Marissa Ross, the official wine columnist for Bon Appétit and author of the book “Wine. All the Time: The Casual Guide to Confident Drinking,” joins us in the studio to talk about (what else?) wine: how to buy it, how to talk about it, and most importantly, how to enjoy drinking it.

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Mira Jacob, author of the novel “The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing,” joins Alice in the studio to talk about how her novel took her ten years to write, and what she learned in the process.  We also hear from Lifehacker staff writers Nick Douglas, Patrick Allen, and Beth Skwarecki about National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo), wherein writers pledge to write 50,000 words by the end of November. Beth has completed NaNoWriMo 10 times; Patrick is trying it this year for the first time. Nick investigates why anyone would do such a thing.

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This week’s interview is with Brian Louden and Jon Lung, the new hosts of Discovery's Mythbusters. Mythbusters, as you probably know, is the popular show that aims to uncover the truth behind myths and legends, by mixing scientific method with ingenuity and experimentation. Mythbusters has taken on the big questions of our time, like Can combining Diet Coke and Mentos make your stomach explode? Is it possible to beat a lie detector test? And Would a bull really cause destruction in a china shop? For this interview, we’ve enlisted staff writers Nick Douglas and Patrick Austin. They’re two enthusiastic Mythbusters fans who are going to ask these guys all about the tools and expertise it takes to find and bust myths.

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This week we’re talking about side hustles: those projects you pursue after work—at night or on weekends—to supplement your income or fulfill a passion. Our guests include Chris Guillebeau, author of Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days, and journalist Catherine Baab-Muguira, who wrote a revealing story in Quartz about millennials and side hustles. Plus, our producer takes to the streets to find out from everyday people what kind of side hustles they have going on.

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In this episode we talk to Manoush Zomorodi, host of WNYC’s Note to Self and author of “Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self.” Back in 2015, Manoush wondered if being plugged in all the time to a constant stream of entertainment and information actually made our lives worse. She noticed that we’re never bored—and she wondered, what is that lack of boredom doing to us? Manoush led her listeners through an experiment to help them unplug—and it was a huge success: after taking part in the experiment listeners reported feeling more creative and productive, and more satisfied with their lives.

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In this episode we’re talking about dinner: what you should make, how you should make it, and why the idea of “dinner” is fraught for so many of us. We talk with Melissa Clark, staff reporter for the New York Times Food section and author of the new cookbook “Dinner in an Instant.” We also chat with Dave Arnold, the Founder and President of the Brooklyn-based Museum of Food and Drink. And we spend quality time with Claire Lower, Lifehacker's food editor and the mastermind behind the “Will It Sous Vide” column.

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In this episode we’re talking about cults: how they operate, how you identify one, what it’s like to be in one, and how to get out. To that end, we’re talking with Rick Alan Ross, the founder and Executive Director of the Cult Education Institute and an internationally known expert on destructive cults, controversial groups and movements. We’re also talking to author Rebecca Stott, whose book “In the Days of Rain: A Father, a Daughter, a Cult” details her childhood in the Exclusive Brethren, a cult that believed the world is ruled by Satan. And we speak with Elizabeth Yuko, a journalist who’s written extensively about cults.

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In this episode we’re talking about meditation and the lasting effects it can have on our minds and bodies. Joining us is Daniel Goleman, co-author of the book “Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body.” Daniel Goleman is a psychologist and science journalist known for his numerous books on emotional intelligence, including the bestselling book “Emotional Intelligence.”  In the book “Altered Traits,” he and his co-author Richard Davidson waded through the thousands of studies that have been published on mindfulness, and identified what data we should pay attention to, and what we should ignore as hype. They also reveal the latest results from Davidson’s own lab: data that point to what the future of mind-training methods should be.

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The Equifax hack has made one thing clear: all of us are vulnerable to these kinds of attacks. But how can you keep your information (and money) safe? What steps should you take to protect yourself? To find out, we brought in Hector Monsegur, former black-hat hacker, now Director of Assessment Services at Rhino Labs—and one of our favorite guests from the past year. He tells us what companies like Equifax should do to keep us safe(r), who he thinks might be behind it, what we should look out for after an attack, and how we can prevent hacks like this one from causing too much damage.

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This week we're talking about personality tests. You know: those tests that ask you personal questions about your philosophy of life or your behavior or your ethics, and then tell you what kind of person you are. How much do they really reveal? And what does our desire to take them say about us? We'll be talking with a good friend of The Upgrade—and our first repeat guest—#1 New York Times best-selling author Gretchen Rubin. Gretchen is the author of the brand-new book “The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (And Other People's Lives Better,Too).” Then we'll be joined by some of the Lifehacker staff to talk about our own results on a couple of popular personality tests: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which uses Jungian theory to determine your personality type, and The Dark Triad Test, which purports to tell you how malevolent you are compared to the rest of the population. And producer Levi Sharpe takes to the streets to ask people what personality tests have (or haven’t) told them about themselves.

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