SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chris Hemsworth: A Road Trip to Remember.

Viewers learned a lot from Chris Hemsworth: A Road Trip to Remember, as the star opened up about his father Craig’s early-stage Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The National Geographic film followed the two on a journey across their native Australia in an attempt to recapture memories, and it was incredibly emotional. Yet there was also real science behind their trek.

Audiences saw Chris in consultation with Dr. Suraj Samtani, who is a clinical psychologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of South Wales. Dr. Samtani’s work focuses on the social determinants of health, and he spoke throughout A Road Trip to Remember on the ways that social habits can help one’s long-term future. In an interview with TVBrittanyF.com, he further elaborated on being a part of the NatGeo project and what he hopes audiences will take away from watching.

Brittany Frederick: What interested you in participating in Chris Hemsworth: A Road Trip to Remember? Was there a particular hook for you?

Dr. Suraj Samtani: I’m a dementia researcher at the Center for Healthy Brain Aging at UNSW, and we’re world leaders in dementia research and social connection. So when I got approached to be part of a documentary about social connections and dementia research, I thought well, I would be dumb not to join.

It’s your job to explain the science related to Craig’s diagnosis and to this adventure that Chris and Craig embark upon. How did you tackle making that information accessible to a TV audience?

I’m very lucky that I do psychosocial research on social connections, which is slightly simpler to explain than nanotechnology or brain imaging or biomarkers. So my job is a little bit easier, because everyone can relate to feeling lonely or isolated at different points in their life. And so our message is actually really simple.

We know that loneliness is as bad for us as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s really powerful that we can see friends and family a few times a month, and see opportunities to confide in people in whom we trust. We know that these two things, they’re the recipe for having good social connections, for brain health.

Was there any one part of the project that you found memorable or that you were surprised by?

As someone who mostly researches social connections, who also knows about reminiscence therapy and how powerful it is, trying to implement that and just seeing how successful it was really the biggest surprise for me. Going to the house they recreated from Chris’s childhood [was] incredible.

They’ve got the whole house looking the way it used to look in the ’90s. I was there in the house feeling goosebumps. I had Enya in my head, and Chris and Craig just walking in, and they felt like they were in a time machine. It was just like being back in the teenage years for Chris, and Craig got really animated. He really came out of his shell. He’d been so reserved—but then he started talking, laughing, joking. And I think just how powerful that was, was really the biggest takeaway for me.

Is there specific advice you’d give to people who have seen the film and now want to take steps to improve their own social connections?

Social interactions have been declining since 2001. People are having less and less face-to-face interactions. My advice to people would be to find something that they really enjoy. Maybe it’s a hobby, like reading or gardening or music or dance or playing board games. Whatever it is, try to do that with other people.

And if you find that it’s really hard to be connected to people, maybe start small. Start with texting or calling someone you haven’t spoken to in a while, and then after a few weeks, you’ll find that you’re a little bit more confident and you can maybe even organize a catch-up.

What did you take away from your Road Trip to Remember experience? How did it affect or change you?

I think what I’m going to take away the most from this experience is that science is for sharing with people. It’s not for writing a journal article that nobody’s going to read. [It’s] so important to have [a] partnership with National Geographic, Nutopia, Chris Hemsworth. How many people are going to now start talking about dementi, because Thor is talking about it?

Chris Hemsworth: A Road Trip to Remember is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu. Photo Credit: Craig Parry/Courtesy of National Geographic.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.