I'm Alan Alda and this is clear and vivid conversations about connecting and communicating. There's so many textbooks in psychology and other fields that start with only we humans do this.

And my first reaction is, are you sure that that's the case you know and and I have my doubts about it so I see this

enormous amount like an iceberg I see there's enormous amount of continuity and then the little tip of the

iceberg which is where our differences are.

I've thought it made it my task in life to show that there are lots of similarities.

This year on March 14th, Franz de Wahl died at the age of 75.

Franz was a leading primatologist who found in the lives of chimps and bonobos,

a level of empathy and a capacity for reconciliation and an ability to form

political alliances and other traits once reserved for humans. This is a special

episode of Clear and Vivit in which our executive producer Graham

Cheed and I look back on some of the times we shared with Franz, learning from

him that things like morality and even just a simple sense of fairness

have their roots in the brains of our primate cousins. I first met Franz Duolle

almost 30 years ago shooting an episode of Scientific American Frontiers.

He was a good teacher with a dry sense of humor.

Over the decades I interviewed him a total of four times,

including twice unclear and vivid.

And each conversation brought me closer

to these animals who are much more like us

than we usually realize.

Graham, why don't you take it from here?

Happy to.

...