Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Season 5 of Clear+Vivid® with Alan Alda starts on Tuesday, August 27th! Listen to the exclusive producer's cut of the official trailer to meet some of Alan’s next guests — including Melinda Gates, Yo-Yo Ma, Robert Sapolsky, and many more! New episodes are available every Tuesday. Subscribe and listen for free on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you like to enjoy podcasts. For more details and to subscribe to Alan’s newsletter, please visit AlanAlda.com. These episodes are made possible thanks to the generous support of our presenting sponsor, Discovery. All the profits from this podcast go to the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University to further support research in science communication and research. Visit AldaCenter.org for details.

How do you engage a national audience and bring attention to a cause? Katie Couric’s decision to allow her colonoscopy to be broadcast live on television was but one highlight in an extraordinary career in television. As co-host of NBC’s Today show and later the first female anchor of a national nightly news program on CBS, her work has been distinguished by her ability to relate to her audience. In this episode, Katie and Alan Alda talk openly about her life as a well-known communicator and what it takes to make people care about an issue.

Is there a way to bring up the climate crisis and not lose friends and disinfluence people? Katharine Hayhoe has found ways to communicate about a topic that desperately needs good communicating – the increasingly dire crisis that’s gripping our planet. What makes her so special is that she finds a way to connect with people – even people who deny the reality of climate change – through things that matter to them. In this episode, Alan Alda speaks with Dr. Hayhoe about the consequences of the decisions we make today on the livability of the planet in the future. 

There's a difference between communication and communications, with an "S." The way we look at it, communicating is connecting with people; and communications with an "S" is the technical way you reach out to millions, as with broadcasting. Some people find ways to combine those two ideas in ways that have a real impact, and Henry Schleiff is one of them. With vast experience as a broadcaster, Henry has a thoughtful, funny angle on communication that he shares with Alan Alda in this entertaining episode. 

Your visit to the doctor isn’t what it used to be. Now, there are more options for doctors to consider, and much less time for them to decide on them. Dr. Eric Topol, one of our country’s leading visionaries in the field of medicine, has a fascinating way of looking at this problem. Even though some experts on this show have talked about digital technology as a threat to our privacy, to our ability to relate, and in some cases even to our health, Dr. Topol tells us how  machines can actually make a visit to the doctor more personal .