Alan Alda and Tina Fey Take Over the Pod

In the category of better late than never, it's Katie Currak. How are you, Katie? I'm great. How are you doing? So nice to hear your voice. And I'm here with my colleague Brian Goldsmith, who's also my podcast co host, who is a gigantic fan of yours. Brian, Meet Allan. I don't know whether to call you Allan or Senator Arnie Vinnick. But that goes back to my West Wing days. Yeah, I think Allen is probably good. Now, I'm not I'm not I'm not rich stuff like a senator. What are

you wearing? You know? That's I reserve that for text communications or sex communications as and certainly devolving but Alan, our podcast is going to be taking a summer break, but we still want to give our audience something wonderful to listen to. And we've heard so much about your podcast, and we thought, why not steal an episode of Alan show? What do you think? I think that's so great of you. I love it. I love I'd love the chance to

introduce our podcast to your audience. Are you enjoying this whole new medium. I can't tell you. I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would, And I mean I thought i'd enjoy it, but this is just wonderful. We have. I enjoy the conversations I have. We have wonderful conversationalists on and we talk about this subject that I'm obsessed with, which is relating to other people when communicating the hard things to them. And you've been obsessed with that for

quite a while. I know that sort of the art of conversation and communication is something you've been focused on for for a few years now, right, really at least twenty five years, because I've started working on that when I was interviewing scientists on the Science Program on PBS, which I did for eleven or twelve years, and then I started. I helped start a Center for Communicating Science

at Stony Brook University. So we've been training scientists to communicate better and medical professionals all over the world, thousands of them. And now it's just pure fun talking to people like Sarah Silverman, and it's a permanent judge Judy and people that you don't even know so well, like

I don't know if you heard this. Kate Bowler is a writer who has UH fatal illness and she wrote a really funny book and we have a really wonderful conversation about the terrible ways people have tried to cheer her up. I bet that's sort of funny and sad at the same time. But yeah, it's very emotional. Clearly, you're trying to be instructive through your art of conversation. You're trying to broach how to have a conversation, which is a really interesting concept. You know. It's that's right

because it's not didactic, it's not a lecture. It's it's pure conversation and it and it takes place on both sides of the microphone. I mean, I'm I'm conversing with them, I'm not interviewing them. Not asking them a list of questions, and things come up that neither one of us expected. So it's it's it's alive, and that's why I'm having such a wonderful time. And they get surprises, you know.

I talked to Renee Fleming, who's doing this wonderful thing about exploring with with scientists to healing power of music, and this you'll love. I didn't expect this to come out of her. Sometimes when she's recognized, when she's out in public, people come up to her and say, I love you, Katie Kirk. I know, isn't that funny. I was actually near Lincoln Center and someone came up to me and said, Renee Fleming, I love you so much.

And I said, gosh, I can't sing a note, but thank you, or you should just say thank you anyway. And then the person thought, my god, Renee Fleming can't sing. Alan Um, that's been I'm afraid of. People come up to me and tell me that they love my work, and then they call me Alan Arkin and sometimes they even get his mail. Wow, Alan, I saw a New York Post headline that called you the world's oldest millennial.

I thought that was my job first of all. Second, I just I've since computers came out, I've I've always loved them. And and I tried to teach myself to the program a computer that was so early that my watch now has more computing power than that first computer. But I love to fool around with it. As a matter of fact, you know what I do. I fixed my friends computers, so I have I have an imaginary company called Celebrity Tech Support, And and the slogan is

why letting nobody touch your stuff? I like it. I like it, but real quickly I know that that one of the reasons I think they called you that is also because you're into this sort of new medium of podcasts compared to the other work you've done, which has been extraordinary. Alan, what what is it about podcasting that you're really enjoying? Is it being able to kind of have a conversation that doesn't have a time limit. That's a wonderful part of it. Uh is some thing about

it that's homegrown, even when it's done professionally. And that's interesting because I used to notice when I'd be when I'd be interviewed on a very big television show like like The Tonight show, there was a lot of attention to what was going to be said. It wasn't very spontaneous. He's going to ask you this, you answer that like that? Yeah, I scripted. You know, they do a preus of view. They find out what you have to say that might be entertaining, and then they make sure you say it.

