Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd look ahead to season 34. Episodes include one of Alan’s favorite topics – humor, and its power to connect; finding joy in unexpected places; why telling stories makes for better doctors; and how Alan’s character in The West Wing, Arnie Vinick, came to be.

Transcribed - Published: 2 June 2026

Alan revisits a conversation with his old friend to compare notes on staying happy when old, as Roger’s new book, More Rules for Aging: Making the Most of Your Ridiculous, Wondrous Life, hits the bookshelves.

Transcribed - Published: 26 May 2026

In her new book she argues that if you want to feel more loved, you don't need to change yourself, you don't need to change the other person (which is sure to backfire!). You just need to change the conversation.

Transcribed - Published: 19 May 2026

Wondering why she and her husband got into frequent spats while practicing competitive ballroom dancing led her to a career in social psychology with a focus on disagreements; not just on why and how we have them, but on how to turn them from toxic to constructive.

Transcribed - Published: 12 May 2026

In her cookbooks and TV shows the Barefoot Contessa uses her early fascination with science to create meals that are not only great to eat but are also ways to connect and communicate.

Transcribed - Published: 5 May 2026

CBS News’ medical correspondent, he also heads the Empathy Project, creating Hollywood-quality short films that train healthcare providers to be more humane and help empower patients to be effective participants in their own care.

Transcribed - Published: 28 April 2026

Whether it’s the accent that hints at your hometown, your group, your social status or your ethnicity, the sounds we say reveal a lot about who we are and where we’ve been – even for those who might think they have no accent at all.

Transcribed - Published: 21 April 2026

Flowering plants were late to evolve, but once they did, they took over most of the planet, connecting and communicating with a network of other living things and making possible our own evolution.

Transcribed - Published: 14 April 2026

Best known for his writings on food – and for his crisp summation of advice for healthy eating – “Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants” – he has now taken a deep and very personal dive into the nature of consciousness.

Transcribed - Published: 7 April 2026

The remarkable and little-known story of how Harriet Tubman played a critical role in a daring raid that in 1863 freed some 700 slaves from rice plantations along South Carolina’s Combahee River.

Transcribed - Published: 31 March 2026

For over 20 years he has been a relentless critic of the extravagant claims made for the current generation of AI based on Large Language Models, or LLMs. But he is even more concerned about what may come next.

Transcribed - Published: 24 March 2026

Her mother’s skillful use of empathy to defuse a potentially dangerous encounter on the streets of Tehran when she was nine has stayed with her ever since. It led to her developing the concept of stoic empathy as a way to navigate challenges.

Transcribed - Published: 17 March 2026

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd look ahead to the new season with clips from episodes on empathy – both helping defuse a dangerous situation in Tehran and its role in the very different circumstances of a doctor’s office; why chatbots can still be exasperating; Harriet Tubman’s key role in a daring raid freeing 700 slaves; and why accents are so revealing.

Transcribed - Published: 10 March 2026

At age 92, Carol Burnett still graces our screens with her presence and humor. Alan revisits a 2019 conversation that explores with her what made The Carol Burnett Show a comedy masterpiece and recalls the time she played his wife in his movie The Four Seasons.

Transcribed - Published: 3 March 2026

It’s highly likely that life – maybe even intelligent life – has evolved elsewhere in the universe. But that aliens bother to hang out in our skies, or are even able to get here...Really?

Transcribed - Published: 24 February 2026

…at least according to a bold-face December 1906 headline in the New York Times. This was in the middle of a decades-long fascination with the idea that Martians not only exist but were much smarter than us Earthlings. How Martians came… and went.

Transcribed - Published: 17 February 2026

A philosopher and novelist, she has spent 40 years pondering why we all have a longing to matter. She’s talked with dozens of people about their own need to matter, and tells their stories in her new book, The Mattering Instinct.

Transcribed - Published: 10 February 2026

Experiments with mice have shown it’s possible to tinker with and even erase a memory. The goal for neuroscience now is to apply the science to help people struggling with PTSD and other mentally crippling memories.

