How To!

By Slate Podcasts

Education Business

What's How To! about?

What if Dear Abby was an investigative reporter? Each week, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) takes on listeners’ toughest problems and, with the help of experts, finds the answers to questions you’ve always wanted to ask, but couldn’t. Until now.

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How To Make Friends as an A...

10.19.2021

Grace and Nikki both need more friends. Grace is an ICU nurse whose best friends have moved away. Nikki is an electrical engineer who worked remotely for the last year and is now moving to a new city. Making friends ...

How To! episodes:

10.19.2021 How To Make Friends as an Adult Grace and Nikki both need more friends. Grace is an ICU nurse whose best friends have moved away. Nikki is an electrical engineer who worked remotely for the last year and is now moving to a new city. Making friends ...
10.12.2021 How To Keep Cool in a Crisis Last week we learned how to stop a public fight before it starts. But despite our best intentions, ugly confrontations still happen—sometimes with tragic consequences. On this episode of How To!, the second in a two part-series, Dan Christensen, a ...
10.05.2021 How To Stop a Fight Before It Starts Things are a little more tense than usual these days. Stress and anxiety levels are up and so are fights in public. We’ve all heard stories of bad behavior in restaurants, airports, hospitals, school board meetings, etc. So on this ...
09.28.2021 How To Coach Squirrelly Kids (and Screaming Parents) When Kelly volunteered to be the head coach for his son’s baseball team, he was nervous. He had no formal training, but he knew he wanted his players to have equal playing time and, more importantly, have fun. Which they ...
09.21.2021 How To Fill an Empty Nest 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 ...
09.14.2021 How To Crack Your Kid Like a CIA Operative Every kid sneaks a cookie from the cookie jar, but Jamie’s 8 year-old daughter Simone has taken it to the next level. If you look under her pillow or in the back of her closet, you’ll find stashes of candy ...
09.07.2021 How To Live With a Dirty Family Secret Usually when something enters Rachel’s parents’ home, it never leaves. Growing up, Rachel and her siblings tried to clean out the growing piles of junk, but her mom would often dig into the trash to retrieve whatever was tossed. Rachel ...
08.31.2021 How To Succeed When Everyone's Mad at You Have you ever had to make an impossible decision? One that doesn’t have an obvious “right” answer. One that someone will inevitably hate. John knows this feeling all too well. He’s the superintendent for a mid-size school district in California. ...
08.24.2021 How To Beat Your Hidden Biases Do you think of yourself as a “good” person? Most of us do. You probably show others kindness and respect—no matter their age, gender, sexuality, or race, right? But our unconscious biases are often more powerful than we realize. In ...
08.17.2021 How To Repair a Broken Relationship Before It's Too Late It’s painful for Barbara to think back on her son Ethan’s childhood. For years Ethan was caught between feuding parents until, one day, Ethan went to live with his dad and never came back. Barbara regrets not fighting harder for ...
08.10.2021 How To Reconnect with Your Kid After a Nasty Divorce Barbara survived a divorce so brutal that she refers to it as ‘The War of the Roses.’ Perhaps the most painful casualty was the severing of her relationship with her son, Ethan. Decades have passed and Ethan is now married ...
08.03.2021 How To Never Miss a Deadline Avalon is driven, creative, and… can’t meet a deadline to save her life. In her defense, she’s a card-carrying member of the gig economy, juggling a complicated schedule as a DJ and visual artist. Avalon’s tried to organize her life ...
07.27.2021 How To Ditch Your Distractions Once and For All There’s one thing that all of Helena’s personal projects have in common: they remain unfinished. The family photo album is empty, as is her mom’s recipe book. And the lavender garden is still unplanted. Helena is not lazy. In fact, ...
07.20.2021 Congrats, You Won the Olympics. Now What? Winning the Olympics is everything Steve Mesler ever wanted. So when he and his U.S. bobsled teammates stood atop the podium at the 2010 Vancouver Games, his life seemed golden in every way. But soon after his triumph, Steve began ...
07.13.2021 How To Make a Big Purchase Without Panicking Alexandra and her boyfriend want to buy a house, but they’re looking in one of the hottest housing markets in the U.S. So when they got outbid for their dream home, Alexandra was secretly relieved. Spending money, even if it’s ...
07.06.2021 How To Fight Outrageous Medical Bills Rich thought nothing of going to the hospital for a routine colonoscopy—until he got the bill. Even with insurance, Rich is on the hook for nearly $2,000, way more than he ever expected. It’s particularly painful because Rich was planning ...
