We interact with each other every day of our lives, but most of us don’t stop to think about the mere fact that we can interact with one another, or stop to question how we interact with one another.
Paleoanthropologist John Shea and actor Alan Alda (M*A*S*H) did, and as a result, PBS’ The Human Spark was born. Together, the duo embarked on a docu-journey to get to the bottom of what makes a human actually human, interviewing specialists, professors and even children to find an answer.
In one scene, host Alda, flanked by a two-year-old chimpanzee and a three-year-old boy each colouring, asks viewers why humans have evolved the way they have, whereas the chimp has minimal evolutionary capacity.
“We did a lot of takes, partly because the chimp kept eating his crayon,” he says. “And the little boy kept talking while I was talking, and then he would get bored and walk away.”
But what really interests Alda is the way we communicate with one another; how we digest and process the information that we give and receive during the course of a conversation.
“We were improvising,” he says of his on-camera interviews. “All of those conversations are improvised and then put together in a coherent way. The moments on camera where we’re just mixing together and they’re trying to make me understand it are really nice moments. There seems to be this intense socialization that we’re capable of. The ability to co-operate is very special among us, apparently.”
The Human Spark, a three-part documentary series, airs January on PBS.
Amber is currently reporting live from the TV Critics Press Tour in L.A. Check out complete coverage here. amber@tvguide.ca
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