Transcribed - Published: 3 February 2026

These days, despite the internet providing us access to every imaginable source of information, the truth is harder than ever to find. A conversation about how to sort truth from fiction and why, more than ever, truth matters.

Transcribed - Published: 27 January 2026

She has spent over 50 years fighting racism, sexism and sexual violence, often fiercely. Now in her 70’s, her experiences have led her to move past anger toward a more empathic relationship with those she disagrees with.

Transcribed - Published: 20 January 2026

The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded every year in a ceremony that is as charming as it is ridiculous, awarding research that itself may seem ridiculous at first sight but often turns out to be unexpectedly useful.

Transcribed - Published: 13 January 2026

Babies find things funny long before they understand language – surprising even the author of the most detailed study to date of when and how babies and toddlers develop a sense of humor. And the better they are at getting jokes, the better they are at connecting with others.

Transcribed - Published: 6 January 2026

Almost 60 years ago she defied television conventions with her depiction of a young woman succeeding on her own in the big city. And for the last 30 years, along with her own busy career, she's helped keep alive and thriving her father’s dream of a research hospital for children.

Transcribed - Published: 30 December 2025

In the almost six years since the beginning of the pandemic he’s developed an on-line personality that’s an exuberant mix of medical expert and next-door neighbor, expressed in engaging videos on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

Transcribed - Published: 23 December 2025

Alan and executive producer Graham Chedd look ahead to the new season, which includes episodes on how babies who giggle become socially smarter; prizes for science that makes you both laugh and think; why truth is so elusive; and how Marlo Thomas kick started Alan’s movie career as well as helping her father found the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Transcribed - Published: 16 December 2025

How technological innovation has shaped our culture, with lessons from history and even from bees. And how these lessons can help tame and curate the information overload that AI is contributing to on social media.

Transcribed - Published: 9 December 2025

The Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism talks about how social media is overtaking traditional newspapers and television as most people’s source of news; what this means for journalism; and how Columbia is preparing tomorrow’s journalists for the new reality.

Transcribed - Published: 2 December 2025

MASH changed Alan’s life as well as the lives of the rest of the MASH cast. In this revisit of a free-wheeling conversation recorded in 2019 Alan, and the gang reminisce about an extraordinary eleven years of connecting and communicating.

Transcribed - Published: 25 November 2025

Alan revisits a conversation he had with Michael seven years ago, at a time when Fox had been grappling with Parkinson’s Disease for 27 years and Alan for three. As Alan says in this updated episode, both have been fighting Parkinson’s with attitude – plenty of attitude.

Transcribed - Published: 18 November 2025

A confident prediction from the man who first brought our warming planet to public attention some 35 years ago. Energy from solar and wind is now cheaper than traditional fossil fuels and is being rapidly adopted across the world. The exception is the US where the federal priority is planet-warming coal, oil and gas. But even in the US, local action, prompted in part by McKibben-backed organizations like Third Act and 350.org, is promoting innovative uses of solar power.

Transcribed - Published: 11 November 2025

In a surprising shift in how we communicate about the climate crisis, Kate Marvel explores the feelings evoked by her research. Her new book tackles what’s happening to our changing planet, each chapter triggering in her a different emotional response – from wonder and anger, though guilt to love: using emotion along with facts to spur action.

Transcribed - Published: 4 November 2025

Data: dry and boring, right? Not in the hands of Justin Evans, a data expert himself, who set out to show that data is not only the lifeblood of today’s world; it is also the source of moving stories of other data experts who have achieved remarkable things – like the epidemiologist whose inspired use of data in the early days of Covid helped save hundreds of thousands of lives in New York city alone.

Transcribed - Published: 28 October 2025

After adopting a beagle that had spent the first four years of his life as an experimental subject in a laboratory, she set out – with Hammy the beagle by her side – to explore the murky world of animal experimentation. She tells the story of her travels and her discoveries in a new book, Lab Dog.

