Francis S. Collins is an illustrious physician and scientist—former head of both the Human Genome Project and the National Institutes of Health. But lately, he’s become passionate about bridging political and cultural divides, which is a subject of his new book, The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust. In his personal life, Collins is a devotee of music. He spoke with us about how he and his wife have been bringing people together through song. “Every holiday season, starting when I was six or seven, my parents would host a singing party at their home near Staunton, Virginia. There might be show tunes around the grand piano, fiddle music in the kitchen, and songwriters in the upstairs hall singing original things. That was always the best night of the year. “Ten or 15 years ago, my wife and I wanted to create something similar, so we began having singing parties. We’d invite 40 or 50 people, many of whom did not necessarily think of themselves as musical. But I’d say, ‘Come on anyway—maybe you’ll discover something about yourself.’ We’d invite people from vastly different perspectives—from the Hill, from academia—and just start singing, often straight through to midnight. I like to start off with something everybody knows, like ‘Wagon Wheel’ or ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads.’ Both have great choruses that people can warm up with. “The thing I love most is that, after a while, you realize you’ve got a real choir. There are stronger and weaker singers, but together, it’s quite an instrument. So you’ll get to a song that has a really good chorus, and I’ll make the instruments stop so it’s just a cappella, and something just hap­pens: People’s faces light up with ‘Look what we’re creating here.’ There was a moment like that where I looked over and saw a very conservative news commentator standing next to a very progressive scientist, a Nobel Prize winner—and the joyfulness in both of their faces, with arms around each other, it was like, okay, that’s the perfect snapshot of what music can do, the way it brings us together. “Music is an example of something that’s hard to ex­plain on a purely scientific basis. It’s an example of beauty, and I think of beauty as a sign­post we’re supposed to pay attention to. It’s pretty clear our brains have special circuits designed for music, and those wouldn’t be there if music had not been something that gave us the opportunity to survive over long periods. Music has kept us together through millennia, has helped us work together, grieve together, go to war together, and support each other through hard times. Those ancient circuits can help us if we can figure out how to tap into them. They can knock back the divisiveness and bring us joy.” —As told to Sylvie McNamara RelatedMiss Pixie’s Owner on Building Community Through the Decade This article appears in the December 2024 issue of Washingtonian.The post Why This Former NIH Head Throws Bipartisan Singing Parties first appeared on Washingtonian.