Terry Greiss: Acting to Connect
The Irondale Ensemble Project, a theater company rooted in improvisation, created a program to help police and community build trust and mutual understanding through theater games.
Feb 27, 2024•40 min
Clear+Vivid with 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
Robert Sapolsky: You Have No Choice
You may think you were free to choose that chocolate ice cream over the vanilla. But maybe the choice was made for you before you were even born – that the free will you believe you are exercising in your everyday decisions is an illusion.
Feb 20, 2024•41 min
Tom Hanks: Making a Book About Making a Movie
And what a book it is, a rich sprawling novel called The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece, which Tom himself describes as a “primer on the long slog of bringing an idea from somebody’s head to a theater near you.”
Feb 13, 2024•39 min
Paul Bloom: Can AI be Moral?
Why can’t AI bots be made to be good, to be moral, so they’ll help us and not do harmful or terrible things? But just whose moral values would we want them to have? And what if they become too moral?
Feb 06, 2024•42 min
Eric Schmidt: AI: The Good, the Bad and the Scary.
He was for many years the CEO of Google where he had a bird’s eye view of the dramatic evolution of artificial intelligence. And while he is alarmed by the many dangers of AI, especially its ability to create fake people in this election year, he is also enthusiastic about the huge opportunities he sees for AI benefitting medicine, education and the tackling of global problems like climate change.
Jan 30, 2024•40 min
Fei-Fei Li: The Godmother of AI
She earned that unofficial title from her peers through her pioneering work harvesting big data to power AI, leading to the recent breakthroughs such as ChatGPT and its many successors. Her personal story is inspiring, from her childhood in China to risking her scientific career on a research gamble that might well have failed. And like a real godmother she now feels responsible for the revolution she helped launch.
Jan 23, 2024•43 min
Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 24 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 computer scientist Fei-Fei Li; former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt; and actor Tom Hanks.
Jan 16, 2024•32 min
Cynthia Breazeal: Her Robots Have Warmth!
Their social, communicative and emotional skills allow her robots to seamlessly collaborate with us. A pioneer in the field of social robotics, Cynthia Breazeal is now turning her focus to ensuring we understand the limits and risks of the artificial intelligence that powers those robots – that we become “AI literate.”
Jan 09, 2024•40 min
Abraham Amiri: From Afghanistan to the Stars
An unquenchable passion for astronomy born from gazing at the stars from a rooftop as a child led to his setting up a nationwide program in astronomy in Afghanistan. Escaping the wrath of the Taliban for the sin of teaching young women about the universe, he is now a graduate student at UCLA.
Jan 02, 2024•41 min
Steve Inskeep: Lessons from Lincoln
A new book takes a fresh look at Abraham Lincoln’s life by recounting sixteen face-to-face encounters Lincoln had with people who differed with him, sometimes vehemently. The book not only reveals his skills as a master politician in a deeply divisive time, but also has lessons for today.
Dec 26, 2023•38 min
Leslie Odom Jr: Bursting Out
A Tony winner for his performance as Aaron Burr in Hamilton, he is now starring on Broadway in the hit play Purlie Victorious. One of the secrets to his success: letting go.
Dec 19, 2023•38 min
Kate Cohen: Asks if You Need God to be Good
It took her years to admit to family and friends that she was a non-believer. But she found that p retending to believe wasn’t working. Her book is“We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe, And Maybe You Should Too."
Dec 12, 2023•41 min
Peter Hotez: The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science
In his new book, the doctor familiar on TV in his white coat and bow tie tells how his attempts to correct lies about covid vaccines led to death threats; while the lies themselves led to some 200,000 unnecessary deaths among those refusing vaccination.
Dec 05, 2023•41 min
Heather Cox Richardson: She’ll Write You a Letter
Two million of us get a letter in our inboxes every morning with a calm, clarifying take on what happened yesterday— from the perspective of a historian, yet written with the intimacy of a friend.
Nov 28, 2023•42 min
David Brooks: How to Know a Person
Columnist and author David Brooks tells how he’s changed over his 60 something years – in part through the books he’s written exploring how people see themselves and others. He shares the insights he’s gained into truly knowing the people around us.
Nov 21, 2023•43 min
Marcus du Sautoy: Around the World in 80 Games
Enjoy playing games? You’ll enjoy them even more once renowned mathematician, Oxford University professor and avid game player Marcus du Sautoy tells Alan why they so fascinate us. And Alan tells Marcus about his favorite game – one even Marcus didn’t know.
Nov 14, 2023•41 min
How "Maid" Was Made
Stephanie Land’s lifelong passion for writing – along with a college degree she could ill afford – led to a bestselling book and a hit TV series, allowing her to escape the poverty trap ensnaring so many single mothers.
Nov 07, 2023•40 min
Frank Felberbaum: Don’t Forget!
Not only does he have an astonishing memory himself, but Frank Felberbaum has taught thousands of others, including Alan, how to improve their memory skills – especially for putting names to faces.
Oct 31, 2023•40 min
Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 23 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 astronomer Abraham Amiri; memory expert Frank Felberbaum; and actor Leslie Odom Jr.
Oct 24, 2023•34 min
Walter Isaacson: Shadowing Elon Musk
The acclaimed biographer spent two years in Musk’s company as his subject launched rockets, built electric cars, decided to save humanity by sending us to Mars, became the richest man in the world and bought Twitter – all the while often behaving like an “absolute jerk.”
Oct 17, 2023•43 min
Laurel Braitman: Writing Wrongs
A life full of adventure while struggling with grief led her to what she does so effectively today – helping doctors to level with colleagues and patients through storytelling when things go wrong.
Oct 10, 2023•40 min
Carl Safina: Wisdom from a Baby Owl
Carl tells how rescuing a baby owl helped him and his wife get through the Covid lockdown – and how it renewed their bond with nature. There’s wisdom in it for the rest of us, too, whose relationship with the natural world is increasingly frayed.
Oct 03, 2023•41 min
Joe Henrich: How Culture Has Shaped Our Bodies and Brains
He’s fascinated by how culture has shaped our evolution – not only changing our bodies and expanding our brains but even expanding our ability to cooperate. And the more diverse a culture, the better its ability to innovate.
Sep 26, 2023•39 min
Kashmir Hill: Your Face Belongs to Us
That’s the title of a new book by New York Times technology reporter Kashmir Hill. Her book is both deeply researched and downright scary, as spelled out in the book’s subtitle: A Secretive Start-Up’s Quest to End Privacy As We Know it. A glimpse of your face in any photo you’ve ever uploaded can now lead to anyone discovering details of your life – both on-line and out there in the world.
Sep 19, 2023•40 min
Matthew Walker: Sleep REALLY Matters
Author of a best-selling book called Why We Sleep, and host of the Matt Walker Podcast, he’s become the go-to expert on everything to do with sleep, from how it keeps both mind and body healthy to why we dream.
Sep 12, 2023•40 min
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.
Sep 05, 2023•42 min
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.
Aug 29, 2023•42 min
Nancy Kanwisher: Your Brain is a Swiss Army Knife
Nancy Kanwisher has discovered many areas of the brain that are specialized for one particular purpose— like recognizing faces – which is interesting to Alan because of his inability to remember the faces of people he meets. Other specialized areas include identifying food, which Alan so far has no trouble with.
Aug 22, 2023•42 min
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 15, 2023•40 min
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 08, 2023•40 min