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.
Series Episodes
Marcia Bjornerud: The Wisdom of Rocks
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.
32 mins
7 January Finished
Matt Abrahams: Off the Cuff and in the Zone
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.
40 mins
31 December 2024 Finished
Dean-David Schillinger: The Power of Patients’ Stories
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.
37 mins
24 December 2024 Finished
Kristin Andrews: Is that spider conscious?
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?
40 mins
17 December 2024 Finished
John Pollack: The Surprising Power of Puns and Analogies
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.
39 mins
10 December 2024 Finished
