{"id":212,"date":"2009-04-09T16:06:41","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T20:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/?p=212"},"modified":"2018-09-10T15:15:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T19:15:41","slug":"spark-blog-video-dr-steven-pinker-language-makes-us-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/video\/spark-blog-video-dr-steven-pinker-language-makes-us-human\/212\/","title":{"rendered":"Spark Blog: Video &#8211; Dr. Steven Pinker: Language Makes Us Human"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we traveled the world investigating what makes us human, we always were sure to ask our interviewees just what <em>they<\/em> think the human spark is. While there was plenty of overlap, there were also a lot of different ideas put forward. And people tended to approach the question differently depending on what their own fields of expertise were.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Alda recently chatted with <a href=\"http:\/\/pinker.wjh.harvard.edu\/about\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Steven Pinker<\/a> in his office in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. Much of Pinker\u2019s research has focused on language \u2013 and not surprisingly language is central to his conception of what makes us human.<\/p>\n<p>Watch this video clip to learn more about three big things Pinker thinks set us apart from other animals.<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 640px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-212-1\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/7\/files\/pinker.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/7\/files\/pinker.mp4\">https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/7\/files\/pinker.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we traveled the world investigating what makes us human, we always were sure to ask our interviewees just what they think the human spark is. While there was plenty of overlap, there were also a lot of different ideas put forward. And people tended to approach the question differently depending on what their own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[505,654,69],"tags":[4547,130,730],"class_list":["post-212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-human-evolution","category-video","tag-harvard-university","tag-interview","tag-language"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Spark Blog: Video - Dr. Steven Pinker: Language Makes Us Human | The Human Spark | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/humanspark\/video\/spark-blog-video-dr-steven-pinker-language-makes-us-human\/212\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Spark Blog: Video - Dr. Steven Pinker: Language Makes Us Human | The Human Spark | PBS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As we traveled the world investigating what makes us human, we always were sure to ask our interviewees just what they think the human spark is. 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