Reviews of Alan Alda's Books
If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself | Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
Reviews of New York Times Best Selling Book
If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?
My adventures in the art and science of relating and communicating
Forbes:
“Alda uses his trademark humor and a well-honed ability to get to the point, to help us all learn how to leverage the better communicator inside each of us.”
Kirkus Review:
"A distinguished actor and communication expert shows how to avoid 'the snags of misunderstanding' that plague verbal interactions between human beings...A sharp and informative guide to communication."
"A distinguished actor and communication expert shows how to avoid 'the snags of misunderstanding' that plague verbal interactions between human beings...A sharp and informative guide to communication."
Kirkus Review:
"A distinguished actor and communication expert shows how to avoid 'the snags of misunderstanding' that plague verbal interactions between human beings.
When Alda (Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself, 2007, etc.) first began hosting the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers in 1993, he had no idea how much the job would change his life. In the 20 years that followed, he developed an enduring fascination with 'trying to figure out what makes communication work.' As a TV show host who interviewed scientists and engineers, Alda became painfully aware of his own shortcomings as a communicator and how his background as an actor could help him improve. In the first section of the book, he discusses how effective communication requires listening with ears, eyes, and feelings wide open. Drawing from research, interactions with science professionals, and his work as an actor, Alda reveals how individuals who aren't 'naturally good' communicators can learn to become more adept by practicing their overall relating skills. He describes activities like the 'mirror exercise,' in which partners observe and mimic each other's actions and speech. Not only do people learn how to focus on each other, but they also 'strengthen cohesion and promote cooperation' in groups. In the second section, Alda, who founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, points out the importance of empathy in communication. He discusses, among others, an exercise that forced him to name the feelings he saw others express. Raising awareness of emotion increases empathy levels, which can trigger the release of oxytocin, the feel-good 'love hormone.' By adding emotion to communication, using storytelling, avoiding jargon, and eliminating the assumption that others share the same knowledge base, message senders can forge closer bonds with recipients. The book's major strength comes from Alda's choice to take an interprofessional approach and avoid offering prescriptive methods to enhance interpersonal understanding. As he writes, communication 'is a dance we learn by trusting ourselves to take the leap, not by mechanically following a set of rules.'
A sharp and informative guide to communication."
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BookPleasures.com:
"This book goes past simply paying attention and being alert to the people we come into contact with. It teaches us how we can see and read emotions with great accuracy via practice, how to be more empathetic and understanding, how to pick up on non-verbal cues regardless of gender, deciphering the real messages between one another, and more. All of these techniques can get us better results as communicators and listeners..."
BookPleasures.com:
"Alan Alda, author of If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on my Face? is a huge Hollywood actor. Alan has won Emmy’s, an Academy Award, written and directed numerous films (The Aviator) and PBS series, as well as, starred on Broadway. (2017) He is one of my favorite television and movie personalities and I am honored to read and review his book. He loves science and has helped scientists, engineers, and other professionals learn how to communicate with the everyday people through his groundbreaking studies in communication and lessons on what does and does not work. For years he was the darling doctor, Hawkeye Pierce, on the television series M.A.S.H.. He has been on numerous other televisions series as guest actor and was in 2014 named fellow of the American Physical Society. Alan is a visiting professor at Stony Brook University in their communications department.
Alan Alda talks about how he felt he knew how to communicate pretty well from his acting experience and his comedy improve training. However, as he embarked on his PBS television series Scientific American Frontiers, The Human Spark, and Trial he learned what little he knew on the topic of communication. This sparked his thirst to learn all he could about the dynamics of human interaction and communication which is the basis for this book.
Alan considers his first television interview on Scientific America with a man who developed solar panels with a tinge of guilt for not doing his homework beforehand and for not understanding completely what this show might entail. However, he learned a lot from that experience and moved on to become an incredible interviewer and custodian for the world of science and how best to communicate those sometimes difficult to understand terms and concepts to the regular viewer so they can find as much delight and inspiration as the scientist and engineer do.
This book is filled with time tested communication games and examples to help move groups of unconnected people toward active listening and true understanding of what is being said. The spoken word is filled with subtle and sometimes not so subtle cues that can teach us what we hope to learn or befuddle us beyond our wildest dreams. IT should be the express desire of all of us to become the best communicators we can be.
This book goes past simply paying attention and being alert to the people we come into contact with. It teaches us how we can see and read emotions with great accuracy via practice, how to be more empathetic and understanding, how to pick up on non-verbal cues regardless of gender, deciphering the real messages between one another, and more. All of these techniques can get us better results as communicators and listeners.
I taught Business Communication to junior and senior level students at the University of Memphis in Memphis, TN and would have enjoyed using some of these games to help my students become more adept at the art of and science behind communication. I enjoyed this book and believe you will too!"
--Michelle Kaye Malsbury
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The Gold Foundation:
"In this marvelous book...Alda co-creates for the willing reader a sense of intimacy, of kitchen table conversation (at the table of an incessantly curious, well-read and down-to-earth host). Like most excellent conversations, Alda’s book is not linear and is packed with stories. Many of the stories come from the extensive interviews he has done with scientists through his work as the host of Scientific American Frontiers and the Founder of the Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. But he brings you with him on other adventures as well..."
The Gold Foundation:
"Alan Alda begins his latest book in the midst of a conversation with the reader. His title “If I Understood You, Would I have this Look on my Face?” seems to be the response to a question you have just asked. Before you have time to argue that you’ve never even met him before, you begin to wonder: “Is he annoyed? Teasing me? Or perhaps he is posing an authentically curious question?”
You examine the cover image (a wonderful cartoon by Barry Blitt) to decipher his facial expression and body language. Alda greets you with an open visage with raised brows, a barely perceptible smile, facing palms at shoulder height simultaneously welcome you in and convey a sort of “who knows?” gesture. He has just made the point, reinforced in moving and delightful ways throughout the book, that communication is more than words, more than tone of voice, more than body language, always somewhat ambiguous, and something that a person cannot do alone.
In this marvelous book subtitled My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, Alda co-creates for the willing reader a sense of intimacy, of kitchen table conversation (at the table of an incessantly curious, well-read and down-to-earth host). Like most excellent conversations, Alda’s book is not linear and is packed with stories. Many of the stories come from the extensive interviews he has done with scientists through his work as the host of Scientific American Frontiers and the Founder of the Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. But he brings you with him on other adventures as well.
You are with him in the chair of a defensive dentist, you cringe as he cuts his hand grappling with a hermetically sealed package (the product of poor communication between the marketing and sales divisions of a company), you walk with a young Alda selling mutual funds, most doors closing in his face until he realizes that sales are about figuring out what the other person is interested in. Day to day life, it seems, is packed with opportunities to observe, decipher and improve our relationships.
Alda humbly shares his own communication snafus – resulting in annoyed scientists and a bored grandson. He travels round and round the Kolb learning cycle – experiencing, reflecting, refining and taking what he learns back onto the conversational road. He shows us that relating is context dependent and requires the practical wisdom to know how best to communicate in this situation with these people.
Much of Alda’s book hinges on two concepts- Empathy and Theory of Mind. The former is the “feeling with” another human being which is necessary for authentic relating; the latter refers to our developmentally honed detective skills which enable us to discern what another person may be thinking and feeling by observing clues in body language, tone of voice, or particular word choice. He features Gold Foundation grant recipient Helen Riess’ work on the science and teaching of empathy. The works he cites are so varied and compelling that I wish he had included a reference list for further exploration.
Alda’s book implies that much of what we commonly do in medical education to teach communication skills could be done more effectively. Every medical student knows the feeling of being an imposter; wearing your starched white costume and reciting the script of a doctor and wondering if you will ever stop feeling like you’re acting. Who would have thought that one way to feel less like an actor is to do more of what real actors do?
Alda describes the way in which actors learn to relate through improvisational exercises. What would happen if we gave our students instructions to communicate bad news in gibberish so as to isolate our body language and tone of voice from our words, or to co-create a relational experience with a peer through mirroring each other’s motions? Most of the doctors I know view their bodies as a convenient vehicle to move their brains from place to place. Alda invites us into wholeness, to engage our entire bodies, all our senses. He asks that we take a close look at our use of technical language and ingrained habits of communication that may bind us to each other but separate us from patients and non-medical colleagues. Learning to communicate would be much easier if we didn’t need to unlearn so much!
And for you healthcare trainees and professionals who think “relating” is the icing on the cake of medical practice, Alda has news for you. It’s not the icing on the cake. It’s the cake!"
--Elizabeth Gaufberg, MD
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JournalingOnPaper.com:
"This book is a down-to-Earth look at how we as humans need to do better at communicating, and how exactly we can accomplish this goal. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to do better in the office, at school, or at any relationship..."
JournalingOnPaper.com:
"Communication is an art form. We may think we are getting our message through to others, but invariably what the world hears is very different from what we had hoped to convey. Without a doubt, this is problematic in so many ways that we need to ask if individuals can fix that glitch in our interpersonal relationships? The answer is yes, but….but it takes understanding and above all, work. The question is how do we get better at making others understand us? Well the book, If I Understood You, Would I have This Look on my Face? is a great place to start.
Part memoir and part how to manual, the author, Alan Alda, yes that Alan Alda of MASH Hawkeye fame, takes us on his personal journey of discovery and education in simply learning how to talk to other people. The book is written in such a way as to make it all very self explanatory. He begins, at the beginning of his quest, by giving us a history lesson of when he simply realized that the words used in every day discourse can be confusing, frustrating, and have their entire meaning wholly misinterpreted.
He takes us through his educational adventure, and scientific meanderings. He introduces us to some of the more prominent researchers in the communication field, and lets us in on some very interesting experiments. Alda teaches us about the concepts of contagious, active listening, empathy and theory of mind. Ideas and tools well known to any of us in the autism community, but not always as easily explained. Every idea, every exercise, every step forward is broken down into understandable parts so that the average reader can employ these same drills at home. He begins his communication lessons with engineers and teaching scientists how to talk to the average person. Not surprisingly, they needed a lot of work with interpersonal communication skills.
Whether he is explaining the use of improvisation in helping communication, mirror exercises, or the notion of commonality, Alda regales us with his own missteps and successes. It is strangely gratifying and helpful to read how he garnered an understanding of his own failings, and was able to overcome his own communication failures. Of course, the reader can find that funny, as Alan Alda among many things, is an award winning actor/ comedian, who without the ability to communicate properly could have not have had such an exemplary career. Yet that is exactly what occurred. Mr. Alda is refreshingly honest about his own blind spots even to the very end of the book.
This book is a down-to-Earth look at how we as humans need to do better at communicating, and how exactly we can accomplish this goal. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to do better in the office, at school, or at any relationship. Personally, I think it definitely will come in handy if you have a recalcitrant teenager at home as well. Well, at least I am hoping it does…."
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BookLoons.com:
"As one would expect, Alda communicates his topic clearly, with humor, wit and catchy comparisons... I devoured this volume in one sitting and look forward to another..."
BookLoons.com:
"Alan Alda has long been my hero, not only for enriching our lives with M*A*S*H's Hawkeye, but also for writing Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself. Now he takes his host of fans into the realm of science (and what it - and improv acting - say about our attempts at communication) in If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating.
As one would expect, Alda communicates his topic clearly, with humor, wit and catchy comparisons. The quote at the beginning of the book sums it all up well - 'The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.' The book is divided into two main parts - Relating is Everything and Getting Better at Reading Others - and exercises (that the author has tested) to improve communication are mentioned throughout.
Alda tells us that 'Developing empathy and learning to recognize what the other person is thinking are both essential to good communication, and are what this book is about.' He proceeds to explain how and why. Much of his understanding grew from his experience as an actor and also his involvement with the PBS show, Scientific American Frontiers, in which he had to communicate directly with scientists and draw from them explanations that laymen would understand and connect with. On the show he learned contagious listening.
He tells us how improv exercises help engineers communicate their work; how mirroring can improve cooperation and trust between individuals; how the presence of women in a group enhances teamwork; the importance of expressing Yes And (acceptance and deep listening); and how too much information can be detrimental to getting key ideas across. And its not all upbeat - Alda also conveys the downside of dark empathy, and the pros and cons of jargon.
The chapter I enjoyed most, Story and the Brain, speaks to the importance of story to mankind, in both communication and memory. And Alda ends his book on a humorous note with a self-deprecating account of poor communication with a grandchild. I devoured this volume in one sitting and look forward to another - perhaps Mr. Alda could apply his excellent communication skills to explain global warming to the unenlightened, and give all our grandkids a future."
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Jaquo.com:
"This is a truly fascinating book...which is brilliantly written and makes even the more tricky concepts easy to understand, is invaluable for anyone, no matter what their walk of life..."
