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• About Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
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Tavis: I'm honored to welcome Alan Alda back to this program. For those of us who grew up watching a little television show called "MASH," he remains one of the most enduring names and faces in the history of prime time television. He's also enjoyed success in film, on the stage and as an author.

In just his first week in stores, his latest book debuts this week in the top ten on "The New York Times" bestseller list, a familiar place for Alan Alda. This book is called "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself." I love the title and I love you. Good to see you.

Alan Alda: Hey, you too. Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: You all right?

Alda: Oh, yeah.

Tavis: It's good to see you.

Alda: I was looking forward to talking to you ever since I found out we'd talk.

Tavis: Yeah, well, no more excited than I was to have you come back. Starting with the title, I want to talk about the motivation for the book, which actually starts with the story you told the last time you were here. But first of all, the title, "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself." I love that title.

Alda: Well, in the middle of the night, I heard this voice because I was in the midst of being so glad to be alive. I heard this voice from the back of my head that said, "So have you lived a life of meaning?"

The reason I asked myself that, I think, is because I had been looking through all the things I had said, thinking about the things I'd said, the kind of advice I'd given to my children and my grandchildren to graduate in classes and commencement talks. I'm urging them to live a life of meaning and to think about their values and are they living by their values and that kind of thing.

So now I hear this voice, "Are you living a life of meaning?" I said, "Come on, please. What? Are you kidding? (laughter) I got this wonderful life." Then the voice said, "No, really. If you don't wake up tomorrow, will this have been a life of meaning?"

I guess I was sort of challenged by the very things I was reading. So I went back and really listened again to them because what I mean by that title is, when we give advice, we're really talking to ourselves, you know.

It's like a moment of hope. You hope that the young person will become what you're urging them to be and you hope that you're already what you're urging them to be, and not necessarily so (laughter). So I was listening to what I had told myself.

Tavis: So now let me go back to what I referenced a moment ago. When you were last on the show at the first book that did so well - I just call it the dog book. It's shorter to say.

Alda: "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed."

Tavis: Exactly. So that book did remarkably well and that book closes with a story about you being on your death bed basically. You almost died in Chile?

Alda: Yeah, in Chile, within a couple of hours of dying. Well, what happened was, I was up on top of a mountain. We were doing our science program, "Scientific American Frontiers." I was interviewing astronomers, you know, eight thousand feet up and I got this incredible pain in my gut and I didn't know what it was. It got worse and worse and worse until I was really out of it. I was just screaming in pain.

They took me down the mountain in an old ambulance that looked like one of the "Mash" ambulances and it worked like one of them too (laughter). They couldn't get it started. I'm lying in the back screaming and they're going, "Well, I don't know. What do you think it is?"

So they get me down there in this incredibly - I was so glad that this guy, Dr. Zapata, was there who was an expert in intestinal surgery and he saved my life. He knew what the problem was and he took out about a yard of my intestine and I lived (laughter).

So I couldn't have been happier to be alive. I woke up euphoric and looking to see if I could get the most juice out of this new life I was handed. Most people who go through this, like Governor Corzine now in New Jersey, you know, he tells everybody that his life's a little different now.

As happy as I was to be alive before that and didn't think I could be happier, I'm way happier because I know that this conversation we're having now wasn't scheduled, you know. This wouldn't have happened. So I'm much more tuned in. The colors are more vivid, what people say is more interesting. I really am loving it.

Tavis: When I think of this book when I started to go through it in anticipation, of course, of our wonderful conversation, there are two quotes that kind of popped in my head that I wanted to get your thought about relative to your work. The first comes from Socrates, of course, who says, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

I'm blanking on the author of the second quote now, but the point essentially is that "it takes more courage to examine your own soul than it does for a soldier to take to the battlefield."

Alda: Well, I'll go along with that because I ain't going to go to the battlefield (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) Hey, you were on "Mash." You were already on the battlefield.

Alda: That's as close as I'm going to get (laughter).

Tavis: You were on the battlefield for like fifteen seasons or whatever it was. That said, when you attempt to be Socratic, to examine your own life, which again takes courage to do that, what do you find?

Alda: Well, I thought it was really interesting. I've been lucky enough to live through most of the things that we all think will give meaning to our lives, trying to be an artist, being a father, a husband, being devoted to love and even trying to do good with other people. I had celebrity which a lot of people think will solve all their problems, but it doesn't, and even money.

