Podcast SeriesClear + Vivid with Alan Alda

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.

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.

Female mosquitoes need your blood to live and breed. So figuring out who among us attracts them and why can not only help in avoiding annoying bites but also help stop the spread of deadly diseases.

The Kavli and Nobel Prize Laureate on his groundbreaking work finding out how our bodies ship vital molecules to where they are needed — enabling profound advances in medicine.

The Kavli Prize Laureate on her research suggesting it may be possible to return aging and damaged brains to a state where they could learn as they did when young.

Up until now, we’ve been smarter than our tools. But that might change drastically sooner than we know. Isn’t it time to think about that?

The President of MIT on how we can lead the world in technology again—and how he’s helping change the educational model so it can survive in the new world of at-home learning.

Kavli Prize Laureate Alan Guth is the man who put the bang in the Big Bang, when late one night he came up with the astonishing idea ­– astonishing even to him – that the universe grew from a fraction of an ounce into the entire cosmos in an incomprehensibly brief moment of time. His insight that night, the theory that became known as inflation, is now the foundation for ideas about the cosmos that are as astonishing as inflation itself, including the idea that an infinite number new universes are being created all the time.

Alan talks with the woman who’s been given the job of leading the fight to conquer all disease by 2100. They discuss whether it’s actually possible and how her life has led her from studying a tiny transparent worm to such a challenging task.

The co-inventor of the powerful gene editing tool called CRISPR, Jennifer Doudna describes for Alan her hopes for new treatments and possibly even cures for diseases that are today incurable. She also tells him about her efforts to make sure that ethical concerns over gene editing are addressed — and how she copes with having become a scientific superstar.

Alan checks out this year’s Kavli Prizes and discovers how figuring out why hot peppers are hot could lead to new pain killing drugs; how putting a tiny black hole in your gas tank would give you a mileage of a billion miles per gallon; and why giving a new generation of electron microscopes the ability to see atoms was a little like being able to see inside a baking cake while it’s still in the oven.

He’s a Nobel and Kavli prizewinner for his role in what’s been described as one of humanity’s greatest scientific achievements – the detection of ripples in the fabric of space. He can also explain what that means! Kip Thorne is deeply committed to communicating science, even bringing it before the public by working with artists and filmmakers. Including, more than once, with Alan Alda.

Alan sits down with physicist Brian Greene in front of a virtual audience to talk about how Brian sees himself (and you and me) as nothing more than an ephemeral cluster of particles in a dying universe—and how that gives him a deep sense of gratitude for his own existence. Along with wonder at how other mere collections of particles can compose the 9th Symphony or write Hamlet.