Jaquo.com:
"Yes, that Alan Alda. Hawkeye. M*A*S*H.
When this book landed on the review desk at JAQUO HQ my immediate thought was ‘Alan Alda – must be well worth reading’. Then I saw the tag line under the title – My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communication. Hmm. Well…
But then I remembered the great title – If I Understood You Would I Have This Look on My Face? Yes, I decided, this would be worth reading and oh boy, was I right!
This is a truly fascinating book and the first surprise was the fact that communication has been a serious interest for the actor for many years. But maybe it’s not so surprising because that’s exactly what an actor does – communicates. But this book, which is brilliantly written and makes even the more tricky concepts easy to understand, is invaluable for anyone, no matter what their walk of life.
The chances are strong that whoever we are, we can encounter difficulties in understanding others and being understood. Do we truly relate to people as well as we could?
- Do you understand your partner?
- Could your relationship be improved if communications were enhanced?
- If you’re a doctor, can you relate well to your patients?
- Can parents find an easier way to communicate with their children?
- Can business people and salespersons become more successful using the techniques in this book?
- Teachers, do your students relate well to you? Do you to them?
- Writers – can you really empathise with your readers and understand what they are looking for from you?
- And of course, bearing in mind the author, can you become a better actor by improving your communication skills?
- Plus, we’re asked the tantalising question – can we learn to read minds?
This book isn’t only full of practical advice, case studies and easy-to-read data – it also is full of memorable quotes. My favourite – right now – is ‘The trouble with a lecture is that it answers questions that haven’t been asked‘.
Think about that. Do you lecture your teenagers about why they should be home before midnight? When you’re berating your partner for not doing the dishes, are you lecturing him/her? Yes, this book applies to everyone in any walk of life, not just teachers, scientists, doctors and business people – the ones who we tend to think about when we consider lectures.
For some reason, this book made me think of Prince Charles who, many years ago, wrote about his concern for our planet and the environment. He could have quoted many statistics and obscure figures about the damage we are doing to our world. In fact, he may have done but all I remember from his book is the following quote regarding conservation.
I don’t want to be confronted by my future grandchild and have them say ‘Why didn’t you do something?
This was quite a few years ago but I remember the quote well. It relates. It communicates the point without rhetoric or statistics. It’s a sentence that everyone can understand. It says so much in one sentence. Has the future king of England ever met Alan Alda and discovered his techniques? It seems so!
Truly though, I highly recommend this book to everyone. We might believe that we are wonderful communicators, or that we relate to other people.
Or we might feel that ‘at our age’ we ‘know it all’ and have nothing to learn about relationships and communication. (By the way, Alan Alda was born in 1936.) I’d love you to read this book and see how it can improve your life in so many ways."
--Jackie Jackson
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BookReporter.com:
"...thought-provoking guide that can be used by all of us, in every aspect of our lives --- with our friends, lovers and families, with our doctors, in business settings and beyond."
BookReporter.com:
"Alan Alda, the award-winning actor and bestselling author, tells us the fascinating story of his quest to learn how to communicate better, and to teach others to do the same. With his trademark humor and candor, he explores how to develop empathy as the key factor.
Alan Alda has been on a decades-long journey to discover new ways to help people communicate and relate to one another more effectively. IF I UNDERSTOOD YOU, WOULD I HAVE THIS LOOK ON MY FACE? is the warm, witty and informative chronicle of how Alda found inspiration in everything from cutting-edge science to classic acting methods. His search began when he was host of PBS’s 'Scientific American Frontiers,' where he interviewed thousands of scientists and developed a knack for helping them communicate complex ideas in ways a wide audience could understand --- and Alda wondered if those techniques held a clue to better communication for the rest of us.
In his wry and wise voice, Alda reflects on moments of miscommunication in his own life, when an absence of understanding resulted in problems both big and small. He guides us through his discoveries, showing how communication can be improved through learning to relate to the other person: listening with our eyes, looking for clues in another’s face, using the power of a compelling story, avoiding jargon, and reading another person so well that you become “in sync” with them, and know what they are thinking and feeling --- especially when you’re talking about the hard stuff.
Drawing on improvisation training, theater and storytelling techniques from a life of acting, and with insights from recent scientific studies, Alda describes ways we can build empathy, nurture our innate mind-reading abilities, and improve the way we relate and talk with others. Exploring empathy-boosting games and exercises, IF I UNDERSTOOD YOU is a funny, thought-provoking guide that can be used by all of us, in every aspect of our lives --- with our friends, lovers and families, with our doctors, in business settings and beyond."
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Science20.com:
"Like the book, he is funny or deep from one minute to the next...he is in the running for greatest scientist interviewer of all time."
Science20.com:
"You are about to hear a huge sigh of relief from the entire science journalism community, because Alan Alda, a man who can interview E.O. Wilson and Jim Watson with ease, who hosted the terrific Scientific American Frontiers, and founded the Alan Alda Center for Communication Science at Stony Brook University, has trouble communicating.
You wouldn't think so. It certainly surprised me. The second time I met Alda was at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles a few years ago, where he was putting on his play about Marie Curie ("Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie"); his favorite scientist, he said. I went there to interview him and we had lunch in one of their stately lounge rooms and I mentioned I was working on my first book and asked him how many drafts he had done of the play and he replied he stopped counting around 70, because they weren't major, so he started using A, B, etc.
Let that digest for a moment.
Seventy drafts is not what you expect from someone who doesn't feel like they don't know how to communicate. Or maybe it is. If you feel like you have a vague sort of "impostor syndrome" (I do - and if you are a science writer and say you don't, you are only fooling yourself) you are going to work hard to get it right. Before any interview I have ever done, I have prepared a great deal because the last thing I want is someone rolling their eyes. A journalist friend of mine, Greg Critser, tells the story of being sent to interview physicist and Nobel laureate Murray Gell-Mann and promptly being thrown out. As Critser said in hindsight, Gell-Mann also did something a good communicator will do. He told a young arrogant journalist, who thought he was doing a scientist a favor and giving them 'free publicity', exactly what he had done wrong, and when he could come back.
I've done that since. Interviewing someone I consider a gifted communicator like Alda, there was no point in false modesty. I plainly told him that, given his ability to as an interviewer, if he felt like he needed to answer the question I should be asking instead of the one I did, to go ahead and do so. He laughed. Who knew inside he was just as worried about being able to keep up with me?
Well, he is, and that is one of the great things about learning from someone who will do the work to explain why communication is so difficult. Like Critser, he didn't know it was difficult. He was confident - at first. Making a huge blunder right away is the surest way to calibrate your own expertise. And it helps to let the humor of things shine through when it's merited.
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people - Victor Borge
After reading his new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have this Look on My Face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating, you will have some sense of his anxiety as well. Even if I couldn't detect it. Why was it not apparent? Because I felt like he was so skilled at interviewing that even while being interviewed we didn't have an interview, we had a conversation.
Like the book, he is funny or deep from one minute to the next. He lays bare his beliefs, even when he knows they don't always jibe with what his more reductionist proclivities might entail. But this is not a woo self-help book for budding journalists. He notes how theory of mind and empathy have become new-age synonyms for faux sympathy. In the place of cloying platitudes we get brilliant insights from people he discusses, like, "And, ultimately, what emerged was that I helped her understand death--and she helped me understand how to be a better doctor".
Keep it simple. Three big ideas.
Everyone wants a take-home message, and it has that as well. You can get a more thorough understanding of it when you buy the book.
It all shows Alda has clearly grown as a communicator despite his impostor syndrome, to where he looks so comfortable he is in the running for greatest scientist interviewer of all time. What about the rest of us? I suppose we have to continue on our way. There's hope. A few weeks back I took a car back to the apartment I keep in Manhattan and the driver and I talked. At the end of the trip, he asked me, 'Are you a journalist?'
Some of the time, I replied, and why did he ask?
'Because you listen.'
So maybe I am halfway there."
--Hank Campbbell
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LAReviewOfBooks.org:
"The need is undeniable: people habitually experience communication breakdowns, which often involve failures of empathy. Whether they happen in bedrooms or boardrooms, they’re universally isolating..."
LAReviewOfBooks.org:
"THE ACTOR Alan Alda has a personal reason for being concerned about the art and science of communication. He was the victim of a dentist who didn’t bother explaining a procedure, leaving Alda with what he calls a “smilectomy.” Warily watching the scalpel head toward his mouth, the actor was in no position to object when the dentist in question removed his frenum, that bit of connective tissue that holds your upper lip to your gum and, among other things, allows you to smile.
Filming a movie a short while later, he was shocked when the director of photography asked him why he was sneering when he was supposed to be smiling. “I was smiling,” Alda insisted. “Nooo. Sneering,” said the director.
When Alda then smiled at himself in a mirror, his image sneered back. “Without my frenum,” he recounts, “my upper lip just hung there like a scalloped drape in the window of an old hotel.” The good news was that his new face 'enabled me to play a whole new set of villains.'
Which perhaps explains the title of his new book in more ways than one: If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?
Alda’s unwitting makeover was a wakeup call to the damages done routinely by such encounters: “suffering the snags of misunderstanding […] is the grit in the gears of daily life,” he writes.
Known early in his career for comic turns in the classic series M*A*S*H and the romantic comedy The Four Seasons (which he also directed), and later as (sneering) bad guys in The West Wing and Crimes and Misdemeanors (among dozens of other films, TV shows, and stage appearances), Alda realized that his oblivious dentist — though looking at him intensely — was not “seeing” him at all. He wasn’t seeing him as a person, and, more to the point, as a person who made a living with his face — a face that sometimes needed to smile. The dentist saw removing the frenum, a procedure he had himself invented, as a clever way to pull a flap of gum tissue over the front tooth he had just extracted in order to increase the blood supply.
Our natural tendency not to notice what (or whom) is around us is, of course, vastly exacerbated by the various “devices” that so cunningly seduce us into electronic worlds much more controllable, tidy, and convenient than human ones. But even face to face, we’re remarkably adept at seeing right through or past each other. We see teeth, for instance, but not faces. We pay attention to tattoos and titles, the cars people drive and the schools they attended (or did not attend), and mostly we see their roles in relation to ourselves: my child, my boss, my mechanic, my student, my enemy, my doctor, my patient, the asshole who cut me off.
I suspect that’s one reason we’re so pleasantly surprised by those rare moments when others acknowledge our existence: that little wave from another driver that says, “You go on ahead,” followed by your nod, “I see you.” The “How are you?” at work from a person who actually waits for an answer. I recently saw a pickup truck driver cut off a taxi and then pull up to the window and apologize: “Sorry, I didn’t see you.” Wow.
Those sparks of connection remind us of just how much we miss when we tune people out. And failing to communicate goes far beyond just “grit in the gears.” “People are dying because we can’t communicate in ways that allow us to understand one another,” writes Alda. “That sounds like an exaggeration, but I don’t think it is.”
If anything, I’d argue that it’s an understatement. When we can’t communicate well enough to convince people to refrain from texting while driving, to vaccinate their children, to negotiate before shooting, then yes, people will die. When we can’t convince governments to fix faulty dams, stop violent people from buying guns, or take seriously the dangers of unsafe water, bad air, and climate change (for starters), yes, people will die.
Alda’s primary focus is science communication, a field whose gears he’s been greasing for decades. But recently his love of experiments, especially on himself, has led him to try something both silly and unreasonably effective: teaching improv to scientists. What he’s learned has led him to believe that improvisation (and related skills) can work as empathy enhancers that could help cure much of what ails us.
¤
Alda credits his 11-year stint as host of Scientific American Frontiers as his impetus for trying to figure out what makes communication work — or, in his case, initially not work. When shooting began in 1993, he dove into conversations with scientists without really paying attention — 'hearing without listening,' as Simon and Garfunkel would put it. He realized that his responses weren’t growing out of what other people were telling him. In one of my favorite lines from the book, Alda points out something we all know so well and heed so little: '[R]eal conversations can’t happen if listening is just my waiting for you to finish talking.'
Improv doesn’t allow that kind of pretend communication. As Alda knew from his long career in acting, improv forces you to pay close attention, observe barely perceptible inflections, notice not just voice but body language, and a million other subtle clues.
Full disclosure: I come briefly into the story here. As a science writer and fan of Scientific American Frontiers, I reached out to Alda, who had read and liked some of my books (my heart be still!); I invited him to USC, where I teach, to see how we might collaborate on communicating science. At dinner, a USC engineer asked: “Alan, what would you like to do?”
