How To!

By Slate Podcasts

Education Business

What's How To! about?

What if Dear Abby were an investigative reporter? Each week, Amanda Ripley and Carvell Wallace take on listeners’ toughest problems and, with the help of experts, find the answers to questions you’ve always wanted to ask but couldn’t. Until now.

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How To Follow Your Small Bu...

09.19.2023

Sarah is a part-time pet groomer who dreams of opening up her own business. Having worked long hours for low wages, she can’t help thinking that she could earn more money and control her schedule if she starts her own ...

How To! episodes:

09.19.2023 How To Follow Your Small Business Dream Sarah is a part-time pet groomer who dreams of opening up her own business. Having worked long hours for low wages, she can’t help thinking that she could earn more money and control her schedule if she starts her own ...
09.12.2023 How To Learn Any Language Fast Niky just isn’t jibing with Spanish. She’s tried courses, podcasts, apps, and even private tutors in order to make a connection with Spanish speakers around Toronto, at her job, and while traveling. But years into her language-learning journey, she’s not ...
09.05.2023 How To Find Your People Katie was ready to graduate from college when the pandemic interrupted everything. Unceremoniously cut-off from her group of friends, she’s now in a new chapter of her life but struggling more than ever to find her people. Katie’s friendships at ...
08.29.2023 How To Navigate Adult Autism It’s a family joke that Dave and his 13 year-old son are the same person. So when his son found out he is autistic, Dave realized that he, too, is on the autism spectrum. The label is a comfort—a reassurance ...
08.22.2023 How To Fill an Empty Nest (Encore) Susan never really got over saying goodbye to her eldest daughter, who left for college four years ago. She knew it would be sad, but she didn’t expect to be nauseous. Now her youngest is applying to college, and she’s ...
08.15.2023 How To Live Anywhere in the World Have you ever wanted to move to a new country? Picking up and starting over internationally can be rewarding, but also nerve-wracking. Our listener Sara has lived overseas for more than a decade, but she recently moved to Switzerland and ...
08.08.2023 How To Cope With Climate Anxiety As the massive Caldor fire blazed towards South Lake Tahoe in 2021, Joyce knew she had to get out. “The sky was red. It was like hell on earth,” she remembers. Her family got to safety and her house was ...
08.01.2023 How To Show Up For a Friend With Cancer When Gwendolyn found out her friend was diagnosed with cancer, she knew she wanted to help. She just didn’t know how. Her friend lives hundreds of miles away. How can she help in a way that’s more meaningful than sending ...
07.25.2023 How To Deal With a Difficult Parent Every year J. and her parents fly thousands of miles, meeting in the middle for their family vacation. A vacation that often leads to shouting and tears. J. and her father have a rocky relationship. Little disagreements often lead to ...
07.18.2023 How To Make Aging Easier for Everyone Caregivers provide an estimated 600 billion dollars in free labor each year, according to the AARP. This week’s listener, Dani is one such caregiver. She and her partner found themselves navigating the confusing world of Medicare and Medicaid, estate planning, ...
07.11.2023 How To Hack Any Bureaucracy When Gwen applied for unemployment during the early days of the pandemic, she never thought she’d still be waiting for her benefits years later. Despite hours on the phone, countless emails and even a court appearance, Gwen is haunted by ...
07.04.2023 How To Stop Finding Your Self-worth Through Your Job (w/ Gloria Chan Packer) On this bonus episode from our friends at the How To Be A Better Human podcast: For some of us it’s easy to lose ourselves in our work. But a lack of boundaries between your personal and work life is ...
06.27.2023 How To Find Genuine Happiness The last few years have been overwhelming for Tracy. Her career was demanding and she experienced multiple deaths in her family. Recently, she changed jobs and is in a better place with her mental health, but something is still missing ...
06.20.2023 How To Find the Gems in All Your Junk Most people have something they’re holding on to. For Lesley and Alex, that’s some old baseball and basketball cards that are collecting dust in their attic. For Kathy, that’s a house full of antiques. They’ve all been wanting to pare ...
06.13.2023 How To Quit Your Calling Amy and Sarah are high school English teachers who both want to quit the classroom, but for very different reasons. Amy has over 200 students, and tensions between teachers and parents are on the rise so she’s “beyond burned out.” ...
06.06.2023 How To Help Teachers Thrive Today there are about four million teachers in America, and nearly a third of them are thinking about leaving their jobs. It has become harder to be a teacher in the U.S. due to a lack of resources, political meddling, ...