Whereas when I was on When I was on shows that were less popular and therefore less stressful to the produced producers, it was much more improvisational and much more fun, and more unexpected things came out. And I think podcasts are a little like that. Well, I know you had a conversation on your podcast with Tina Fey, a fellow uv A grad like me, um, and I think she's so fantastic. So we thought we would run your conversation with Tina Feye in place of one of our podcasts

while we take a break. What do you think, Oh, that's wonderful. You know. The reason that the conversation with Tina is so appropriate to my series is that I learned so much about relating to other people from studying and doing improvisation, and that's how Tina's started too. So we both talk about improv but we even do some in in the way that nobody's ever heard it before. It I won't give it away, but this kind of funny. But what how What about you with the podcast? What?

What's What's? What? What? Why do you think it's such a good medium? What? What do you enjoy about it? I think people are hungry for more depth and this very sort of superficial society and media landscape that we've created, where the news is so you know, seven and in little snippets. I think the chance to really kind of settle in listen and you know, feel close to a conversation and learn something is extraordinarily appealing for a lot

of people, including my twenty two year old daughter. So I think there's a hunger for I think there's a hunger when we're out there, Alan, Yeah, I hear I hear that same same response from from a wide range of ages and experience. Well, people who are in their twenties listen to us, and people in their eighties, and and they're all interested in and just what you're talking about,

that conversational approach where things build on one another. Plus, I think people must love hearing your voice because it's so recognizable and I think, you know, I think it probably you're the science person, but fires up neurons of familiarity that actually produce endorphins. I'm just kind of making this up, but it's doing it for me right now. It's doing that for me right now. You have a new field as a neuroscientist. I love. Yeah, I know. Well listen, I've got to run, You've got to run.

But we were so grateful for you allowing us to basically bogart one of your episodes and claim it as our own. And if you ever take a break and you want to throw one of our episodes in just to mix things up a little bit, feel free. You're well, I would love to, it would be great. I'd love to have you on our series in any way possible. Well, I'd love to come and talk to you personally, because as you know, I'm a huge fan and a huge

longtime admirer of yours. And anyway, all the best, Alan, Hope, I'll see you around town and h thank you so much, thank you, Thanks, thank you to Brian the Senator, thank you very much for coming on. Really appreciate it. Oh my god, it's always about politics with this one. I'm wearing my bathing suit. I'm not wearing a senator. That's good to know. We'll go back into the pool. Okay, talk to you later. Bye bye. Bryant. Isn't Alan all the nicest person on the planet. He seems like it.

I mean, maybe he's an AX murderer in his private life, but he seems really, really nice. I think he's nice all the time. Anyway, Listeners will be back next week with one more Summer Break podcast from the Vaults, but for now, without further ado, here's Allen's conversation with the one and only Tina Faye. Enjoy everyone, I'm Alan Alda and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. This conversation is with actor, writer, and producer and amazingly

talented person Tina Fay. You know teen of course, and we're work on Saturday Night Live or best selling book or movies and also for creating, starring and thirty Rock. My conversation with Tina took place in front of a live audience at the two thousand seventeen World Science Festival.

Good eating, Hi everybody, Hi Allen, how are you? It's nice to be here on such a Great Day for science A. Tina was supposed to be interviewing me about my new book, but like many interviews, many many good interviews, it turned out to be just a conversation between the two of us. I think one of the key attributes of good communication is people paying attention to each other. But I mean really paying attention, really listening, not just

having dueling monologues. I'm kind of fascinated by the idea that a fundamental tool used by actors, a kind of deep listening, can be used by anyone. The way I learned to was by studying improvisation, and although anyone can apply these principles, it's always fun to run into someone who learned it the way I did. It turns out that Tinea Fa and I both began our careers in the field of improvisation, and in fact with the same company,

the Second City. Tina worked in the Chicago company of Second City and I worked in the New York company, and we were both trained in improvisation by the great Violas Boland. But Viola's improv training was not to teach us how to be funny. Instead, it was all about relating and connecting, which, of course is the subject of

these podcasts. At one point in our conversation, I told Tina what a profound effect Violas Boland's improv training had had on me, and not just as an actor, but in my whole life, and I wondered if she'd felt the same way I did. I felt that it was completely transformatively. The one of the core ideas in improvisation is is to agree to say yes, and right to agree is the yes, and then the and is to

contribute something of your own. And it's something that once you get in the habit of doing it as an improviser, I don't know if you find the same thing that it's just the way you think about things. And if you meet someone in in a work situation or someone who who's starting from a place of no, like, well, I don't think we're going to be able to do that right, You're just like, oh, why would you? Why would you start there? So I feel like it really sticks.