To everyone’s surprise, what he wanted to do was teach improv to a bunch of engineering students. In the book, he says I was skeptical of his experiment. The truth is, I thought he was nuts. But the Viterbi School of Engineering offered Alda its elegant boardroom for an entire afternoon, plus some 20 young engineers, faculty, refreshments, AV equipment, and anything else he needed. The young engineers gave presentations on their work, as Alda had requested. All used PowerPoint. All were stiff, and most were unintelligible. None took much notice of whether the audience was engaged or understood a word.
Then, for at least three hours, it was playtime. Early in Alda’s career, he’d taken a workshop with Paul Sills at Second City stage in New York, where he learned to rely on a book by Paul’s mother — Viola Spolin — titled Improvisation for the Theater. Full of games and exercises, this volume is the go-to resource for learning and practicing improv. It was the basis for our day. A tug of war with an imaginary rope forced us to pay close attention not simply to a physical object that didn’t exist, but also to the slightest movements, grunts, groans, sighs, and postures of people on the opposing team — and to respond in real time (or get pulled to the floor).
One group created an imaginary space out of their hands and bodies; they “built” it together by observing what other players were doing. 'If another player creates a bump in the sculpture, you don’t ignore it; you acknowledge the bump and build on it,' writes Alda. Others took on imaginary roles involving imaginary relationships with other people, who then had to guess what those relationships were — not by asking anything, but by behaving in a way that made sense in the imaginary context. At one point in the afternoon, someone started to play an imaginary trombone, and then, one player at a time, the young engineers created an imaginary orchestra.
'Communication doesn’t take place because you tell somebody something,' writes Alda. 'It takes place when you observe them closely and track their ability to follow you.' This sounds like a no-brainer. And yet, how many speakers in classrooms and lecture halls don’t even notice when audience members nod off, get lost in their laptops, or simply look pained or bored?
When we concluded our theater games, the students gave their presentations again. We were communally amazed. Abandoning their slides, they looked us in the eye. One self-conscious young woman who’d previously looked over our heads, and a young man who’d focused on his PowerPoint slides, now spoke directly to us, the audience. They remembered they were people speaking to other people. They engaged. They were present. I was especially impressed by a student who went from describing her research in a passive voice, as work conducted by parties existing only in the third person, to telling her personal story. It was almost as if she’d just discovered that her scientist self and her personal self were the same, and she had a story to tell.
After that, I started inviting improv teachers into my writing classes. Writing is based on noticing, after all. But it’s also very much about remembering the reader on the other side of your words, like the students on the other end of our imaginary rope in tug of war. Writing may be a lonely occupation, but writing that gets read is always a partnership.
¤
When Alda’s Scientific American TV series ended after an 11-year run, he delved more deeply into what he’d learned about communication, exploring the science behind it. Fascinated by how emotion enhances communication, he became interested in Theory of Mind (ToM), a subject he explored in his three-part PBS series The Human Spark. A big part of what makes humans different from most other animals is their ability to think about what someone else is thinking, feeling, wanting, fearing, or about to do — including what that someone else is thinking about what a third person is thinking about what that first person is thinking, and so on. This capacity is widely considered to be the basis for empathy.
Alda came to realize that the “curse of knowledge,” as he calls it, was a well-known phenomenon, and he cites studies confirming that “knowing” can be a disadvantage in trying to communicate. That’s because it’s so very hard to shake the feeling that if you know something, then other people must know it too. Worse, it becomes almost impossible even to imagine what it’s like not to know.
The 'curse of knowledge' helped explain why Alda’s early TV interviews had gone so wrong. He’d assumed he and the scientist were on the same page, thinking the same thoughts, and that he was asking the right questions because he’d done his homework. Fixed on the script in his own head, he was oblivious to the fact that the scientist might want to take their conversation in an entirely different direction. Knowing things, he thought, mattered more than simply listening. After a while, he began to go into interviews essentially unprepared, relying on the power of natural curiosity and honest ignorance. The conversations became more lively and informative for the actor, the scientist, and the audience alike.
'There’s another great cooperation killer,' he writes. 'The Sound of Certainty: the triumphant, but self-defeating, tone of voice that announces, I know what I’m talking about and that ends the discussion' (emphasis his).
In contrast, the kind of active listening required in improv means letting the other person know that you’ve heard what they said, either through your words or actions or both. This requirement is captured in improv’s 'Yes. And …' mantra: 'Yes, I hear you (see you). And this is what I’m doing with it.' As Alda writes, 'This process of allowing something you receive from another person to transform into something else is one of the most interesting experiences in improvising.' And in life.
¤
Our magical day with the Viterbi engineers helped solidify Alda’s conviction that he was onto something. But he also knew a one-shot wouldn’t have lasting effects, and so he wondered if he could do something more long term and systematic — like teaching improv to scientists on a regular basis. He approached the usual suspects, including the president of a university well known for its top-tier scientists. The president wasn’t interested: his university, he said, already gave a prize rewarding good communication. Alda pointed out that the award-winners were by definition already skilled. How about teaching those who weren’t? No luck.
Then, by chance, he found himself at dinner with Shirley Strum Kenny, the president of Stony Brook University on Long Island. Enthusiastic from the start, she rounded up people to help. Before long, Alda’s seed of an idea had grown into the Stony Brook Center for Communicating Science, which has since trained thousands of scientists in dozens of universities, laboratories, and medical centers throughout the world. In 2013, it was renamed the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science.
Improv is still at its core, but, of course, good communication requires more — for example, compelling storytelling. Human brains are wired to seek out narratives (or make them up) in just about anything. Alda quotes Aristotle saying that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But there’s a lot more to it, he reminds us: 'After all, a dead cat has a beginning, a middle, and an end.'
Not everyone gets to attend an improv class. So Alda wondered if there were improv skills people could acquire on their own. Could he teach people to increase empathy in a solitary, do-it-yourself context? The need is undeniable: people habitually experience communication breakdowns, which often involve failures of empathy. Whether they happen in bedrooms or boardrooms, they’re universally isolating. 'Not being able to communicate,' writes Alda, 'is the Siberia of everyday life.'
Not surprisingly, he decided to experiment on himself. Fully aware that his activities might be dismissed as a “mental aberration” rather than a proper scientific study, he nonetheless set out to see if he could systematically increase his ability to empathize. In the chapter 'My Life as a Lab Rat,' he tries a variety of approaches, including practicing reading the faces of people he runs into in taxis, stores, on the street, and trying to see the situation through their eyes.
On one such outing he became so empathetic with a New York taxi driver that when he heard it was the end of a long shift and the driver hadn’t had a chance to use a bathroom, Alda insisted the driver drop him off a few blocks from his destination (closer to the bathroom). They got into an empathy match: 'You’re a nice person,' the driver argued. 'I’m taking you to the door.'
'I couldn’t stop him,' writes Alda. 'This man was sacrificing his bladder for me. I wished I’d never started the whole thing.'
He stopped practicing empathy for a while. 'It was exhausting,' he concedes. He then tried again in a more focused manner: by simply labeling the emotions of people. It gave him a 'sense of comfort,' he writes, 'almost a sense of peace. […] Practicing contact with other people feels good. It’s not like lifting weights. It feels good while you’re doing it, not just after you stop.'
Alda recounted his experiences to a scientist friend who helps autistic kids, suggesting they test the principle. The scientist thought Alda’s teach-yourself-empathy idea was 'clever.' 'What a nice word,' writes Alda. 'I started to get excited.'
The scientist wired up Alda’s brain to an EEG to get a baseline empathy reading. Alas, a week of labeling emotions didn’t do much to improve his empathy score (actually, Alda did worse). Once he got over the disappointment, he took comfort in the idea that he could turn his experience into a story. 'This would be a helpful thing to do,' he writes. 'It would be a service to mankind. In other words, I was slightly depressed.'
¤
Despite the recent proliferation of Empathy Apps designed for all our devices (yes, that’s a real thing), relating to others will never be as simple as labeling emotions or clicking buttons — or even spending a day with an improv master. As author Sherry Turkle, director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, told a USC audience in March, “The only real empathy app is yourself.”
Human connection has always been scary and hard. Technology, says Turkle, makes it easier than ever to keep our distance, making “us forget what we know about life.” Life, lived in-person and awake, is both messy and mined with communication traps. It’s also full of opportunities to connect in surprising ways. But we can’t see them when we’re not paying attention, not open to unexpected commonalities.
It’s hard not to see this as the reason so many progressives felt “Trumped” in the recent election. Yes, much about Trump is crazy and deplorable. But that doesn’t mean all his supporters are crazy or deplorable (or that there aren’t so-called crazy deplorables on the left). We didn’t see beyond their hats, or try to understand their fear of strange ideas, or their anger at being left out and left behind.
Firmly in the grasp of the 'curse of knowledge,' we couldn’t find common ground because we thought we just knew there wasn’t any.
Alda reminds us of the strange truce that spontaneously arose between German and British soldiers in the trenches during World War I. On Christmas Eve, some Brits heard Germans singing Christmas carols. Before long, “enemy” soldiers were trading schnapps, cigarettes, and chocolate. In some places, they played improvised soccer.
He concludes: 'If people are shooting at you repeatedly for months, and if reminding them you share something in common can silence the guns for a while, something important is going on.'
In other words, a connection.
Here’s looking at you."
--K. C. Cole
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Library Journal:
"Alda brings a distinct perspective with his trademark warmth and humor..."
Library Journal:
"Today, we have more ways to communicate than ever before, but how well are we actually communicating? As founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, the beloved actor and author helps researchers learn essential skills that can help them communicate their work to a wider audience. The center also trains health-care professionals, with the aim of improving their relationships with patients. It's not only scientific concepts that need clarification; the content of our daily lives can be better expressed and understood. Alda utilizes methods that he has learned at the center and through his work as an actor to explore how we can become better listeners and communicators. Drawing on a range of scientific and social science research, as well as his work in improvisation and directing, Alda outlines the steps and missteps in relating to other people in productive, meaningful ways. VERDICT Alda brings a distinct perspective with his trademark warmth and humor. As he addresses current popular themes in general nonfiction, readers can imagine his voice and expressions in recounting his experiences, making this book's content even more welcoming."
--Meagan Storey
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Publisher's Weekly:
"...he explains how improvisational games, empathy exercises, and storytelling tools can help anyone get better at communicating, listening, and relating everywhere 'from the boardroom to the bedroom.'..."
Publisher's Weekly:
"Veteran actor and director Alda (Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself) turns his attention to the world of social science in this breezy overview of work conducted at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in New York. Citing the center's research, he explains how improvisational games, empathy exercises, and storytelling tools can help anyone get better at communicating, listening, and relating everywhere 'from the boardroom to the bedroom.' Though widely associated with his role on the TV show MASH, Alda also hosted Scientific American Frontiers on PBS for 11 years, and he writes as enthusiastically about his experience with educational programming as he does about the scientists who teach the art of empathy to autistic children and medical doctors, among other subjects. Readers expecting healthy doses of Alda's signature dry wit, however, might be disappointed. Other than a riff about his dentist and the occasional throwaway joke, he's all business here."
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Booklist Reviews:
"This is an enlightening and thoughtful combination of shared experience and advice."
Booklist Reviews:
"Alda, known for his acting in shows like M*A*S*H and The West Wing, has been exploring his deep interest in the sciences for the last several decades, as the host of Scientific American Frontiers (which ended its 12-year run in 2015) and as the founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, at Stony Brook University. It is his work with the latter that Alda draws on, although this inquiry was in part inspired by his work with the series. Alda noticed when speaking with scientists that often their explanations went way over laypeople's heads; conversely, when he started his work on Scientific American Frontiers, his assumptions about his own knowledge hindered his dialogue with experts. Alda lays out how improv techniques such as mirroring can help improve communications skills, and he stresses how important active listening is to a successful conversation. He goes on to illustrate how essential these skills are in all walks of life, from motivating employees to reaching autistic children. This is an enlightening and thoughtful combination of shared experience and advice."
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PopDust.com:
"Alda takes great care in explaining the concepts he wants to share, and yet his prose never becomes overly ponderous...Alda has an excellent grasp of everything he discusses here. He cites scientists and studies easily to back up his hypotheses."
PopDust.com:
"Alan Alda will be known forever to the wider world as the iconic Hawkeye Pierce of M*A*S*H. However, in the last twenty or so years he has been an influential part of a quiet revolution in the scientific community. In his time as host and interviewer of Scientific American Frontiers he became fascinated with the art of science communication. When were the scientists he interviewed at their most relatable? When were they hiding behind jargon?
Through his background in acting and improvisation, he began to distill what he learned as an interviewer, factoring in the latest research on emotional empathy and theory of mind. This lead him to create the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. Out of that came his new book, If I Understood You Would I Have This Look On My Face?, which is a fascinating compendium of everything he has learned. Part textbook, part memoir, part gentle conversation, Alda discusses concepts about theory of mind, empathy, and generally tries to make the world a better place through communication.
