How To!
You’ve got questions. Together, we get answers. We all need advice, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to turn. Each week, Courtney Martin and Carvell Wallace bring a listener on to the show to solve their toughest problems with the help of world-class experts. It’s free therapy, and you’re invited.
Episodes
April 23, 2024 • 39 mins
A few years ago, Leah was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Her condition has posed many serious challenges, including how to start and maintain friendships. She wants to build a rich social life, but her symptoms—and the stigmas surrounding mental health—often get in the way. When Leah does meet a new person, she struggles with how (and when) to talk about her diagnosis and feels intense pressure to be “the perfect friend.” On this ep...
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April 16, 2024 • 38 mins
“Doing the work” is a phrase often heard when talking about racial justice. We heard it a lot after the death of George Floyd in 2020. And we need to continue talking about it—but there’s an important aspect of “the work” that’s been missing. On this episode of How To!: Courtney Martin brings in Garrett Bucks, author of The Right Kind of White and founder of The Barnraisers Project, to help Elizabeth Doerr talk to fellow white pare...
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April 9, 2024 • 43 mins
Mia is a professional violinist. She’s played in symphonies. She’s played in improv groups. She’s played as a form of personal exploration. But now she’s taking on a big, conceptual project that may have nothing to do with music. Instead, she wants to create a piece rooted in connection. The only problem? She doesn’t know what she wants to create. On this episode of How To!: Carvell Wallace brings in storyteller extraordinaire Mich...
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April 2, 2024 • 33 mins
Last week we learned about using the four different styles of humor to your advantage, and who makes a good target for a joke. But what if you read the room wrong and absolutely bomb? On this episode of How To!, the second in a two-part series, we resume our conversation with Naomi Bagdonas, co-author of Humor, Seriously!, and Michael Terry, the most hilarious hedge fund guy we’ve ever met. They swap stories about office jokes that...
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March 26, 2024 • 34 mins
Did you know that we, as a society, have fallen off a comedy cliff? No joke. Studies have shown that we largely stop laughing when we enter our mid-twenties, which is a shame because delighting in humor has a ton of health benefits. Plus, being perceived as funny can actually make people think you’re more intelligent, more competent, and even better looking! So on this episode of How To!, the first in a two-part series, we bring on...
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March 19, 2024 • 43 mins
Forgetfulness. Repetitiveness. Confusion. Dementia is a long, painful road for both the person living with it, caregivers, and their additional loved ones. Mara’s mom just received her diagnosis and Mara is wondering what is next for their family. She turned to our host Courtney Martin for guidance—since Courtney is going through the same thing with her father.
On this episode of How To!: Courtney and Mara are joined by Tami Anast...
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March 12, 2024 • 37 mins
Shannon is set to become an ordained minister—but she has always struggled with public speaking. Here’s the thing: She’s fine in front of large gatherings. In smaller gatherings, however, she mentally “freezes up” and rambles until she regains her train of thought. As Shannon prepares to start interacting with a congregation, Courtney Martin sits her down with former How To! host Charles Duhigg, author of Supercommunicators: How to...
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March 5, 2024 • 37 mins
When Patti retired a few months ago, everyone told her she would love the freedom and flexibility that came with leaving the workforce. Not so. The transition has left Patti grieving the loss of her routine and sense of purpose—and she’s wondering how to find fulfillment in life’s (gulp!) third act. On today’s episode, Courtney Martin welcomes Brad Stulberg, author of Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing—Inclu...
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February 27, 2024 • 31 mins
Our series about friendship ends with a look at, well, how friendships end.
Alice and Grace connected when their kids started dating. They became fast friends whose family lives were intertwined—in a good way. They even joked that they might end up raising grandchildren together. When the kids broke up, Alice and Grace broke apart, too. Now, Alice is wondering whether she should fight for her cherished relationship or just move on...
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February 20, 2024 • 38 mins
In part two of our series on friendship, we’re looking at how to revitalize a relationship that began in a previous phase of life.
Michelle and Blair became fast friends in grad school. That bond survived graduation, marriages, and even a cross-country move. They now live just a short drive from one another—but things have never felt so distant. Michelle wants to know how to evolve their friendship to be more compatible with the ...
