Salon@615-Alan Alda

[Music] [Music] this is going to be really easy we can't top that no oh yeah we could read the phonebook to each other and we're gonna be fine hi hi Ann hi Alan so guess what I don't have with me tonight Alan what's that notes note I have no notes no notes this is a this is the new Alan Alda method of interviewing people on stage which you will you all have this book and you're gonna go home and read it and it's gonna change your life but part of it is we just spontaneously interact with one another yes oh because they haven't read the book yet I guess I should explain that a little bit when I one of the things I learned that had led to the writing of the book was that when I was doing the science program Scientific American frontiers I did it for about 11 years and at first I thought it would be really important to be smart and ask them questions to based on their own papers and I read all their papers and that turned out to be really dumb because I didn't know enough to understand their papers well enough to ask them good questions I asked them questions about what I thought was in the papers and what it meant and I could see this funny look on their face because I was boxing them into something that was not true not true about their work and they didn't want to say to me while the camera was running what the hell is the matter with you so I've learned and it was interesting because the book you know has that in the title about what the look on my face and I learned that the best policy would be to go in as ignorant as I really was and I didn't I didn't pretend to an ignorance I didn't have but was genuine but I was curious and I just wanted to understand their work but as from that time one I never had a list of questions I just went in and asked them things that I was curious about so that I because I knew you didn't read the book yet and if it bogs down you can read it during this internship but see now that makes me feel like I didn't get the book what do you mean well I mean you're saying that you didn't get their scientific papers oh no no no but the thing that I learned in the process was that a conversational approach to view a conversation is so much more interesting and involving and engaging than somebody asking questions that the other person in effect turns away from the questioner and speaks to the audience in lecture mode if you don't really want to know something no matter how well you understand the book and if you understand the book so well you say to me explain to us that part of the book were you it's like being asked a question in school yeah you know it's not it's not the live it's more fun to be alive I think it's scary though is it well should I be scared no no you shouldn't be scared I should be scared because when I come out with my stack of note cards that's my little security blind that's my binky and I'm just rubbing my thumb over him the whole time thank you my dad your big hair Becky we did something really has changed me we I helped start this Center for communicating science eight years ago and we teach thousands of Sciences and medical professionals around the world to communicate better and we teach them in pride and their what do you suppose that was I think I think maybe John is upset with us everything okay don't we assigned your damn book he's laughing he likes lecture you can laugh we're getting we're out here and now we're deaf yeah right I'm that would give me where I was we have a cute person the way there's yes so you started this oh started oh yes they really very massive right out of our heads I remember it well no so we teach improvisation before we teach anything else about communication because the improvisation puts you in touch with the other person in this conversational way that we were talking about so one that this is all comes back to being afraid of saying the wrong thing okay one of the great exercises that would that our chief improv person invented on her own was the clown bell where we're given thing let's do it so the clown bow is you and I have to do something that's kind of difficult to do like I say one you say - I say three okay but I just want to say the clown bow is not in the damn book so you are actually freaking me out okay it's gonna get worse okay good so I say one you say - I say three okay one two three four no you say one one two three one four no remember you try to get this right I never say four one two three one two three okay now when you lose the rhythm you've made a mistake okay you got to think you have to say the clown bell which is every time one of us makes a mistake whoever it is has to go tada wouldn't this be easier if we just did shots what do you mean well that's what a game of shots right Oh shots you mean a drink you know when you make the whole town knows what shots is welcome to Nashville world okay this is where they have the honky-tonks alright good okay one two three one two three okay and it gets it gets more and more complicated but more and more you must you've driven to do today's now here's have a seat thank you sir it's all over the wonderful thing is I I had never seen this before and nor had I yeah and I did it a few times with the rest of the class I often take part in the workshops as well as help run them I would find myself making what felt like a terrible error in a meeting or on the air in an interview or something and if I was all by myself I'd go Patera and if I wasn't by myself I'd mentally go tada and it wiped it right off the slate you know what's interesting is I'm a very calm interviewer I do this a lot I don't have any stress about being on stage and my heart rate is is up at like 150 right now no kidding yeah so thanks for putting me at ease well you got to do this Ted I think more I guess yeah is amazing because we're both careful about our work we do the best most rigorous work we can and there's a tendency although I don't think of myself as a perfectionist there's a tendency to tend towards perfectionism and mistakes feel terrible and if you can give it up and say tada it it just takes