From lizards that cling on for dear life during hurricanes to bees that can’t find flowers, plants and animals are trying to cope with climate change – and both inspiring and warning us to take action.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

How do we instantly sense whether someone has more or less power than we have – and change our behavior as a result?Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Dunbar’s Number is the most people you can have meaningful relationships with. But that number – 150 – is only one of the many circles of friends and acquaintances in your life. And one of those circles, according to Robin’s research, can determine how long you’ll live.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

How is it that the experience of stress or trauma can be passed on from one generation to the next, even without contact between them?Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Surviving some of the hardest of times has given Kate Bowler insights that are valuable to the rest of us who can't know what tomorrow will bring. And she’s funny, too.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The discovery of a direct and instant connection between your stomach and your brain has brought a whole new dimension to the notion of a “gut feeling.”Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

At 95, Mel tells it like it was in his new book, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show BusinessSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Best-selling books like The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z made Max Brooks famous. They also led to his becoming an advisor to the Modern War Institute at West Point. There he’s helping shape a survival guide for a future where cyberwar becomes more threatening than war on the battlefield.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan’s conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include zombie expert Max Brooks; neuroscientists Diego Bohórquez and Bianca Jones Marlin; and author Kate Bowler.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Emmy and Tony nominee Holland Taylor wrote and performed a one-woman show called Ann, bringing to life on the stage the woman she most admired, former Texas governor Ann Richards. And she came up with a smash hit. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Next month her camera will be hurled a million miles into space, from where it will be seeking the first stars in the universe. On board the James Webb Space telescope, her infrared camera will also be checking the atmospheres of planets beyond the solar system, looking for signs of life.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Jon LaPook, Chief Medical Correspondent for CBS News, is on a mission to help doctors be more empathetic with patients. And his communication skills are turning out to be contagious.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

With the invention of new ways to explore the brain, Karl Deisseroth has revolutionized neuroscience – work that has just now been recognized with the highest honor in medical research, the Lasker Award.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Taking a deep dive into the alternative reality of people convinced that the earth is flat, Lee McIntyre learned valuable lessons about how – and how not – to talk to those who persist in denying science.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The first female conductor of a major American symphony orchestra, Marin Alsop explains to Alan just what a conductor contributes to a performance; how her right and left hands have different roles; why oboists have to be treated differently from horn players; and the success of an innovative program to bring the joys of classical music to kids.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

An eminent physician caring for patients with memory loss, Scott Small was a surprised as you will be to discover that not all forgetting is bad – in fact it’s vital to your being “smarter, better and happier".Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The authority of the court to be a check on the other two branches of our government, Justice Breyer says, rests on its ability to be regarded by the people as completely impartial. That trust was hard won and is in danger when the court becomes political.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Alan and his friend, best-selling author Roger Rosenblatt, explore what makes a good piece of writing. Turns out to be very similar to what makes a good life.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

With a schedule impossible for anyone not named Mayim Bialik, she shares with Alan how acting and science have intertwined throughout her extraordinary career – as sitcom star, neuroscientist, podcaster and now movie director.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

After finding himself the subject of a trivia parlor game called Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, the actor turned the concept of how we’re all connected into a philanthropic project that enables us all to help those we may not even realize we’re connected to.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Alan and Executive Producer Graham Chedd chat about and play excerpts from Alan’s conversations with some of the guests in the new season, beginning next week. Guests include actors Kevin Bacon and Mayim Bialik; the first woman conductor of a major orchestra, Marin Alsop; and author and old friend of Alan’s, Roger Rosenblatt.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Few people have the same knack for explaining the unexplainable as Dennis Overbye, who for over 20 years has been illuminating the mysteries of the universe – and the minds of the scientists trying to understand those mysteries – in the pages of the New York Times.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Nobel prizewinner Bob Lefkowitz tells the story of an extraordinary group of young physicians chosen to work at the National Institutes of Health during the Vietnam War. Their brief time there transformed medical research and saved millions of lives.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

When a Chinese doctor changed the genes of two baby girls he thought he’d be acclaimed. Instead, his experimental treatment alarmed scientists and ethicists around the world.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Jacqueline Novogratz has recognized the need among the poor for something more than just money: dignity. Employing a new kind of capitalism, her company, Acumen, has invested $128 million to build more than 128 social enterprises across Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and the United States. These companies have leveraged an additional $611 million and brought basic, critical services like affordable education, health care, clean water, energy and sanitation to more than 300 million people.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The physicist and best-selling author argues that “the mind of God” can be found in “a symphony of strings – cosmic music resonating through hyperspace.”Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Her breakthrough discovery of a gene that doubles the lifespan of a tiny worm offers the possibility of extending the lifespan of people.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Paul Rudd and Alan Alda talk acting, from being spontaneous and "in the moment," to odd ways to learn lines.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

