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Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

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.

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Episodes

Keith Houston: There?s More to Writing Than Words.

The intriguing stories behind the often weird and baffling origins of punctuation and other symbols we use to communicate. And it?s not just commas, colons and periods. There are pilcrows, octothorps, interrobangs and a whole menagerie more.

2024-03-05
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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.

2024-02-27
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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.

2024-02-20
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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.?

2024-02-13
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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?

2024-02-06
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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.

2024-01-30
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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.

2024-01-23
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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.

2024-01-16
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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.?

2024-01-09
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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.

2024-01-02
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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.

2023-12-26
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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.

2023-12-19
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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 pretending to believe wasn?t working. Her book is?We of Little Faith: Why I Stopped Pretending to Believe, And Maybe You Should Too."  

2023-12-12
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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.

2023-12-05
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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.

2023-11-28
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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.

2023-11-21
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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.

2023-11-14
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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. 

2023-11-07
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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.

2023-10-31
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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.

2023-10-24
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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.?

2023-10-17
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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.

2023-10-10
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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.

2023-10-03
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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.

2023-09-26
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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.

2023-09-19
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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.

2023-09-12
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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.

2023-09-05
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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.

2023-08-29
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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.

2023-08-22
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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.

2023-08-15
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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.

2023-08-08
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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.

2023-08-01
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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.

2023-07-25
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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.

2023-07-18
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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.

2023-07-11
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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.

2023-07-04
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Steve Israel: Disagreeing Without the Hate

A member of the US House of Representatives for 16 years before retiring ? unindicted and undefeated as he likes to say ? Steve Israel knows the value of good communication, and the cost to us all when it?s missing.

2023-06-27
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Dan Levitt: You Are Stardust. Really

Every atom in your body ? and there are more than all the grains of sand in the world­ ? came from outer space, many of them created moments after the Big Bang that began it all. Dan Levitt tells the stories of the remarkable people who figured out how all those atoms got into you.

2023-06-20
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Adam Gopnik: The Joy of Getting Good at Something Hard

The New Yorker essayist explores the mystery of mastery as he tackles skills he believed he could never learn. Including boxing, figure drawing and ? in his 50s ? driving.

2023-06-13
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Brenna Hassett: Why We Are Weird

Of all the attributes that make us humans unique ? or in archeologist Brenna Hassett?s view, weird ? the weirdest of all is our extraordinarily long childhood. In her delightful book, Growing Up Human, she explores the many tricks evolution has invented to lengthen our childhoods, including her favorite: Grandmas.

2023-06-06
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Michael Turner: The Dazzling Cosmos

When funding for the James Webb Space Telescope was in doubt, cosmologist Michael Turner argued passionately that it would transform our understanding of the origin and fate of our universe. Today, with the spectacular images being taken by the Webb exceeding even its designers? dreams, Turner is ?awed and ecstatic.?

2023-05-30
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Daniel Libeskind: His buildings speak for themselves

The prizewinning architect has designed some of the world?s most dramatic, daring, and memorable buildings. Inspired by optimism, wonder, music, and light they challenge their visitors to experience them as a story.

2023-05-23
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Eric Topol: A Covid Reckoning

With the national state of emergency for Covid-19 now officially over, we invited physician and author Topol to reflect on his experience writing a regular online newsletter attempting to counter the misinformation flooding the internet. Called Ground Truths, it takes an unsparing dive into what went right and what went wrong over the last three years.

2023-05-16
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Clear + Vivid with Alan Alda - Season 21 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 architect Daniel Libeskind; bioarchaeologist Brenna Hassett; and a return visit from congressman Michael Turner.

2023-05-09
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Ken Duckworth: Navigating mental illness

Chief medical officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Dr Duckworth has written a guide for those with mental health problems that along with advice from experts tells of the lessons to be learned from people and families who are themselves struggling to live with mental illness.

2023-05-02
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Susan Goldin-Meadow: Thinking with your hands

Decades spent studying the way we use our hands when we talk has convinced Susan Goldin-Meadow that not only do gestures help our listeners understand us; gestures help us understand ourselves. They help us think, and as children, even to learn.

2023-04-25
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Valerie Fridland: English evolves, like it or not

Annoyed by all those likes and so?s and you knows, not mention ahs and ums? In her delightfully titled book Like, Literally, Dude, Valerie Fridland argues that we should stop grumping about language tics and recognize that they are inevitable ? and actually useful.

2023-04-18
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Dava Sobel: The Women Who Brought the Stars to Earth

Starting in the late 19th century, a group of women at the Harvard Observatory pored over hundreds of thousands of glass photographic plates bearing images of billions of stars. It was the beginning of a revolution in understanding what stars are made of and how far away they are.

2023-04-11
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Judd Apatow: Funny, With a Side of Feeling

For decades now, he?s been building a comedy empire as writer, director and producer of a string of movies and TV series. Judd Apatow explores his early experiences soaking up the comedy writing of others and how he came to understand that the richest kind of humor is personal.

2023-04-04
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Kieran Setiya: Facing up to Life

Life is hard. But drawing on the insights of philosophers ancient and modern, Keiran Setiya has written a witty and hope-filled book chronicling his own realization that, even with chronic pain, while his life may not be perfect, it can still be richly rewarding.

2023-03-28
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