But what's funny is, none of that, or at least not any one of them, gives me a personal sense of lasting satisfaction that I would define as meaning. Because you say meaning enough, it starts to lose its meaning. I want to have meaning in my life between now and the time it's over. I'm not thinking about getting meaning later on after I'm dead (laughter). I want to know now.

Tavis: You want it now.

Alda: I want it now, yeah. And I'm greedy. I want as much of tasting of this life as I can. It's funny. I got into this thing where it's something that another guy said a long time ago, Marcus Aurelius, the emperor who was also a great writer who said, "All we have is now."

That registered with me along with what brain scientists have told me on the science show where they said our experience of now in the brain lasts about five seconds. Of course, it keeps moving, you know. But except for those five seconds, anything that happened just prior to that is already a memory.

So when we were joking a couple of minutes ago, we're not in that now anymore. That's a memory. Or thinking about the future is also outside of now. So staying in those five seconds has become for me a kind of a game to see if I can do it, to see if I actually can just see what's happening now.

Your tie is so vivid to me right now. I'm watching you think. I'm hearing what you say and I'm also hearing what's coming up out of the back of my own head because I'm more connected to that than I would be if I was worried about what I was going to say next.

Tavis: That's fascinating to me, in part, because it gives a whole new meaning to that advice we hear all the time to "live in the moment." What you're saying is right. We're living like in five-second moments.

Alda: Five-second moments. It just keeps moving and I'm trying to just keep up with it as it goes, you know. I mean, look, I was trained to do this as an actor. You know, you got to stay in the moment as an actor. You act moment to moment. You don't decide the night before how you're going to play it. You don't think as you're in this moment, "How am I going to say that next line?" You just are there for each moment.

So I've had experience in doing this and I'm getting better and better at it on the stage. But in my own private life, I never went for it the way I'm going for it now and it's really interesting. It's funny that that gives me a sense of meaning and that's not one of the things that are listed in the list of meaningful activities.

Tavis: There is so much good advice in this book and I want to get to some of it. I want to start with something I think segues nicely from what you just said now, which is that you love the opportunity to get better at what you do, not to get praised for it.

Alda: Well, I do like to get praise (laughter). Let's be honest.

Tavis: Okay (laughter).

Alda: But I look to get better. I don't look to get the praise. When the praise comes, I really like it, but I don't dawdle over it if I can possibly help it. I think there are two wonderful pleasures for me. One is to be able to do something well. That really feels good. To get better at it feels even better.

That's where risk keeps coming in. You know, you talk about the risk of the guy going on the battlefield, or the woman. It's scary when you try to get better at anything. I mean, no matter what. If you're an acrobat or a piano player - I mean, I carry it too far. I have to tell you. I'm a little nutty (laughter).

Tavis: Now you tell me (laughter).

Alda: I eat oatmeal every day, see? So instead of making it forty minutes every day because I use that really good kind, I decided to make a vat of it in the beginning of the week and stick it in the microwave for three minutes every morning.

Tavis: (Laughter) Okay.

Alda: So I go to the microwave one day and I opened the door. Three minutes have gone by and I didn't know where they went. I thought, "Oh, my God, I'm supposed to be paying attention to every second. What's happening to me?" I calmed down. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to like worry?

When I put my shoes and socks on, am I supposed to put one sock on and then the shoe right away? Maybe I'd save a couple of seconds. So I tried it. I actually did that. I tried a different way. I saved ten seconds. I could read "War and Peace" by the end of my life if I put those seconds to get there (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) That's funny.

Alda: I backed away from that. I mean, I'm not crazy enough to actually do that. I put them on the regular way now.

Tavis: You talk in this wonderful book, "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself," also about the need for curiosity, that each one of us has to live a life where we are curious about something.

Alda: Well, I'm personally very curious. I don't want to tell other people what to do, but I don't know how my life would have been if I wasn't so curious. I just love to think, you know? It's really fun to think and try to figure something out.

But I'm a little nutty. I stand in the elevator and I spend the time thinking, "I wonder why the buttons are in that order? There must have been some reasoning behind that. I wonder what that was?" You know, that kind of thing. But it keeps you busy. It keeps you interested.

Tavis: You speak of your life. It's never lost to me every time I see you. Since I last saw you, you've celebrated - if I got this right - your fiftieth since you were last here?

Alda: Yeah, yeah. This March, we were married fifty.

Tavis: Congratulations.

Alda: Thank you.

Tavis: Fifty years of matrimony for Mr. Alda and wife. I'm trying to juxtapose your being married fifty years with knowing - because I've read how your life began - I'll let you explain that.

Alda: There's my wife and I at my graduation from college.

Tavis: Fifty years of your being married is so far removed from the way you were raised, what you were exposed to.

Alda: Well, yeah, that's true. I mean, first of all, I was brought up in burlesque standing in the wings watching burlesque comics and strippers and chorus girls, which is a very odd beginning for a two year old.

Tavis: That's why you're nutty (laughter).

Alda: Could be, could be. Slowly I turn (laughter).

Tavis: (Laughter) It's all that burlesque, yeah.

Alda: But in addition to that, my poor mother was schizophrenic and my father was often absent because he was off traveling. The interesting thing, there were the three of us. If you look really closely at that picture, you can see a slightly distracted look in my mother's eye.

However, she loved me and I knew she loved me. She told me I could do anything and I believed it. I went off and did things I really wasn't capable of until I realized that I guess I can do things if I just have a go at it.

I don't know what saved me. I was talking to some brain scientists yesterday. They were saying that what I sensed about life is in fact true chemically. You come in with a certain constitution that can tolerate a certain level of stress. Some people come in with a constitution that can't tolerate anywhere near that level of stress. And if you can take it, if you can tolerate it, you can get stronger from it. But if you can't, you can really break down from it. We just have different tolerances.

Tavis: I'm just picking things that I just found fascinating. You talk in this book about patience and how important it is to have a little bit of that, whatever that thing is.

Alda: I think it's really important. It's been important to me, anyway. I learned it from a guy I worked with for decades now. Forty or forty-five years, we've been working together. He's Martin Bregman who's been my manager all that time.

He's only ten years older than me, but he's in some ways like a father or an uncle and also like a colleague and like a competitor. You know, we have a whole complicated relationship, but I love him. He always had his eye on the long-distant goal. My natural inclination to be patient was really strengthened by working with him.

When I spoke at his daughter's graduation, I took that idea and I applied to us now, the life we live now, which is moving at the speed of light. Young people often don't get a chance to think things through before they make a move.

Everything takes place in time. Chemical reactions take place in time. Bereavement takes place in time. Things have to heal; they have to grow, getting from childhood to maturity. It all takes time. We can't rush it. In a way, I was a late bloomer and I guess that's because I took the time and I'm glad I did.

Tavis: It's worked out.

Alda: Well, so far okay (laughter).

Tavis: Yeah, so far. Who knows? Who knows what might happened tomorrow, but it's worked out so far today (laughter). You said something a moment ago, Alan, that I want to go back and get if I can. Same manager, forty-five years?

Alda: Something like that. Forty or forty-five, yeah.

Tavis: Whatever. That's a long time, in this business especially. Talk to me about that relationship and how you keep it intact that long. You got a wife for - same woman - you've been married to for fifty years, same manager for over forty years.

Alda: Yeah.

Tavis: I think that that kind of loyalty, that kind of constancy, means something in the world that we live in and yet we live in a world where so few people have the same companion in a relationship or in a partnership or business arrangement for long periods of time.

Alda: Well, I really don't know what the ingredients are except, in the simplest way, my wife and I love each other, so that accounts for that. Anybody who wants to stay married for fifty years, I suggest that you love each other (laughter).

Tavis: It helps.

Alda: It gets you at least forty-nine (laughter). Marty and I love each other too, you know. We respect each other and we get things from each other that each one is generous to give to the other, and we trust each other.

Tavis: I'm not a blue card person really -

Alda: - no, but they're very nice.

Tavis: Thank you. I'm glad you like these blue cards. I'm not really a blue card person, but Carol gave these to me in part because I wanted to make sure I got this right. It's in the book, but it's just easier to hold this card.

I give commencement speeches all the time. I just agreed to do some for next year. We're still months away from next year, but we're just trying to get the calendar filled up already. You do this all the time. You've done many more than I have, so you're the expert here. But I'm always fascinated. I always try to study the art of giving a good commencement speech.

Alda: Oh, that's interesting.

Tavis: It's just one of those things I just love looking at. I love watching commencement speeches and seeing what works. I think that's a really important time to talk to people and there really is an art in getting on and getting off and not boring these people who really didn't come to see you. They came to get their degree and they want to go spend time with their family. Maybe they came to see Alan Alda, but not Tavis Smiley.

Alda: Either way.

Tavis: Anyway, there are a number of things that you lay out in one of your signature commencement speeches and this is the one that you would give on your deathbed.

Alda: Yeah, right (laughter).

Tavis: The commencement speech you would give on your deathbed. I want to run quickly through some of the elements of the deathbed commencement speech. In no particular order, "Find someone to laugh with."

Alda: Well, I think that's important. When you're laughing, you're vulnerable. You're usually not defended. I mean, you get helpless with laughter, when you're really laughing. That opens you up to another person. So if you can keep each other laughing, that's pretty good.

Tavis: Number two, "Find someone to laugh at." I like that (laughter).

Alda: Find something to laugh at, and yourself is always good.

Tavis: That's a good thing.

Alda: I mean, if you can laugh at yourself, then you're really not defended against who you're with.

Tavis: "Keep moving."

Alda: Yeah, keep moving. That's really good. Keeping in motion is one of the ways we have of finding meaning in our lives. I don't think it's the only way, but it's really good to keep moving because it means that you don't get to sit and stew. Everything is made of action. There isn't anything in nature that isn't active. Every little amoeba is trying to find food or a mate, you know, trying to reproduce itself.

There's always some kind of action going on. I mean, my guess is that a catatonic person is putting a lot of energy into avoiding pain. There's probably a blockage in the neurons too, but there's a lot of energy going into that. Everything is active and, to be really alive, I think staying in motion is a real part of it.

You know, letting the stuff that's back in the back of your brain where probably most of our most important thinking is going on, not at the awareness level, being aware of letting things come into your consciousness, lets those things come up. So the motion that you take, the action you take, I think has a better chance of being meaningful.

Tavis: "Make someone happy."

Alda: Well, that's true, isn't it? Don't we feel good when we make other people happy? This was simple-minded advice I was giving to kids and probably somebody else will give them that advice twenty more times in their life. If one of those times sticks and they try it, they might be a little happier.

Tavis: I got two more to go and I'm going to get to them. I'm laughing internally at your word choice at least about simple-mindedness. They may be simple-minded, but they're not so easy to do because, if they were, the world would be a whole lot better place.

Alda: You said it.

Tavis: We wouldn't need this book (laughter).

Alda: You know, it's funny. Like "living in the now." It sounds very sixties. You know, we heard that from Baba Ramdas, right? Yeah, we heard it from Marcus Aurelius. We probably heard it even earlier than that. Some guy in a cave said, "Hey, you know, we're in a cave."

Tavis: Let's live in the now (laughter). "Find out how you can be helpful."

Alda: Well, boy, that really feels good. That's like making someone happy. But, you know, there are things about that that are kind of important. You got to make sure you can actually be helpful and that they want you to.

I remember one time my wife Arlene and I were crossing the street and there was a lady who seemed to be quite a bit older than us. This street had potholes in it and everything and we said, "Can we help you across?" She said, "No, you want me to help you across?" (laughter) She didn't need the help and she was kind of put out by the offer of it.

Tavis: The last thing I want to mention because I love this is to "Keep score your way."

Alda: Well, you do that.

Tavis: I try to.

Alda: I see you every night do that.

Tavis: Thank you.

Alda: You know, the example I think I came up with when I was talking to those kids was, if you think a happy home is a success and not a big house, then why would you live by that other standard? If you keep score your way, then I think you have a better chance of winding up feeling okay about how things turned out because you may not get the other guy's way.

Tavis: This book is chock full of wonderful advice like that we have had a chance to get to in this very short conversation. I highly recommend the new book from perennial bestseller, Alan Alda, "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself." While you're at it in the bookstore, pick up a copy of "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed." Two good pieces of work from a great man, a wonderful humanitarian, Alan Alda. Alan, nice to have you here.

Alda: Oh, it was great.

Tavis: Always an honor to see you, man. Take care of yourself.

Alda: Me too. I enjoyed it very much.