away the feeling of failure and that's just a waste of time I really look at it this way that everything that everything that takes place everything is a stepping stone to something else whether it's something good or something kind of lousy it's still a stepping stone but what this book is asking us to do and what you're asking me to do here is break things down and I think that there is a deep human need especially as we get older to build our wall and make things safe and comfortable I've got my questions I know what I'm going to ask you I know what's going to happen and I'm gonna do a good job but everything this is about is is smashing the self you know the experience you believe you're about to have and live completely in the moment it's actually very Buddhist people have told me that yeah I didn't did never thought of it but but that's scary it's my heart it's to me it's kind of I understand that it's scary and it it is amazing to me because what this does is put us in a position of empathy where we're reading the other person and we're understanding what they're going through and the way I believe scientists track the process of empathy is that I know what you're going through because I feel at first I experienced a hint of it and that's how I know that it's happening to you I pick up your clues and pick up clues from you and it does something to my brain and I sense the way I sense what you're going through is that I'm going through it that's the idea anyway I mean I think they I don't know if that's just somebody's hypothesis or they figured it out they had the answer to it but the the thing is that when I am connected to you it feels good yeah why the the part that amazes me is that we retreat from this we call ourselves social animals and yet we behave as if we're condemned to one another's company what that's such a weird thing yeah and empathy can be taught and we teach empathy and yet you can lose it I lose it I have to go through I have exercises that I do during the day that bring me back in touch with people with empathy yeah I think it bright what I think I'm doing it what no no I wouldn't know I know I mean I I'm not certain that it works but if there's some little bit of a little bit of evidence that it does so what's an empathy exercise for me what it is is when I'm talking to somebody I check out whether or not I've actually for instance noticed the color of your eyes now we've been together a lot in the last two or three days yeah you don't have green eyes I do oh wait a minute oh you do have green eyes no I see from over here they looked hazel my father had hazel eyes I think I have hazel that's what it is yeah I'm also telepathic that's right so noticing the color the eyes noticing the person's hair what they're wearing the jewelry that they're wearing all of a sudden I'm looking at you and I noticed very often in a meeting especially an important meeting where I'm trying to get a point across to somebody I realized when I if they're maybe 10 minutes I finally look at them and see them I realized that up until then I've just had a blob where their face was that's amazing you know have you ever done that the Buddhists exercise where you wish someone well and I do this in airports all the time and it makes me feel so much better what do you mean a stranger a total straight like you're just passing by people and you look at them and you think I wish you peace I wish you happy and you get arrested a lot you keep it inside oh I see oh well you didn't tell me that hi I wish you peace yes officer no but if I'm frustrated and they're all that that feeling of this this river of life coming down the concourse towards me and all these people going past and I just try to pick one person out and it's not even about making eye contact with them but I think just I just look at them and I think I wish you peace I wish you happiness I wish similar it sounds very similar to what I do because what I do with strangers passing me I try to think what are they going through right now exactly mmm I just practice trying to read them mm-hmm and it turns out that me do you find yourself slipping away from empathy you seem like an empathetic person that's one way I can really say it and I don't know if I think about it so much is slipping away from empathy as I think about it as retreating into my self into the bell jar yeah you know where it there's too much going on and I just want to be in my own head in my own body alone and then I'm I feel an assault of all the world coming at me but if I can feel some compassion yeah then I feel like I can be more at peace yeah you know one of the things that I find interesting about the notion of empathy is that it is not in and of itself equal to compassion at least in the way I think of it I I think of empathy as a kind of indispensable tool for good communication I can't really communicate with you unless I have a sense of what you're going through so I know how you're receiving what I'm saying to you or what I'm trying to convey to you but that doesn't mean I have compassion for you in fact if I know really well what you're going through and I'm better able to communicate something I want you to believe and I don't care whether it's to your benefit or not I want to just do it because it's to my benefit I'm using empathy in a way that's not only not compassionate it's hurtful explain I thought I just did why to what end would you use empathy in a hurtful way well we get for instance if I was a bully bullies know I believe what you're feeling oh I get it and they can twist your feelings and make you feel really bad and then they know that you're feeling bad and then they are happy you know because they feel now superior or whatever their dynamic of bully ism is can you think of any examples yeah like people maybe like people in public life yeah no not offhand the you know propaganda does that the the Nazis were really good at it did they're there you can you using fear to motivate people to to do what you want them to do l have interrogators use it really well an interrogator from what