Did you feel the same, Oh? Very much so. Except once in a while I think about this and I'm I yes, and comes to mind often when I'm talking to somebody. But if I'm talking to somebody who's saying to me, you know, I was wearing my tinfoil hat and it really helps. I want to be able to say yes, and then I want to say and you're completely crazy yes, and he's like yes and goodbye? Yes, and oh come is my bus? Yeah, it's my bus and we're not even on the street corn, So what

how do you handle that? Well? How do you? How do you? What do you say yes too? I'm trying to think of examples that, you know, for people are working, Mostly it's sort of a production question where they'll say like, oh, we couldn't possibly you know, we like your idea, but we couldn't possibly get that done in time, and this is not and it was to pause and say, well, what if we let's just take a minute, and what if we did that? You know, you just open your

mind up to being able to get things done. I guess I guess it's possible to agree with some underlying premise to like, yes, that's right, we gotta worry about time. That's that's so important. Yes, how about if we do

this that we should save some time? Right right? Trying to to to be to and to add because in so many of us, and I hear myself saying I go, I get the yes part, and then I say, but yes, And that's a good substitute for no. Tina asked me about the work we do with the Older Center for Communicating Science, because improv is a key part of how we trained scientists to talk to the rest of us clearly and vividly. By now, the team at the Older

Center has trained over twelve thousand scientists. Have any of the scientists left their careers to pursue improv full time? You know our in our first in our first group, yes, we had somebody, but he doesn't do it full time. And I know a scientist in Israel who is a great uh computer biologist what do you call it? Computational biologists who improvises? What is a computational biologist? You stick your hand in the computer, it tells you what's wrong,

something like that. I don't know. I didn't want to show off, but I did sort of know that a computational biologist uses computer algorithms to find patterns in biological systems. But I wanted to get back to how my friend the Israeli science is uses improv to help his team communicate. So he improvises with an improvising troop every week, and he uses improvising techniques to keep his team in the in the lab, doing good teamwork and and helping them

motivate themselves. It's he uses improv the same way we teach scientists to do it in our in our courses. Yeah, you know, I I believe improv can really work miracles. It can connect people who cannot connect in any other way. It uh, it keeps you tethered, It keeps you present, and at a time when it's very increasingly difficult for us all to be present with each other. Um So, I think, my god, you're so smart to to figure out that it came out of me. You know. It's

it's the process of improv is nation. What comes to the surface is going to be good no matter what it is. And if it turns out to really land on people and you realize you're doing something, value will when you do more of it. Yeah, that's all it is. It's just following my nose. I had had to have a daughter who when she was eight, she used to say, I would say, I'm cold. My nose is so called just sure your nose is cold. The circulation can't get out that far. Don't you love it when kids are smart?

And why you like that? Yeah, it's not so long you you you have an eleven year old, have an eleven year old and a five year old to daughter,

and the eleven year old is doing something. Yes, I tried to actually was applying a technique from Olen's book last night on my eleven year old because she has a very very large and serious presentation tomorrow about Finland and I you would think she was trying to pass the bar tomorrow, and so she has given eight minute presentation in and so she she didn't want to do

it for us again. So anyway, so we we used the technique in the book and asked her to give us the presentation in gibberish, but for us to try to still understand it. You know what gibberish is, right, It sounds like a real language, but it's total nonsense. I guess most people know what gibberish is, but I wanted to make sure the audience understood how we use it in improv Gibberish helps you use your whole body. It gets it gets you out of the thing where

you you communicate. You feel so many of us think that communication is getting the message right and saying the exact right words and somehow that communicates what we want to communter. In fact, it's everything. It's the tone of voice, it's the look on our face, it's the body language we use. All of that is really contributing an enormous amount to what we're communicating and it can help the

people get it better. So what you want to do a little like, well, we could do a little scene and and do it in gibberish and make it a game, because usually these are all in the form of games, and you all could try to figure out what the situation is, Well, who are these two people and what what's happening between them? You may never get It depends

on how lucky we are. This is what we said that we're going to do, right, Yeah, this is we have, like our relationship and a situation which we have not rehearsed. Because what did you get, George, Nick, you and your border into the audience is having a little trouble figuring out what our relationship is because we're basically just standing there talking at each other. Our tone of voice isn't yet communicating what's under the gibberish, and neither is our

