Scientific American Frontiers 1993. Actor Alan Alda became the permanent host starting in the fall season of 1993 and continued until the show ended in 2005. So the show was also billed as "Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers". Alda's tenure has been notable for his humble and often humorous approach: in one memorable segment, he became car sick while driving an experimental, virtual reality vehicle. In 2005, Alda published his first round of memoirs, "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned", published by Random House (); in the book, he recalls his intestines becoming strangulated while on location in
Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done was shot with a handheld camera by the episode's director, TJ Scott, with Maslany and Outerbridge improvising the dialogue and use of props. The subsequent shot of the barn on fire was created by the visual effects company Intelligent Creatures. The title of the final two episodes, "Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done" and "By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried", are taken from a Francis Bacon quotation in his philosophical work "Novum Organum": "It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means