Hello and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcast from the team at LifeHacker, where we help you improve your life one week at a time.

I'm Melissa Kirsch, editor-in-chief of Lifehacker. And I'm Alice Bradley,

Lifehacker's deputy editor. And today we're talking about how to find love. It's officially

cuffing season, or so some call the fall and winter months, where cold weather and prolonged

time spent indoors cause people to want to couple up and hunker down.

But how do we even begin to find love in this messy world of online dating, ghosting, and benching?

To get some tips, we interviewed a real-life matchmaker, Dr. Frankie, about why people are turning to old-school intermediaries like herself to find love.

People are looking for people who have passion in their lives that have either a big career

or it doesn't even have to be a big career, but it's something that they're passionate about.

Then we have a recipe for a sexy three-ingredient cocktail from LifeHackers skillet editor Claire Lauer.

To me, there is nothing more seductive than a perfect martini.

Managing editor Virginia Smith goes over the principles of Tinder etiquette, or lack thereof,

with etiquette expert Daniel Post sending.

Be honest. It's a core tenet of all good etiquette, consideration, respect, and honesty.

And of course, we'll finish with our upgrades of the week.

Melissa, I've got a question

for you. Hit me. What the hell is benching? You haven't been on the dating scene in a while.

It's been a long time. I actually had not heard of it until we started doing this episode either.

It's a fairly new term. Not to be confused with ghosting. Sure. You know what benching is in sports? Sure. Tell me. When somebody's put on the bench.

Perfect.

That's right.

Well, it's same thing with dating.

...