05.30.2023 How To Sleep Apart to Save Your Relationship Sleep is objectively worse when splitting a bed. Yet that’s the default for most couples. But that doesn’t mean sharing the covers is easy. Especially when one person is having trouble falling or staying asleep. On this episode of How ...
05.23.2023 How To Sleep Like a Champ Vanessa isn’t a night owl. Yet, often, you can find her lying awake desperately trying to turn off her brain. When her partner stays over she often resorts to the couch just to get some rest. On this episode of ...
05.16.2023 How To Deliver Bad News Better ‘I’ve got bad news’ is a sentence no one wants to hear. But at some point, all of us will either have to deliver bad news or will be on the receiving end. So what can make these gut-wrenching conversations ...
05.12.2023 Sponsored Content: Secret Sauce for Business Owners It’s not easy to start a business. It’s even harder to build a successful one. Luckily, we can ask experts, entrepreneurs, and business leaders for advice. In this special Slate episode, brought to you by Bank of America, we’ve gathered ...
05.09.2023 Dear Prudie: My Husband Wants Our 9-Year-Old Son to Play Tackle Football. Help! On this bonus episode from our friends at Slate's Dear Prudence podcast—Bomani Jones (host of HBO’s Game Theory With Bomani Jones and The Right Time With Bomani Jones) joins Prudie (Jenée Desmond-Harris) to answer questions from letter writers about workplace ...
05.02.2023 How To Raise Kids in a Nation Full of Guns Guns are now the leading cause of death for children in America. Each tragedy can be visceral, whether it’s in your community or across the country. And it’s especially heartbreaking when your kid voices that fear directly, as our listener ...
04.25.2023 How To Face the A.I. Revolution If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT, chances are you will soon. Maybe you’ve tried casually playing with the artificial intelligent chatbot. Maybe you’ve tried avoiding it. Or maybe ChatGPT is the new host of this podcast and you haven’t realized ...
04.18.2023 How To Start Reading Books Again Kate stopped reading in 2016. Since then, she’s tried to find her way back to it but something’s not clicking, and it’s left a book-shaped hole in her heart. Reading used to be something she really enjoyed, took pride in, ...
04.11.2023 How To Breathe Like a Navy SEAL John has spent years training to become a Pararescueman, a member of Air Force Special Warfare tasked with recovering downed military personnel around the globe. He has pushed himself past countless obstacles and trials, except one — holding his breath ...
04.04.2023 How To Succeed at Social Media Emily is a successful career and executive coach in Ohio, who has done well finding clients through word-of-mouth. But in order to expand her business she knows she has to up her online marketing game. The only catch? She is ...
03.28.2023 How To Bounce Back From a Layoff On a recent workday, Pauline woke up and logged into her computer from home … only to find an email saying she was being laid off — effective immediately. She and her entire team, many of them working remotely, instantly ...
03.21.2023 The Upside of Stress: A Slight Change of Plans with Dr. Maya Shankar This week we present a special episode from A Slight Change of Plans hosted by Dr. Maya Shankar, a cognitive scientist who studies human behavior and was our featured expert on How To Stick To Your New Year's Resolutions. Maya's ...
03.14.2023 How To Make Imposter Syndrome Your Superpower When Leslie landed her dream engineering job right out of college, she was elated but also worried she was a tad unqualified—even though she has the skills and expertise. Since then imposter syndrome has reared its ugly head on a ...
03.07.2023 How To ‘Chaos Cook’ With Samin Nosrat Cooking is one of the most basic human activities. We’ve probably been doing it since the discovery of fire and, yet, it’s more than just fuel. It’s culture. It’s comfort. It’s increasingly content. The problem is when we have such ...
02.28.2023 How To Style Your Home Like a Pro This summer, Hillary and her fiancé will be moving into their first home together. It’s an upgrade from their apartment, and they get to design it from scratch. Hillary is really looking forward to entertaining friends and even growing their ...
02.21.2023 How To Manage Your Precious Time Joey is a young creative living in Australia who can’t decide which hat to wear. Should it be songwriting, skateboarding, acting, or should he focus more on his day job as a retail clerk? Fitting everything in during the week ...
02.14.2023 Encore: How To Find Your First Kiss at 38 Sharon is 38 and never been kissed. This, as she acknowledges, is “a bit weird.” As a nurse who loves ballroom dancing, Sharon is smart, funny, and attractive. At the same time, she’s deeply religious and has been waiting so ...