I've read and Tara Gators can make you feel helpless by using your feelings against you so that I call that dark empathy because it's important to me to think of empathy as a tool and not as a squishy touchy-feely feel-good emotion if we all had empathy I think Barack Obama was mistaken when he said the world should have more empathy and then we'd all be better off like that's a paraphrase I'm not sure he said exactly that but that idea I doesn't it sounds like it's missing something to me because I think you can use empathy to someone's disadvantage but if you want to communicate some of something with somebody and if you want to do good to another person it's really really good to be able to use empathy to do it but I think it's just a tool it's interesting I I don't watch television like not watching television is sort of my religion and I saw that's how you're going to get to heaven it is the bedrock of my peace of mind but I remember seeing an ad for alarm systems once where the woman is at home and it's dark and she's in her nightgown and a guy in steel-toed boots comes and kicks in the door and it's then then the other guy walks up and says boy sure you had an alarm system and there's a phone number and you know everybody is yeah you know dialing up the phone number but that seems like dark empathy you know that they use like it to me you're using the fear of the other to sell a product right and it doesn't matter and all kinds of selling it seems to me in which the objective is to say whatever you need to to pry their money out of them yeah he's using empathy in it's not to not to their advantage and not to your advantage because the most successful selling has been revealed over and over again by studies and by successful salespeople that if you tried to find out I think Daniel Goleman said this who talked to talked about EQ emotional equivalent emotional quote quotient that the idea in selling successful selling is not just that you know what they want and sell that to them know what they really need even if they don't know it quite themselves and be kind of firm about helping them get what they really need then you've made that person better off why wouldn't they want to come back to you and buy from you again that's a beautiful thing especially if you're selling books actually I watch the address of the store you know I'm serious and one of the things that I do in the bookstore if I'm talking to a person and they have a book in their hand that I know is not the right book for them having talked to them I'll take it away I'll rip it out of their hands that's for my cousin yeah but it's true I mean there are times somebody has the wrong book what I want is for people to have a positive experience with reading yes you know if somebody comes into the store and says I haven't read a book in 10 years this is my first time into the bookstore which actually happens really and and look I picked up this book it's very interesting it's a man without qualities and I'm like you're doomed you're totally nobody is gonna read a man without qualities you're just gonna take this book home you're gonna read one paragraph you're gonna feel like a failure and then you're not going to read so let me give you a book that's gonna make you feel like a success there's the there's the perfect example there you go so okay now there's a real balance in the book but also in the work you do between empathy and if I have my note card I would remind theory of mine you're mine yes and it's sort of the brain and heart balance so I don't want to talk about empathy without talking also about yeah that's good the scientists have called this awareness of the other person's state of mind they call it theory of mind which means you have a theory of what the other person is thinking if you have a theory about what they're feeling that's empathy some estimate of what they're feeling what their viewpoint is theory of mind is more what they're thinking is it a very interesting thing I love to think about this being ties together so many things this this the idea is if I'm on people who have studied this that when we're children this we've all gone through this until the age of about four or five we don't realize that other people are thinking things different from what we're thinking we think that what we're thinking they're thinking and and the the example is if you show a kid a cartoon of a woman coming into a room of putting a cookie on the table and then leaving then somebody a man comes in it takes the cookie and puts it in a closet and the four-year-old is watching this or three and a half-year-old now the first woman comes back in and the the the researcher says to the child where does she think the cookie is and the child says she thinks it's in the closet because the child saw it put in the closet but the woman was outside didn't see it put in the closet the kid believes that what I know she knows even though who was kind of clear by the cartoon she wasn't there it's not until they're about five years old that they four or five that they get the idea that you can have an idea in your head different from my idea and that's when they start to lie what's the point of lying if they know what you're thinking right now the interesting thing to me about this is the smartest of us do it even though we're not five years old or four years old and that's called the curse of knowledge the curse of knowledge was a term invented by a couple of economists about 20 years ago but the way it's used mostly now is if I know something with such depth and in such complexity that I assume you understand it the way I understand it I'm cursed by my own knowledge not that it's a curse to have knowledge it's a curse to think that what knowledge I have is shared by you so if I talk jargon to you that only my colleagues understand at a professional level and you're not one of my colleagues I'm exercising the curse of knowledge on you that's interesting it's what's really interesting is how how much can be conveyed with so little for instance can you hear this it's probably hard to hear