Good evening and welcome to tonight's program presented by the Commonwealth Club Silicon Valley, Kepler's Bookstore and San Jose Repertory Theatre. My name is Bill Highlander and I will be your chair for this evening. Our thanks to the Bernard Osher Foundation for generously supporting tonight's special program. It's my pleasure to introduce Alan Alda award winning actor, writer, director and author of "Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself". After graduated from college and serving a six months throughout duty in the US army reserve. Alan began performing at the Cleveland Playhouse, Chicago Second City and on Broadway. It has been 11 years and one of his most terrible roles is Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H where he wrote and directed a number of episodes include the show's finale. With additional fringes in Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors", his solemn movie "The Four Seasons" and hosting the PBS series "Scientific American Frontiers", Alan continued to define himself as a talented and versatile writer, director and actor. Last year Alan hit the trifecta of acting distinctions receiving his 32nd Emmy nomination and sixth Emmy win for his role as conservative politician, Arnold Vinick on the final season of the West Wing. A Tony nomination as Shelly Levene in Glengarry Glen Ross, and his first Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Senator Ralph Owen Brewster Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. His memoir "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: and Other Things I've Learned" spent 19 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. In addition to acting, Alan's role as an activist includes supporting organizations like the Equal Rights Committee, St. Jude's Children's Hospital and the Ginger Foundation which he founded with his wife Arlene and has dedicated helping women and children. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Alan Alda. Thank you - thank you thank you very much. Thank you, very nice to see you tonight and I really appreciate your coming and hearing a little about about this second book I wrote which is this Sunday it's going to be on the New York Times best seller list, so I am really excited about that. This book was it's the second book that I wrote and it it starts off where the first one leaves off which was one a mountain top in Chile where - and you may have heard this before because it's you might have heard me talking about the first book but I will just pick you up if you have "oh hi up there, hello, hi". Well, that's nice. I will pick you up on the story in case you don't know it. and I was doing my science program, scientific American frontiers in Chile and I was up on top of a mountain 8,000 feet up talking to astronomers in an observatory and I was waiting to interview them for the final interview or so at the end of 10 years of doing the show it was this last interview of these - this 10 year period. And I got this gurgle in my stomach and didn't know what it was I thought may be it was the chilly peppers that I had the day before and it wasn't that hello come in. oh, that's your camera no don't make any noise with that camera. So it turned out to be this unbelievably terrible pain and I was doubled over in pain. And and they had a they had a medic there who, I don't think like gets called on too much and and he came over, he said how are you feeling? I said "well, it's a horrible pain and it's it's moved down over here to the lower right, may be it's I think may be it's my appendix". And he said, I think so too. So I wasn't real confident about that, then they put me they had an ambulance there. It looked just like the ambulances we had on M*A*S*H. These ambulances went back to the Second World War you know, and they didn't run too well. And neither did this, they stuck me in the back and they couldn't get the ambulance started. And they were pounding on the hood and trying to figure out how to get and I am lying in the back of the I am screaming in pain. So finally, they get me going and we go down an hour and a half down a bumpy road to this this little town called La Serena where there was small hospital, and in that hospital there to meet me was Dr. Nelson Zepeda who was an expert in intestinal surgery. And I any way, they have got a lot of expert surgeons in Chile but I I think I was lucky that he was there that night in La Serena. And he he did a lot of tests on me because he knew what was, he knew he knew that field. He could diagnosis it right away which was very important because I had about this much about a yard of my intestine that was dead and there was a little more dying every few minutes and in about two hours I will be dead along with my intestines. So, he he - by now he had me on a little morphine, so I wasn't feeling so - and I think I like the morphine a lot then. You know, I am just used to a little vine, a glass of beer, but this was quite at a departure it's very - And and that he he leaned in till I faced. And he said, "Now now here is what's happened. Some of your intestine has gone bad and we have to cut out the bad part and saw good ends together." And I said, "Oh, you are going to do an end to end anastomosis?" You should have seen his face when I said that, He said, "How do you know that?" I said, "Oh, I did many of them on M*A*S*H." and then you know that's true, I that was the first operation I learned about on M*A*S*H and he had a sort of know what you were you know, what the idea was, so your hands were going in the right place, things like that and and while M*A*S*H was on the air, he was watching M*A*S*H, while he was in high school. So, good two of this is two of us came to this from a fictional background to this evening. And it was a it was a very you know, it was very interesting. I didn't I didn't get scared which surprised me a lot because I I; - all my life I had thought I I want to know exactly how I I am going to die. I going to die in my sleep, I don't want to notice it, you know. And here, I was just taking care of business. I I dictated a letter to my wife and and to my children and grand children and and then they put me out. And well, the end of the story is I lived. And and in fact, my my, I was wondered when two of our daughters came - we have three daughters and two of them came down to to see me in Chile while I was recuperating for a few days. And my middle daughter was very funny. Said, "Wait a second, hold hold it. You see, you dictated your last words and and we don't know where they are, we don't know what happened to them. May be you left everything to me." She has a good sense of humor, I admit. So, I got back to the States and I was really-really glad to be alive. I mean, I was I was a little euphoric and I I just wondered I was very much aware that every thing that I went through, everyday was something that wouldn't have happened if on that night October 19th, four years ago if I had just gone, checked out. And it's very interesting I - I think a lot of who go through this have have bumped into a number of them now; some of