02.07.2023 How To Face Your Kid’s Future Keith prides himself on being a good dad to his three sons. But in a post-pandemic world with looming student debt and uncertain opportunities, the future can be really scary. He’s especially worried about his middle son Ben, an introvert ...
01.31.2023 How To Command a Room Yuzuha has been interviewing people for six years. She’s a journalist based in Japan who writes about business and technology but has dreamed of working in broadcast, interviewing people for an audience. Her first challenge is coming sooner than she ...
01.24.2023 How To Love Your Face Earlier this year, our listener, Rell, nearly failed a promotion. Not because she was unprepared or unqualified, but because she didn’t maintain enough eye contact with the interviewers. Rell’s eye hasn’t been fully receiving information since she was born, a ...
01.17.2023 How To Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions January is barely two weeks old and already some of our ambitious New Year’s resolutions may be starting to fade. No shame! Approximately 90% of resolution makers don’t reach their goal. Which means there’s gotta be a better way. Our ...
01.10.2023 How To End Political Violence (From an Ex-Gang Leader) In the wake of the anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, and now similar riots in Brazil’s capital, we’re picking up our conversation about how to reduce political violence. In the first episode of our two-part series, we heard from ...
01.03.2023 How To Prevent Another Jan. 6 It’s been two years since the January 6th riot at the US Capitol in Washington DC. Over 900 people have been criminally charged, but political violence continues to be a threat. Well, here at How To!, we are not content ...
12.27.2022 Our Favorite Advice of 2022 Here at How To! headquarters, we give and receive a lot of good advice. This year we saved the planet, unbroke the news, discovered our style, sat in silence, found pleasure, put a small town on the map, learned to ...
12.20.2022 How To Forgive Someone Who Isn't Sorry TJ has spent years trying to heal herself and put her childhood behind her. Both of her parents struggled with addiction, which made for a very complicated, unstable upbringing. After sacrificing her own childhood to raise her siblings—TJ feels deeply ...
12.13.2022 How To House Everyone in Your City This week, Los Angeles’ newly elected mayor Karen Bass declared a state of emergency to help address the city’s homelessness crisis. It’s an overwhelming issue that has left a lot of Angelenos wondering how they can help, including this week’s ...
12.06.2022 How To Throw a Party They’ll Remember ‘Tis the season of gathering with friends and family. It’s also a time where some of us yearn for a closer community, like this week’s listener. Morgan is looking for a way to hang out with friends in a consistent, ...
11.29.2022 How To Know When to Quit Your Job Victor’s job—at its core—is to change the world. But he feels like he’s plateaued within his large humanitarian and development organization, and is now on the verge of jumping ship. On this episode of How To!, Annie Duke, author of ...
11.25.2022 Atlas Obscura: Louie Mattar’s Fabulous Car In this episode from our friends at The Atlas Obscura Podcast, you'll visit the San Diego Automotive Museum in California to hear about one man’s dream of creating the ultimate road trip car. Their podcast is an audio guide to ...
11.22.2022 Encore: How To Write a Bestseller Lauren already knows the plot of her bestselling novel—the problem is she hasn’t written a word. Paralyzed by self-criticism and an earlier rejection, this former English major has spent years journaling instead of attempting the scary, difficult work of creative ...
11.15.2022 How To Make a Huge Decision In 60 Minutes... Or Less To move or not to move? That is the question for Tiffani. She is desperate to get out of her hometown in rural Oregon and find a place with affordable housing, better dating prospects, and a ballroom dance studio nearby… ...
11.11.2022 Sponsored: How Can We Use Our Success to Empower Our Communities? Season 3 of The Relentless is all about moving fearlessly. We’re kicking things off with two guests who not only embody that mindset, they’re growing businesses in ways that also empower their communities. First, we talk to Kathryn Finney, a ...
11.08.2022 How To Parent Your Depressed Teen As Kate’s teenage son, Sam, approached college she noticed him withdrawing. He wasn’t excited about his future and started to show symptoms of major depression. It came to a crisis point one summer night before Sam was set to leave ...
11.01.2022 How To Talk Politics With Your Dad (Without Yelling) Pt 2 Today we’re going to see if one American family can flip the usual, tortured and tedious script for arguing about politics and do something more interesting. Jenn and Todd Brandel sit down with their dad, Bruce, to see if they ...

