I’ve been vaguely familiar with Phillip Ball through various article over the years, so when this video came up I clicked it out of curiosity and it was fascinating.
We don’t even know what genes are | Philip Ball on biology’s biggest mistake
The Institute of Art and Ideas
Jan 20, 2026
Philip Ball explains what molecular biology got wrong about genetics. Did we get genetics completely wrong?Join leading science journalist Philip Ball in this this exclusive studio interview that challenges some of biology’s most entrenched ideas. Ball argues that familiar ideas - the genome as a blueprint, genes as instructions, proteins as precision machines, even cells as fixed entities - are incomplete or misleading. Instead, he presents life as a multilevel, self-organizing system governed by principles that cut across genes, cells, tissues, and whole organisms, and discusses the radical implications this “new biology” may have for humanity. …
I checked out his WIKI page and stumbled on something I’ve often thought about, that is music’s emotional impact. Related to why I’ve been know to say, I think music is the purest religion we’ve come up with.
In 2011, Ball published The Music Instinct in which he discusses how we make sense of sound and Music and emotion. He outlines what is known and still unknown about how music has such an emotional impact, and why it seems indispensable to humanity. He has since argued that music is emotively powerful due to its ability to mimic humans and through setting up expectations in pitch and harmony and then violating them.[5]
Gonna have to add that on my list.