you can okay now watch this talk to the audience for a minute I'm gonna get out my iPhone hi I'm awfully glad you're here you should all be at all of the Parnassus books events Matthew quick author of the silver linings playbook will be at Parnassus books win Nick Thursday thank you very much Thursday at 6:30 and Julia glass who wrote three June's will be there the next week it's a really good book okay that's enough of that thank you it's like great that was the intermission yeah that was really good okay I'm gonna show you three songs the first lines of three songs okay don't say that it don't say it out loud don't hum or sing okay and you're gonna pick out pick out one of those okay these are very well known songs everybody knows these songs yeah you know what's really funny about this what I was reading this in the book and I thought of a song that I think I could tap in that you would know can I play it with you that right now I'm the teacher let's have a little discipline here would you fold your hands on your desk okay okay okay usually what you're gonna do is you're gonna tap out this song and you're going to be able to tell what the song is these are all very well-known songs and if you if you recognize it don't say anything we'll ask you in a minute so start start tapping and by the way this is really well known we can stop for a second she's just going to tap not going to do the melody but this so what percentage of the people do you think will get I would think zero from that if you would let me tap out my song no no no go ahead and tap yours or mine no the one you pick from here I just did well undo it or they didn't get more did they have to get it don't say anything don't say anything okay this is good not how many of you think you know what it is one I'm voting on this guy right in the front waited maybe about three people I think what do you sir what do you think jingle bells anybody else think what do you think it is what is it oh yes Star Spangled Banner right okay can I tap out money okay okay okay really quick go ahead good the Battle Hymn of the Republic anybody [Laughter] if we had prizes you would get one just for that anybody no ok how many did you think we'd get it did anybody get this please wait a minute wait a minute HUD should give us the percentage yeah ok but I'll go back in time what percentage do you think we'd get it well I read the book so that's not a fair assessment but you said I know one you're gonna get right away oh well that's true yeah I did by sea by jumping over your desire and tapping out my own damn song you proved the point it was Hernandez hideaway oh sure oh one person out of 800 ok here's the thing I just want to point out is you know most people say 50 percent of the audience would get it some people say 80 percent and thought surely I would get it which is a hundred percent right right cuz you were doing it for me that's right heart beating is act the graduate student at Stanford who figured this exercise out found that testing it on thousands of people and I've tested it on thousands of people only at at most two and a half percent ever get it and what's interesting about this to me is this is an example of the curse of knowledge it's very hard to tap out a song without hearing the melody in your head when you hear the melody you believe they're hearing the melody it's hard to believe that the tapping plus the melody in your head isn't going to communicate the song too that winning combination it's perfect yeah right so that to me is a fall back to the time when we were kids and we thought what's happening in my head is happening in your head but the greatest of scientists do this when they talk jargon to the rest of us in the public or to each other sometimes when neuroscientists and nano scientists got together in Washington to talk about exploring the brain together they argued for hours over the meaning of the word probe Wow it's an ordinary English word and they meant different things by it but it was jargon in each field and they couldn't share the meaning of the term so we're all cursed with the curse of knowledge sometimes when we just want to tell each other how we feel about something you haven't talked to me enough today or you left your socks on the floor or I tripped over your shoes with there are so many things about that that we think the other person is getting with the slightest reference or no reference at all right you know we think if I notice it and think about it and have a reaction to it surely this other person knows exactly how I feel and why don't they get with it okay this is the great and important thing about this book now I will turn to you and say it bothers me a little bit that it is presented as a book about communicating science because it is a book about communicating science but it is so much more importantly a book about communicating to everyone I know now give me some advice because I know I did that but I didn't mean to do I meant it to make the opposite point that it's a book for everybody but I told it as a story that began with my work on science and and I hoped to convey the idea that I began to realize it applied to everybody but maybe because I started with that that's the overall impression you get what could I have done better well I think it's packaging I mean because I think it's the idle and his packaging sorry too late but once you get in once you get into the book it's very clear I mean all of you who came to see Alan Alda because you love Alan Alda as an actor and you've had this lifetime of experience with him and then you've got this book and you're looking at the book and you're thinking well you know it's about communicating science communicating science isn't necessarily my thing these people are not probably all here because they wish to better communicate science but what I want to say to you is read this book carefully and then I read it when the galley came out I read it months ago and then I read it again and I got so much out of it just in terms of my own life my own marriage friendships working with my colleagues