Transcribed - Published: 21 October 2025

Not only are non-violent protests more effective than armed resistance, but a surprisingly small percentage of the population – around three and a half percent – has been enough to change governments.

Transcribed - Published: 14 October 2025

With long memories and the ability to figure out what other crows are thinking – then plot to outdo them, using what Nicky Clayton calls “sleight of beak” – crows are at least as smart as chimpanzees, despite having very different brains.

Transcribed - Published: 7 October 2025

It then becomes “common knowledge,” and can be both beneficial – like cementing friendships or empowering peaceful protests – or destructive, causing a run on toilet paper or splitting society into silos, each with their own common knowledge.

Transcribed - Published: 30 September 2025

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd look ahead to next season and some unexpected connections between our first guests. They include best-selling author Steven Pinker, and how you know that I know that you know that I know; psychologist Nicky Clayton and why crows are so smart; Erica Chenoweth and the power of peaceful protest; climate scientist Kate Marvel on why she gets emotional in her new book; and journalist Melanie Kaplan, who with her beagle Hammy explore together the murky world of animal experimentation.

Transcribed - Published: 23 September 2025

Perched on a mountain top in Chile, the new Vera Rubin Observatory’s telescope will view the universe as it’s never been seen before, seeking answers to cosmic mysteries like dark energy and dark matter, but also helping keep Earth safe from potentially dangerous asteroids.

Transcribed - Published: 16 September 2025

With lessons learned from the Covid pandemic, he points to how we might better tackle the next, inevitable, global pandemic — at a time when science has been all but discarded from the leading government agencies responsible for public health.

Transcribed - Published: 9 September 2025

Unlike most other land animals, we can live almost anywhere – from deserts, to mountains, rain forests, even the arctic. We are supremely adaptable, and that adaptability has led to our diversity – not only in our biology but also in our cultures.

Transcribed - Published: 2 September 2025

Along with revelations about snake sex, their contributions to medicine, that flickering tongue and why slithering is a secret to their success, Stephen Hall goes at least some way to convincing Alan that snakes – “the ultimate other” – deserve our respect as well as our dread.

Transcribed - Published: 26 August 2025

She’s had a love-hate relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald since she was a teenager. And she’s now written a wonderful new take on The Great Gatsby, reimagining the story with a cast of the Black elite in post-war Los Angeles.

Transcribed - Published: 19 August 2025

An old friend of Clear and Vivid is back to enlighten Alan on some of the oddities of human behavior – both good and bad – and to talk about his entertaining new podcast, Father Offspring Interviews, hosted by his daughter.

Transcribed - Published: 12 August 2025

From his long running role as Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, to his recent Broadway appearance in Glenngary Glen Ross, and his new incarnation as an off-beat action hero in the movies Nobody and Nobody 2, Bob Odenkirk does it all.

Transcribed - Published: 5 August 2025

With her Black scuba-diving companions she has sought to reveal the appalling cost in lives lost in sunken slave ships, while at the same time honoring those lives by telling their stories.

Transcribed - Published: 29 July 2025

Alan joins his old friend to compare notes on staying happy when old; and Roger shares tips from a forthcoming book, including some that may seem counterintuitive – like don’t use common sense, believe everyone, and don’t pay attention to people in your way.

Transcribed - Published: 22 July 2025

Tina Fey’s reimagining of a movie Alan made over 40 years ago has been a big hit for Netflix. She and Alan have fun talking about how she went about updating the story for a new generation.

Transcribed - Published: 15 July 2025

Alan lets bots mostly run the show to see how much they can do and still be under human control. For a while, it seems to go well, but then dangers start to emerge— and it gets a little scary.

Transcribed - Published: 8 July 2025

Alan and Clear and Vivid’s executive producer Graham Chedd chat about and play clips from some of the shows coming up in season 30. Guests include actor Bob Odenkirk, scuba diver Tara Roberts, and some AI chatbots.

Transcribed - Published: 1 July 2025

Research often derided for being a waste of money has led to world-changing breakthroughs, ranging from GPS to Ozempic.

Transcribed - Published: 24 June 2025