Curatorialist

I haven’t even seen it and I know it’s interesting. Just the premise alone is worthy of spending some time on. I will be furiously hunting for re-airings of this show, so I can get the full story, but until then, I’m watching these little clips on the PBS site. Everything from scientists studying how birds make songs, to songwriters getting scans of their brains to Bobby McFerrin discussing the different roles music has between cultures. One of my favorite books ever is Steven Pinker’s “The Language Instinct,” which opened my mind to the inner workings of the human brain and redefined cultural standards for how we think about linguistics, which influence many parts of Western thinking. Coincidentally, or not, this show is called “The Music Instinct” and it seems to be further proof that humans are more amazing, by design, than we give ourselves credit for. We have a cultural bias to believe that you have to work hard to become creative, but in fact, it seems to be in us from the get go. That’s a great, hopeful, thought and could mean a lot for the field of education, if they were paying attention. It is, after all, PBS – can we get these people to talk to those people?

The site is here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/

The schedule tool to figure out when it’s playing next is here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/schedule/