at the bookstore how can we better communicate with one another as humans and I wish all of those humans were lining up to buy the book not just the people who are interested yes I agree with you and that and you told me that something like this when we had dinner months ago and since then I've been trying to underline how it's for humans right because most of our sales have been to chimps silver and but actually it says on the cupboard the my adventures in the art and science of relating and communicating so there's the word science does appear but science actually is a turn-off for a lot of people I realized that yeah why is that I probably because it hasn't been communicated by people who've read my book yeah yeah they would just read my damn book we'd be alright I think I actually think that's really true but it's true for all sorts of people ok now I made a connection speaking of scientists that I wondered if you made in your mind you have this whole part about autism and kids on the spectrum going to this camp and the acting techniques are used to work with these kids and it's so helpful did you make any connection between the spectrum II kids and scientists no but but you see where I did there there there is that stereotype that exists on not only in the part of the public but on the part of many scientists I have a friend Steve Strogatz who's a really wonderful mathematician and a wonderful teacher and his goal is and then we're going to be collaborating to try to help mathematicians communicate about math because that is harder than the rest of science but his joke to me about other mathematicians and this is not my joke it's a mathematicians joke where he said you know how to tell whether you're talking to an introverted mathematician or an extroverted mathematician the extrovert is looking at your shoes [Laughter] but that's the stereotype the fact is all your any type sometimes come from someplace well sure yeah there's no question but I can't tell you how many scientists I talked with on the science program where I must have talked to 700 scientists and over at 11 or 12 years they were funny they were outgoing they they were human they had human frailties like the rest of us and they were personal when we did this conversational thing if we didn't they would sometimes even when we did they drift off into lecture mode I was talking to a scientist once who is she her work was so interesting and we had a real really good conversation going and then I think she remembered that what she was telling me was a lot like a lecture she gave and she slowly turned away from me and looked right in the camera and started lecturing the camera and her vocabulary changed her tone of voice I couldn't understand what she was saying so I coaxed her back with some questions and she came back to me she got warm again and personal and we were talking essentially a little by little she turned back it was like Niagara Falls slowly I thought so some people can't help but lecture mode is real appealing to a lot of people but scientists do not all conform to the stereotype but the thing is scientists are trained for a good reason not to present their work with their personality showing but to present the work on the basis of the relevance of the data the accuracy of the data I don't want to cross a bridge that was built by somebody on the basis of his cute personality by his gregarious me he's a great guy you got to come over across this bridge so it's kind it's important that that when they're talking business that they don't get personal most of the time sometimes to get a collaboration going even in your own lab for the people in the lab the members of a team to really work well together the more they engage one another in this empathic way the better the teamwork goes and that teamwork applies in a science lab it applies among parents and children couples lovers actors actors teams in business there's research on the fact that teams that are really really good at doing any job you give them have three characteristics one is they are good at I've got to hope I get all three right I think the three are they're they're pretty empathic they feel free to speak speak up and the more presence of women on the team the better the team does that's true with everything yeah it's even true in a marriage the more women in America a big shout to find extra oh sorry a big shout out to my sister wife Arlene so talk about your training I mean what there is a very specific reason why you're the man for this job you're the man for this job because you are a great actor and you have had a lifetime of experience in acting that you have brought to science so make these people happy and talk some about acting and that training and how you've brought all that okay so it starts when I'm two-and-a-half years old and I have my memories to go back that far because I was standing in the wings watching burlesque shows very hard to forget watching the chorus girls and the strippers it gave me a lifetime interest and I was watching the comics and my father who was a straight man and a singer and it became second nature to me to observe their timing the improvisational air they had years later when my father was playing Sky Masterson on Broadway in Guys and Dolls he was the original Sky Masterson it was what he was acting alongside Sam Levine who I always thought even I was fifteen standing in the wings watching but I thought Sam was a genius my father was perfect in the part of Sky Masterson II nobody ever played it better than him including Marlon Brando and he never played any other part as well as that it was just an absolutely perfect fit and I knew him because he's my father I know where all his acting juices come from so it was very educational to see that when you know somebody and you know where the stuff is coming from you see how they do it Sam Levine was this genius standing next to him who although he said the same words every night stood in the same place was improvising his performance every night he would do it differently every night and in a Broadway