TCA Tour
The Human Spark
Production Biographies
Alan Alda, series host and narrator
Alan Alda, six-time Emmy-winning actor, writer and director, best-known as M*A*S*H's Hawkeye Pierce, hosted the PBS series Scientific American Frontiers for eleven years. In a single year he was nominated for an Oscar (The Aviator), a Tony (Glengarry Glen Ross), an Emmy (The West Wing) and wrote a bestseller (Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I've Learned). His second book, Things I OverheardWhile Talking to Myself , also became a bestseller. He was presented with the National Science Board's Public Service Award in 2006 for helping to broaden the public's understanding of science. He has served as moderator and playwright for the annual World Science Festival and is currently a member of its board of directors.
John Shea, Ph.D., paleoanthropologist
John Shea is the associate professor of anthropology at Stony Brook University and a paleoanthropologist who researches the archaeology of human origins. He's interested in the beginnings of our Homo sapiens species, as well as the extinction of our cousins the Neanderthals. Shea investigates these questions through fieldwork in the Middle East and Africa.
Shea is also an accomplished practitioner of “primitive technologies,” a skill set of particular interest during our filming visit for The Human Spark. Shea demonstrated how our earliest ancestors created their stone tools – and he instructed Alan Alda in how to recreate these technologies by knapping stone.
Through this type of hands-on experimentation, Shea attempts to reconstruct early human behavior through better understanding the creation and use of the stone tools left behind.
Graham Chedd, producer and executive producer
The founding science editor of NOVA in 1974, Graham Chedd produced several episodes of the series before setting up The Chedd-Angier (now Chedd-Angier-Lewis) Production Company in 1980. He created and produced the first bioethics series on PBS, the seven-part Hard Choices, in that year. He also produced several episodes of the PBS series The Nuclear Age, as well as three episodes of the high-profile PBS series Columbus and the Age of Discovery and episodes of The People's Century. In 1993, he created and produced, in collaboration with the BBC and WGBH Boston, the seven-part series The Secret of Life. But his principle PBS work over the last 15 years has been his collaboration with Alan Alda on the long-running series Scientific American Frontiers. In total, Chedd has produced more than 60 hours of primetime PBS programming.
Chedd is a graduate of Cambridge University and the author of several books, including The New Biology. Before joining NOVA, he was the science editor of the London-based magazine New Scientist.
Jared Lipworth, executive producer
As director of science programs, Jared Lipworth is responsible for commissioning and executive producing all science programs produced by THIRTEEN's Science, Natural History and Features department. Current projects in production or development include Secrets of the Dead IX, Ground War, Curious II and The Human Spark, which is currently a finalist at the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival for Presenter-Led programming. Recently completed projects include Curious, Warplane, Secrets of the Dead VII-VIII (with one program, Doping for Gold, up for a 2009 Emmy) and The Mysterious Human Heart, which won the 2008 Emmy for Science, Technology, and Nature programming.
Prior to becoming executive producer and then director of science programs, Lipworth was the series producer for the department's technology series, Innovation. He also served as series producer for the Emmy-nominated Secrets of the Dead III and coordinating producer for many of the department's projects, including Warrior Challenge, Secrets of the Pharaohs, the Emmy Award-winning Frontier House and The Secret Life of the Brain, Warship, Taxi Dreams, Echoes From the White House and Savage Planet. In 2003, Lipworth was nominated for a writing Emmy for Secrets of the Dead: Mystery of the Black Death. Additional credits at THIRTEEN include post-production producer for The American President and 1900 House and production assistant for Savage Seas, On The Trail of Mark Twain, The Great Balloon Race and Stories of Lupus.
Before arriving at THIRTEEN, Lipworth produced, directed and edited In the Footsteps of the Black Rhino for the BBC's Animal Zone. He received his master's degree in broadcast journalism from New York University, where he won the award for academic excellence, and he received his bachelor's degree in business management from Cornell University.