I was lucky enough, in tandem with reading the book, to attend Alda's accompanying talk at the May 12th Random House Open House. An excellent event, and one that I recommend to anyone with a fondness for reading. Comments and quotes from him in this article are from that event.
If you have read Alda's previous books, then his style of writing here will be familiar to you. It is the same tone he speaks in. Gentle, warmly patricianal, and never too far away from a joke. 'I can [see] what you're thinking,' he said ominously, referencing his newfound ability to read minds to the Random House audience, 'and it's that you love me.' He was not wrong, and laughter ensued.
As you might expect, given the topic of this book, Alda takes great care in explaining the concepts he wants to share, and yet his prose never becomes overly ponderous. With a book such as this one, it would have been so easy for it to be a dry, pseudoscientific tome, but If I Understood You is blessedly free of these trappings.
While you would never call this a scientific treatise (the jokes are too good), Alda has an excellent grasp of everything he discusses here. He cites scientists and studies easily to back up his hypotheses. Though this would not be enough for a peer-reviewed paper, for your average reader (myself included), this proves to be more than sufficient in opening up a new perspective on the art and science of communicating.
Alda inevitably brings many of his suppositions back to improv and acting exercises, which is to be expected given his background. He speaks in relation to 'relating', in which he quotes Mike Nichols, who once told him: "Relating isn't the icing on the cake… it is the cake," as he directed Alda in a play. "I thought relating just meant looking at someone, so I did," Alda demonstrates with an imaginary scene partner, "[then Nichols] said 'Relate more!!', so I did this," he leans in uncomfortably close to the imaginary actor, causing laughter in the crowd. Alda's process of listening and relating has obviously evolved somewhat since then.
Alda describes an exercise tested at the Stony Brook centre to improve empathy, where subjects, on a daily basis, were encouraged to notice people's facial expressions and assign them an emotion. Test subjects were found to be more empathetic on a standardized empathy test after a week of performing this activity on a daily basis. Alda speaking of his own experience with the technique said 'I think I would have been a better actor sooner, if I'd had this earlier,' adding, 'I find people less annoying now.'
Another exercise he details in depth is the classic actor mirroring exercise, in which one actor must copy another's movements exactly, like a mirror. He uses this as an analogue for communication, stating how listening is a two-person exercise. He demonstrated this at the Random House Open House using an audience volunteer. As he did so, he added: "It's my job to make her look good, and that's part of communication."
It is the job of a scientist explaining a theory, or anyone explaining anything, to ensure that the person they are communicating with can follow them. 'The idea is to make that contact [with people] habitual… it makes [people] more open, more human.' It will not surprise you that Alda is a very open person.
'We are social animals who are condemned to one another's company,' says Alda, speaking of the tribulations of communicating and relating. What makes this book so endearing is how genuine his fascination with the topic is. You never get the sense that he was bored at any point whilst writing this, and his enthusiasm is a contagion communicable through the text. 'It's not a formula,' says Alda, 'I'm looking for experiences that transform you in ways you can keep at it… it's not a formula, it's an improvisation.'
What started as his own quiet interest in science has evolved into an incredible hybridization of the fields of acting and scientific discourse. This work feels surprisingly overdue. It's not that these exercises will be new to actors, they won't be. And it's not that these concepts will be brand new to behavioral psychologists either. What's new here is the interdisciplinary application of these principles, and how accessible he is able to make them.
Alda's work could well improve scientific discourse the world over, and day-to-day interactions in general. As he recanted at his talk: 'one physicist said to me [about the work]: "This has saved my marriage".' Alda set out to improve scientists' people skills, and may have ended up with a blueprint for doing a lot more than that. Highly recommended for people of all stripes."
--Thomas Burns Scully
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PopMatters.com:
"... a rich meal that fulfills and makes us eager for another serving."
PopMatters.com:
"There is a difficult scene in the Introduction to this book that sets the basis for what will prove a rich, enjoyable, comfortable journey through the always troubling differences between interpretation and translation. Alda, who notes that he’s “well over fifty”, is in the operating chair in his dentist’s office, moments away from experiencing a procedure that will change his life. “There will be some tethering,” Alda is told. He asks for meaning and receives an impatient response from the dentist.
What he doesn’t know is that in order to fix what’s needed, the dentist decides to temporarily alter Alda’s face, turning what was normally seen as a smile into a sneer. The dentist had torn Alda’s frenum (the connective tissue between the gums above our front teeth and upper lip) without effectively communicating the details and consequences of the procedure:
'I’ve come to see my exchange with the dentist that day as something that happens frequently in life—a brief encounter that threatens a relationship’s delicate tissue, the tender frenum of friendship.'
Alda continues by noting that rather than looking for a friend that day, he simply wanted assurance that he was being seen, that he was being recognized and understood. It’s a strong way to open what proves to be a compelling, enjoyable book by a man looking only for answers and understanding that the best way to get them is by drawing from minds more scientifically focused than his. He notes in the book that for the past 20 years he has been trying to determine why communication seems to be so hard, what obstacles have always been in our way. His work as host and audience guide for the PBS-TV show Scientific American from 1993-2004 took interesting routes to reach the same conclusion: Who are we? Why are we here? What’s the biggest obstacle preventing full understanding between medical practitioners and patients?
Alda is perhaps best known as Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce in the classic CBS-TV series based on the 1970 Robert Altman film M*A*S*H. Hawkeye was an acerbic surgeon who found himself in the Korean conflict against his will patching up wounded soldiers, trying to save them, and otherwise searching for a way out. In the nearly 35 years since the end of that show’s 1972-1983 run (eight years longer than the actual Korean War), Alda has built an interesting film career building both on the comic, empathic persona of Hawkeye and also some purely diabolical characters. With his Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, Alda has built a strong, legitimate track record as a journeyman scientist, and it’s that voice he carries throughout this book that makes the trip well worth taking.
There are two sections in this book sliced into various chapters. In the first section, “Relating Is Everything”, Alda focuses on what he knows best, theater and improvisation. How this will work with the average reader depends entirely on their tolerance for theatrics, which by their very definition can sometimes be too precious. For those of us willing to take the journey, though, Alda’s excitement is palpable. He makes us want to participate. For instance, of the skill known as “Responsive Listening” he notes: “You don’t say your next line because it’s in the script. You say it because the other person has behaved in a way that makes you say it.” This leads him to wonder whether scientists could become more personable and available if they studied the art of improvisation.
The excitement Alda expresses in this book is tantamount to child-like wonder, and that’s risky for a book that may seem to be wandering if a more conventionally science-minded reader wants something serious. “Improvising transforms you,” he writes, “But it does so over time.” In “The Heart and Head of Communication”, Alda goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s “Dialogue between Head and Heart”. This 1786 letter Jefferson wrote to a desired paramour expressed for Alda the essence of clear communication. We have to decidedly understand what the other person is thinking, perhaps even learn how to forecast their reactions through body language and tone of voice. Understand what the other person is feeling, develop a clear awareness of what (and how) they are thinking, and some sort of fulfillment will take place.
Alda continues by looking at “The Mirror Exercise”, which is nothing but what its title suggests. Two people stand before each other, make synchronous movements, and they try to match. The goal of synchronous unity in heart and mind cannot take place without clear observation. Note the use of clear (clarity) rather than perfect. Unity takes time. “There’s no pretending in improvising,” he notes, “no deciding to behave differently.” It’s this aim towards fully understanding the here and now, the present moment, which makes this book so compelling and emotionally valid.
There are many heroes in this book, and Alda generously gives them space to tell their stories. Massachusetts General psychiatrist Helen Riess speaks about a life-changing moment where a woman who appeared on her surface to be fully confident was in fact (as seen by detectors attached to her skin) extremely anxious. “Examining the spikes in the patient’s emotions, she could see the woman was having ‘these little leaks’…leaks of emotions that didn’t necessarily show on her face. ‘She was very good at concealing them’ (Weiss notes.) Dr. Matt Lerner discusses Cognitive and Affective Empathy and the Autistic Spectrum. He adapted improvisatory games originally intended for actors and applied them towards an autistic population. His goal, to help even the severely autistic mind read the actions and motivations of others, bloomed in a camp setting called Project Spotlight, serving over 350 people a year in the Boston area alone.
Alda brings Daniel Goleman’s “Emotional Intelligence” into his argument by condensing the latter’s steps: develop a primal awareness of the other (empathy), grasp their feelings and thoughts (Theory of Mind), and finally just learn how to understand complicated situations. Alda seems to be bringing these previous studies in less as filler for this book than basically providing the foundation for something bigger. Is he breaking any new ground here? No. What he’s doing is looking at ideas like “Affective Resonance”, which Helen Riess notes is “…the feeling of connectedness we’re able to get with other people…” Later, Alda introduces Evonne Kaplan-Liss, a doctor who argues (as Alda sees it) that 'Words can introduce you to an idea, but we think it takes an experience to transform you.'
In Part Two of “If I Understood you…” titled “Getting Better at Reading Others”, Alda enters as a lab rat, and this part of his narrative is particularly entertaining. He wants to learn how to name emotions as a way to separately deal with them. It’s the idea of determining how well we look at each other, how closely we understand visual cues, and Alda clearly wants to understand the success rate. No matter how highly experiment participants score in learning to read others, they will always score higher when they pay attention to emotions and faces.
For all that is bright and hopeful about empathy, there will always be dark and hopeless. In “Dark Empathy”, Alda recounts the classic 1975 experiment by Al Bandura, in which participants gave a greater electrical shocks to other participants they had heard referred to as animals. Also, “Reports have come out of Guantanomo that psychologists have advised jailers there on how to make their prisoners feel helpless…” From the darkness of big pharmaceutical companies and the American Psychiatric Association conspiring to control emotions through controlled doses, the bad sides are everywhere. To his credit, Alda’s goal is positive inquiry but he does not hesitate to shine a light on the darkness.
In “Reading the Mind of the Reader”, Alda looks at the need to help science students distill and clarify their written narratives as effectively as their spoken trains of thought. Of his experiences at his Stony Brook center, he notes: “The more we reinforced our students’ ability to focus on the other person, the better able they were to express themselves with words that would land on the reader with clarity.” Again, Alda notes that the initial imposition of improvisatory techniques into written activity (a freewriting exercise to open the mind) was helpful for the overall clear flow of ideas between communicators.
In “Story and the Brain”, Alda goes back to the clearest basic fundamentals and discusses Aristotle and the building blocks of the story. For Christine O’Connell, an Instructor at his Center, it breaks down as follows, to be read in the following order: question, suspense, turning point, and resolution. This is a more distilled version of the diagram used in Literature classes: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Whether for the concrete objectivity of science purposes, or the more subjective high-mindedness of creative literature, it all works. Communication is about overcoming struggle and answering questions.
By the end of his book, Alda looks at “Jargon and the Curse of Knowledge”. It’s an apt way to finish a swift and enjoyable journey through the mission of finding verifiable evidence to life’s questions. There’s good jargon (science speak) and there’s bad, but “When a scientist uses language that’s just beyond the audience’s reach… or when a doctor describes a medical procedure in terms the average patient doesn’t understand… [they] hear the melody but the people listening only hear the tapping…” For Alda, the essence of nature is a beautiful song, not just melody and rhythm. “I want to be cautious and not regard these… as the last word in understanding human interactions,” Alda notes earlier in the book. “One thing you can say for sure… is that they leave you with the suggestion to do more studies.”
Alda’s book is neither the first word nor the last word in a layman’s journey through scientific inquiry. It is, however, a rich meal that fulfills and makes us eager for another serving."
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CompulsiveReader.com:
"The title ...reflects an intellectual sensibility conveyed clearly and directly. It underscores the very points he is trying to make in this book. Alda has a gift for speaking about lofty ideas in layman’s terms, and his fervor for his subject matter shines through. This passion is at the heart of what engages us."
CompulsiveReadercom:
"Most of us know Alan Alda as an award-winning actor, particularly from his eleven seasons on the hit television series M.A.S.H. As Captain Hawkeye Pierce, he perfected the double entendre and danced a fine line between humor and tragedy. He not only entertained us, he touched our hearts and enlightened our minds. Now in his ninth decade, he shows no signs of slowing down his penchant for inquiry. It is a testament to his longevity on multiple levels. In many ways he is our “everyman”—someone with fame, accomplishments and recognition but also someone we feel comfortable with, who understands how we feel. He’s smart but approachable and speaks our language.
