Emmy Award-winning actor Alan Alda launches podcast to encourage meaningful conversations

At a time when political discourse often results in a breakdown of interpersonal communications, actor Alan Alda is on a mission to promote meaningful conversations through empathy and understanding.

The seven-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, screenwriter, director, and most recently host of the podcast “Clear + Vivid with Alan Alda,” joined National Press Club President Andrea Edney in a discussion on Wednesday about his latest project.

The podcast, which launched Tuesday, is the culmination of Alda’s longtime interest in how to help others to more effectively communicate.

“The podcast comes out of about 25 years of work that I’ve been doing. It’s relating to people and being clear and making contact," he said. "I’ve been trying to understand communication, but not in an academic way – in a very direct way."

Alda cited his experience as the host of PBS’s “Scientific American Frontiers,” which he began in the early nineties, as inspiration for his interest in the subject. While interviewing scientists on the show, Alda realized that by relating to them in a personal way through engaged conversation, he enabled the scientists to communicate using language the general public could understand.

The experience led him to think, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could train scientists to have this personal connection without somebody like me standing next to them and pulling it out of them," Alda said.

Alda founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science within Stony Brook University’s School of Journalism in New York to teach people to communicate in a more relatable, empathetic way. The center has trained more than 12,000 people worldwide, he said.

The center initially focused on scientists and doctors.

"Patients get healthier when the doctors relate to them like people,” Alda said, referencing a study that found patients who regard their doctors as empathetic are 19% more likely to follow their doctors’ orders.

Alda found, however, that the training had far broader application. “We realized while we were teaching doctors and scientists, that it really applied to everybody in every walk of life, in every situation. Scientists were coming up to us and saying, this training saved my marriage,” he said.

The podcast, “Clear + Vivid,” approaches the subject of effective communication more broadly, featuring “conversations that touch on people’s own experiences in communicating and relating - people in different fields,” Alda said. Guests will include notable figures such as comedian Sarah Silverman, violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman and Judy Sheindlin, known as TV's "Judge Judy".

Alda said the podcast is particularly relevant in a time of political polarization, when families gather for Thanksgiving or Christmas and find "we have to censor ourselves because at least one person in the family can’t talk about current events.”

Emphasizing the need for respect in politically-charged conversations, Alda said, “It is probably not a good strategy to make it clear to the other person that they’re stupid for having these opinions, that they’re ignorant, that they’ve been sold a bill of goods. If we don’t have respect, where are we gonna go? It’s gonna be the Hatfields and the McCoys.”

Alda also shared a key principle he brings to conversations.

“I have this radical idea about listening," he said. "I don’t think I’m really listening to you unless I’m willing to let you change me in some way.”