Name: Dr. Hogan M. Sherrow
Profession: Professor of Anthropology
Hometown: Rogue River, Oregon
Years in Athens: 5
What work have you done in terms of television?
I consulted on the hit show “Monsterquest” for the History Channel on two different episodes. The first was a show on a potential young sasquatch sighting on an old video-clip (it was a pet monkey). On the second show I served as the scientific expert on an expedition to investigate the possibility of escaped chimpanzees in the forests of Florida (there were no chimps, and never had been).
How did you get involved in working with the History Channel?
The producers of Monsterquest contacted me by email, asking if I could analyze video for them, and things just snowballed from there.
What was the most exciting thing about being on TV?
The most exciting thing about being on TV was the reaction of my family and students. My wife and kids thought it was cool, my parents and grandparents HAD to have copies, and my students went nuts.
What was the most challenging thing?
The most challenging thing about being on TV was that science wasn’t always made a priority, and sometimes science was ignored for the sake of drama. I love communicating knowledge to a larger audience, but take my job as a scientist seriously.
Would you do television again? Why?
Absolutely. In fact, I’m currently working on several projects with production companies to bring a show to a major cable network.
If yes, do you have a ‘dream show’ you would want to do?
My ‘dream show’ would be a series on the nature of the human animal. I would love to travel to different parts of the world, examine different times in our history and prehistory and bring the latest in our understanding of the science of human behavior to a television audience. From falling in love to the propensity for war, humans from all over the world share behaviors that we’ve inherited biologically and culturally from our ancestors. In my dream show I would take the viewer on a journey of discovery of ourselves.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Ohio U chapter.