Hi, I have great listeners.

Before we dive into the show, just want to make a quick note that towards the end of our interview with Judith Matloff, we start to ask her things that are a little outside of her wheelhouse.

So please take her answers with a grain of salt during the lightning round segment of the show.

And she's making her best guess.

Don't take it as concrete advice.

Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker,

but we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Alice Bradley, editor-in-chief of LifeHacker.

And I'm Jordan Calhoun, LifeHacker's deputy editor.

And today we're talking worst-case scenarios.

That's right. We're learning the best things to do to ensure your survival in every type of situation, from earthquakes to bombings,

to simply choking at the dinner table. Everything is dangerous. Here to give us our best survival tactics is crisis reporter Judith Matloff. I think it's human nature to be optimistic and to be in

denial and think nothing's going to happen to me. And, you know, but the thing that's going to be optimistic and to be in denial and think, nothing's going to happen to me.

And, you know, but the thing is things do happen.

And when you have a plan, and again, if you've rehearsed it,

you will feel calmer when it actually happens.

Judith has over 40 years of experience covering crises around the world.

Her work has appeared in the New York

Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, among other publications, and she now teaches crisis

reporting at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. Judith is also the author of several books,

including Homegirl, Fragments of a Forgotten War, and No Friends But the Mountains. And her

...