Not to be overly presumptuous, but if you're a person who's alive in the world at 2018, there's a good chance that sometimes, you need help calming down.

Gretchen Rubin practically invented the concept of hacking your happiness. With her blog and then best-selling book The Happiness Project, she’s been experimenting for years with how to find and maintain happiness in this crazy world.

You know those days: You wake up in a dark mood, sure that everything is terrible and doom is imminent. And then you have a conversation, or read a book, or hear a song, or have some experience that changes your mood entirely. Your perspective has shifted. That’s what we’ll be talking about in this episode with David Burns, MD.

This week we chat with Les Stroud, the creator and star of the hit TV series Survivorman. Alice and staff writer Nick Douglas talk with Les about just how one becomes an expert in surviving, as well as the one aspect of survival that he finds nearly impossible to endure.

We’re also joined by our old friend, divorce attorney James J. Sexton. James tells us the five steps to developing a thick skin — emotionally, that is. Plus, a new segment!

In this episode, KJ Dell’Antonia — journalist and author of How to Be a Happier Parent: Raising a Family, Having a Life, and Loving (Almost) Every Minute — joins our parenting editor Michelle Woo to discuss how to make your family life less stressful and even — dare we say it? — fun.

But first, Alice gives staff writer and soon-to-be new parent Nick Douglas an important (note: Not really important) parenting quiz. And finally, we have a playlist of non-kid songs that your kids will love as much as you do — because nothing is happier than a parent who doesn’t have to spend all day listening to the Wiggles.

Have you ever noticed that some people just seemed hard-wired to be stressed out? Maybe you feel as though you’ve been dealt an anxious hand yourself. According to psychology professor Daniel Keating, how we deal with stress and anxiety may have been determined while we were still in the womb.

This week, we’re digging into the things you’re terrified of — the concrete stuff like fear of spiders and heights, as well as the more conceptual, existential anxiety we all have about just being alive. First, we interview Dean Sluyter, author of the new book Fear Less: Living Beyond Fear, Anxiety, Anger, and Addiction. Then Ben Brock Johnson, host of the Reddit podcast “Endless Thread,” shares the scariest stories from Reddit. But first, Alice and Melissa confront two of their worst fears — and you get to listen in.

All of us are vulnerable to being hacked. 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 favourite guests from the past year.

He tells us what companies should do to keep us safe(r), what we should look out for after an attack, and how we can prevent hacks from causing too much damage.

Mornings. Many of us hate them; some of us love them; all of us want to make the best of them. But how exactly do we do that?

Whether you’re dealing with a bad boss or disgruntled employees (or a great boss and enthusiastic employees) you’ve got an opinion on the employer/employee dynamic.

In this episode, Coss Marte tells us how he went from drug kingpin to fitness entrepreneur using a regimen he developed in prison. Then we head outside to find out how people have reinvented themselves, and chat with television pundit Lawrence O’Donnell about how he reinvented himself as a socialist (and why some people are so scared of socialism).

How far would you go to hack yourself? Would you spend thousands of dollars across decades to maximise your health and performance? That’s what Dave Asprey did. He’s the Bulletproof Exec, and you might know him as the guy who suggests you put butter in your coffee. There’s a lot more to it than butter though.

The Upgrade has returned with a new format, new segments, and a ton of new hacks. Joining us in this episode are author Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Eileen and the new My Year of Rest and Relaxation, along with author and actress Keiko Agena (best known for her role as Lane Kim on Gilmore Girls), who’s most recently authored the book, No Mistakes: A Perfect Workbook for Imperfect Artists.

If anyone knows the difference between being busy and being productive it’s Charles Duhigg. The Pulitzer Prize-winning former reporter for The New York Times and author of The Power of Habit has made a name for himself plumbing the science of productivity, and this week he’s joining us on the podcast.

This week on The Upgrade we talk with Hector Monsegur, Director of Assessment Services at Rhino Labs.

Meditation (and specifically mindfulness meditation) has become increasingly popular, thanks to apps such as Headspace and studies touting the lasting effects of mindfulness on the mind and body. But are these apps really as effective as serious meditation training? And do these studies’ findings have any basis in reality?

How do you deal with a psychopath? What if you realise you married one? This week on The Upgrade we’re joined by Jen Waite, author of A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal, and Dr Michael Stone, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and author of The Anatomy of Evil, to talk about psychopaths, sociopaths and narcissists: How to recognise them, how to avoid them, and how to disentangle yourself from them.

This week, Alan Alda and The Moth’s Catherine Burns join us to talk about storytelling. What makes a good story? What makes a good storyteller? How can we use storytelling to communicate better, to sell people on our ideas, to make people like us?

Mel Robbins is a motivational speaker and the author of The 5 Second Rule. She’s also the host of the Audible Original, Kick Ass with Mel Robbins. In this episode, we talk about motivation, taming the negative voices in our heads, and how we can kick our own asses to get from good to great.