I’m fascinated by neuroscience, by how the software that is our brain really works. I’m also fascinated by music, and how it can show how the brain works in a common way across cultures. Here’s a great example of that. Bobby McFerrin at the 2009 World Science Festival showing how a pentatonic scale is something kind of hard-wired into people. (I’m not quite sure how true the term “hard-wired” is, since different cultures have different musical scales — I’d be interested to see how this experiment worked in Japan, frinstance.)

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.