Science Clear+Vivid Podcast by Alan Alda

09.02.2021

Anna Ploszajski: When Science Meets Craft

A scientist fluent in the atomic properties of materials like glass and steel and wood, Anna Ploszajski wanted the hands-on experience of how craftspeople use them. The result is her book, Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making. Support...

08.26.2021

Daphna Shohamy: Your Creative Memory

You may not realize it, but you are subtly revising and updating your memories all the time – to keep them, as Daphna Shohamy puts it, “nimble,” and so better able to help you chart both the present and the...

08.19.2021

Caterina Vernieri: Seeing What Can’t be Seen

As a young Italian physics student, Caterina Vernieri was lucky enough to join the team hunting for the most elusive and highly-prized fundamental particle of all – the Higgs boson – just as it was found. She is now leading a...

08.12.2021

Marcelle Soares Santos: Capturing a Cosmic Explosion

Having helped develop and install a camera to gaze the heavens with unprecedented resolution, Marcelle Soares Santos was part of the team that used the camera to capture an unprecedented record of a massive cosmic explosion. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid...

08.05.2021

Lucy Aplin: Cockatoos have culture too

An unknown but very clever cockatoo in Sydney Australia invented a novel way of raiding trash bins. Teaming with citizen scientists, Lucy Aplin and her team tracked how cockatoos throughout the city soon picked up the same trick. Support the...

07.29.2021

Kerri Cahoy: Hitchhiking to Space

Tiny satellites, catching a ride to space, can improve weather forecasting and even help spot planets outside the solar system. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

07.22.2021

Polina Anikeeva: Communing with the Brain

With ultra-thin fibers and minute magnetic particles, Polina Anikeeva and her team are developing new ways to tap into the brain. Her ultimate goal is to understand and treat brain diseases like Parkinson’s. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for...

07.15.2021

Abigail Vieregg: Seeking Cosmic Messengers

Dangling from a balloon the size of a football stadium miles above the South Pole, a payload built by astrophysicist Abby Vieregg peers down at the ice looking for messenger particles from the most energetic places in the universe. Support...

07.08.2021

Rae Wynn-Grant: Carnivore Champion

She not only cares passionately about the large and ferocious animals she studies. Rae Wynn-Grant also has a passion and a talent for getting the rest of us to care about them too. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for...

07.01.2021

Maya Fishbach: When Black Holes Chirp

The mightiest events in the entire universe – when black holes collide – create ripples in space-time now being detected by the most sensitive instruments ever built – and are opening up a new era in astronomy. Support the show:...

06.24.2021

Beronda Montgomery: Lessons from Plants

Beronda Montgomery suggests we humans have a lot to learn from the surprising ways plants connect, communicate and collaborate. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

06.17.2021

Science Clear+Vivid - Season 3 Trailer

Alan and Science Clear+Vivid’s executive producer Graham Chedd preview the new season. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

06.10.2021

Alex Schnell: Do Cuttlefish Ponder?

It’s not often that cuttlefish go viral, but that’s what happened when Alex Schnell published the results of her experiments showing that cuttlefish perform well in a version of the famous marshmallow test used to test self-control in children. Support...

06.03.2021

Alysson Muotri: A Brain Begins – in a Dish

By coaxing skin cells to become brain cells in a dish, Alysson Muotri hopes to learn how early brain development can go wrong in conditions like autism or epilepsy – and how our brains differ from those of our cousins,...

05.27.2021

Edward Chang: A Brain Speaks

During brain surgery, Dr. Edward Chang can record the brain’s electrical activity while the patient speaks – then reproduce the spoken words. His goal is to develop a device that will give a voice to people who have lost their...

05.20.2021

Shriya Srinivasan: Making prosthetic limbs feel real

While still working on her PhD Shriya Srinivasan invented a way that allows someone with a missing limb to move and feel their prosthesis as naturally as if it were part of them. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

05.13.2021

How Your Mind Creates Language

Ev Fedorenko is in awe of her 3 1/2 year old daughter’s ability to soak up language – and as a neuroscientist, Ev’s goal is to one day understand how her daughter’s brain is doing it. Meanwhile she is tackling...

05.06.2021

Researching Her Own Disease

Audrey Winkelsas has a rare genetic disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. While it limits her physical abilities, it has helped ignite her passion for science as she works at the laboratory bench – aided by her mother – to find...

