Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Research often derided for being a waste of money has led to world-changing breakthroughs, ranging from GPS to Ozempic.

To celebrate Sir Paul's 83rd birthday June 18th we are reprising a wonderful conversation recorded five years ago. Alan and Paul exchange their experiences writing and performing; and McCartney demonstrates how some of the Beatles' greatest hits began with what he calls “oobley” chords on the piano.

Reaching back to the first season of Clear and Vivid, a replay of the July 2018 episode when the violin virtuoso tells Alan why he likes to talk to his audience as well as play for them; why he plays Bach very differently from Tchaikovsky; and why the first time he played the Stradivarius that was to become his 30 years later, “I thought that I'd died and went to heaven.”

A mathematician and epidemiologist, his research helped save lives during the Covid pandemic in the UK by predicting the effectiveness of interventions like social distancing and masks. In his new book, he tackles the thorny problem of how you find truth in a world awash with falsehoods.

Playing attending physician “Robby” Robinavitch in the hit HBO Max series The Pitt has given him insights into how the harrowing world of the emergency room could be improved in real life.

The recent discovery on a distant planet of a chemical that could be a sign of life has this astrophysicist intrigued if not convinced. But if it turns out to be real it would mean that not only are we not alone – “It would really mean that our Galaxy is teeming with life.”

Now starring in the Netflix series The Four Seasons – based on Alan's 1981 movie – he's won an Emmy and has been nominated for two Oscars and two Tony awards. In 2024, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. And you surely didn't miss him at this year's Met Gala!

While promises of extending the human lifespan to 125 and beyond are premature, recent breakthroughs in the early detection of killer diseases of the major organs and brain offer a healthier old age – especially when paired with behavioral changes that Dr Topol calls “Lifestyle+.”

AI generated voices like Alexa and Siri are now so much a part of our everyday experience that disembodied chatbots that talk are edging ever closer to being accepted as real. And not for the first time: attempts to generate artificial human voices date back over two centuries.

Stories of the discovery that the air is full of invisible life – and how that discovery was tragically overlooked when the covid pandemic struck.

His far-reaching career acting, writing and producing on television and film spans voicing a sloth in the movie Ice Age to hosting a PBS series on the untold history of Latinos in the US. He's fast talking, funny, outspoken and possesses a rare quality in his acting – on display in his new movie Bob Trevino Likes It.

Alan and Clear and Vivid's executive producer Graham Chedd chat about and play clips from some of the shows coming up in season 29. Guests include actor John Leguizamo, science writer Carl Zimmer, and astrophysicist Mario Livio.

A chat with an actor who does it all. After recovering from a near fatal fall on stage as his career was beginning, Bill Pullman has not only had a busy and award-winning career on stage, screen and television, he's also getting into science communication  – while working on a one-man play and making hard cider for his friends and neighbors.

How the letters in the acronym TALK can have a profound effect on the next conversation you have.

A psychiatrist, engineer and neuroscientist, Kaf Dzirasa is researching ways to reengineer the brain to make it better able to cope with stress and so improve mental health.

Artificial intelligence is poised to reshape our world, in many ways for the better. But the gains come with great risks – above all that its seductive appeal lulls us into believing that AI machines know better than we do.

His new book Revenge of The Tipping Point takes a fresh look at the tipping points of social change he opened our eyes to 25 years ago  –­ and unearths unexpected explanations for such new questions as: what really drove the opioid crisis, why diversity matters, and why Harvard University has a women's rugby team.

In a remarkable and illuminating tour de force, the novelist recently took a fresh look at her best-known book, going through it line by line and annotating it with handwritten notes in the margins – notes on things she both loved and hated. “It shows,” she says, “a lot about how to write a novel.”

The answer, regrettably, is unbelievable. That is, unbelievable to most of us, because we cannot imagine a universe – including ourselves – made of waves. Quantum physicist Matt Strassler braves the task of convincing Alan he is a collection of waves, and in doing so helps Alan answer a question that's haunted him for more than a decade.

Her new book, Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love is an ode to the power of language to both shape us and be shaped by us. It's informed by her own experience with languages: she spoke five before learning English as an immigrant to Canada as a child.

The 500 feet of wiring packed into fruit fly's brain has been fully mapped – giving insights into how the more that 300,000 miles of wiring packed into your brain generates your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and actions. These insights could also lead to novel treatments for the diseases caused when the wiring goes wrong.

In 1925, a trial in a small town in Tennessee riveted the nation. In the dock was a young man named John Scopes, charged with violating a state law outlawing the teaching of evolution. The trial exposed fault lines in society that are opening again today, a century later.

Music can lift our spirits, bring us to tears, spark our creativity, pace our workouts. Neuroscientist and musician Daniel Levitin explores all these benefits of music – and adds the recent scientific evidence that in some chronic medical conditions, music is medicinal.

Alan and Clear and Vivid's executive producer Graham Chedd chat about and play clips from some of the shows coming up in season 28. A major theme of the season is language –from babies picking up clues about  their mother's language while still in the womb, to male fruit flies singing courtship songs to female fruit flies, to a best-selling novelist second guessing some of the language she used in her best known novel. 

Offsprings of the Earth – Earthlings – we are most of us ignorant of the 3.5 billion years of experiments our planet has been through to produce us. Yet the story is there in the rocks all around us – if only we can decipher what they have to say.

So much of our communication is spontaneous and yet we never really learn or are taught how to do it well – we're just expected to do it. How to avoid being tongue-tied, whether when called upon to give an impromptu speech or when sitting next to a stranger at a dinner party.

Eliciting the story behind a patient's visit to the hospital can lead to better diagnosis and treatment than medical tests alone – and also reveals much of what needs fixing in health care today.

Alan's fleeting thought while chasing a spider around the floor sparked a conversation with an animal minds expert who argues that many more creatures than we imagine are conscious. What could this mean for our relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom – including those that annoy us and those we eat?

Good analogies led to cheaper cars and Apple computers; bad ones to lives wasted and lost. And while puns might not always make you smile (or grimace), they helped pave the way for written language.

As a Black graduate student disillusioned with academia, she founded Minorities in Shark Science (MISS). She now pursues her passion for sharks and outreach to a public fearful of sharks as a successful independent researcher.

For most of us who live in the “tame” modern world, a reminder of how we can refresh ourselves by experiencing the wild world – even the wild world of our backyard or city streets.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 writer Roger Rosenblatt, writer Anne Curzan, and journalist Mo Rocca.

Most creatures – including unlikely ones like octopuses, crows and bees – make room for fun. But play is much more than fun and games. Play teaches life skills, empathy – even morality. And it may help shape evolution.

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.

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.