North Carolina Scientists Explore the Human Spark
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Uniquely human abilities – to think in symbols; recombine those symbols into infinite meanings; invent a technology to disseminate the message; ponder the past; speculate about the future; imagine the unknown; build cities; compose music – constitute the "human spark." In the three-part PBS series, The Human Spark, premiering on UNC-TV in January 2010, host Alan Alda searches for the origin and nature of this spark.

In The Human Spark, Alan Alda travels the world trying to understand one central question:  What makes humans unique?  In order to shed a local light on this question, in conjunction with The Human Spark series and in association with the The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, UNC-TV presents North Carolina Scientists Explore the Human Spark. In this UNC-TV special, host Deborah Holt Noel joins Alda and a wide variety of North Carolina experts in an eye-opening panel discussion about our most human characteristics. Along the way, viewers like you can form your own own intriguing personal view of what our Spark is and where it lies.

In the meantime, what do you think makes humans human?
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