Alan Alda — the science communicator — visits UB

Science is our joyful adventure, the “greatest detective story in the world,” TV icon and devoted science communicator Alan Alda told a packed and appreciative Alumni Arena crowd Wednesday night at the close of UB’s Distinguished Speakers Series for 2017-18.

And yet, “it’s as if the public is on a blind date with science,” Alda said. “There is this cliché that a person on a blind date thinks, ‘Ohmygod, I should have told a friend to call me and tell me my grandmother is sick. I got to get out of here.’”

Alda has been on a mission to change this, to close this gap between science and the public, for very clear reasons. “Our lives are run on science,” he said. “And we don’t know what’s going on in science. We don’t know what’s going on under the hood or anything about it.”

It’s one thing to listen to an impassioned, engaging speaker championing the need for science to make its life-changing research more clear to the public. But to hear it from Alan Alda — Hawkeye Pierce from the legendary TV show “M*A*S*H*; Arnold Vinick from ‘The West Wing;” the actor who DSS moderator Liesl Folks, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, said TV Guide named one of the 50 greatest television stars of all time; the only actor ever to win an Emmy for acting, writing and directing in a single series — that was something more altogether.

Alda captivated his audience from the moment he calmly stepped on stage and stood alone in the front, without notes, podium or any prompting devices. He just had that familiar, comforting presence of being a part of so many television habits, the wisdom of all those accomplishments and that voice that sounded as if he were still talking to Radar.

Speaking with the ease and warmth of a living-room guest, Alda wasted no time in telling his audience of the “extraordinary moment that changed my life.” About 15 years ago, he was in rural Chile interviewing astronomers as host of “Scientific American Frontiers,” a PBS TV show exploring cutting-edge advances in science and technology.

He was sitting on a blue vinyl bench in the mountains when he felt the worst pain of his life. He ended up taking a 50-year-old ambulance “that looked like one of those ambulances we used on ‘M*A*S*H*,’” screaming in pain while the ambulance rumbled down a bumpy mountain road. Alda was taken to a dimly lit emergency room, where he met “an incredible surgeon.”

“And he figured out what was wrong with me in a few minutes,” Alda said.

“I remember this so clearly. I can still see his face,” he said. “He leaned down into my face. He really had my attention. Here’s his face and here’s mine. And he said, ‘Here’s what has happened. Some of your intestine has gone bad. And we have to cut out the bad part and sew the two good ends together.’

“It was the most pungent example of good communication I had ever come across, or come across since,” Alda said. “He was looking me in the eye. He wanted to make sure I could understand what he was saying. He spoke in plain English. He didn’t use Greek words. What he said to me was accurate, and he wouldn’t have been any more accurate if it were inside talk or jargon.”

That doctor in Chile who saved his life epitomized the way Alda wanted to help scientists communicate.

This revelation and interest in scientific communication encouraged him to continue hosting “Scientific American Frontiers.” There, he put his passion for understanding science — and finding ways to let the general public understand science — to work.

“We had this relationship going on the show where I simply wanted to understand it,” Alda said. “I wasn’t there as a host; I was just me, trying to understand it. And I loved science.”

The conversations were all “in plain words,” he said. “It turned out it brought out the real ‘them’ in ‘them.’ It was like an improvisation where the real ‘you’ comes out. So if they were funny or charming, that came out, too. If they were ambitious, that came out, too.

“‘Scientific American Frontiers’ was when I began to realize we could probably train scientists to do this, to have this relationship that we had on the show without someone there like me to draw it out of them.”

This interest led to Alda establishing his Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. Starting in 2009, the center has trained thousands of scientists from around the world to be better communicators. Carrying out Alda’s mission are hundreds of university administrators and professors trained in the Alda method of teaching better communication — a method with strong ties to the improvisational communication he learned as an actor (UB is presently training several of its own in the Alda method.).

“Learning to act was central to what we teach in communication,” Alda said. “We’re not trying to turn scientists or anybody else into actors or comedians. We teach improvisation, but it’s not comedic improvisations. It’s the kind of improvisation that puts you in contact with the other person. The same kind of contact Nelson Cepada (the surgeon in Chile) had with me that night in Chile when he looked me in the eye and talked to me in this comfortable, easing, understandable tone of voice and used words that were understandable.”

Alda said the training offered at his Center for Communicating Science has caught a resonant chord in people.

“We started nine years ago,” he said. “We do 150 workshops a year in the U.S. and five other countries. Now they’re clamoring to get the training. In the beginning, they didn’t understand that it was useful, that it was so valuable.

“This is what I was preparing for all my life.”

Alda’s presentation had it all: audience participation, recollections from his Hollywood days and communication tips that could apply anywhere from the university classroom to the dinner table.

“There has to be this connection, this bonding, relating,” he said. “Relating is everything.”

Folks said UB’s signature speakers’ events have been a “tradition,” opportunities for the guests to “share their wisdom, insights and talents with our campus to enrich our university and the greater community.”

“Tonight’s speaker,” Folks said, “is perfectly emblematic of what our series stands for.”