house the laughs would come in different places every night because it's different parts of what he had to say we're funny because he followed it wherever it went and he was open I mean emotionally open which I feel like is the point of all of this present and open yeah be there that was an it he would follow the other actor wherever the other actor went you know and he would also follow his own trail wherever he went it the way you say something in one moment influences the way you say the very next thing if it's all in one long speech the way you say something makes me say it differently I don't stay my next line because it's in the script I say it because you do something or say something that makes me say it and makes me say it a certain way that's the best kind of acting right where life takes place between us but that's not the way it always goes no I I get kind of bored watching it the other kind of back then where it's all worked out individually I figure out my part you figure out your part and we say them at each other and we come out with our note cards yeah it's a little like that yeah to just dive in and see what happens to dance together to swing together it's funny people say and that's what keeps you from having a long run itis you know people come backstage if I've been in a play that's been running six months or a year they say how can you do the same thing night after night I don't do the same thing night of tonight yeah that would be like somebody saying you want to dance and you say no I've done that right I mean it's different it ought to be a little different every time and that's interesting and you don't know where it's going to go and you discover things and when I was younger I used to say oh that was good now I got to remember that and make sure that happens next time baloney sometimes something else will happen you never thought of but it's kind of amazing that you took all this training and all this experience and brought it to communication but I didn't plan it it was all in in front facing yeah well yeah it's not yeah okay but but it wasn't that I said look I know how to do this I'm gonna now teach 8,000 scientists and doctors and nurses to to be spontaneous it happened step by step and I didn't know where I was going I don't believe in 5-year plans and and in life I think the Russians and the Chinese showed us that five-year plans don't work I I was drawn to improvisation that's the only acting extraneous improvisation I'm only for about six months but it changed me as a person that is an actor and I got better and better at relating to the other person and when I started to do the science show simply because I was interested in science in the doing of it as they described before I began to realize that I can apply this improv stuff to the interviews and when it was over right though wouldn't it be great to have all scientists have and later it turned out to be doctors as well we went from scientists to doctors and nurses wouldn't it be great to train them to be good communicators the way these people are in the conversations were having on the show without having to have somebody like me standing next to them drawing it out of them so what have we taught them improvising and then taught them how to distill their message what how to make the most effective message but then relate to another person as they might create that that message and that's how the Center for communicating science came into being and now we years ago we started working with medical professionals just adjusting it a little bit and now to help raise money for the center I started a company that will train in corporations trained people in business the first program is interesting here the first and all the money goes to the Center for community all the profits we make mm-hmm it's it's a little like Paul Newman's business but instead of selling spaghetti sauce we sell empathy there's a bigger market but I can't make up my mind between them uh but our first workshop is for women in business and it's really exciting you know what shots me I'm a woman in business yeah what do I need to know well you already do it I mean you sell the people what they well I don't know I don't know what we do is we find out what they need to work on what I can't believe this would be true of you but I was shocked to see in one workshop we said we had a little exercise where everybody who's has this come over here everybody who does that come over says everybody who feels that you need to have more confidence come over here everybody got up and went across the room Wow is that in any way true you know no it's not true of me I was the only one who didn't get up that's really interesting yeah so that they were brave enough to say that it's a wonderful thing and I think that right away these basic exercises we teach and therefore the role-playing we're able to go into which is similar to what we do with medical professionals we do you know with scientists it's a little different we do the improv and then the scientists use that to make public talks to develop a public talk so that the improv helps them relate to the audience with medical professionals we want them to be able to relate to the patient or to the rest of the team or sometimes you know but if there were medical researchers then they they have to relate to the audience as well but to one another at very levels the managerial staff and that kind of thing so with with with the women in business the very things that work in these other workshops already build up their their confidence but then when we go into the roleplay where where let's say you're your I'm your boss and you've got to ask me for more money or more help on your team or something like that you're better able to go through that roleplay and get more out of it if you've had the improvising exercises and will often stop the role-playing right in the middle of it and say let's go back to that exercise and refuel get that going again that that connection that makes this interaction work better and we send them out not only with these