When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.

I always thought the name of Utah’s major newspaper was some sort of weird misspelling of the word “desert.” But no, Deseret is the “land of the honeybee,” according to the Book of Mormon. I guess I should have figured they would have caught a typo in the masthead after 154 years.

The Bible talks a lot about thankfulness, and I'm more thankful than I ever was. I try to concentrate on the hundreds of things that go right in a day, instead of the three or four that go wrong.

When I was with the serpent-handlers in Tennessee, it was the most bizarre method of worship I could think of. Yet when you sit with these people, you can kind of see how it makes sense.

I thought religion would eventually wither away and we'd all be worshiping at the altar of science.

I'm all for cafeteria religion. I think there's nothing wrong with cafeterias - I've had some great meals at cafeterias. I've also had some horrible meals, so it's important to pick the right things. Take a heaping helping of compassion and mercy, and leave the intolerance on the table.

I tried the paleo diet, which is the caveman diet - lots of meat. I tried the raw food vegan diet. And I tried the calorie restriction diet, which is the idea is that if you eat very, very little - if you're on the verge of starvation, you will live a very long time. Whether or not you want to, of course, is the idea.