body language. I just need. I seem to be imploring her to do something, but it's not clear what the list listen to delosophy. Finally, Tina follows a basic rule in improv. When you're stuck, go to the place. Use the place what violas Boland calls the where. So Tina crosses the stage and does something with what seems to be some sort of equipment, but I can't tell what it is because her back is to me. I'm watching

her carefully, and I see her arms moving. I'm trying to get as much information by observing as I can. She comes back and she holds out her arms as if to dance with me. I think she's been turning on a record player over there, and now we're dancing. Yeah, Blue Corret, you were for now. We were pretty Russian. Our our show brush is pretty never know what you never know? Where was any idea what was going on there? Did anyone have any idea who those two people were

to each other, what their relationship might have been? An old man whipped dementia. I think that was no, not at all, man, But just keep guessing, neighbors. I want to go to date teacher. Yes, it was the teacher right, Yes, yes, wants to go on a date with the students. Was asking the teacher to go to prom good see. Yeah, But what's what's fun about this? Regardless of how many people we conveyed to, what's fun is it was a

very hard thing to do. So we had to find ways to physicalize it, to communicate it not only to you watching, but to each other so we could move through this encounter that we didn't know where it came from or where it would go. That was a pretty hard one. I never did one that hard. That was a It was a very specific relationship. Sometimes when we're trying to communicate something difficult, we seem to be speaking gibberish without even knowing it. That's when we're using some

incomprehensible jargon. We started to talk about that and then drifted away, but Tina brought us back. Let's talk some more about jargon. Yeah, and how do you believe it to be a curse? In some ways, every day you run across some kind of jargon, and it makes sense because if it takes five pages to say something you can say in one word, then it makes sense to use that word as long as you're talking to somebody

who knows what the word means. Yeah, well, thank goodness, there's a small group of people who know what that means. There is scuse. I was like, wow, you go into the mat on that one. Do you? How do you do when you hear scientific jargon? Do terribly? I am? I wouldn't. I am do not think of myself as a science person. I try not to even say that out loud around my daughters because they like science and I want them to continue. I take a science took

a science class with both of my daughters. It's like across the street at the Natural History and I'm I'm always wrong, I'm always answering in my head, and I'm like Arthur pot Now I'm terrible with her, like I'm the Converson. I can't memorize the names of flowers. Oh, I'm bad at that too. Wife Arlene is so good at that. So I make up names. Wow, look at that great hydrofloxy. She knows I don't know anything, and

she just laughs at me. When we come back after the break, Tina and I have a little surprise for the audience. It's a special guest. I invite up from the front growth Brian Green, the well known physicist and best settling author. We're going to put him to a test. We're going to see if he can explain some pretty tough physics to Tina without ever lapsing into jargon and the catches. Tina is going to have to actually know

what he's talking about. This was fun. Stay tuned, you're listening to clear and Vivid and now back to my conversation with Tina Faye. I bet if we worked on it, If we worked on this, we could get somebody to help you understand something really complicated. You could try. I would be a really of a tough customer on it, because I'm well be as tough as you tell me. I'm gonna just pick somebody who looks like a scientist and you look at you. Are you as scientist? Would

you help us? Yeah? Now we've never met before. This is the great Brian Green. As you won't hello Brian to have a sheet? Let me hello? So do you want to you want to get a topic maybe from the audience brain that anybody. What are we gonna do with the topic? You're going to explain something complicated to Tina, and Tina has a buzzer here, and anything she doesn't understand,

she'll just she'll buzz you if she's not following. Remember we said the whole point is to help the other person follow you, So if she's not following you, she'll let you know. You won't even have to read it on her face. Should I test this? Okay, fantastic. Yeah, we can throw out some some topics. Yeah, a strength here. I heard stringth here. Let's do that. I never never

explained that before, Like good one string theory. String theory, yes, all right, so string theory, it's um our attempt to unify the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in a way I don't know anything. So so let's start with general relativity. That's a theory of the force of gravity. We got on gravity. Quantum mechanics is a theory of matters very small scales, how the particles interact behave evolve by the Shordinger equation. We don't need the shorten your equation.