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February 13, 2024 • 44 mins
Love typically reigns in February. But, here at How To!, we are giving friendship its due. For the next three episodes, we’re going to teach you how to find friends in surprising places, how to grow and change in your friendship during life transitions, and even how to recover from a friendship breakup.
So today we’re starting with a potential cure for our epidemic of loneliness: intergenerational friendships. Emily is in her ear...
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February 6, 2024 • 40 mins
Dry January has come and gone, but the conversation about alcohol—and rethinking our relationship with it—is still very much with us. This week’s listener, Natalie, wants to move past the abundance vs. abstinence debate and talk about a third option: thoughtful moderation. In this episode, Courtney Martin brings on journalist Rosamund Dean, author of Mindful Drinking: How Cutting Down Can Change Your Life and Well, Well, Well, a Su...
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February 3, 2024 • 34 mins
Travel can be thrilling, relaxing, even life-changing. But planning for your big trip? Not so much. There are so many unknowns: Where to go? When is the best time? How much do you want to spend? In this special episode of How To!, founding host Charles Duhigg brings in Brady Binstadt, owner and CEO of the adventure travel company Geographic Expeditions. Brady explains how to pick the right destination, when to splurge, and how to m...
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January 30, 2024 • 47 mins
We’re constantly getting bombarded with messages about our bodies: They’re too big. They’re too small. They’re not muscular enough, not curvy enough, and so on and so on. Rebecca has lived in a bigger body all her life and she wants the messaging to stop. She’s done all the things—followed plus-size influencers, deemphasized weight from her health goals, tried to rewire how she thinks about weight. But it’s just not working. In thi...
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January 23, 2024 • 30 mins
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. On this episode of How To!, we bring on James Nestor, author of Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, to share the history of why we breathe the way we do. Turns out being a “mouth-breather” is more than just an insult, it’s harmful to our health. James gives Andrew some nasal b...
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January 16, 2024 • 38 mins
Small talk has a bad reputation. It’s boring, shallow, and awkward. Who really wants to talk about the weather, again? But, when done right, it can be a cornerstone of connection. In this episode, Carvell Wallace is joined by Susan McPherson, the author of The Lost Art of Connecting. Susan is going to help our listener, Bee, navigate the uncomfortable small talk that she endures everyday at school pickup. Along the way, we’ll learn...
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January 9, 2024 • 40 mins
Sometimes reading our news feeds can feel like getting hit by a semi-truck of devastating information, without really knowing how to respond. We can’t always tune the world out, which means we need to figure out how to be an empathetic person within the chaos. In this episode, Courtney Martin is joined by public theologian and best-selling author, Nadia Bolz-Weber, as well as artist and activist, Jen Bloomer. Together they explore ...
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January 2, 2024 • 42 mins
When he’s not working on How To! or coaching his daughter’s basketball team, our producer Derek John loves to play in pickup games with friends. But a serious on-court injury has kept him on the sidelines for months. Now, as he prepares to return to the sport he loves, Derek is seeking tips on how to prolong his playing days while avoiding another injury. In this episode, author Jeff Bercovici joins Carvell Wallace and Derek to sha...
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December 26, 2023 • 34 mins
Jonny is a 26 year-old bachelor whose cooking often leads to heartache (and for one ex-girlfriend, a stomach ache). Jonny admits he’s a klutz in the kitchen, so we hooked him up with Sam Sifton, cookbook raconteur and head of the New York Times’s Cooking section. In this episode of How To! we see if we can teach our love-lorn Millennial to cook one perfect meal. Is romantic bliss just a well-browned chicken thigh away? (Recipe incl...
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December 19, 2023 • 38 mins
Here at How To! headquarters, we give and receive a lot of good advice. This year we learned to love our faces, started reading again, aced an interview, dealt with difficult parents, said goodbye to our pets, cooked chaotically, moved to a new country, navigated adult autism, and breathed like Navy SEALs. On this episode, co-hosts Carvell Wallace and Courtney Martin are joined by former host Amanda Ripley. They break down their fa...
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