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.

What has always surprised me when I walk into a bookstore is the number of books that you can find that are written with certainty. The authors tell some story as though it's true, but they don't have any evidence that it is true!

Consciousness is the smallest player in the operations of the brain.

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.

Imbalance of reason and emotion may explain the tenacity of religion in societies: world religions are optimized to tap into the emotional networks, and great arguments of reason amount to little against such magnetic pull.

Awareness of your surroundings occurs only when sensory inputs violate expectations. When the world is successfully predicted away, awareness is not needed because the brain is doing its job well.

A typical neuron makes about ten thousand connections to neighboring neurons. Given the billions of neurons, this means there are as many connections in a single cubic centimeter of brain tissue as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy.