How to Age Up
Episodes
How to Age Up on a Warming Planet
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
How should we think about aging when the impacts of climate change can make the future feel so uncertain? That’s a question Sarah Ray, professor and...
How to Define Old Age
05 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2021 Dr. Kiran Rabheru, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and a geriatric psychiatrist, found himself at the center of a medica...
How to Age Up Together
28 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the next 10 years, our society will become more old than young. How do we leverage this time to build stronger intergenerational connections? Eunic...
How to Fuel Up
21 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Food trends are constantly changing, so can people commit to a long-term nutrition practice? Kera Nyemb-Diop says yes. She is a nutrition scientist fo...
How to Wish You Were 66 Instead of 35
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We don’t often talk about the benefits of aging. Dr.Karen Adams has a different perspective. From new beginnings to menopausal zest, the director of...
How to Defy Death
07 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Humans have always tried to prolong life and battle mortality, but what do the current influx of biohackers reveal about this era of individual respon...
Introducing: How to Age Up
10 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 Atla...
Best of “How To”: Make Small Talk
30 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 fin...
Best of “How To”: Identify What You Enjoy
23 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 fin...
Best of “How To”: Waste Time
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 f...
Best of “How To”: The Infrastructure of Community
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 fin...
Best of “How To”: Rest
02 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 fin...
Best of “How To”: Spend Time on What You Value
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 fin...
How to Know What's Real: How to Know What’s Really Propaganda
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
How to Know What's Real: How to be Immortal Online
17 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 cul...
How to Know What's Real: How to Win at Real Life
10 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 G...
How to Know What's Real: How to Keep Watch
03 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With smartphones in our pockets and doorbell cameras cheaply available, our relationship with video as a form of proof is evolving. We often say “pi...
How to Know What's Real: How to Trust Your Brain Online
27 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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...
How to Know What's Real: How to Live in a Digital City
20 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
While the vibrance, innovation, and cacophony of online life can feel completely unlike anything humanity has ever created before, its newness isn’t...
How to Know What's Real: How to Know Who’s Real
13 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Social media has made it easier to build more parasocial relationships with celebrities and influencers. What impact are those connections having on o...
Introducing: How to Know What's Real
22 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ser...
How to Keep Time: Can We Keep Time?
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 dis...
How to Keep Time: Time Tips From the Universe
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Time can feel like a subjective experience—different at different points in our lives. It’s also a real, measurable thing. The universe may be too...
How to Keep Time: How to Rest
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between making time for work, family, friends, exercise, chores, shopping—the list goes on and on—it can feel like a huge accomplishment to just t...
How to Keep Time: How to Leave Work Time at Work
18 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Before laptops allowed us to take the office home and smartphones could light up with notifications at any hour, work time and “life” time had cle...
How to Keep Time: How to Look Busy
11 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many of us complain about being too busy—and about not having enough time to do the things we really want to do. But has busyness become an excuse f...
How to Keep Time: How to Waste Time
04 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost explore our relationship with time and how to reclaim it. Why is it so important to be productive? Why can it fee...
Introducing: How to Keep Time
06 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Why can it feel like there’s never enough time in a day, and why are so many of us conditioned to believe that being more productive makes us better...
How to Talk to People: ‘Everyone Used to be Nicer,’ And Other Persistent Myths
27 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
A lot of people are plagued by the feeling that society used to be better, that neighbors were more helpful, that strangers once talked to you. Some p...
How to Talk to People: How to Not Go It Alone
26 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The values of individualism that encourage us to go it alone are in constant tension with the desire for community that many people crave. But when at...
How to Talk to People: How to Know Your Neighbors
19 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Are commitment issues impacting our ability to connect with the people who live around us? Relationship building may involve a commitment to the belie...
How to Talk to People: What Makes a House a Home
12 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What motivated two families to engage in the organized chaos of shared living and how did they learn to talk through, and shape, new expectations for ...
How to Talk to People: What do we owe our friends?
05 Jun 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The terms of friendship are both voluntary and vague—yet people often find themselves disappointed by unmet expectations. In this episode of How to ...
How to Talk to People: The Infrastructure of Community
29 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Coffee shops, churches, libraries, and concert venues are all shared spaces where mingling can take place. Yet the hustle and bustle of modern social ...
How to Talk to People: How to Make Small Talk
22 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Making small talk can be hard—especially when you’re not sure whether you’re doing it well. But conversations are a central part of relationship...
Trailer: How to Talk to People
15 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
On How to Talk to People we explore the barriers to relationship building and why—in a world of endless potential for connection—so many people st...
Introducing Holy Week
13 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Holy Week: The story of a revolution undone. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, is often recounted as a conclusion to a...
How To Build a Happy Life: A New Formula for Happiness
14 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We often follow a misguided formula for happiness—pushing us toward material wealth and other worldly successes. But when our expectations set us do...
How To Build a Happy Life: The Right Choices in Parenting
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The mandates of modern parenting can be dizzying. But in the effort to optimize our parenting, we may lose sight of the values we hope to impart to ou...
How To Build a Happy Life: Subtraction as a Solution
31 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
From how we build our cities to how we shop, it can seem as though our natural human tendency is to add. But a culture of accumulation may be exactly ...
How To Build a Happy Life: Spend Time on What You Value
24 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
We try to use our time wisely—both at work and in leisure—but we often waste it. We may blame work for stripping us of recreation, but when valuab...
How To Build a Happy Life: The Complexities of Human Love
17 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Dating apps show us what we want—a relationship—without always accurately reflecting the experience of it. Our expectation that tech will create a...
How To Build a Happy Life: When Virtues Become Vices
10 Oct 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When the behaviors we thought would make us happy don’t, we’re forced to bridge the gap between where we are and where we want to be. But our happ...
How To Build a Happy Life: When Expectations Don’t Meet Reality
27 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In our pursuit of a happy life, we build, we structure, and we plan. Often, we follow conventional wisdom and strategize. But what happens when our pl...
How to Start Over: Forgive Ourselves for What We Can’t Change
04 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
When we regret our past, it can feel like we’re incapable of changing our future. But it may be our past “mistakes” that help us realize there i...
How to Start Over: The Misgivings of Friend-Making
27 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In the post-social-distancing era, some of us can’t remember how to make a new friend. But for many, making friends has always been a challenge—le...
How to Start Over: When Can a Marriage Be Saved?
20 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Romantic relationships often show us the deep divide between expectations and reality. For any relationship struggling to overcome conflict, the first...
How to Start Over: When Partnership Is Not the Destination
13 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In a society dominated by romantic couples, it can be hard to accept your unpartnered state for what it is. But for the “single at heart,” the des...
How to Start Over: 'Parents Are Not All Good and All Bad'
06 Jun 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Some families have the frictionless ease of unconditional love and understanding, but for many the stalemate of family tensions can be insurmountable....
How to Start Over: When You Think It's Too Late
30 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
A professional change in midlife can provide a much-needed reset—at least when you’re looking for a career that more closely aligns with your pass...
Trailer: How To Start Over
09 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this series, Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan analyzes what it takes to change our relationships, our work, and our perspective—with a practical...
How to Build a Happy Life: Identify What You Enjoy
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In adulthood, many of us are forced to recalibrate our relationship with joy. As responsibilities multiply exponentially, time grows limited, and chal...
How to Build a Happy Life: Live When You’re In Pain
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As we wind down this series, a paradox remains in our pursuit of happiness—joy comes to those who have known pain. In order to overcome struggle—b...
How to Build a Happy Life: Find the Secret to Meaningful Work
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The road to purposeful work is paved with good intentions; but for many, happiness at work can feel like a hopeless cause. What if the secret to happi...
How to Build a Happy Life: Know That You Know Nothing
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If there’s one thing we might regret at the end of life, it’s that we missed out on moments that mattered—not because we weren’t physically th...
How to Build a Happy Life: Don't Be Your Own Worst Enemy
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In the social-media age, we curate images of our lives on a screen—making it especially easy to translate images of perfection as the image of onese...
How to Build a Happy Life: Know You're Lonely
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The irony in loneliness is that we all share in the experience of it. In this episode of How to Build a Happy Life, we sit down to discuss isolated li...
How to Build a Happy Life: Be Self-Aware
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Only when we admit we have a problem can we begin to find solutions. On the first episode of How To Build a Happy Life, we explore the neuroscience of...
Trailer: How to Build a Happy Life
22 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Welcome to How to Build a Happy Life! In this series, host Arthur Brooks digs into research and offers tools to help you live more joyfully. Join us f...