06.29.2021 How To Trick Your Brain Into Running Longer Have you ever thought about running but been too intimidated to start? Or maybe you’ve already got an after-work jogging routine and need tips on how to increase your endurance? On this episode of How To!, we reveal the game-changing, ...
06.22.2021 I'm a Recovering Alcoholic. I'm Afraid My Kids Will End Up Like Me. Lee is worried that one day soon her 25-year-old adopted daughter, who is pregnant and struggling with a drug addiction, will show up on her doorstep with a baby in tow. How will she be able to explain the situation ...
06.15.2021 After a Year of Survival, How to Start Living Again For the past year, Brandon has been terrified of leaving his apartment. And so he’s settled into an extreme pandemic routine. He cooks all of his own meals, has yet to see his parents, and on the rare occasion he ...
06.08.2021 How To Have the Best Sex of Your Life Ever since she started taking a new medication a few years ago, Meme is worried that she’s lost her sex drive. She still has a great relationship with her husband, but she isn’t interested in sex the way that she ...
06.05.2021 How to Turn Grit Into a Lifelong Habit \| Angela Duckworth \| The TED Interview What does it take to persevere and succeed, not just in our careers but in all aspects of our lives? For psychologist Angela Duckworth, the answer can be summed up in one concept: grit. She explains the ingredients in grit ...
06.01.2021 My Kid's Anxiety Is Giving ME Anxiety! How Do I Fix This? Michaela is worried that her son, Asher, is constantly worried. At 8 years old, Asher is already dealing with some pretty intense anxiety. For example, he cried every day at school last year. Now that he’s being home schooled during ...
05.25.2021 The Single Most Important Thing to Know Before Becoming a Single Parent Stacie is in her early 30s and is ready to have a baby. There’s just one problem—she doesn’t have a partner. As much as she wants to be a mom, Stacie is worried about being a single parent by choice. ...
05.18.2021 How to Stand Up to Your Terrible Manager—Without Getting Fired Shirley loves her job as a product manager for a startup, but she can’t stand her manager. He’s inefficient, old-fashioned, and entirely unsupportive of her work. “Just so you know, you don’t deserve this,” he told Shirley when she recently ...
05.11.2021 How To Have a Fight That Actually Helps Your Relationship Diane feels like she’s constantly picking fights with her partner Mohammed—when he forgets to grab tomatoes from the grocery store or drops the ball on planning their son’s birthday party. Their conflicts are complicated by layers of cultural differences: Mohammed ...
05.04.2021 Now Is the Time To Escape Your Bad Relationship. Here’s How. Dating is always tough, but during a pandemic it can feel downright impossible. “I’m incredibly lonely, and it’s impossible to meet anybody my age right now,” our listener Sarah said. Feeling isolated, Sarah has clung to a friends-with-benefit situation with ...
04.27.2021 I’m Great at My Job. So Why Do I Feel Like a Fraud? When Shellye Archambeau walked into her first meeting as a board member of Verizon, she felt a moment of panic. “Do I actually belong at this table?” she remembers thinking. Shellye, one of the first Black women to work as ...
04.20.2021 How To Give a Killer Speech We're all have to give a presentation at some point in our lives — on a stage, in a conference room, and, these days, on Zoom. So what makes a good speech? On this episode of How To!, we bring ...
04.13.2021 I Was Lost at Sea for 438 Days. Here's How I Survived. Imagine you’re floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a boat the size of an SUV. You have no working electronics, no food or water, and only a styrofoam box to shade you from the sun. Your only ...
04.06.2021 How To Fight Rattlesnakes and Polar Bears Have you ever wondered how you’d fare in the wild? What you’d do when facing off against a rattlesnake or staring down a polar bear? On this episode of How To!, the first in a two-part series, we dive into ...
03.30.2021 How To Write the Perfect Obituary Laura’s dad lived an unusual life. He raised 12 children on a farm without running water in the Texas countryside while also programming his own website that connected families, for free, with help when they were going through difficult times. ...
03.23.2021 How To Make an Exit Like Mary Poppins For years, Stella helped raise twin girls whom she loved deeply. She potty trained them, read bedtime stories and made sure they ate their veggies. But then, one day with little warning, she was asked to leave them. Stella isn’t ...
03.16.2021 How To Stop Snoring (And Breathe Easier) Andrew snores so badly that his cats won’t sleep in the same room as him. He’s desperate to sleep better at night, and breathe more easily during the day. As a trans man, Andrew spent most of his life training ...
03.09.2021 How To Quiet the Chatter in Your Head Emilia can’t stop thinking about a long-ago love affair with Ivan, a man she met in Mexico in her early 20s and dated for several years. Now, a decade later, Emilia is newly married, but thoughts of her time with ...
03.02.2021 How To Survive a Doomsday Cult Michael grew up terrified that the world was going to end. This wasn’t your typical childhood anxiety, but something he was taught while being raised in the Children of God cult. Michael left the cult years ago, but now in ...
02.23.2021 How To Fall Out of Love Several months ago, Sarah told her best friend John she’s in love with him—but he doesn’t love her back. Now Sarah can’t get John out of her head, especially because they still talk all the time. How can Sarah move ...
02.16.2021 How To Start Over at 60 Age may just be a number but turning 60 is a big deal—at least, according to three listeners who recently wrote us about the challenges they’re facing in their later years. Joy can’t decide whether to retire from her job ...
02.09.2021 How To Leave the Church When Your Dad’s the Pastor Chris’s childhood was defined by the Pentecostal church, where his father is a minister and his siblings are following the same path. But when Chris went to college, his views on the church changed, and now at age 23, he ...
02.02.2021 How To Steal Back Your Identity Ever since Casey’s husband had his identity stolen, Casey hasn’t been able to relax. She spends late nights and weekends obsessively checking their family bank accounts and scouring the web for information on the thieves who live just 15 minutes ...
01.26.2021 How To Be a Badass On and Off the Court Juliet knows she’s one of the best tennis players in her community league, but whenever she gets on the court, she’s paralyzed by self-consciousness. Did the crowd notice how bad that shot was? With all eyes on her, Juliet keeps ...
01.19.2021 How To Get Things Done in a Divided Nation with Samantha Power Samantha Power knows what it’s like to arrive in Washington, D.C. and feel a little lost—literally. She once couldn't find the oval office. But more than that, as a Pulitzer Prize-winning human rights activist and former UN Ambassador under President ...
12.29.2020 Our Favorite Advice of 2020 Here at How To! headquarters, we give and receive a lot of good advice. This year we learned how to talk politics without wrecking relationships, lose weight and keep it off, confront a crazy neighbor, and even survive a shark ...
12.22.2020 How To Stress-Bake with Claire Saffitz Are you sick of sourdough? Stress-baking the same chocolate chip cookies every week? Our listener Daniel understands—he’s been baking like crazy during this pandemic, but is feeling tired and uninspired lately. On this episode of How To!, we bring on ...
12.15.2020 How To Get Your Dog to Stop Eating Your Daughters’ Underwear With Jenny Slate Erin thinks her dog Chief has the most embarrassing habit—he keeps eating her daughters’ underwear. This has happened several times, resulting in multiple costly surgeries. If she can't put a stop to it, it could eventually kill Chief. How can ...
12.11.2020 How To Get Out of Debt Faster Than You Think Irina and her husband are more than $100,000 in debt. They’re working to pay it off, but between monthly credit card bills, student loan payments, 401k contributions and spending on their new baby, their money is spread too thin. In ...
12.08.2020 How To Face Your Fear of Dying Katie is terrified of dying. As the youngest in a big family, she can’t stop thinking about the fact that all her loved ones may die before she does. Katie is a comedy writer who knows how to get laughs, ...
12.01.2020 How To Save Your Marriage Lauren and Carlos are afraid their marriage is at a breaking point. With Carlos out of work, an active toddler to care for, and another child on the way, Lauren and Carlos are feeling pressures familiar to many newlyweds—and the ...
11.24.2020 How To Rescue Someone From a Conspiracy Theory Matt’s dad believes some crazy conspiracy theories—that the moon landing was faked, that JFK’s assassination was an inside job, and that QAnon is real. Matt can’t stand talking about politics—or really anything—with his dad these days, but he’s desperate to ...
11.17.2020 How To Have an Open Relationship Abe’s girlfriend wants to try something different—sleeping with other people. In other words, she wants an open relationship. Abe could be on board, but he has some questions. How does that work exactly? What are the ground rules? And what ...
11.10.2020 How To Be the Next Erin Brockovich Mike is an average guy on a mission to change the state of Florida—specifically, to convince the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to stop overspraying the rivers and lakes with herbicides. As a fisherman, Mike cares deeply about the waterways ...

