

   Children still learn long division even though calculators exist, and many people continue to study languages even as AI translation becomes faster and more accurate. Is there a deeper purpose for learning that technology will never touch? In this episode of How to Touch Grass, hosts Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck hear from Michelle Miller, a cognitive psychologist at Northern Arizona University who studies technology and learning. She explains that although the changing tides of tech may shape what and how we learn, as humans we still have the autonomy to build the minds we want. Learn more…

9. 

   S9 · E3 · 10 Aug 2026 · 37 min

   The Internet Is More Image-Focused Than Ever

   It wasn’t that long ago that “body positivity” was all over the internet. Oppressive beauty standards hadn’t gone away by any stretch, but many people on social media were pushing against limits on what an “ideal” body could look like. Now, things have swung in the opposite direction, with the rapid uptake of GLP-1s and the resurgence of a skinny ideal, combined with a new frankness about plastic surgery. The calls for “self-love” and “health at any size” can be harder to hear these days over the roar of looksmaxxers and influencers talking about weight loss and cosmetic procedures. In this…

10. 

    S9 · E2 · 3 Aug 2026 · 28 min

    How AI Could Make People More Anxious

    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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