This program is sponsored by the Covley Foundation based in Los Angeles, California.

The Covley Foundation is dedicated to advancing science for the benefit of humanity.

I'm Alan Alda, and this is Clear and Vivid, Conversations about Connecting and Communicating.

The most unexpected part of my grieving process in losing the ability to play the violin

was acknowledging that I hadn't just lost the ability to play an instrument, I lost myself

in the process. You know, I felt like I was missing a huge piece of my heart. I didn't know where

it had gone, and I really struggled to figure out who I was and who I could be without the violin,

and I'm sure a lot of people listening can resonate, you know, might not have been an instrument,

but we all experience loss in our lives. That's Maya Shankar. In her teens, she was a violinist

of such promise that the great Idzad Pearlman took her on as a student, but her world came crashing

down when an injury ended her career just as it was beginning. Remarkably, she turned that loss

into a PhD in neuroscience, a stint in the White House, and creating and hosting a popular podcast

about others who were navigating drastic changes in their lives.

This is already a treat to be talking with you. Your life has taken so many changes,

and you've navigated them so brilliantly, it's really amazing. You started out obsessed with

the violin, right? What, when did that start? Yeah, Idzad Pearl, that's so kind of you to say,

Alan, and it's such a delight for me to be in conversation with you today. Yeah, when I was

six years old, my love of the violin emerged. So I'm the youngest of four kids, and my mom

one day went up to our attic, our family attic, and brought down my grandmother's violin that she

had brought with her from India when she immigrated to this country with my dad. I had a really close

emotional connection with my grandmother, and I do wonder whether knowing that she had played when

she was a young kid in the Indian classical style was part of it, but I gravitated towards

...