The Chasers Road Trip: Trains, Brains and Automobiles Series 1 Press Pack TX: Thursday 21st January 2021 at 9pm on ITV Programme Information TX Thursday 21st January 2021 at 9pm. Anne Hegerty, Mark Labbett and Shaun Wallace - three of the biggest brains of the quizzing universe escape the confines of the studio to embark on an adventure like no other. In this brand-new three part series The Chasers Road Trip: Trains, Brains and Automobiles we follow our three fearless brainboxes as they pit their wits against extraordinary competition as they try to answer the age old question 'Are we really as smart as we think we are?' To find the answers, this brand new primetime series, follows our three titans of trivia as they travel the globe to take on child geniuses, great apes, and the latest AI and robot technology. We get to see three of Britain’s best-known brainboxes as we’ve never seen them before. On this intellectual journey like no other, our cerebral celebrities question if we underestimate animal intelligence by exploring the brightest sparks in the animal kingdom. They journey to America to pit their wits against Kanzi, a Bonobo ape who is able to communicate with humans by using a series of pictures and symbols on a Lexigram, and in addition to this is also thought to be one of the first Apes to show an understanding of spoken English. They also meet a chimpanzee memory wizard, a 25 year old gamer orang-utan called Katie and that well-known genius of the ocean, the dolphin. And, using their hearts as well as their heads, they will confront the moral challenge: that if humanity fully understood animal intelligence, would we treat them differently? Travelling the UK, they go head-to-head with child geniuses in order to weigh up to what degree intelligence is innate or can be developed. But, while some of the UK’s brightest kids impress Anne, Mark and Shaun, they are shocked to learn that they themselves have something surprising in common, which could unlock the mystery to the trio’s amazing memories. And finally, in Japan, our quiz masters encounter some of the world’s cleverest computers and the very latest in artificial intelligence in an attempt to find out if we humans are heading for a utopian future…or are destined to be taken over by robots. The Chasers Road Trip is produced by Boundless (part of Fremantle). The Chasers Road Trip: Trains, Brains and Automobiles Interview with: Anne Hegerty, Mark Labbett and Shaun Wallace How did you find filming the series? Shaun Wallace - “I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, going to such diverse destinations from mid-town America to quintessential places like Cambridge and Japan was just fantastic, just really good. It was amazing to just see three completely contrasting places to look at different forms of intelligence.” Mark Labbett - “ It was a real eye-opener, in that we’ve never done anything like that before, so it was a change from being in the studio, where we could more or less know what time we go in, what time we come out. In a studio, to a certain extent is just a job, whereas this was, you didn't know where you were going to be, what time you started, what time you finish or more importantly what you are going to have for food that evening. “ Anne Hegerty - “I’ve never done an actual documentary series before, so it was a learning curve certainly, and we learnt a lot of very interesting stuff. “ What do you think the audience will find most interesting about the series in general? AH - “I think they will enjoy watching us interacting with the animals. The first episode is about animal intelligence and we encounter various kinds of apes and also dolphins, and I think people will enjoy those and find out what levels of intelligence they have.” ML – “Obviously the different places we went to, there was a huge difference between Japan, where it was nearly forty degrees! they were in the middle of their worst ever heat wave. Shaun absolutely loved it, Anne and I were sort of like ice cubes melting, we went without the air conditioning. Next we went off to the middle of America where it was freezing, me and Anne were in our element, but Shaun had about four layers of clothes on.” SW - “I think what they will find is that intelligence is not confined to human beings, there are different forms of intelligence, we looked at animal intelligence, we studied children’s intelligence, and they will be fascinated in relation to how clever children can really be, especially at the age of ten, where your brain is most developed in terms of storing information. We came up against some child prodigies who really embarrassed us, which is good.” Did you learn anything new about yourself during filming the series that you might not have known before hand? ML – “The bits where we learned about our fellow animals was fascinating, and it turns out that, there was a test that apparently chimps do really well and humans can’t do at all, and I absolutely aced it, so I guess I'm some sort of mutant retro super chimp. I looked it up, I learnt that about six million years ago, the human brain dumped a load of short term memory capacity and started developing the linguistic parts of the brain, so chimps are way better than us at short term memory. There was a test that you had to put the numbers one to nine on a grid in order, and they were showing how chimps do it brilliantly and get their banana or their peanuts. I could do exactly the same and i was loudly saying ‘where’s my peanut?’ when I got it right. They get the motivation, so should I. It was fascinating the differences between all three of our brains, we have quite a range of IQ’s and we found one thing in common with all of us, that we all get remarkable amounts of deep sleep.” AH – “We did an interesting sleep test, we all had to sleep in the sleep lab with electrodes on our heads and we discovered that all of us sleep very deeply. Deep sleep is the time where you are laying down memories, so that sort of indicated why we are so good at retaining information.” SW - “I know that I am bright, but discovered that I’m clever in a different way to the other two, because there are different forms of intelligence, such as, you have got emotional intelligence. You’ve got common sense, and I would like to think that I've got that in abundance. The mere fact that you may have an IQ of a million, it doesn't make you any more superior to anyone else, because you have got to use your intellect in different ways, in different situations. You have got to have that empathy, that’s just me, only in comparison to my companions.” What surprised you most during the making of the series? SW – “What surprised me was how intelligent animals can be, especially if you prepare them and train them. As I was saying, when we looked at new intelligence found in chimpanzees and primates in general, I was surprised that they are only just a step down from us. If animals could communicate in a way that we could understand, it could be up there, I’m telling you. The only thing they can’t do, I suppose is reason or articulate in a way that homo sapiens can do. But if they could, and they could communicate, then their intelligence would be a force to be reckoned with.” ML – “ We were all wired up, and I thought I had had a terrible nights sleep, its an interesting chicken and egg thing. I think they are going to do more research on it, we are great quizzers, but have we got great memories because of this deep sleep or have we developed like this because we use our memories so much, that its our bodies response to shut down. We have just done series two of Beat The Chasers and we were in the studio for three days and all of us have turned round and said we are exhausted. We’ve all been sleeping for England. If you phoned me at about three O’clock this afternoon you’d be waking me up on the sofa, because its nap time.” What would you say would be the stand out moments during the series for you? AE – “I enjoyed swimming with the dolphins, what I really enjoyed simply was the opportunity to swim in open water, which I always like doing and obviously in November, you don't actually expect the weather to be quite so warm, I’ve never previously been on the Florida Keys, so I didn't realise it was warm. I mean the water was very cold, but that was a lovely experience.” SW - “For me, it would be being part of this journey, in different countries, looking at the different forms of intelligence. I suppose I was really intrigued by the whole exercise in terms of looking at the different strands of intelligence, it was really fascinating studying robots and whether or not robots can actually develop in years to come and will be able to think and feel just like human beings.