Older episodes

How To!

What's How To! about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

How To! episodes:

How To Make Friends as an Adult

How To Keep Cool in a Crisis

How To Stop a Fight Before It Starts

How To Coach Squirrelly Kids (and Screaming Parents)

How To Fill an Empty Nest

How To Crack Your Kid Like a CIA Operative

How To Live With a Dirty Family Secret

How To Succeed When Everyone's Mad at You

How To Beat Your Hidden Biases

How To Repair a Broken Relationship Before It's Too Late

How To Reconnect with Your Kid After a Nasty Divorce

How To Never Miss a Deadline

How To Ditch Your Distractions Once and For All

Congrats, You Won the Olympics. Now What?

How To Make a Big Purchase Without Panicking

How To Fight Outrageous Medical Bills

How To Trick Your Brain Into Running Longer

I'm a Recovering Alcoholic. I'm Afraid My Kids Will End Up Like Me.

After a Year of Survival, How to Start Living Again

How To Have the Best Sex of Your Life

How to Turn Grit Into a Lifelong Habit | Angela Duckworth | The TED Interview

My Kid's Anxiety Is Giving ME Anxiety! How Do I Fix This?

The Single Most Important Thing to Know Before Becoming a Single Parent

How to Stand Up to Your Terrible Manager—Without Getting Fired

How To Have a Fight That Actually Helps Your Relationship

Now Is the Time To Escape Your Bad Relationship. Here’s How.

I’m Great at My Job. So Why Do I Feel Like a Fraud?

How To Give a Killer Speech

I Was Lost at Sea for 438 Days. Here's How I Survived.

How To Fight Rattlesnakes and Polar Bears

How To Write the Perfect Obituary

How To Make an Exit Like Mary Poppins

How To Stop Snoring (And Breathe Easier)

How To Quiet the Chatter in Your Head

How To Survive a Doomsday Cult

How To Fall Out of Love

How To Start Over at 60

How To Leave the Church When Your Dad’s the Pastor

How To Steal Back Your Identity

How To Be a Badass On and Off the Court

How To Get Things Done in a Divided Nation with Samantha Power

Our Favorite Advice of 2020

How To Stress-Bake with Claire Saffitz

How To Get Your Dog to Stop Eating Your Daughters’ Underwear With Jenny Slate

How To Get Out of Debt Faster Than You Think

How To Face Your Fear of Dying

How To Save Your Marriage

How To Rescue Someone From a Conspiracy Theory

How To Have an Open Relationship

How To Be the Next Erin Brockovich

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