Older episodes

How To!

What's How To! about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

How To! episodes:

How To Follow Your Small Business Dream

How To Learn Any Language Fast

How To Find Your People

How To Navigate Adult Autism

How To Fill an Empty Nest (Encore)

How To Live Anywhere in the World

How To Cope With Climate Anxiety

How To Show Up For a Friend With Cancer

How To Deal With a Difficult Parent

How To Make Aging Easier for Everyone

How To Hack Any Bureaucracy

How To Stop Finding Your Self-worth Through Your Job (w/ Gloria Chan Packer)

How To Find Genuine Happiness

How To Find the Gems in All Your Junk

How To Quit Your Calling

How To Help Teachers Thrive

How To Sleep Apart to Save Your Relationship

How To Sleep Like a Champ

How To Deliver Bad News Better

Sponsored Content: Secret Sauce for Business Owners

Dear Prudie: My Husband Wants Our 9-Year-Old Son to Play Tackle Football. Help!

How To Raise Kids in a Nation Full of Guns

How To Face the A.I. Revolution

How To Start Reading Books Again

How To Breathe Like a Navy SEAL

How To Succeed at Social Media

How To Bounce Back From a Layoff

The Upside of Stress: A Slight Change of Plans with Dr. Maya Shankar

How To Make Imposter Syndrome Your Superpower

How To ‘Chaos Cook’ With Samin Nosrat

How To Style Your Home Like a Pro

How To Manage Your Precious Time

Encore: How To Find Your First Kiss at 38

How To Face Your Kid’s Future

How To Command a Room

How To Love Your Face

How To Stick to Your New Year’s Resolutions

How To End Political Violence (From an Ex-Gang Leader)

How To Prevent Another Jan. 6

Our Favorite Advice of 2022

How To Forgive Someone Who Isn't Sorry

How To House Everyone in Your City

How To Throw a Party They’ll Remember

How To Know When to Quit Your Job

Atlas Obscura: Louie Mattar’s Fabulous Car

Encore: How To Write a Bestseller

How To Make a Huge Decision In 60 Minutes... Or Less

Sponsored: How Can We Use Our Success to Empower Our Communities?

How To Parent Your Depressed Teen

How To Talk Politics With Your Dad (Without Yelling) Pt 2

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