So so our goal is to be able to have a single theory that can put together the laws of gravity and the laws of quantum physics. So we have one unified mathematical description of everything in the physical universe. Oh, that's pretty good. You got it. You got it, You think you got it? You want it back? Yeah, tell us string theory is your attempting to unify that's your word, uh, the theory of relativity and quantum physics that we said so that you can use you can have one sort

of language to describe all of it. Wha, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. All right. Do you want to do another one to a harder one, harder than harder than that? You want something harder than that, computational bioglogy. Yeah, I'll let you do that one, Alan, Yeah, I already covered These are like really easy ones. Should try. All right,

let's do it. So. Um, the universe is usually thought to be all that there is, but there's a possibility that what we long thought was all there is might actually be a small part of much grander landscape of reality, populated by other realms that would be rightly called universe is of their own and the grand collection we would call the multiverse like that one, alright on, we need a harder one, dark energy. You want to do dark energy?

Dark energy? All right? So for a long time we thought we knew what the universe was made of, things like particles, electrons, corks, neutrinos, you heard of these things. So these are little tiny particles of matter that we believe may not be made up of anything more fine. They may be the fundamental ingredients oude of which everything is made. It's little tiny things, and we thought that

that was what the universe was made of. But we've now learned that there is this energy suffusing space, which when you put into Einstein's we believe that there is this substance that is everywhere in the universe, every nook and cranny of the universe. And when this energy is in Einstein's general theory of relativity, when this energy is put into our equations of how gravity works, we find that this energy gives rise to a repulsive version of

gravity that makes up the bulk of the universe. That's giving rise to a negative pressure that yields a negative gravity that pushes everything apart, making the expansion of space. Found why Edwin hobble in making the expansion of space speed up, driving everything in the universe apart of an ever quickening pace. No, I can't do that. Okay, so you started like Chinese food, you got it for a moment. Then let me let me say that, and I think

you'll agree with this. That who haven't taught China everything there is to know about it, we're done. We're done for her to be able to do work in this, to understand it at a deeper level, she would have to learn the mathematics. She'd have to really work hard at it. But you may have told her enough for Tina to be interested to know more. And when we make things clear to the public, that's what I hope

for first, that they want to know more. I don't know you might have right, I mean, you know, you know, jargon gets a very bad rap. It's vital for us scientists to have a shorthand, and that's why we use it. We don't do it to have funny sounding words. We can communicate everything that we just spoke about here in one tenth of the time with ten times the accuracy if we make use of the actual jargon and ideas.

But of course, when you're talking to the general public who's not going to go to graduate school, you want to, like you say, excite them about these ideas. So hopefully you can do it in a way that gets the essence across. Thank you so much for helping. Thank you. I angry. Towards the end of our conversation, Tina and I realized we shared a trait that you might not expect performers to have. We realized we were both shy. I was a shy kid, but here I could on stage,

I could be in command. That makes sense. A lot of people, a lot of people in comedy I know, are very shy. Are you shy? Very shy? I am? Yeah, me too. I have I have a lot of social anxiety. Someone from the audience had a question for us, what can you do about that? How can you turn making a toast at a wedding, or making a presentation at work, or any kind of public speaking into a pleasure instead

of an invitation to an anxiety attack. One aha moment that I can think first thing I thought of as a happened during improvisation was on stage years ago at the Second City. I was in an improv set where we would take suggestions from the audience and improvised for the any minutes different things. And I was in a scene with my friend Rachel Dress and my friends got out, said, and it was going so badly. It was we were

just bombing so hard. And I remember looking deeply into Rachel's eyes, and she was she would clutch me what we called her mouse paw, her tiny little hands clutching, and we were continuing the scene. But there was a whole other level of communication of like, dear God, we were bombing, and the realization for me was that my greatest fear was being realized. We were sweating bombing. It was going terribly and the realization was that after it was over, we were still alive and we would live

to fight again another day. And so for me, it's the thing of taking the my what is my greatest fear? What what am I so nervous? Will happen that everyone will boo or no one will paytation like that, Even if that happens, You're fine, You will be mine. So if that helps you at all, if your public speaking, do you find that that helps you in life too? Yeah? I think, you know, I think one of the biggest things you get out of improvisation work is, uh, you

abandon a fear of embarrassment. And you know, my friend Amy Poehler talks a lot about She talks a lot about UH having the courage to kind of break the social protocol, which is something that none of us have. You have to be not afraid of embarrassment to say like nope, from breaking the social rules here and saying whatever. And so I think improvisation helps you with that stuff.

