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 send a voice memo to [email protected] with your name, your age, and answers to the following questions:

Sending in a voice note means that you are consenting to the possibility of The Atlantic using your audio in a future episode of How To.

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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 [email protected]. 

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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, 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 [email protected]. 

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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 [email protected].

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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, 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 [email protected].

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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, 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].

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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 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].

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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.

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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.

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Music by Forever Sunset (“Spring Dance”), baegel (“Cyber Wham”), Etienne Roussel (“Twilight”), Dip Diet (“Sidelined”), Ben Elson (“Darkwave”), and Rob Smierciak (“Whistle Jazz”).

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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 is produced by Natalie Brennan. Our editors are Claudine Ebeid and Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak. The executive producer of audio is Claudine Ebeid, and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez.

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