A life-long interest in science led Alda to engage with various renowned scientists and scientific organizations. This included hosting the acclaimed PBS series “Scientific American Frontiers” that also aired for eleven years. He has played a physicist on Broadway and authored the play Radiance: The Passion of Marie Curie. He was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2014 for his work helping scientists with communication skills. These converging interests led him to establish the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York where he is also a Visiting Professor. It was inevitable that his experience in the entertainment field and quest for scientific knowledge would coalesce. The beauty of it is that Alda is able to share his expertise with us in colloquial, available ways. This sharing is at the crux of his intentions in both fields: communication and relating. The title to his newest and third book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? and its subtitle, “My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating” reflects an intellectual sensibility conveyed clearly and directly. It underscores the very points he is trying to make in this book. Alda has a gift for speaking about lofty ideas in layman’s terms, and his fervor for his subject matter shines through. This passion is at the heart of what engages us.
Alda examines communication in all aspects of life. The lynchpin is the word “relatable.” It is at the heart of compassion that allows us to truly recognize another person and connect with them. Alda often illustrates his points with personal stories and references that bring a universal appeal to his intentions. During his initial foray as host of “Scientific American Frontiers” he blunders through an early interview and learns one should listen with eyes, ears and feelings. As he states, “I hadn’t been listening in three different ways” (P. 6, l. 5). There is a misconstrued assumption that we know where a person is coming from before they actually tell us anything. We need to watch body language and keep all our senses alert. These realizations lead Alda back to his earliest days as an actor and the key ingredients of improvisation and “spontaneous interactions” (P. 6, l. 26). Those exercises created more immediate and genuine responses in connecting with other actors and, certainly, this would correspond to its potential in all relationships. But we have to be vigilant in keeping these connections alive. Alda observes: “But it seemed to be something I had constantly to relearn” (P. 9, ll. 8-9). Perhaps the basic human condition of fear precludes us from implementing these skillsets permanently into our psyche and behaviors. What are the defensive and resistant places we act from in relating to another person? We listen but are often ready to defend, deny or rebut. When do we truly hear, and possibly change, when we are always confronting those sentries of resistance and misunderstanding that stand guard at the doorways to communication? The challenge is to continue to relate openly with true intentions by examining old wounds that intrude upon the process if they remain unexamined and unhealed. These are habits and behaviors instilled in us from our original caregivers and role models. This is one aspect of relating that needs to be given greater priority and consideration when analyzing how all of this really works.
One of the ways Alda confronted communication issues was in his acting career. He realized that “You don’t say your next line simply because it’s in the script. You say it because the other person has behaved in a way that makes you say it” (P. 10, ll. 12-14). There is an active, almost spiritual impetus to live in the moment without the intrusion of anticipatory responses and actions. Perhaps the missing component is those personal wounds, learned behaviors and fears that preclude us from consistently breaking through those barriers. Alda approaches these situations through the dynamic of training. Listening is not enough. As he observes: “I’ve been listening to good pianists all my life and I still can’t play the piano” (P. 20, ll. 7-8). With his legendary good humor, he continues to blend homespun comedic references with serious concerns and applications lending to an easy flow of the text.
Another significant component is empathy. What creates an empathic connection? Alda leads us to the concept of the story as a critical component of conveying messages and communicating with one another. In pondering this, I recalled reading at a poetry event for my newly released book, hoping to generate interest for sales at the conclusion. When reading one particular poem about childhood abuse, I became very emotional. The poem came across as a story about the people and places and how things felt during that time. One man came up to me afterwards and bought a book. As I signed it he told me he hadn’t really planned to buy it until he heard the story and attendant emotion in my voice. He had not experienced a similar situation, but he felt empathy for times he had similar feelings. This is the axis of connection and pertains to Alda’s reference of Daniel Goleman’s work on emotional intelligence and social awareness. Goleman posits three separate steps: “…having an instantaneous, primal awareness of another’s inner state (empathy); then, grasping their feelings and thoughts (Theory of Mind); and, finally, understanding” (P. 77, ll. 11-14).
In a section about couples and active listening, Alda discusses the petty annoyances that preclude true interactions. His notes that “…little irritations tend to mount up, but what I’m hearing from researchers…a richer kind of listening can produce a little cooperation and a lot less friction” (P. 79, ll. 3-5). As an example, couples sharing household and other responsibilities equally have less stressful relationships, and usually more sex as well. I’m sure this works on a practical level. But what would happen if those couples plunged even deeper into those petty irritations and why they weren’t working together. Again it goes back to childhood, early modeling behaviors and how we seek to resolve those in partnerships throughout our lives. All relationships reflect many things back to us that are immensely helpful if we can move beyond the blame and shame game. As in the teachings of someone like John Bradshaw, any person we come into contact with can act as a mirror for our own awareness and growth. This brings us back to Alda’s advocacy for improvisation. Working without a script leaves us vulnerable in a good way and open to alternate results, not just the consequences we already anticipate.
Alda also discusses how to work on these issues on our own. It makes sense that we won’t be able to read others very well if we can’t understand ourselves. He spends considerable time observing people’s expressions that, in turn, lead him to guess at the emotion behind the visage. He concludes “…naming other people’s emotions seemed to help me focus on them more and it made talking to them more pleasant” (P. 107-108, ll. 32, ll. 1-2). We learn about someone by actively listening. Still, we need the right tools and attitude to be able to do so. His story of a young man who worked with autistic children illustrated that understanding emotions and making that empathic connection went a lot further than practicing rote exercises.
Mr. Alda offers a lot of scientific experiments to support his journey into the various studies of communication and human relations. He had to remain open to the possibility that not all studies would lead to the conclusions he sought. While awaiting the results of one study, he anticipates a possibly disappointing outcome and notes with his signature humor: “…I took comfort in the idea that I would be able to write an account of an experiment that took an interesting hypothesis and proved it wrong. This would be a helpful thing to do. It would be a service to mankind. In other words, I was slightly depressed” (P. 114, ll. 24-28). In reality most of the experiments supporting evidence of our inter-connectedness offered positive reinforcement.
As writers we need to engage our readers from the very first sentence. This involves focus and clarity. Alda quotes a paper written by George Gopen and Judith Swan, “The Science of Scientific Writing,” that is applicable for any kind of writer: “Readers expect [a sentence] to be a story about whoever shows up first” (P. 137, ll. 9-10). In other words, parse the verbosity and enlist the reader’s interest from the beginning. Gopen posits further that the end of a sentence is vital and “…calls it the stress position, a place of emphasis” (P. 137, ll. 20-21). Alda compares it to the punch line of a joke. But it all speaks to proper communication. And Alda is interested in yoking the divide between science and art in ways that not only illustrate how closely they are related but how they highlight our interconnectedness as people. He demonstrates this beautifully with the story of The Flame Challenge. Children and adults from around the world sent entries on how to best explain the nature of a flame. A last minute entry by university student Benjamin Ames engaged everyone on multiple levels: information, wonderful visuals and an ear-catching song. An improvisation to teach and inform became an example of excellent communication.
Perhaps the best foundation for communicating is examination of oneself. As Alda states: “…by connecting to your self you can connect to your audience” (P. 152, ll. 5-6). We need to be in touch with our own emotions because, as Alda further notes, “…emotion helps us remember” (P. 157, l. 11), and an important link to this can be stress. A stressful experience is an impressionable reminder. But a negative link between memory and stress is not the only avenue to emotion, as Alda reminds us. Laughter works just as well and goes further to engage people in positive ways.
We all need to overcome obstacles, which is at the heart of dramatic action. Challenges are opportunities to understanding, to becoming better people. We need to be passionate about our intentions, keep our commonalities in mind and maintain awareness of the self before we can communicate properly with another. We need to embrace the gifts of failure and keep clear on basics. Alda emphasizes similarities as common denominators, observing that we “…have to be aware we’re alike” (P. 181, ll. 26-27). Perhaps the greatest ingredient at the heart of communication is caring. Mr. Alda has never been lacking in that department, and this latest book confirms that."
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Vital Magazine:
"It is a good feeling, and such an elusive one for many of us lately that Alda’s bestselling meditation on the art of communication, as well as some of the science behind it, might just be the ideal book for our hyper-partisan moment."
Vital Magazine:
"A 2012 study conducted on behalf of Bosch home appliances found that over 40 percent of Americans admitted to having fought with a family member over the correct way to load a dishwasher. This is not one of our prouder national statistics, but according to Alan Alda, it’s one that probably shouldn’t surprise us. As he explains in his new book, 'Pretty much everybody misunderstands everybody else. Maybe not all the time, and not totally, but just enough to seriously mess things up.'
This may not be a revelatory insight, but Alda’s wide-ranging exploration of how and why we “mess things up” is as fascinating as it is dispiritingly familiar, and it has implications for all of us, not least anyone connected to the field of health care. Communicating effectively with doctors, as most any patient will tell you, is hard. And as most any doctor will tell you, communicating effectively with patients is equally challenging.
Alda’s message is a hopeful one, though. Communication is hard, but practice can make perfect—or at least better. Learning to do so is more art than science. Alda, an artist, not a scientist, navigates this distinction with authority, but anyone coming to this book out of nostalgia for his work on M*A*S*H will quickly learn that he’s come a long way from his days as Captain Hawkeye Pierce. He describes how, as host of PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers from 1993 to 2005, he interviewed hundreds of scientists, and quickly learned how hard it was for many of them to explain the fascinating work they were doing. These lessons had a life beyond the TV show. Would it be possible, he wondered, to train accomplished scientists who are also accomplished communicators? Could doctors, for example, develop stronger patient interactions through learning about theory of mind, cognitive empathy, and affective resonance?
Not everyone thought these aims worthwhile. Professors at one medical school told him flatly that there was just too much science they had to teach, and that students would pick up communication skills simply by listening to good communicators. (I’ve been listening to fine pianists my whole life, reflects Alda, but still can’t play the piano.) Eventually, his dedication to helping scientists share their work more effectively with the public led him to Stony Brook University, where in 2009 he co-founded the Center for Communicating Science. At the Center, scientists strengthen empathy through improvisational theater games—techniques traditionally used by actors and comedians. Even those who don’t know anything about improv might be familiar with “Yes, and”: the principle of generous acceptance. An Israeli scientist who does improv every Friday night told Alda, 'A lot of blocking takes place in science, but ‘Yes, and’ frees science to grow… Instead of talking to the data, you listen to it.'
What does it mean to relate to another? For Alda, it goes beyond trying to make eye contact, getting in someone’s face 'like an errant telephone pole.' Rather, to relate is to listen with a willingness to be changed: 'Even in life, unless I’m responding with my whole self, unless I’m willing to be changed by you, I’m probably not really listening.'
If the profound relevance of all this to medical and health professionals isn’t already obvious, it comes into even sharper focus when Alda discusses the power of narrative. We’re suckers for stories, which serve as one of the fundamental ways that the mind stores and organizes information. Pharmaceutical companies tend to know this better than many of the doctors who prescribe their drugs. Every drug ad you’ve ever seen tells a story, however ridiculous or overwrought, and because emotions help to solidify memory, the ads stick in the mind. Moreover, the act of telling a story has a powerful effect on the cognition of storyteller and listener, activating response patterns in the brains of both. Expert diagnosis and prescription aren’t much use without patient comprehension and compliance, which is where narrative’s power to instruct and to bond can be useful. Lorna Role, the chair of Neurobiology and Behavioral Science at Stony Brook, goes beyond telling physicians to avoid using jargon with patients. Instead, she encourages them to tell patients the story of their condition and care plan.
The payoff? One meta-analysis of studies on patient reaction to physician communication showed that patients were 19 percent more likely to follow the recommendations of physicians ranked as empathic, interactive, and involving patients in their own care.
Empathy doesn’t come naturally to many of us, but it can be learned, as demonstrated by an original study that Alda himself funded and helped to design. It’s hard to make the details of such a study sound interesting, but Alda tells the story of the research process clearly and naturally. One of the book’s primary services, in fact, might be to provide lay-readers some insight into the methods and limitations of the kinds of studies that most people only learn about from headlines, which are often misleading and nearly always reductive.
(On that note, I should add that the book serves as a handy de facto bibliography of work by scientists for non-specialists. I’ve already added to my wish list mathematics professor Steve Strogatz’s Math for People Who Hate Math, upon which Alda heaps great praise.)
It seemed appropriate, for a book on listening, that I encounter it with my ears, and since this is Alan Alda we’re talking about, listening to the audiobook turned out to be a good decision. “Not being able to communicate,” he laments, “is the Siberia of everyday life, a place that, crazily, we often send ourselves to.” The overwhelming quality of Alda’s voice is hospitable warmth, inviting trust in his advice to return from this self-imposed exile, steering away from what he calls “the cold North Pole” of jargon, lecture mode, and PowerPoints. He’s a wonderful reader of his own words, and models with his own patient tones the kind of attentive, relational engagement he urges listeners to cultivate.