She finds justice among the bones. Like helping to convict the genocidal murderers of Kosovo. And, she's just been made a Baroness!Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Don’t feel bad about taking the elevator instead of the stairs. Blame evolution for not preparing you for voluntary physical activity. But, says anthropologist Dan Lieberman, there are ways to make exercise rewarding as well as healthy.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Studying the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers has led to the surprising discovery that dieting simply to lose weight misses the real benefits of cutting calories.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The wonderful Helen Mirren is as honest and searching in conversation as she is in the rich characters she’s brought to us in performance after performance. She’s just as thoughtful and fun as you’d expect her to be.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

And if it comes to that, wrist, elbows, and lungs? Neil Shubin found that fish in 375 million-year-old rocks in the Canadian Arctic. It was the earliest known evidence of what Neil calls the Great Transition, when life was about to emerge from water to land.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Using her voice, her body, and a close observation of speech patterns, Anna Deveare Smith has chronicled our times with staged portraits of the people who lived them.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Journalist John Colapinto blew out his voice singing too loud and too long in a rock band. The good news is that it inspired him to find out what happened – and that led to a terrific book about that remarkable instrument, the human voice.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

A searing experience with an apparently uncaring doctor when she was young helped make Dr. Jillian Horton a passionate advocate for a radical rethinking of how doctors are trained.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Bill Bryson loves finding out about stuff – like how much the earth weighs and why you have a spleen – then letting the rest of us know what he’s learned in books that are delightfully clear and vivid – and funny. In conversation with Alan, he tells why and how he does it.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

In her new book, The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir, Sherry Turkle movingly—and candidly—weaves together events in her own life with her dawning understanding of the way technology can weaken human connections.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Brian May, famed guitarist and founder of the rock group Queen, is also Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist. His research on the dust that swirls around the solar system and his fascination with 3-D imaging has led to his working with NASA on projects ranging from tracking asteroids to the Perseverance mission on Mars.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Something is pushing the Universe apart. We don’t know what it is, but Michael Turner named it: Dark Energy. This cosmologist’s way with words helped raised the public profile of what Michael calls the greatest question in all of science. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The wonderful Laura Linney really knows how to relate, on stage and off. The way actors have to be present for one another can be a good model for how we relate in life, too. But it’s not always easy. Like, what do you do when the other actor doesn't relate back?Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

In a moving and frank conversation – punctuated by laughter – Alan talks with Rabbi Steve Leder about the unavoidable subject, which people usually avoid — only adding to their loss. Their talk is inspired by Rabbi Leder’s new book, The Beauty of What Remains: How Our Greatest Fear Becomes Our Greatest Gift.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Walter Isaacson’s latest exploration of the lives of creative geniuses focuses on Jennifer Doudna, the co-inventor of the revolutionary gene editing tool CRISPR. Alan explores with Isaacson his fascination with people who have changed the world, from Leonardo to Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Deborah Tannen, author of the hugely influential best seller, You Just Don’t Understand, swaps stories with Alan about conversations that went wrong; and talks about her new book, Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to FollowSupport the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Embedding themselves in a fundamentalist Mormon community, journalists Sarah Ventre and Ash Sanders wove together the stories of both those in thrall to its all-powerful prophet and others seeking escape. They take Alan behind the scenes of their gripping and evocative podcast Unfinished: Short Creek.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

Propelled by events in her own life, Reisa Sperling is working hard to defeat this disease that cruelly destroys brains and crushes families. As we live longer lives, more of us are in danger of contracting Alzheimer’s. But Reisa’s work is exciting. And so are the signs that we’re making progress.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

The British actor, Sanjeev Bhaskar, started his career later in life and is glad he did. He didn’t try to portray human experience until he actually had some. It’s led to useful wisdom, both on the stage and off. Fans of Masterpiece Theatre will recognize him as the co-star of the crime drama Unforgotten.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

They walk among us. Some percentage of the genes of many modern humans have been handed down to us from Neanderthals. Alan, who has about 2% of those genes, is more than a little excited to hear from expert Rebecca Wragg Sykes how Neanderthals looked, lived and loved. Her new book is Kindred.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid

First impressions are supposed to tell us a lot, and they often do. Problem is, as Malcolm Gladwell explains in his latest book Talking to Strangers, sometimes what they tell us is wrong – dangerously wrong. Even deadly.Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/clearandvivid