This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alda and this is Clear and Vivid.

Conversations about connecting and communicating.

When you think about it, we're all interested in science because science tells us everything

explains who we are and how we got here, where we're going and what we have to do if we

want to get to where we want to go.

Science is really important to us and we're all fascinated by it, but at different levels.

My interest in science has nothing to do with equations and theorems and the kind of

things that get written on blackboards.

What I do want to know, you know, where, how the universe is, has put together and a

voice been especially fascinated by things like, how does anybody know how much the earth

weighs?

How do you figure that out?

That's Bill Bryson.

Best known for his compulsively readable and often laugh out loud books on people and

places.

Books like the story of his hike along the Appalachian Trail called The Walk in the Woods, which

was later made into a movie with Robert Redford as Bill.

But Bryson fans know that in the last few years, he's also turned his narrative skills to

books that tackled science.

First, there was a short history of nearly everything and then more recently, The Body,

...