The communication strategies Alda discusses would be foolproof—if one only had to use them with people as calm, reassuring, and gently self-effacing as Alda himself. As he is quick to admit, though, in the improv game of life, people aren’t always going to “Yes, and” you. The kind of relationality he describes demands vulnerability, which can be tough and even dangerous for already vulnerable people. These can include physicians themselves, and he shares a few stories of medical doctors whose emotional availability became crippling to them, and unhelpful to patients. In a chapter called Dark Empathy, he admits, “Sometimes empathy worries me.” Empathy and theory of mind, he stresses, are not the same as sympathy. As he points out, few people access the inner states of others as effectively as bullies, interrogators, and corporations. He recounts his shock at finding that pharmaceutical giant Merck’s sales training included techniques of empathy and trust-building, deliberately designed to overcome doctors’ objections and concerns. Even some of his beloved improv exercises were weaponized in a course called, “Captivating the Customer,” designed for company sales managers.
Chilling, but there’s no denying the power of ethical empathy, and not just for doctors and scientists, but for all of us: 'If we remembered that every conversation we have, every bit of advice we give, every letter we write, can be an exchange in which the other person might actually have a better way of looking at it, then we have a chance to be in sync, to be in a dance with a partner, not a wrestling match with an opponent.'
The book’s massive success on the New York Times bestseller list is a tribute to its author’s talent and likeability, but it may also attest a public hunger for practical advice on better understanding one another. 'When it clicks, when you’re in sync with someone, even for the briefest moment, it feels like the pleasure of reconciliation. We’re no longer apart . . . . We go from, ‘No, you’re wrong,’ to ‘Maybe you’re right.’ And boom! Dopamine. It’s a good feeling.'
It is a good feeling, and such an elusive one for many of us lately that Alda’s bestselling meditation on the art of communication, as well as some of the science behind it, might just be the ideal book for our hyper-partisan moment."
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FeistySideOfFifty.com:
"...do yourself a favor, and check out... It just might shed some new light on your own way of interacting with your friends and family."
FeistySideOfFifty.com:
"If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? The title alone seems to say it all… but this latest book by author, actor and ongoing truth seeker, Alan Alda, is rich with insights on the art (and science) of communication. Moreover—no surprise here—Alda delivers even the most complicated information in an easy-going, highly readable style.
Having been a longtime fan of both Alan Alda’s acting and his series on PBS, I was eager to get my hands on this book. But even I was surprised at the wide ranging aspects of communication he explored. From the importance of empathy and emotional intelligence, to tips on active listening, to the multiple benefits of conducting improvisational exercises, Alda shed some surprising light on the mysteries of human interaction.
As a member of today’s feisty set (aka Wise Women/Crones of America), it was especially gratifying to read a work that not only engaged my brain and taught me numerous new and fascinating concepts, but was also written in an equally engaging style. More than once I found myself nodding and chuckling in recognition of one of my own habits or experiences. Alda truly does walk his talk: this guy is one heckuva communicator!
So do yourself a favor, and check out If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating. It just might shed some new light on your own way of interacting with your friends and family. After all, growing older is easier—and a lot more fun—when you truly are communicating with those you love."
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GeoffWhaley.com:
"I found the book to be incredibly well written and Alda had a way with storytelling that really brought all of his points home and his enthusiasm for science and learning in general is contagious."
GeoffWhaley.com:
"Only two ARC/Galleys left and I am all caught up! The same publicist who sent me Finally Out reached out about this book and the title had enough humor in it I figured it was worth a shot.* I enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would!
What Alan Alda—I didn’t even recognize him from M*A*S*H (IMDb link), I just recognized his caricature—is doing is what the Plain English Campaign (website) has been trying to do since the late 70s, just through a different venue: improv. Both are trying to get things translated from the indecipherable jargon of science or government into easily relatable language. Alda, has basically made a side career out of this with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, where the observations he made from his many years on Scientific American Frontiers are put into practice to teach scientists how to talk to non-scientists.
I found the book to be incredibly well written and Alda had a way with storytelling that really brought all of his points home and his enthusiasm for science and learning in general is contagious. He used examples from research scientists to graduate assistants, from doctors to individuals running a summer camp for teens with autism. It really hit home toward the end of the book what he was trying to do. He’s walking through the garden with his wife who is naming flowers.
“‘Look at that gorgeous hydrofloxia,’ I say, and immediately I feel a surge of pleasure at having inside knowledge. Arlene is not impressed. She knows I’m making it up.
For one brief moment, I had enjoyed speaking the private language of botany. It didn’t bother me that the word doesn’t exist. We both knew I was joking, but I got to use a fancy word and I loved it. There’s something appealing about a private language. It can be intoxicating. Jargon is like that, and the more rarefied it is—the fewer people who understand it besides you—the more it resembles the common hydrofloxia. IT has a seductive aroma. You can get drunk on it.” (Chapter 20)
THIS is what he is trying to help alleviate in the scientific field and what he highlights others are doing in other fields.
Alda walks us through many of the Improv exercises he used to relax individuals and to get them in the mindset of thinking about the listener and not themselves or their work. The exercises are as simple as tossing an imaginary ball to as complex as having to explain something jargon-y while at the same time getting across your relationship (think little brother or ex-boyfriend) without saying what the relationship is.
What I wish there was more of, was Part II: Getting Better at Reading Others.Even though the book is roughly evenly weighted between the two parts, the second one felt a little weaker. I’m not sure if I was looking for more practical advice (which he provides a good amount) or if I just wanted more stories about how he’d applied a lot of what he worked on.
Recommendation: This is one of those books that should be required reading in school. It could be required for everyone as there is a lot to learn, especially about emotional intelligence, but really it should be required for those who have super specific language but still interface with the public (accountants, lawyers and doctors just to name a few). It’s a quick read and I felt like I got a lot out of it. Depending on the subject, I would probably read another book by Alda.
*I received a copy of this book from a publicist in return for my honest opinion, no additional goods or money were exchanged.
Opening Line: 'A couple of decades ago, a letter came in the mail that set me on a path that would not only bring me to a deeper understanding of that day with the dentist, but would actually change the direction of my life.'
Closing Line: 'He said, "I’M NOT MAKIN’ THAT MISTAKE AGAIN."' (Not whited out as this is a work of nonfiction.)"
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WashingtonIndependentReviewOfBooks.com:
"...he makes the case that a compelling story, and personalizing one’s message, are two keys to better communication...Reflecting Alda’s persona, the book is bright, breezy, and upbeat.
WashingtonIndependentReviewOfBooks.com:
"Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer led the World War II team of scientists that created the atomic bomb. After two of those bombs were dropped on Japan, killing an estimated quarter of a million people, Japan unconditionally surrendered, ending the war.
Sobered by atomic energy’s destructive potential, Oppenheimer became an evangelist for international control of the force he helped create. He also realized that citizens of a self-governing society like the United States could not make sound voting judgments about the use of atomic energy without understanding both its benefits and risks.
In April 1958, Oppenheimer addressed a worldwide conference of journalists with this message (which I’m paraphrasing for brevity): We’re entering an era of incredible scientific discovery. There’s no more important mission for journalism than to bridge the gap between science and the general population. Otherwise, how will people know what’s in their best interests and vote to make rational choices?
Oppenheimer’s speech was published in Harper’s magazine. That’s where I came across it. It inspired me to become a journalist.
To introduce this review, I’ve recalled the Oppenheimer story, and personalized it, on the advice of actor Alan Alda. No, Alda didn’t contact me personally. But in his new book, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?, he makes the case that a compelling story, and personalizing one’s message, are two keys to better communication.
We know Alda as a gifted actor. But there’s also a lesser-known Alda, one with a lifelong love of science.
To fully appreciate this book, read it as an extension course of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science, located in the journalism department at New York’s Stony Brook University. Since Alda founded the program in 2008, the center has taught communications theory and techniques to thousands of journalists, scientists, health professionals, and policy-makers.
Reflecting Alda’s persona, the book is bright, breezy, and upbeat. Its voice is as friendly and reassuring as that of Hawkeye Pierce, Alda’s character on the iconic TV series “M*A*S*H.” In writing this book, Alda follows his own advice: Communicate through storytelling. He tells stories of the improv exercises that transformed reluctant scientists into intelligible speakers. Other exercises evoked empathy and helped bridge lecturer-audience gaps. He relates experiences from his acting career that can be applied to everyday communications.
The acting, performing, personal side to better communications is the “sugar” that makes the medicine of the book’s research go down more easily. And there’s a lot of research to digest, including information about the “reading the mind in the eyes” test and the “Stanford study on synchronous marching.”
The book has 13 pages of index referencing mostly scientists and research projects. Don’t be deterred. The mission of the Stony Brook Center is to make otherwise hard technical slogging accessible. Alda achieves that here. It’s a role for which he has had considerable preparation.
After filming the last episode of “M*A*S*H,” Alda spent 13 years as the host of the PBS show “Scientific American Frontiers.” In that role, he interviewed, unscripted, some of the world’s leading scientists and technicians, teasing out language the rest of us could understand. In many ways, If I Understood You has the feel of a transcript from that show, focused entirely on methods of better communication.
Alda’s intentions are admirable and important, but he has embarked on an extraordinarily difficult quest. How difficult? Recently, New York Times science writer Claudia Dreifus covered the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science where Alda made his case for using plain words to describe complex topics. According to Dreifus, Alda’s speech was so successful that the usually staid scientists in the audience gave him “a hooting, hollering, foot-stomping ovation.”
“The next day, however,” wrote Dreifus, “at the various panel discussions I saw speakers deploying language so dense that only others in their discipline were likely to understand them…It was depressing, especially when one realized that the very researchers mumbling jargon had recently been cheering Mr. Alda’s call for clarity.”
Here’s another way to assess how long a road it is to achieve general scientific literacy: In 2016, American voters elected a president who rejects the science behind climate change and questions the evidence that vaccines do not cause autism.
Technically, Alda’s latest work is a communications how-to, joining countless other books designed to help individuals speak more successfully in business, politics, and various professional situations. But as an introduction to the work being done at Stony Brook, it deserves much more attention.
Robert Oppenheimer was concerned about a democratic nation’s understanding of the promise and risk of nuclear energy. More than half a century later, that problem remains. Add to that concern today’s advances in science that are literally changing evolution through gene editing, the development of artificial intelligence superior to the best human brains, and breakthroughs across a vast array of disciplines that few, except those directly involved, can understand.
As a surgeon on TV, Alan Alda saved countless fictional lives under impossible battlefield conditions. In real life, one hopes he can be as successful helping us all understand the forces shaping our future."
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“In this charming, witty, and thought-provoking book, full of rich anecdotes, Alan Alda describes some of the tools of communication that he teaches in his work with the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and shows how everyone—from lovers to politicians to scientists—can benefit from being better communicators. The issues he touches on are more important now than ever. His book is useful and fun, and it is a valuable tonic for these challenging times.”
--Lawrence M. Krauss, author of The Greatest Story Ever Told . . . So Far
“I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand and use the art of communication. And then comes this fellow Alda—actor, interviewer, academic, and, mostly, student—who teaches me new, useable ideas. Communicating is at the heart of connectedness. Alda, with his laudable curiosity, has learned something you and I can use right now.”
--Charlie Rose
“Sit back and enjoy Alan Alda’s scientific journey of communication.”
--Barbara Walters
“Alda, who has made a distinguished and valuable career out of empathy—in acting, writing, and political thinking—now gives us a book that shows empathy to be the key to understanding, and thus to a much improved life. The exchange of feeling of one person with another makes it possible for each to grasp something different and larger than both: a delightful and useful surprise of knowledge. Alda proves his theory almost casually, with self-effacing good fun, but it is a true revelation. You wonder, How has one done without such a book?”
--Roger Rosenblatt, author of Thomas Murphy
Jun 06, 2017 | 978-0812989144 (978-0812989144)
Available in Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook, Audio CD, and Audio Download
Reviews of New York Times Best Selling Book
Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Read REVIEWS of Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
Read an EXCERPT of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Read an EXCERPT of Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
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Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):
"Alda is chatty, easygoing and humble..."