I find too, it seems allied with that that you get more used to the idea that something from your unconscious is going to come up and it's going to be okay no matter what it is, Whereas without that freedom that you get from knowing it's going to be okay even if it's even if it's something bad that happens there, you say something terrible, it's going to be okay because in the long run, what difference doesn't matter,

You're still going to be there. You're just gonna be there. Yeah, that seems like that's a good one to go out on. I think we should be done right. I'm very happy to hand on holding up the books that's now available. Thank you. I had such a thing that was fun, but we're not finished yet. We still wanted TEENA to give us seven quick answers to our seven quick questions, and she was kind enough to drop in on our studio. Tina,

thank you for coming back. Oh it's great because since you and I talked, we came up with seven questions that I asked everybody. Number one, what do you wish you really understood? The first thing that came to my mind was music. I wish I could read and read music and play an instrument and sing. That's how I feel. You're the first person to say that. What Now, what do you wish people understood about you? It's a good question because I feel like in some ways, I'm like

we've talked too much about me as a community. Yea less, less understood less? All right, what what's the strangest question? Anyone ever asked you? What's the strangest question or really strange guy's interviewed? Let me think, I don't know. Can I come back to that one? What's the strangest question? It sounds like you're basically an easy going person. I am really easy going. Nothing strikes you as odd? Yeah,

I don't. I can't. I'm stumped on that one. Maybe something will come to me and we'll edit it and seem like make it seems like I knew in the moment. Okay, how do you stop a compulsive talker? Um? I asked, Well, A kind of counterintuitive thing is to ask them questions to try to pivot the topic right sometimes yeah, or just you know, fake a heart attack. I find nothing works, especially if I'm the compulsive talker. That's that's really hard. Yeah. My dad was a big talker, and my friend Lauren

Michaels is a pretty is a pretty big talker. Um. And sometimes you just have to write it out. Is there anyone for whom you just can't feel empathy? I can almost always dig deep, and at some point in fit you can go. You can find a little bit, but sometimes it's buried under layers and layers and layers of anger. Um. Yeah, like a couple. There's a couple of famous people that I don't feel a tremendous amount of empathy. Four, But I'd probably rather not name that.

I think I got it. How do you like to deliver bad news in person, on the phone or by carry your pigeon? I think bad news is best delivered in person, and that's what you like. I think that's the right thing to do in your life. You keep a pigeon in real life, a fleet of pigeons and carry rats. Okay, last one, what if anything would make you into friendship dishonesty. Well, I'm telling you the truth. I really like you coming on. Thanks, thanks for having me.

Should I try to think of the answer to that? Okay, what is the weirdest question? Yeah, it sounds like that was it? What was the weirdest question? Yeah, that's trying to think because certainly, you know, we've all done kind of press junkets and stuff. We get a lot of strange ones. You know, if somebody asked me, I'm not sure I could remember the weirdest one. I just this was just sort of a silly one. But we did

a when the movie Mean Girls came out. We came out the same time as an Olsen Twins movie called New York Minute, and I was at a Hollywood Foreign Press uh thing, and they said, uh, we watched your movie, and then we watched the Olsen Twin movie. And with the Osten Twins movie, everyone was very laughing, but not your movie. Why it's great. I think you got it. This has been clear and vivid, at least I hope.

So Tina's an inspiration for me. She's talented, creative, and a really nice person in spite of the fact that her Broadway show is called Mean Girls. Visit Mean Girls on Broadway dot com for tickets. Tina and I appeared on stage together last year during in the World Science Festival and our conversation some of it anyways, what you heard in this podcast, My thanks goes out to all the people who organized and produced that event, and I thank them for providing us with the audio of our interview.

The World Science Festival takes place every year in New York, and I really advise you to check it out. It's an amazing thing. Five days of fifty events that combine art and science. You can find more about the World Science Festival at World Science Festival dot org. This episode of Clear and Vivid was produced by my friend and longtime producer Graham shed. Graham and I have worked together for more than twenty years, including many events associated with

the World Science Festival. Our associate producer is Sarah Chase, sound engineers Dan de zula, are tech guru is Alison Costan, and our publicist is Sarah Hill. My special thanks to John Delore, Harry Nelson, and Jared O'Connor know for their in studio assistance. You can subscribe to this podcast for free at Apple Podcasts. For more details about Clear and Vivid and to sign up for my newsletter, please visit

Alan Alda dot com. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Clear and Vivid, and I'm on Twitter at Alan Alda. Thanks for listening, Bye bye,