Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

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 author Roger Rosenblatt, word maven Anne Curzan, and TV and radio personality Mo Rocca.

Most creatures play– even octopuses, pigs, crows and bees. But play is much more than fun and games. Play teaches life skills and empathy – even morality. And it may help shape evolution. Want to play?

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. 

Sharing her experiences of three space missions – including 159 days as the only woman on the 6-person crew of the International Space Station – Cady Coleman also shares lessons about getting along:valuable insights for the rest of us down here on earth.

Alan and the author of a new book called Supercommunicators share their thoughts on what makes a great conversation.  The result? A great conversation!

The world of the very small is very different from the one we are familiar with. (Gold for instance turns red.) Chad Mirkin and Robert Langer’s skills in crafting this bizarre micro-world into medical breakthroughs earned them the 2024 Kavli Prize in nanotechnology.

He is searching space for planets that are something like ours. She is searching brains to discover how we recognize things. They are both 2024 Kavli laureates – Charbonneau awarded the prize for astrophysics, Tsao for neuroscience.

That was the question two determined astronomers set out to answer. A frustrating five-year search revealed that Pluto, long thought to be a small, lonely planet on the outer fringes of the solar system, is in fact part of a huge ring of debris left over from the solar system’s birth.

Between them these two neuroscientists changed the way we think of our brains. Their insights are now opening new ways to tackle the problems our brains face as they age, including neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. 

Once sworn enemies in TV appearances and on social media, Fred Guttenberg and Joe Walsh got together privately and realized there is much that unites them. They are now on a tour of college campuses hoping to share their success in bridge-building with others divided by hate.