Publishers Weekly (Starred Review):
"After actor Alda (Never Have Your Dog Stuffed)
recovered from a nearly fatal intestinal obstruction, he decided to
live as if he'd been given a second life. To make his new life as
meaningful as possible, he wanted to remember those rare moments
when a special stillness had come over him, the kind that hits you
when you hear something that goes to the core of who you think you
are. These were moments when he'd had some understanding about the
meaning of his life, his reason for living -- the central questions
that Alda grapples with, as he looks back over his life. While
poking good-natured fun at some of his earlier rhetoric (the ravings
of a naïve Hollywood liberal) he shares highlights of the various
commencement speeches and keynote addresses he's given to future
doctors and physicists, or even to the odd group of Jefferson
scholars. He phrases it differently for each audience, but the
message is consistent: It's not what you do in life, but how you
do it. Notice everything. Always be open to new ideas, new
experiences. Alda is chatty, easygoing and humble, rather like a
Mr. Rogers for grownups. His words of inspiration would be a
perfect gift for a college grad or for anyone facing major life
changes."
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Sydney Sun Herald:
“Engagingly thoughtful and thought-provoking . . . [Alan Alda] candidly shares many stories of his life, so easily and wittily you can hear him speak as you read.”
San Antonio Express-News:
“Smart, engaged, funny and observant.”
BookLoons.com:
"Do yourself a favor - read this amazing book and share copies with the people you care about most..."
BookLoons.com:
"Who hasn't heard of Alan Alda, who tickled our hearts and funny bones for so many years as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H and
recently wrote the hilarious but very touching memoir, Never
Have Your Dog Stuffed? In it he shared - in his own
inimitable fashion - much of what he has discovered about acting,
about creativity, and about life.
Now, Alan Alda begins Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself (where does he get these great titles?) where the last book ended,
discussing his near death experience in Chile and the lease
on life that surviving it has given him. He tells us that he
kept asking himself 'What should this
new life be like?', looking for a fresh approach.
In an interview, he talks of wanting to get the 'most
juice' out of the life given back to him, and to
have it filled with 'aliveness and
satisfaction'. So he looks back on the advice
he's given to others over the years - in college
commencements and similar addresses - and considers whether
or not he's lived up to his own words.
Having suffered through several high
school graduation speeches in the last couple of years (only one of
which impressed me) I was thrilled to read Alda's words to his
daughter Eve and her graduating class, and wish my sons had heard
his heartfelt wisdom (they'll just have to read it instead). Father
tells daughter to 'Love your work';
that 'you have the chance to keep getting
better at the things you work at'; to 'keep
laughing' and challenge assumptions; 'Be
fair with others; then keep after them until they're fair with you';
'that life is meaningless unless you bring
meaning to it'; that 'you can dig
into the world and push it into better shape'; and to 'have
chutzpah.
He continues through the book to
review past speeches, and to talk about values, pushing limits,
trying new things, and always challenging yourself. He suggests that
we rank our values and then consider how much time we actually spend
on what's important to us. He compares Thomas Jefferson to a Chinese
scientist named Yuan Long Ping; reflects on Simon Wiesenthal's soul;
talks of the joy involved in performing any art and of the 'daunting
challenge of the humanities'; recalls actors' response 'through
the only action they knew' in the aftermath of 9/11;
muses on the death of friends and 'What made
their lives count' to him; and - based on his work with Scientific American Frontiers - suggests how to make
science more accessible to modern Luddites.
In Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself , Alan Alda offers remarkable life wisdom,
reminding us that 'time is all we have'.
He advises us to 'Find someone to laugh with';
'Find something to laugh at'; and 'Keep
moving.' On creativity, he tells us that 'The
poet puts the right words in the right order so that the colliding
of their sounds and meaning makes your neurons flash like a pinball
machine.' There's poetry in Alan Alda's soul and he uses
it to communicate his own recipe for a good, even meaningful, life.
Do yourself a favor - read this amazing book and share copies with
the people you care about most."
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Boston.com:
"{Alda} comes across in a manner very much in line with his persona as a devoted family man whose spare time is devoted to the pursuit of knowledge. He also cuts the inherent pretension in any life lessons book with a conversational tone..."
Boston.com:
"How can an actor say anything new about Thomas Jefferson to
a roomful of scholars at Jefferson's home at Monticello? According
to legendary actor and writer Alan Alda, you do it not by
regurgitating the words of previous historians, several of whom
might actually be in the room, but by recounting the story of a
biologist who transformed rice production in China, much as
Jefferson had done in America.
Throughout his career, Alda's standing as one of the most articulate and
insightful celebrities has given him the opportunity to
deliver many commencement speeches, keynote addresses, and
even eulogies. Now, he has compiled many of these speeches
in his new book, Things I Learned While Talking to Myself,
which acts as a companion to his 2006 memoir, Never Have
Your Dog Stuffed.
While addressing the graduated class at Caltech one year, Alda
used his experience in portraying the late Caltech professor
Richard Feynman to implore the students to share their love
of science with the world.
'Tell us frankly
how you got there,' he writes. 'If you got there by many twists
and turns and blind alley, don't leave that out. We love a
detective story….Most scientists do leave that out…and it
doesn't sound like a human thing they've done. It separates us
from the process.'
Alda wisely heeds
his own advice in the book. He begins each chapter by telling a
story, either about his family, professional career, friends, or
political activism. Then he describes how that anecdote relates
to a speech he was asked to give, and how he overcame the
challenges involved. Then he provides excerpts from the speech,
breaking in when necessary to talk about what he learned from
the experience.
Had the book been
solely a collection of the transcripts of the addresses, the
book would be an exercise in self-indulgency. Instead, he comes
across in a manner very much in line with his persona as a
devoted family man whose spare time is devoted to the pursuit of
knowledge. He also cuts the inherent pretension in any "life
lessons" book with a conversational tone (you can hear Alda's
trademark inflections as they read) and plenty of
self-deprecating humor.
As a lifelong
M*A*S*H freak, I've often suspected that Alan Alda, through
his Hawkeye Pierce character, has been inside my head to give me
guidance throughout my life. Now, with Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself , that becomes one step closer to
reality."
--Dave Lipton
Close
Parade Picks:
"Equal parts humor and heart."
Curledup.com:
"...Alda’s wisdom is accompanied by humility...stories are honest demonstrations of fallibility and full of passion."
Curledup.com:
"What is the meaning of life? What is the good life? Does your life have meaning? Countless people have
posed this question and tried to answer it, and Alan Alda takes
a crack at it in his latest book of essays, Things I Heard
While Talking To Myself.
Armed with commencement speeches, eulogies, and decades of
memories, Alda leads us on a tour of his own life’s lessons.
It’s similar to sitting on the living room floor in front of
the fireplace while Grandpa delivers cautionary tales. That
is, if Grandpa were a famous actor. With Hollywood and
Broadway as a backdrop, Grandpa’s stories about his life add
another dimension of celebrity to those tales.
Virtually every chapter is crafted to begin and end with a specific theme, accompanied
by a speech or two that demonstrates that theme. One
thought-provoking point includes the hypocrisy of ranking of our
values while spending an inversely proportionate amount of time
on things that do not support those values. Alda clearly ranks
family, love, environmental responsibility, ethics, equal
rights, and self-determination high on his list of values. Like
many parents, his first conclusion to the meaning of life was
the birth of his first child. Many years later, he delivers a
speech to a graduating class whose audience includes her. He
advises us to not force our children into some mold but to
simply love them.
Alda conveys the
insightful lesson that while you can’t save the world, you can
make a difference in another person’s life. Or ten people. Or
more. Stop complaining and start doing. You and the people you
help are better off each time you do. Like interest over time,
it all adds up to something significant and measurable. Be
patient, Alda says.
Much of Alda’s wisdom
is accompanied by humility, a key factor in making his claims of
such wisdom credible. Some writers spew forth their knowledge as
if they were born with it, and it is therefore not to be
questioned. Alda’s stories are honest demonstrations of
fallibility and full of passion. While the speeches themselves
are at times platitudinous, that’s what speeches are, and in
this book they are framed as such. Still, it does take a little
away from the enjoyment of Alda’s storytelling and as a result
is slightly less entertaining than his previous book, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.
As each chapter comes
full circle in theme, so too, does the book as a whole. His
final chapter begins as a commencement speech to the reader but
includes a poignant one he delivered at a college in 2003. It is
in this same changing pattern that he tries to tell us what the
meaning of life is. It comes across as: Life is this; well,
actually maybe it’s this; oh yeah, and this. He tries to boil it
down to just a few words and ultimately one word. The reader may
get the feeling that Alda still hasn’t quite made up his mind
and, given more time, he would resummarize it, and maybe that’s
the point. But while he may have a different decision in his
next book, the answer still wouldn’t change for us: that we
define our own meaning. It is not intended as a cop-out but just
the simple truth.
Come next June, when
you’re looking for a graduation gift, this book is packed with
entertaining advice to send them out into the real world. It’s
surprising that the marketing wizards behind this book’s
publication didn’t schedule its release with that in mind."
Close
Parade Picks:
"Equal parts humor and heart."
BookBlog.com:
"Alda has a smooth storytelling style that transports the reader."
BookBlog.com:
“Alda has a smooth storytelling style that transports the reader.
Nearly dying
from an intestinal blockage in 2003 had a profound effect on
Alan Alda. It brought him a second life and, with it, a
first book, his bestselling memoir Never Have Your Dog
Stuffed, published in 2005. Happily, Alda's appetite
for introspection, intensified by his near-death experience,
was not satisfied by the one foray into autobiography. He
was moved to write Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself as a means of answering a question that had
begun pricking at him. After leaving death behind in a
Chilean hospital, along with three feet of intestine, Alda
began to wonder whether he had lived a meaningful life and
to ask himself, more generally, what constitutes a
meaningful life.
The title of
Alda's book alludes to the approach he adopted in trying to come
up with an answer to that question. Alda dug up speeches he had
delivered on various occasions over the years, talks which he'd
attempted to infuse with some wisdom pertinent to the occasion.
Many of these speeches were delivered at commencement
ceremonies, but Alda also talked to historians at Monticello and
to psychiatrists at Cornell. He spoke at a ceremony honoring
Simon Wiesenthal. He delivered eulogies for Ozzie Davis and
Peter Jennings and Anne Bancroft. He spoke over the grave of his
grandchildren's dead rabbit.
Alda structures
the book around excerpted passages from these speeches, but Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself is by no means
wholly or even primarily a collection of excerpts. Rather, Alda
uses the excerpts as writing prompts, wrapping stories from his
life around them. In one chapter, for example, Alda excerpts
passages from a talk he delivered at Emerson College in 1977 on
the subject of living up to one's values. He seamlessly weaves a
handful of stories around the quotes--the author being slapped
as a four-year-old for off-color humor and upstaged by a
quarterback a decade later; picket lines and cigarette ads and
Bert Convy's heroics. As we saw in his first book, Alda has a
smooth storytelling style that transports the reader. Once he
begins on a reminiscence--traveling on the Orient Express,
meeting his agent, biting his mother's watch--the pages turn
themselves.
Insofar as they
interrupt the flow of the narrative, Alda's excerpted
speeches--if arguably the raison d'être of the book--are
actually its weakest part. One feels less of a connection with
the author when reading them, perhaps because we are not in fact
their intended audience: he didn't write the speeches for us,
after all, but for a specific audience on a specific occasion.
What, then, makes
for a meaningful life? Alda has found his answer, and it's
unlikely to surprise readers unless they're living the life of
Lindsay Lohan. But arriving at the answer will surely not be the
point for most of us. As in life, so with a good book: it's the
going, not the getting there that's good.*"
*Phrase borrowed from Harry Chapin's
Greyhound
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Parade Picks:
"Equal parts humor and heart."
Rambles.net:
"...bright, well-paced mix of Alda's speeches, mostly to
college graduating classes, juxtaposed with events from his
long life...proving that the actor
and director is also comfortable as an author."
Read Entire Review
Rambles.net:
"Alan Alda told the American Academy of Arts graduating
class, "Show up on time. Know your lines. Respect your
director, your fellow actors and yourself." He advised
them always to tell fellow actors "you were wonderful,"
whether they were or not. Not "the play was wonderful."
That means the actor wasn't. He goes on to say, "There's
an ecstasy to acting, and that ecstasy is a glorious
experience, but acting is something else, too. It's a
service to the people who come to the theater." Alda's
latest book, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself , is Alda's service to his many fans.
Alda writes
that many people believe he is a doctor (he has spoken to
graduating medical students) because of his 11-year comedy
stint as Hawkeye, the disaffected, sarcastic but
compassionate war-time doc on the enormously successful TV
series M*A*S*H. A neighbor even confessed to him she
had thought of calling him in a critical medical emergency.
But though Alda is not Hawkeye the doctor, he embodies
something of Hawkeye's wit and certainly his compassion.
Alda is a long-time activist and idealist who has given back
much to the audiences that enjoy his work.
