I'm Alan Alder, and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating.

The personal fire that I feel is when I see these children get well. And I've also seen them die. I've been to

funerals. I've been to weddings. I've been to graduations. And I held a dying child in my arm,

which I never thought I'd be able to do. You know me long enough to know I've got a good heart

and I'm smart. But there's something else between those things.

I feel less alone and I feel more aligned with other people than I did before.

That's Marlowe Thomas. We've known each other for almost 60 years. We worked together in a movie when she was a big

hit in the groundbreaking television series, That Girl. In 1972, I worked with her again on the

record album she conceived and produced called Free to Be You and Me, which went on to become an Emmy-winning

TV special in 1974.

Marlowe has written several books and acts frequently on television and the Broadway stage.

The daughter and eldest child of entertainer Danny Thomas, founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital,

Marlowe is the hospital's National Outreach Director.

This is great. We've known each other for a long time, haven't we? Oh, yeah, for sure.

I remember the day I was standing in the kitchen of our house in New Jersey, and you called me

out of the blue. Right. Somehow you knew my work. Oh, I saw you in Appletree. I was a huge fan, and I tried to reach you, and somebody said you lived somewhere in New Jersey, and I looked it up, and there you were in the book. In the phone book? Yes. And you called me yourself because you wanted me to be in a movie with you. Right.

We made that movie, Jenny.

Yeah, Jenny.

And you were a tremendous hit at that time in that girl.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was a big deal then.

Alan, you'd have loved it.

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