Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Alan Alda and our production team sit down for an impromptu "Table Talk" about our upcoming season's highlights. We'll discuss and play clips from Alan’s conversations with Tom Hanks, Paul McCartney, Betty White and many more! Alan, Graham, Jean, and Sarah take you behind the scenes of season 7. You'll find out what it's like to live in an actual "Octopus's Garden" tended by a real Giant Pacific Octopus named Rudy — and you'll hear some things about Paul McCartney's creative life you haven’t heard before. Season 7 is going to be great and it all starts Tuesday, February 25th with Tom Hanks! If you'd like to get even more exclusive behind the scenes clips, video, content, and opportunities to communicate with Alan, consider joining our Patreon Listeners Community at: www.patreon.com/clearandvivid Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

From Saturday Night Live, to Late Night, from The Simpsons to Conan Needs a Friend - Conan O'Brien is an unstoppable force of comedy. In this happy back and forth among Alan Alda, Conan O'Brien, and Conan's hair — these two students of communication and comedy invite you into a conversation that's full of joshes, jives, jokes, a few shared jitters, and a whole lot of joy. The producers wish to thank Conan, #TeamCoco, and all the great folks who helped bring Alan and Conan together for this special season 6 finale. Enjoy!Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Do animals – other than we humans – have thoughts, feelings? Are their emotions similar to ours? Carl Safina is an ecologist who explores our relationship with the living world—and how it could be better. His recent work, and new book, probes how free-living animals experience life - and takes a serious look at their thoughts, emotions, and experiences. Carl's love of nature has led him to a lifetime of studying the world we live in — a world from which we’ve become increasingly separated. In this episode, Alan Alda and Carl Safina look at communication across the animal kingdom, as they reflect on the other animals in the world - with a firm understanding that a lot of what we are, we actually share with them.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee is the author of the best-selling book, “The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer." The book won a Pulitzer Prize and became the basis for a Ken Burns documentary series on the subject of cancer for PBS. In this fascinating conversation with Alan Alda, Dr. Mukherjee talks about the extraordinary power scientists like him have now to edit our genes using the tool known as CRISPR. Dr. Mukherjee uses CRISPR in his own laboratory at Columbia University to pioneer innovative ways to treat cancer. Dr. Mukherjee is a masterful storyteller and he possesses an obvious command of the science behind his books. He has a special ability to make science both personal and intimate, as you'll experience in this episode. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Is there life in the universe beyond planet Earth? It's the question everyone, including Alan Alda, wants to understand. In this episode, Alan asks Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger, the head of the world-renown Carl Sagan Institute, about life in the cosmos. What Dr. Kaltenegger has to say is surprising and inspiring. Before you stare up at the sky tonight, be sure to hear what Dr. Kaltenegger has to say about which of the billions of planets might be more like ours than we ever thought possible. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

What do microbes, the soil, and climate change all have in common? Dr. Jo Handelsman studies microbes at the University of Wisconsin. She researches the vast array of microbes that live on us or in us, and also the even greater number that lurk in the soil beneath our feet. In this fascinating episode, Alan Alda talks with Dr. Handelsman, who served as the previous science advisor to President Barack Obama and as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, about why both the microbes within and below us are so important to our survival. Alan and Dr. Handelsman begin this conversation talking about the weather, which these days often leads to talk that’s far from small. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Dr. Lucy Jones is a seismologist, who has a talent for translating the scary uncertainties of earthquakes into a language the rest of us can relate to. She is now putting her communication skills to work not only to help communities prepare for the inevitability of future earthquakes in her home state of California, but also for the inevitability of global climate change. In this episode, Alan Alda speaks with Dr. Jones about the best ways to help people prepare for natural disasters.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

In this special bonus episode of Clear+Vivid, BBC America’s Executive Director Courtney Thomasma and Executive Producer of Seven Worlds, One Planet’s Jonny Keeling speak with Alan Alda about the surge in popularity of nature programming and how audiences around the world have connected to the projects that the BBC Studios Natural History Unit has produced in partnership with BBC America. Courtney discusses a recent study demonstrating that watching nature programming delivers many of the same benefits as direct experience with nature, and that these benefits are particularly needed at a time when people are more connected to technology than the natural world. Jonny discusses the production across the seven continents and how they shape the extraordinary animal behavior and biodiversity we see today. The series reveals how these unique worlds gave rise to the extraordinary diversity of life on earth and how that precious diversity is being lost. Clear+Vivid returns after the holiday break with new episodes starting Tuesday, January 7th!Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Dr. Jamil Zaki is a Stanford scientist who has a way for you to sharpen you empathy skills. It’s a little like going to the gym to strengthen your muscles and improve your flexibility. In fact, he calls it the "empathy gym". It's not an actual place you can go to, but rather, it's things you can do to get a work-out for those empathy skills. That’s something we all seem to need - now more than ever. As Dr. Zaki explains to Alan Alda in this episode, we’re not stuck with the level of empathy we came in with. We can exercise it and raise it. We can use this virtual gym to improve our ability to read other people and to connect with them — which makes Dr. Zaki the perfect guest for Clear+Vivid. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

How does an actor adapt to becoming a director? In this episode, Alan Alda and Ben Stiller compare notes about the delicate art of communicating director to actor, actor to director, and actor to actors. Ben Stiller is an Emmy Award winning actor who has been in over 50 movies. And, recently, he produced and directed the critically acclaimed hit Showtime series, Escape at Dannemora. This 7-part series is based on the true, stranger-than-fiction account of a prison break in upstate New York in the summer of 2015. The series was also a break for Stiller from the comedy that audiences expected from him. If it worked, he’d be free to work in any genre. Happily, at last report, he’s still at large.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid