How to Know What’s Real

The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC

How to Know What’s Real

A weekly Education and Science podcast featuring Arthur Brooks, Rebecca Rashid and Julie Beck
Good podcast? Give it some love!
How to Know What’s Real

The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC

How to Know What’s Real

Episodes
How to Know What’s Real

The Atlantic Monthly Group, LLC

How to Know What’s Real

A weekly Education and Science podcast featuring Arthur Brooks, Rebecca Rashid and Julie Beck
Good podcast? Give it some love!
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Best Episodes of How to Know What’s Real

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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 living and Americans’ collective struggle to create a relationship-centric life. As we continue
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 oneself. But the pressure to pretend we are perfect is exactly the thing holding us back from experie
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 emotional management, practices that help us befriend our inner monologue, and challenges to
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—left as an unfulfilled desire without any clear course of action. In this episode of How to Start O
In adulthood, many of us are forced to recalibrate our relationship with joy. As responsibilities multiply exponentially, time grows limited, and challenges mount, it becomes harder to make time for fun, let alone remember what it feels like. A
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 there, but because our mind wandered off to some unknown place.In this episode of How to Build a Happy
Romantic relationships often show us the deep divide between expectations and reality. For any relationship struggling to overcome conflict, the first step to starting over may be identifying how your vision of marriage is out of step with your
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—breakups, illness, even death—we must first accept and acknowledge its inevitability. Exploring the
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 ro
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 the
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
With smartphones in our pockets and doorbell cameras cheaply available, our relationship with video as a form of proof is evolving. We often say “pics or it didn’t happen!”—but meanwhile, there’s been a rise in problematic imaging including dee
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 separate fact from fiction. How do we come to believe the things we do? Why do conspiracy theo
While the vibrance, innovation, and cacophony of online life can feel completely unlike anything humanity has ever created before, its newness isn’t wholly unprecedented. Humans reckoned with many similar challenges to life as they knew it whil
Social media has made it easier to build more parasocial relationships with celebrities and influencers. What impact are those connections having on our relationships IRL? And how do they shift our understanding and expectations of intimacy and
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 series, co-hosts Megan Garber and Andrea Valdez explore deepfakes, illusions, and misinformation, and h
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 discomfort that comes with realizing we have limited time on Earth. But how exactly does document
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 big to fully comprehend, but what we do know could help inform the ways we approach our understan
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 take a few minutes to read a book or watch TV before bed. All that busyness can lead to poor sleep
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 clearer boundaries. Today, work is not done exclusively in the workplace, and that makes it harder to
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 for our inability to focus on what matters? According to Neeru Paharia, a marketing professor at
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 feel like there’s never enough time in a day? Why are so many of us conditioned to believe that b
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 people? On How to Keep Time, co-hosts Becca Rashid and contributing writer Ian Bogost talk with
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 people channel that belief into political action, as in the Make America Great Again movement.
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 attempting to do things on our own, we may miss out on the joys of coming together.This season’
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