Things I Overheard is a bright, well-paced mix of Alda's speeches, mostly to
college graduating classes, juxtaposed with events from his
long life. It is the second memoir he has undertaken in
recent years (the first was Never Have Your Dog Stuffed,
also reviewed on Rambles.NET), proving that the actor
and director is also comfortable as an author.
Alda once gave
up a chance for a $50,000 paycheck because he wouldn't do a
cigarette commercial. "That was when values kicked in." He's
always chosen his material with an eye to its social
content, and also managed to make his productions, when he
had the say-so, vehicles for other people's talents. The
book is peppered with stories both hilarious and tender,
about Alda's aspirations, some of his failures and his
encounters with daughters and grandchildren. He writes about
Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Anne Bancroft and the heroic workers
cleaning up in the aftermath of 9-11 (he sent them a
truckload of Hershey bars).
Toward the end
of the book he quotes himself from a speech made in 2003,
"We have the miserable luck to live in fascinating times." This means anything could happen. He advises those
graduates, "Don't let the world tell you that success is a
big house if you think success is a happy home." These are
the kinds of aphorisms that are strewn almost carelessly
throughout this delightful upbeat book.
I'm not sure Hawkeye was an optimist, but I'm sure Alan Alda is."
Close
Superperformance.com:
"...takes such care with his thinking and such time to craft his thoughts into usable insights he shares without defense."
Read Entire Review
Superperformance.com:
"Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself is a philosophy book.
Yes, really. It is about meanings and values and thinking and
learning from experience. True "meaning of life" stuff.
Literally. But, be undaunted -- it is done with fun, humor,
warmth and sensitivity. In plain English. It's full of
fascinating stories drawn from the author's own life; a richly
interesting life.
Alan Alda
looks at his own writings from the past -- his speeches --
in which he has publicly declared his philosophies of life.
He quotes from those speeches he has selected as
representative of his quest for meaning in life. And he
intersperses them with relevant vignettes from his
experience. In that way, he examines his own values and the
sources of those values.
He reveals himself
as a lifelong learner, a man of insatiable curiosity engaged in
an incessant search for knowledge and understanding --
especially self-knowledge -- and insight. He shows his penchant
for rigorous research in his gathering facts and statistical
support for his ideas and conclusions. It is easy to see how he
might have wished to be a scientist at times, since he proceeds
so much like one in preparing speeches. (And I'm sure his 11
years of interviewing scientists for Scientific American
Frontiers contributed to his methodological and empirical
approach.) He does what he has suggested scientists do. He takes
complex information, ideas and analyses and converts them into
stories, analogies and mental images that make them
understandable and relevant to the average guy or gal.
So, he models for
you how to approach the search for meaning and values in life
and how to think about what you find in that search. All the
while, he is entertaining you as well with his own search, his
own findings and his own conclusions.
By the time I
finished the book, I was sure that the people who are the
author's friends are lucky folk. What a pleasure it must be to
just have a chat with someone who takes such care with his
thinking and such time to craft his thoughts into usable
insights he shares without defense. Ah well, the rest of us have
his book."
-- C.S. Clarke, Ph.D.
Close
Lifetwo.com:
"interesting and quick read with more than a few passages that will make you stop and think about your own life, values and bonus days."
Read Entire Review
Lifetwo.com:
"At first blush
a more accurate title for this book might have been
"Commencement Speeches That I've Given Over the Past Thirty
Years." Having been a popular speaker at university
commencements and other events, Alda found himself with a drawer
full of well-written advice that had been doled out over the
past three decades which gave him a good starting point for a
follow up to his popular Never Have Your Dog Stuffed.
Like everyone
else, I knew Alda as a wildly successful actor on TV, film
and the stage. But in the process of reading Things I
Overhear While Talking to Myself, I learned two important
things about him. First, he is an amazing speech writer and
it is easy to see why he was in such demand. He threads
personal experience, introspection, and world events into a
motivating story that makes the grads listening want to rush
out and improve the world. The second thing that I learned
about Alda was that a few years ago (2003) he survived a
near-death experience that forever changed his outlook on
life. He doesn't look ahead wondering how to best spend his remainingdays. Instead, he wonders how to best
spend these bonus days. The difference is hardly
subtle and everything he now writes is run through this
filter.
Without this
second part, the book would have been nothing more than a
collection of well-written speeches and could have been called
"The World According to Alan Alda." But now, post his near-death
experience, Alda is on a mission to find ever-more meaning in
his life and it's clear that simply publishing a book of
speeches is not part of that plan. So he takes the speeches as a
starting point and then weaves commentary about what he was
thinking then versus what he knows now. This is compelling and
Alda is uniquely positioned to pull it off. How many other
people have written record of the advice that they were giving
young people about what to do in the real world and then have
the perspective that someone who nearly died has with which to
reinterpret and re-prioritize what he wrote? The clear goal of
the book is to motivate us to improve our lives but without
having to first almost die.
One other aspect
of the book worth noting are the anecdotes that pepper each
section that include his experiences doing M*A*S*H, negotiating
his first motion picture contract, dealings with agents and
managers, and meeting Simon Wiesenthal, to list a few.
All-in-all, it's an interesting and quick read with more than a few passages that will make you stop and think about your own life, values and bonus days."
Close
Reviews of New York Times Best Selling Book
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I've Learned
Read REVIEWS of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Read an EXCERPT of Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself
Read an EXCERPT of Never Have Your Dog Stuffed
Buy the Books
Entertainment Weekly
[Grade:] A . . . "The actor's superlative memoir is full of surprises . . . (Alda) writes with witty, self-deprecating honesty; our only complaint is that it's just 224 pages."
Los Angeles Times
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is a memoir by of one of the most acclaimed actors of our time, who perhaps is one of the most genuinely humble. Alda seems defined more by his struggles, intellectual pursuits and general sense of wonder than by fame or wealth.
What's striking about this book is not merely the scope of his accomplishments -- personally as well as professionally -- but the sense that the author thinks there's still so much yet to be learned.
People Magazine
"poignant, funny new memoir about growing up and finding fame."
Liz Smith -- New York Post
". . . a cornucopia of delight and informed curiosity . . . this is a wonderful book of fun and philosophy from a genial good-hearted man at the peak of his creativity."
The BBHQ Book Review
We know him as Hawkeye Pierce. We also know he is smart, personable, and irresistible. All that comes out in Alan Alda's wonderful memoir . . .
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is a delightful memoir from a delightful man.
Publishers Weekly
". . . Alda's conversational style keeps the story on track. It's a brief but entertaining autobiography tempered with humility and a depth rarely found in celebrity memoirs."
Classical 103.5, Washington DC
"I hate celeb memoirs. Alan Alda is not a celebrity who desperately wanted to write a memoir. He's a fine writer who happens to be a celebrity."
The Sacramento Bee
"The award-winning actor faces life's demons with honesty and humor in this moving memoir."
The Houston Chronicle
“Alan Alda's 'odd' childhood -- the son of a burlesque-performer dad and mentally ill mom writes entertainingly about his youth . . . it's hard to argue with his advice and easy to admire this revealing memoir.”
Chris Matthews, Hardball
“I want everybody to read this book . . . what a great writer.”
David Mamet
"Most theatrical memoirs are, not surprisingly, structured as dramas -- the climax, fame and accomplishments, is hidden in and formed by the author’s early struggles. Mr. Alda’s book is rather different, the record runs true throughout: a story of wonder at and curious affection for the odd world around him. It seems to be, in fact, a record of what happened to him, rather than a recitation of the various paths which led to his success -- it is honest and touching and very funny -- like Mr. Alda himself."
Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe
"Alan Alda’s life story is as engrossing as it is moving. I couldn’t put it down, and I couldn’t stop laughing. With his characteristic wit and humor, Alda’s gripping memoir tells of journeys through the worlds of film and theater, family and friends, the occult and science. It’s the inspirational story of a man with an insatiable curiosity to understand the inner stirrings of the human soul and the outer workings of the universe."
Reviewer Harriet Klausner calls it a "Deep autobiography" and says:
". . . his superbly written memoir grips readers . . . This autobiography is one of the best out there as Mr. Alda lays out his soul including those demons eating at it, but never points the finger at his peers."
CultureDose.Net
"Alda continues to welcome and even relish new challenges to his preconceived notions, even when those challenges threaten his health and safety."
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This is no by-the-numbers memoir. Alda, 69, doesn't dish the dirt, doesn't kiss and tell . . . Alda does what a writer, even one with five Emmy Awards, plus Tony and Oscar nominations, should. He tells a story, with detail, generous amounts of humor, sometimes painful honesty and insight . . . It's 224 pages long and he does what "M*A*S*H" did: He leaves you wanting more. A nice trick, that. It makes you like the guy even more.
Booklist (the review journal of the American Library Association)
"Alda, Emmy winning star of television’s M*A*S*H as well as a writer and director, candidly details his turbulent childhood and the lessons he learned during his event-filled life in this breezy collection of remembrances and anecdotes . . . Refreshingly, this collection of biographical sketches is written in a good-natured and compassionate way. A large publicity effort is under way for this release, and Alda is a well-liked and well-known celebrity, so librarians should stock up."
-- Kathleen Hughes
Debra Hamel, BookBlog.com
"There's simply nothing wrong with this book. In prose that flows so smoothly you'll want to down the whole of it in one sitting Alan Alda, whose TV personae most of us will have admired for years, shows himself to be in real life an affable, intelligent, intellectually curious, normal, nice guy. Who can write well. He begins with one of the best first lines of a book I've ever read . . . Obviously this book comes very highly recommended. Buy it and enjoy it. Like me you may find yourself reading the last page very slowly in a vain attempt to keep it from ending."
CultureDose.Net
“. . . as defining as that [MASH] role was, and as validating as the praise and respect it got him turned out to be, it was hardly the end of Alda's journey and education. . . . Alda continues to welcome and even relish new challenges to his preconceived notions, even when those challenges threaten his health and safety. He is living proof that a mind that keeps questioning keeps growing, and that alone is pretty inspirational."
Amazon.com:
"...breezy, most enjoyable read...Like Alda's persona, his book is more human and less flash."
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Amazon.com:
"Alan Alda's autobiography travels a path less taken. Instead of a sensationalist, name-dropping page-turner, Alda writes about his life as a memory play, an exercise in recollecting his childhood, his parents (dad Robert was a veteran on stage, film, and vaudeville), and his career. You want to know about Alda's most famous work, the eleven years on M*A*S*H? You have exactly 16 pages to do so, and guess what: It's one of the least entertaining parts of the book. But should fans of the award-winning actor-writer-director avoid this slim memoir? Not in the slightest. Slyly humorous and open-hearted, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is a breezy, most enjoyable read. Alda's ability to recall his childhood (including backstage at raunchy vaudeville shows), school years, stage struggles and successes is as entertaining as one of his Emmy-winning teleplays. Alda is inordinately attune recalling life's crystallizing moments: when religion no longer worked for him, how something in his pocket made him forever a better actor, or his mother's painful descent into dementia. Alda's ever present humor is a great asset whether telling a charming love story on meeting his wife Arlene or a life-threatening illness in a remote part of Chile ('I am in and out of consciences, but I never take a break from the screaming. The show must go on.'). Like Alda's persona, his book is more human and less flash. What would be filler in most books is often the mot entertaining and revealing here; especially Alda's dynamic relationship with his parents. Really, who else would name his memoir after an unfortunate trip to the taxidermist? The year the book was published during a revival for the 69-year-old; he was nominated for an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony in the same year."
--Doug Thomas
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Publishers Weekly Says of the Audio Book:
"While listening to Alda's colorful and often poignant recollections, it becomes clear that, in addition to being a consummate actor, he is an introspective storyteller who isn't constrained by memory.. . With a touch of wonderment in his voice, he tells of weeks spent traveling with his father's burlesque company, of time spent with his dog Rhapsody (before he was stuffed), of a lifetime spent coping with his mother's mental illness and of the highs and lows of his acting career. ...Alda's intimate, dynamic narration makes one feel as if you're sitting across from a wise and entertaining friend, the kind you could listen to for hours."
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- Listen to Alan Alda’s Podcast Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda here!.
- You can order Alan Alda’s New York Times Best Selling book If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face? from these booksellers.
- You can buy Alan Alda’s Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I've Learned and Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself -- New York Times Best Selling books or Grammy Nominated audio books read by Alan Alda --from these booksellers.
- Find out where and when Alan Alda will will be speaking about his books.
- Watch Alan Alda talk about his involvement in advocating for the communication of science and discuss his books in video interviews.
- Read excerpts from Alan Alda’s best selling books, Never Have Your Dog Stuffed and Other Things I've Learned and Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself.