I'm using the afterlife as a backdrop against which to explore the joys and complexities of being human - it turns out that it's a great lens with which to understand what matters to us.

Just like a good drama, the human brain runs on conflict.

If you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet.

Knowing yourself now requires the understanding that the conscious you occupies only a small room in the mansion of the brain, and that it has little control over the reality constructed for you.

In our current understanding of science, we can't find the physical gap in which to slip free will - the uncaused causer - because there seems to be no part of the machinery that does not follow in a causal relationship from the other parts.

We spend our lives on a thin slice between the unimaginably small scales of the atoms that compose us and the infinitely large scales of galaxies.

My lab and academic work fill my day from about 9 am to 7 p.m. Then I zoom out the lens to work on my other writing.