It may be time to rethink our relationships with our devices.

How to Touch Grass

Nothing sucks you in quite like the internet. It seems to have a way of figuring out what you’re currently obsessed with and serving you more and more of it, whether that’s cat videos, cookie recipes, or information about your most pervasive and seemingly unshakeable anxiety. (At this point, anyone who’s never spent a late night Googling their worries should be studied by science for their willpower.) But with the rise of artificial intelligence, the internet may be fueling a different kind of engagement. 

Elias Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, and Ashleigh Golden, a psychologist at Stanford, recently wrote a paper arguing that the design of AI chatbots appears to encourage anxious behavior and keep people stuck in obsessive loops. One in six adults have turned to chatbots for mental-health information and advice, according to a KFF poll, and Golden cautions that “we may be encountering the perfect storm of avoidant coping behaviors and this tech that reinforces those tendencies and disorders.” 

In this episode of How to Touch Grass, hosts Julie Beck and Natalie Brennan hear from Golden and Aboujaoude about how people who use AI looking for reassurance may instead find their symptoms getting worse, and what that means for an anxious nation.


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How AI Could Make People More Anxious

Back in the ’90s, before everyone had smartphones, were things just … better? Tech-focused nostalgia has become a potent cultural force in recent years, driving sales of “dumbphones,” iPods, CDs, and other retro technology. According to a 2023 survey, 67 percent of Americans wish they could go back to a time “before everyone was ‘plugged in.’” The psychologist behind that survey, Clay Routledge, has found that this sort of nostalgia is more than just a yearning to go backwards. “We can often feel overwhelmed in the moment and in the challenges we face today. It's hard to see past them. Nostalgia can help us step outside of that moment,” Routledge explains. Nostalgia can actually teach us how we want to live now, and in the future.


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The Power of Pre-Internet Nostalgia

A common piece of advice for those who are chronically online is to “go touch grass.” This upcoming season of How To, co-hosts Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck will look more closely at the often-fraught, always-changing relationship people have with technology. They’ll explore how people can be more intentional with their devices, rebuild their attention span, and find a way to thrive in this fast-paced, image-driven culture. 

Episodes will feature personal experimentation and conversations with experts in anxiety, education, and new technology. 

The first episode of How to Touch Grass publishes Monday, July 27, and new episodes are released every Monday for five weeks. Subscribe now.




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Introducing How To Touch Grass

How should we think about aging when the impacts of climate change can make the future feel so uncertain? That’s a question Sarah Ray, professor and chair of environmental studies at Cal Poly Humboldt, has been helping her students consider. Though climate anxiety can cause some to feel overwhelmed, Ray has tips for how to minimize doom loops and inaction. How to Age Up co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan talk about how current climate concerns compare to the existential crises of previous generations, and how to practice hope during uncertain times. 

Here is a link to the full poem “The Low Road” by Marge Piercy. A passage is referenced in this episode. 




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How to Age Up on a Warming Planet

In 2021 Dr. Kiran Rabheru, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Ottawa and a geriatric psychiatrist, found himself at the center of a medical debate. The World Health Organization wanted to officially designate “old age” as a disease, but with more than 40 years of work with aging populations, Rabheru saw this as another example of ageism that needed to be challenged. Dr. Rabheru talks with Yasmin Tayag about how he fought the WHO and about the impact such designations can have on research and our understanding of growing old.


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How to Define Old Age

In the next 10 years, our society will become more old than young. How do we leverage this time to build stronger intergenerational connections? Eunice Nichols, the co-CEO of CoGenerate, has spent more than two decades bringing older and younger people together to address issues that affect us cross-generationally. She explains how a history of structural policies, some of them great innovations, have contributed to this age-segregated era and about what a future could look like if people from different generations choose to partner together more often.


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How to Age Up Together

Food trends are constantly changing, so can people commit to a long-term nutrition practice? Kera Nyemb-Diop says yes. She is a nutrition scientist focused on breaking down the “rules” of what people think they should eat and focusing instead on being responsive to how our needs change over the course of a life. Co-hosts Yasmin Tayag and Natalie Brennan reconsider their own food habits and which practices are worth hanging on to for the long haul. 


How do you think about aging? Please leave us a voicemail (at 202-266-7701) with your name, your age, and your answers to the following questions:

What aspects of aging are you nervous about?

What are you looking forward to as you age?

Who do you hope to be like when you are older? Is there someone in your life who has made you excited about getting older?

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How to Fuel Up 

We don’t often talk about the benefits of aging. Dr.Karen Adams has a different perspective. From new beginnings to menopausal zest, the director of the Stanford Program in Menopause & Healthy Aging discusses what women can look forward to as they age up. 

How do you think about aging? Please leave us a voicemail (at 202-266-7701) with your name, your age, and your answers to the following questions:

What aspects of aging are you nervous about?

What are you looking forward to as you age?

Who do you hope to be like when you are older? Is there someone in your life who has made you excited about getting older?

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How to Wish You Were 66 Instead of 35

Humans have always tried to prolong life and battle mortality, but what do the current influx of biohackers reveal about this era of individual responsibility? 

Timothy Caulfield, a professor and the research director at the Health Law Institute at the University of Alberta, studies how health and science are represented in the public sphere. The lines between wellness culture, longevity, and biohacking are beginning to blur, and Caulfield offers advice about how to dodge misinformation and unproven theories while still pursuing a long and meaningful life. 

Listeners, how do you think about aging? Please leave us a voicemail (202-266-7701) with your name, your age, and answers to the following questions:

What aspects of aging are you nervous about?

What are you looking forward to as you age?

Who do you hope to be like when you are older? Is there someone in your life who has made you excited to get older?

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How to Defy Death

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 howtopodcast@theatlantic.com with your name, your age, and answers to the following questions:

What aspects of aging are you nervous about?

What are you looking forward to as you age?

Who do you hope to be like when you are older? Is there someone in your life who has made you excited to get older?

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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