Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Alan Alda

Learn to connect better with others in every area of your life. Immerse yourself in spirited conversations with people who know how hard it is, and yet how good it feels, to really connect with other people – whether it’s one person, an audience or a whole country. You'll know many of the people in these conversations – they are luminaries in our culture. Some you may not know. But what links them all is their powerful ability to relate and communicate. It's something we need now more than ever. read less

Our Editor's Take

Beloved TV, film, and Broadway actor Alan Alda is serious about science. His main contribution to the subject these days is the Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda podcast. The long-running show illustrates both science and how to explain the topic. Alda hosts many science-related conversationalists. In fact, he spoke with Dr. Anthony Fauci about the novel coronavirus before the public knew it as COVID-19.

Alda is best known for M*A*S*H, but the classic TV show is only one of his many achievements, and his work transcends the arts. A science advocate, he hosted PBS's Scientific American Frontiers for 15 years. He then cofounded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. He currently remains on the center's advisory board. Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda helps expand his conversations on science.

The actor is also an author. And this podcast has the same theme as one of Alda's best-selling books. That title was If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face? The Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda podcast explains scientific topics. But it does it in an understandable way. It's about communication as well as science. So the show also brings on many guests who are not scientists. And they're all fascinating, be they actors, authors, journalists, or Supreme Court justices. Alda's beloved stature in his community makes it easy for him to secure exciting guests for the podcast.

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda debuted in 2018. New episodes of the podcast come out each week. Listeners interested in science, communication, or fascinating conversations may enjoy this show.

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Play Trailer

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 16 trailer

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 16 trailer

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan's conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include actor Michael Keaton, poet Billy Collins, and astronaut (and space oddity) Chris Hadfield.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Episodes

Joshua Greene: Games That Build Bridges

Joshua Greene: Games That Build Bridges

His research figuring out how our brains make moral judgments has led to two on-line games: One aimed at overcoming political animosity (and that’s fun to play!); the other to satisfy both your head and your heart when you donate to charity.

Dan Heath: In Someone Else’s (Working) Shoes

Dan Heath: In Someone Else’s (Working) Shoes

Most of us have no idea how others – even our friends and neighbors – spend their days at work. What’s it really like to be a plumber, a marriage counselor, an ice cream truck owner, an author of mystery novels? In his podcast Dan Heath talks to workers in dozens of different jobs to find out What It’s Like to Be.

Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods: How to Raise a Great Dog

Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods: How to Raise a Great Dog

The puppy kindergarten at Duke University is discovering how to spot a future great service dog while the dog is still a puppy. And it turns out that what makes a great service dog can also make your dog great.

Backstage at The West Wing

Backstage at The West Wing

How the acclaimed TV series came to be and what it has come to mean since, as recalled in a new book by cast members Melissa Fitzgerald and Mary McCormack. Including stories you’ve probably never heard before.

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 27 trailer

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 27 trailer

Alan and executive producer Graham Chedd look ahead to season 27. In a nostalgic look back at the TV series The West Wing, Alan recalls the scariest moments of his career; we visit a puppy kindergarten to spot future service dogs; a doctor tells stories that vividly illustrate the shortcomings of the health care system; and we meet a woman who can read our history as Earthlings. All that and more…

Lynnae Quick: Could an Icy Moon Harbor Life?

Lynnae Quick: Could an Icy Moon Harbor Life?

Her doctoral thesis led to her becoming a member of the team behind yesterday’s successful launch of NASA’s Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. Her contribution could help find out if beneath its thick ice crust, Europa is friendly to life.

Terry Szuplat: Speak Your Mind

Terry Szuplat: Speak Your Mind

For eight years he wrote speeches for President Obama. Today he applies much of what he learned then in helping others with public speaking – how to craft a speech, how to connect with the audience, how to overcome the sheer terror of standing in front of dozens or hundreds of people.

Steve Martin: Portrait of the Artist

Steve Martin: Portrait of the Artist

He’s had a legendary life as a stand-up comedian, actor, writer, banjo player, even magician. As Steve talks about these threads in his life, a picture emerges of the thoughtful side of this remarkable entertainer.

Ayana Johnson: We Can Do This!

Ayana Johnson: We Can Do This!

A clarion call to those of us acutely aware of the peril facing our planet yet feel powerless to help save it. Ayana Johnson urges us to stop fretting about what “I” can do and instead think about what “we” can do, by joining our own skills and passions with those of others – and have fun doing it. Then, she asks in her provocative new book, What If We Get It Right?

Frank Barry: Taking the Lincoln Highway to America

Frank Barry: Taking the Lincoln Highway to America

Escaping the Covid lockdown in 2020 he and his wife Laurel set out in an RV to travel across America along the Lincoln Highway – a road more aspirational than real. But with Abraham Lincoln’s spirit as their guide they talked with the people they met along the way to explore the urgent question of what can hold our fractured country together.

Randy Fertel: Improv Everywhere

Randy Fertel: Improv Everywhere

Is improvisation at the heart of Western culture — music, art, literature, politics, even artificial intelligence? Author Randy Fertel thinks so. And he warns that as much as it’s a positive force, there’s also peril in it.

Roger Rosenblatt: Wounds and Other Blessings

Roger Rosenblatt: Wounds and Other Blessings

Alan talks with Roger Rosenblatt about his new book “A Steinway on the beach.” It explores that great mystery of how being wounded—emotionally or physically—is both an inescapable part of life and a chance to illuminate it. It’s seeing the wound as the place where the light enters you.

Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Hunter

Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Hunter

She’s a pioneer in figuring out how we might tell if any of the trillions of planets out there in the galaxy might harbor life – and if so, what kind of life.

Mark Rank: As Luck Would Have It

Mark Rank: As Luck Would Have It

Chance events not only change lives, they can change history – as when a soviet sailor’s briefly stuck foot prevented a potential nuclear catastrophe. You can’t predict when luck, good or bad, will intervene. But you can learn to take advantage of it.

Anne Curzan: Say What? Says Who?

Anne Curzan: Say What? Says Who?

Over time, the meaning of words often changes. The history of these changes suggests they're inevitable and that some of us (like our host) could be a little more relaxed about it and a little less peevish.

Mo Rocca: Late Comebacks

Mo Rocca: Late Comebacks

Older people, says Mo Rocca, have better stories. And he tells many of them – stories of people as different as Colonel Sanders and Henri Matisse – in his new book Roctogenarians – older people who even in their 90s have achieved great things.

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 26 trailer

Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 26 trailer

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan's conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include author Roger Rosenblatt, word maven Anne Curzan, and TV and radio personality Mo Rocca.

David Toomey: Want to play?

David Toomey: Want to play?

Most creatures play– even octopuses, pigs, crows and bees. But play is much more than fun and games. Play teaches life skills and empathy – even morality. And it may help shape evolution. Want to play?

Sanjana Curtis: Sprinkling Stardust on TikTok

Sanjana Curtis: Sprinkling Stardust on TikTok

An astrophysicist brings the universe down to earth. In brief captivating videos she tells the stories of how everything our world is made of – including ourselves – was created in cataclysmic explosions and collisions far out in space.

Chris French: Would you believe it?

Chris French: Would you believe it?

When we experience things that seem beyond explanation, are they evidence of the supernatural? Or instead, a quirk of our brains? A skeptical but open-minded psychologist has some entertaining answers.