04.29.2021

The Brothers Shenderov

Brothers Eugene and Kevin Shenderov escaped with their parents from the Soviet Union shortly after being exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl explosion. They are now physician researchers whose personal experience shapes both their research and their relationship to their...

04.22.2021

There’s More to Everything than Meets the Eye

As a Black female professor, Chanda Prescod Weinstein is a rarity in her field. And she relishes the fact that everything that we see and experience in our lives – including the stars in the sky – are themselves rarities...

04.15.2021

Something in the Way You Move

Husband and wife Eiman Azim and Sharona Ben-Haim believe we should be very proud of ourselves for doing things like buttoning a button or typing on a keyboard – because they require astonishingly complex fine motor control. Eiman is studying...

04.08.2021

A Shot in the Arm for Us All

Right before Alan got his second shot of the Moderna vaccine, he talked with Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, who led the science team at the NIH that helped developed it. Their version of the notorious spike protein gives us, as Dr....

04.01.2021

CRISPR versus COVID

Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg are young researchers who were smart enough, persistent enough and lucky enough to find themselves – while still in their early 20s – in the lab of one of the pioneers of CRISPR. They are...

03.23.2021

TRAILER: Science Clear+Vivid Season 2 / Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda Season 12

A look ahead at the people we have in the new seasons of both C+V and SC+V, starting next week. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

12.17.2020

Michael Drake: Higher Ed in the Time of Covid

Michael Drake, newly installed as the president of the University of California, talks about the challenges in the age of Covid of running an institution of 10 campuses and some half-million students and staff. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid See omnystudio.com/listener...

12.10.2020

Simon Johnson: Jump-Starting America

Former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, now an MIT professor, Simon Johnson urges increased investment in basic research as a way “to convert knowledge into jobs into a way to share prosperity.” And he argues that this increased...

12.03.2020

Rebecca Blank: The Power of the Publics

Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rebecca Blank argues that public universities like hers not only produce over two-thirds of the PhDs that come out of the top schools, but crucially include students from more diverse backgrounds. In her state,...

11.26.2020

Bob Conn: When it’s Wise to be Risky

Bob Conn, the president of the Kavli Foundation, argues that philanthropies play a vital role in funding scientific research because they can take more chances. Unlike the federal government, they’re better able to fund research that may very well fail...

11.19.2020

Freeman Hrabowski: The University That Multiplies Genius

President of the University of Maryland Baltimore County for almost 30 years, Freeman Hrabowski has transformed a sleepy, mainly white, commuter school into a launching pad for thousands of African American scientists and engineers. “And that helps obviously the people...

11.12.2020

Marcia McNutt: When Science Matters Now

When she was head of the US Geological Survey, Marcia McNutt led the federal response to the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now the first female director of the National Academy of Sciences, she draws...

11.05.2020

Sethuraman Panchanathan: The Scientific Spirit

“Dr. Panch,” as he’s known, is the new Director of the National Science Foundation. He supervises over $8 billion of federal investment in research. To make that investment count, among his goals is inspiring the “spirit of science” in the...

10.29.2020

Shirley Tilghman: The 75 Year-Old Idea We Need Now

Shirley Tilghman finds inspiration in the report delivered to President Roosevelt 75 years ago. It was called Science: The Endless Frontier, and it spurred the curiosity driven research that fueled America’s leadership in science and technology. We need to follow...

10.22.2020

Harvey Fineberg: Ready When Needed

Vaccines that could save us from Covid19 are being developed with unprecedented speed. Harvey Fineberg argues this would have been impossible without decades of basic research. Research that, at the time, seemed to have little or no practical purpose. Fineberg,...

10.15.2020

Robbert Dijkgraaf: Opening Doors to the Unknown

Einstein spent his last years at the famed Institute for Advanced Study. Robbert Dijkgraaf, who heads the Institute now, marvels at how work like Einstein’s allowed us to see so deeply into nature. That work came from the same human...

10.13.2020

Science Clear+Vivid: Trailer

With support from The Kavli Foundation, Clear+Vivid presents this special series on the power of basic scientific research – from the pure to the practical. What is curiosity-driven research? Why does it matter? How does it play a role in...

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