Now in Their 80s, Alan Alda and Ken Miller Talk Creativity, Aging and What’s Next for the Octogenarians (Exclusive)

Alan Alda, the award-winning actor, writer and director, at almost 90 years old, hosts the popular podcast, Clear + Vivid. He also recently made a cameo appearance in Tina Fey’s remake of his 1981 movie The Four Seasons.

Ken Miller is a legendary financier whowill publish his debut novel, High Finance at 82 years old on Sept. 2. He’s got a second finished novel and a third in the works and shows no signs of slowing down.

The two recently caught up to discuss friendship, aging and the connection between creativity and longevity in their lives.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

 Ken:  Alan, we’ve been friends for decades now, and we used to have great conversations between tennis games. Now that I’m 82 and you’re 89, we hit a ping pong ball from time to time, and despite your struggle with Parkinson’s, I have a horrendous win/loss record. What’s more, you’re still in a hyper-active mode creatively. So, what is driving you after you’ve already made such storied contributions to the culture, to be so productive at your advanced age?

Alan: Oh, fine, thanks. I didn’t know my age was advanced until you started harping on it. It’s true, I do a lot of stuff. Mainly because it’s all play and fun. Of course, if you do it enough, play becomes work. What saves me there, though, is that I think there are few pleasures in the world as great as feeling you can do something well. And even more so: learning how to do it better. Is that true for you? I’m reading your novel now and enjoying it. I imagine exercising your skill in writing it must have given you a lot of pleasure. Has it? 

Ken: I do love the experience of writing. But as you point out, play can become work.  I start writing something because it’s fun, and the next thing I know, I’ve written 30,000 words only to encounter an irreconcilable plot problem. Then, to paraphrase the title of your bestseller, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look On My Face?, I’m asking myself, “If writing is so much fun, why am I banging my head against the wall?” 

Of course, it’s not just play becoming work. Paradoxes are everywhere, and so many of what we think of as extremes are really continuums; love becomes hate and vice versa. Same with pleasure and pain. In finance, many assets are liabilities while the opposite is also true. What were we talking about?

Alan: I don’t know. I fell asleep at continuums. But to go a little deeper with your question about being productive while being old, I think a few embers still have to be glowing. A passionate interest in something you haven’t yet followed up on. I’ve always been interested in how people relate and communicate. And now I’m spending most of my time exploring that on my podcast.  But I think it’s important to follow a passion even if it doesn’t deliver the same status hits you’ve had in the past.

Compared to the tens of millions who watched M*A*S*H, my podcast, “Clear and Vivid” has a small audience, but listeners seem to love hearing from my spectacular guests as much I as I do. I get the happy feeling I’m doing something that counts. And speaking of relating, studies suggest that reading novels gives a person more empathy. Are you aware that you’re in the empathy business? 

Ken: No, it hadn’t even occurred to me that empathy might be a business. I’d need a unit of measurement so a customer could fill up on their desired number of, say, empathons. Would you like premium or regular? But it’s good to know I’m not just peddling objects at $27.95 a pop; I’m an Empathy Salesman! In my novel High Finance, I tell the fun story of a greedy, moody, unscrupulous financier who is wiped out by the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers … his ruin and possible resurrection. Readers know upfront that the Lehman bankruptcy will be bad news for Jed, so part of my job was to create enough empathy for this flawed character such that a reader cares how Jed handles the disaster. 

Now, I know that empathy is central for you, but perhaps empathy is just a tool, and we owe our continued existence, yours and mine, to the itch of insatiable curiosity?

Alan: When all is said and done, I think the main thing that keeps me alive is laughing. When something goes wrong, I often see it as funny. Take my Parkinson’s. (Please.) The night I accidentally fell into the dishwasher, I reassured our dinner guests by telling them, “I’m fine. It was only on rinse cycle.”  Fortunately, when you’re old, pretty much any bizarre thing you say gets a laugh. What’s the one thing that keeps you going?  

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Ken: Curiosity. I want to see tomorrow’s news. But not just to observe. Perhaps there will be a development I can act on to help a friend or humanity in general. Noble, right? But I remember a conversation where I informed you of a fact you already knew: There are an estimated 200 billion trillion stars in the universe, around the same number as the grains of sand on earth. We are nothing. 

That day I was wallowing in my insignificance, and you cheered me up with a “Don’t overdo it on this ‘We are negligible’ business.” But, Alan, what if we are just characters in someone else’s video game? If so, I hope that Someone is God, a Being whose benevolence surpasses human understanding.

Alan: Well, you certainly are creative in your old age. But I think you can calm down about being insignificant. We may be grains of sand from somebody’s point of view, but we don’t have to be from ours. As long as we can stay creative, life goes on — for us and for the whole rest of the sand pile.   Dig.  Play.  Yes?

Ken: I’m getting out my pail and shovel.

High Finance hits shelves on Sept. 2 and is available now, wherever books are sold.