exercises in their minds I want them to go out with the tada thing and looking at each other and being able to read one another and to also leave with another person from the workshop that they've now made contact with right who's gone through the same experience they now speak the same language and before they have an important meeting they can contact each other and say let's go over this together and and get ready for it so that it live it lives beyond the world a buddy system yeah so you've got acting yeah you've got communication and then you've got writing I have read all three of your books you're a really really good writer oh thank you and that's you can't get higher praise yeah you got that from you and one of the things that amazes me about your writing and all of your books in if you haven't read the other two books you really they're just great they're all for sale they're all for sale Nasus books does she prays every author no actually I can just barely make it through some of them so that was a joke yeah but you have a quality that very few people have which is when I read your work it is as if you are reading it to me you so inhabit your writing your voice is so present and your own in your books but this is one of these things is not like the others so you're talking about acting is the group activity you're talking about teaching communications it's the group activity training the team doing improv and then you're talking about sitting down by yourself in a room writing a book that's a big shift and I'm just wondering how that is for you and how much you like it or don't I love it I loved the process right yeah because I there are those times whether I'm writing you know I wrote about 10% of math and I didn't know that yeah I really yeah and one of the one of the wonderful experiences was funny sayings that the characters would say would come to you out of nowhere like you're a lightning rod you must get that writing novels where suddenly stuff is happening that you didn't and you didn't know where it came from that's a wonderful experience that I have had have you had that maybe less than you but well the other thing is this may sound crazy and you may not agree with it because I find that novelists I've talked to don't seem to think so so so maybe it's just not true for that kind of writing but in the writing that you've talked about that I've done I do the same thing that we've been talking about all evening which is I think about how it's being how its landing in the head of the person that I'm writing for I don't just write to please myself I write to convey something to have something happen in the brain of another person I want them to feel something I want them to understand something what them to be elevated in some way I want them to laugh I want to have an effect on them and every sentence I write has that in it what's the point of the sentence I want to get that up front what's happening in the sense I want to get that name what's the punchline of the sense I think about this all the time and it's not just a mechanical thing I'm thinking of an effect on somebody on a kind of a person I don't think of a specific person my friend Steve Strogatz has written two or three books with one person in mind I've heard of people I know people who do this I'm the person oh wow wow isn't that amazing that is amazing and he's writing about tough stuff mathematics and he's thinking of all the conversations he's had with me where I say to him over and over again what is calculus again and he's helping me to get it step by step but you don't do that when you write a story I absolutely do not and what I do I write a book entirely for myself 100% it's the book I want to read well I write the book wait why writing for a reader yeah for me yeah but I write the book that's missing and it's why people don't read it while I'm writing I never sell a book before I'm finished writing it because it's it's my invisible friend it's my book for me and then it goes out into the world and when somebody says oh you know the book sold 20,000 copies this week I think I wonder if people are buying this for building material I wonder if somebody would like an extension on their house out of Commonwealth yeah because I can't ever imagine people reading my books I'm trying to go back in my mind when I think about this the - when I wrote episodes of mash and I've written about five movies did I write them for me or did I write them for somebody the only thing I can compared to is that there because I've been on the stage all my life and I've had the experience of hearing the audience respond yeah and it's not always laughter sometimes it's utter silence and the quality of the silence is a response to what's happening but I'm aware of my partners in the room and when I'm writing and something funny occurs to me I sometimes actually hear laughter so this is it says though some part of my brain is then does applause mean anything to you know standing up and applauding then you know if they're gonna be so laziest it's be seated while they have loved the hell with them I mean the reason that I asked is Renee Fleming said to me every opera singer sings for applause and any opera singer who tells you that she doesn't sing for applause is lying oh and I have a way by them when it's all over it's nice to get the applause but while you're doing it it's not for applause while you're doing it it's for it to happen in the best possible way and for something living to take place and that that it should be caught that you toss a ball out and it's caught by them and they toss the ball back yeah that's stayed up again I got a ball in my hand I'm a novelist Allen okay you got a ball in your this will make you such a better okay lay it on me man okay you can you can tell by how I handle the ball how big it is how heavy it is and therefore you'll bite your body will know because of what you see in my body how long it's gonna take for the ball to get to you right it's about the same size that's great a lot of people catch the ball when suddenly it's a softball so I sit back good good try it again good okay he's a beach ball okay [Laughter] so I forget why I brought that up because it was they were just needed to get up together what in what in your life are you proudest of you who have done so many different things oh do you see it's it's so gooey planned I'm really sorry but but it is the first thing I thought of I wouldn't say it except it's going so well okay it's me and Arlene I know I mean that's really nice at that that's and I'm not even so much proud of it as just glad about it you know but I guess proud is good because you can't stay together and be happy together without a certain amount of effort and forgiveness and taking pleasure we root for each other you do you know so that that makes a big difference amazing an amazing couple they just had their 60th anniversary yeah Thank You white I know your applause is well meant but it really wasn't hard what are rare what rare that's what it is that's what it is I never understood why you know we would get applause for our marriage but I always wondered what ardently where she at berlin's right up there right there what do you think do you find it odd when people applaud the 60 years yeah see I always say it's not that hard but she said it's not that hard for you you're married Arlene all that yeah that's the that's the main thing yeah yeah actually I agree I mean when I think of that in my mind the thing that's most astonishing to me in my life is my marriage is you've written about this it's the great good fortune of my life that green it is I think it's why we hang out together so um what do you want to do next what what what are some of the things you're gonna do up ahead I don't have any plans oh you do - you were telling me in the green well I have a calendar I'm stuck with the calendar I'm obligated at the brahms thing or you know what oh I said yeah Oh what are you doing yeah I'm there's at the end of the month there's a chamber music festival in the town next to where we live and we're close friends with the flutist who runs the festival and she has great musicians from all over the world so she's gonna have a concert of music by Clara Schumann Robert Schumann and Brahms and they all had a fascinating triangle together that lasted for years and has tantalized people what was the nature of their triangle they loved one another but was it platonic or whatever but that's not nearly as important as the love they had for each other and the support they gave each other and the incredible music that grew out of that so I wrote a piece that I'll read and when I get to that tells the story of their lives together and when I get to that part of the story where one of them wrote a piece of music the quartet or will play it so I'm looking forward to that yeah absolutely so we didn't open it up for audience questions and we're out of time and I want to throw the audience a bone because they've been so nice so tell a MASH story just to make the audience for questions it would have been this so they're telling me I'm trying to it's hard to think of my friend Wayne Rogers who died about a year ago there's a lovely guy and we were very close we decided that we had to be close because we're gonna play best friends in the show so the night before we started with her so we had dinner together we said let's give this everything we got and let's be on each other's side and we became close friends pretty much right away and he didn't like to drive so I would drive and the way an hour out to the location where we did the exteriors and we were such good friends I would tell him my dreams and he would interpret them for me this is the story they want this is really good yeah so one time I said I had this dream last night where we were doing a scene in the show and the director said say this next line from on top of that armoire and I said god there's no real reason for me to get up on the armoire you know no it's better for the camera if you're up there so Wayne said this is a very important dream as we do this show there are going to be directors who want us to do things that are not real and truthful and have no relationship to life just because it's good for the camera Wow let us a promise that we'll never do an armed war and every once in a while we'd get a direction Wayne would say armoire he was a very smart guy he had studied history at Princeton and was a businessman was a very successful businessman while he was acting and then became a financial commentator on the Fox Business Channel people always say to actors how can you remember all your lines Wayne could remember the entire text of the glass-steagall Act I mean he gave testimony before Congress Wow he quoted from memory amazing that is amazing they think actors are like children and we may be in the good way but that doesn't mean that we're not smart some of us I think you have to be pretty smart you have to be very smart to be to be funny to be a comedian a lot of comedians are way smarter than you think they are yeah that's true I was telling you that I just read this book that Tom Hanks wrote that's coming out in October and it's story it's a collection of short stories and it is fantastic I mean I I had it lying around for two months before I cracked it because I was weary of typing exactly no that's exactly Tom Hanks write short stories yeah yeah yeah and then I picked it up one night though I'll take a look at one of them and it turned out to be you know really one of the top three books I've read this year well you just hand sold me his book there you go it's been such an honor and a lot of fun and you've made me a better interviewer by breaking through my own insecurities and and crutches you kicked my crutch Allen oh well I fall down and I've had a wonderful time with you you've really been fun to be with thank you [Laughter] [Music] thank you [Music] you

Channel: Nashville Public Library

Views: 2,465

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: alan alda, ann patchett

Id: eQJwiKrUXmA

Length: 64min 53sec (3893 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017