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.
Episodes
Mentioned books
5 snips
Sep 5, 2023 • 42min
Maya Shankar: Beginning from an Ending
A brilliant violinist in her teens, her world came crashing down when an injury ended her career even as it was beginning. Remarkably, she turned that loss into a PhD in neuroscience, a stint in the White House and a popular podcast about others also navigating drastic changes in their lives.
Aug 29, 2023 • 42min
Adam Mastroianni: Why You So Often Get It Wrong
Do you believe people are worse now than they use to be? That smarter people are happier people? That you know when to quit a conversation? Wrong on all counts, according to Adam Mastroianni, a social psychologist. He’s also a professional improv performer and uses those skills teaching business school students.
6 snips
Aug 22, 2023 • 42min
Nancy Kanwisher: Your Brain is a Swiss Army Knife
Neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher talks about specialized brain regions for recognizing faces and identifying food. The podcast explores super recognizers, brain structures, and the correlation between face recognition ability and IQ. It also discusses brain responses to music, theory of mind, and initiating authentic conversations.
Aug 15, 2023 • 40min
Elizabeth Rush: Journey to the Doomsday Glacier
She managed to write a lyrical, moving book about her journey to a massive glacier in Antarctica that, if it collapses into the ocean, would cause a catastrophic rise in sea level. Unexpectedly, it’s also a book about her difficulty in choosing motherhood in a time of radical climate change.
Aug 8, 2023 • 40min
Robert Klein: He Observes, We Laugh
The actor/writer/comedian has been an inspiration to comedians like Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld. And he’s been inspired himself by greats of the past in the exacting art of finding what’s funny in our daily lives – when observed from just the right angle.
Aug 1, 2023 • 19min
Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 22 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 comedian Robert Klein; writer Elizabeth Rush; and neuroscientist Nancy Kanwisher.
Jul 25, 2023 • 38min
Dan Dennett: Fake People Aren’t Funny
Counterfeit people, the seductively appealing Deep Fakes made possible by AI, are just the beginning of what the distinguished philosopher Dan Dennett says is a threat to humanity. This spring, he joined hundreds of other thought leaders in signing a starkly scary statement: AI threatens to make us extinct.
5 snips
Jul 18, 2023 • 39min
Steve Sloman and Phil Fernbach: How Do You Know That?
Most of us don’t know most things. Yet most of us also think we understand a lot (OK, not quantum mechanics or Federal Reserve policy). We are all living with what Sloman and Fernbach argue is an Illusionof how much we know: a knowledge illusion. And this is fueling the fracturing of society.
Jul 11, 2023 • 41min
Aomawa Shields: When an Actor is Starstruck
Torn between astronomy and acting, she has landed in the sweet spot: leader of a research team judging other planets for their hospitality for life, while using the skills she learned as an actor to connect with and encourage a new generation of girls to become – as she was – entranced by the stars.
Jul 4, 2023 • 38min
Alan Lightman: Can Science Explain Spirituality?
A physicist whose world has no room for spirits, but who has experienced many eerily transcendent moments – both in nature and in his work – sets out to understand the unexplainable.