them having had the same operation. Everybody feels really glad to be here. It's a it's a wonderful feeling to be that aware of your life. And I had loved my life before this and I was - I enjoyed everything that I did and yet, now I was enjoying it even more. And I was looking for ways to get even more juice out of it because now I mean; we have a greater awareness you know, that that this time is limited. Certainly when we were kids, we think it's going to go on forever. And even as we get older, we we know it's kind of indefinite. But before you realize, if they might come a day sometimes when it's going to stop and when ever that is, I I kept that feeling going for a long time that I wanted to be able to to enjoy it and and then I started to get this things up - I didn't want to just enjoy it. I wanted to get the most out of it and feel the most satisfied with it. In fact, I have started looking over I started looking over talks that I have given, - things I had said to young people, then I get commencement commencement exercise or thing I had said to my children or my grandchildren; I thought back on them. And I was trying to figure out what kind of advice I had given them; because I had always told them to look for values and think about what made their lives meaningful. And so, in the middle of that night - one night, I heard this voice in the back of my head saying "so, tell me have you lived a life of meaning" I am talking to myself you know, -- excuse me so, I I mean I am and my age was you know, what what are you kidding? What look at what a wonderful life I have had No, no really I said if you don't wake up tomorrow which - you know it was like a an idea that wasn't too too alien to me now. If you don't wake up tomorrow, will this have been a life of meaning? So, then I started trying to figure out what meaning meant to me and mean you know, if you are say meaning enough and know that it does not have any meaning. So, I I think I boiled it - I had to had to define it for myself. I think it - for me it's a kind of a lasting feeling of satisfaction and I have been lucky enough to live through a lot of different things that most of us regard as meaningful you know, -- I love my family I I have been an artist most of my life and that - these things do give you a sense of of meaning. Helping out other people and that kind of thing, I have I have been involved in that even some people think a lot of us - most of us think gaining celebrity is going to give them a sense of life long satisfaction and it doesn't it doesn't really it doesn't work out that way. A lot all these different things and I found it not any single one of them gave it to me, and and all put together they did for a time and it would be leapfrogging from one to the other. I didn't know what would what would give me this feeling all the way through to the end and and then I came across this idea that Marcus Aurelius really had said 2,000 years ago and you know he was the emperor of Rome and he was a great writer at the same time and he said, in one book there is just this one sentence that really jumped out at me, he said "all we have is now" and you know, I am trained as an actor to to live in the now, to work in the now when I am on a stage and I am working with another actor it's just the two of us together. Even though we know of it everything else is happening there is in an awareness like a multiple awareness, we are aware of the audience, we are aware of the exit signs, we are aware - not that I don't this stage but often, it is a red stage and and at the same time that you you have this imaginary existence in Spain or some place, you are also aware that you are right here on this red stage and you have to be careful where you put your feet or you will trip. So, this is multiple awareness but it's all happening now and and I put this together with what a brain scientist told me when I was doing the science show. He said "our experience of now just last for five seconds and then we are into a new portion of now and what ever happened before that five seconds, that's just memory". You know, like when I talked about the red stage, that's over that's not happening now to us - that all of us, we are all we are all thinking of that of a memory when I said Marcus Aurelius that's already a memory and and then just now when I said remember when I said remember when I said Marcus Aurelius that's a memory too. So, -- so the problem is for me now it's it's like a game to see if I can stay as this five seconds keeps moving to try to stay within it, stay in that five seconds and I find when I do this just wonderful thing, I don't know, this is what I am - telling to me what is happening to me likely and I don't know that I don't know if this is scientific, it's probably just a fantasy but I get the impression that colors are more vivid, I see people's faces when I when I get when I say to myself hey get into that now thing and I and I I see the colors of their faces more vividly and I I hear what they are saying - what they were saying registers on me better, well I think that this may be great, I may be able to keep this going all the way until the next time I nearly die or may be actually do, and and I will and it may not give any meaning to my life, but at least that a bitter edge to worry of meaning, I don't have to just care about that any more, because this is so interesting, and you know one of my heroes, a guy that I played on broadway, who was a great physicist, Richard Fineman , and he had he he was curious about every thing, and he explored every thing that he could about nature and about his own life, and he had a similar a similar thing that he that he went through when he when he was about to die and it's very much like what what I was discovering here, he was about to die of cancer, he had a bad cancer and he he said to his doctor, at the end when I am about to go, I don't want you to give me an anesthetic because if I am going to die, I want to be there when I do, isn't that great, what I mean that just for that alone I feel I feel he is a hero of mine. So let's, roughly what the book is about, it's me trying to figure out and you know I have done I have given these talks in crazy places some times, I scare my self if I can, when you get famous, they ask you to talk at places, and some times they ask you to talk at a place we have no business going, because you don't know any thing about it, and I say yes, and then I am scared to death and then I have to like really work hard to deliver for instance I was asked to soon after M*A*S*H was popular, I was asked to give the commencement talk had a college of surgery where these doctors were graduated, and I and I don't know any thing about medicine, you know, I mean, I said to them I said you know, may be they thought here that they have taught you every thing they could about being a doctor and now they brought in some body to show you had to act like one. So it's really good to be here with you tonight and I am enjoying being here now with you right now, thank you.
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