What’s wrong with the collective “we”? Here’s a good one: “We don’t know how life emerged on Earth.” That’s a perfectly fine sentence that ropes in the current state of knowledge (or lack thereof, actually) for all of humanity: Nobody on Earth has clue on how life emerged.

As for NDEs, I’m with Oliver Sacks (the subtitle of his essay is perfect: “How the brain creates out-of-body experiences and religious epiphanies”). Also, while I’m here, Jerry Coyne’s essay “Eben Alexander’s Bogus Trip to Heaven” is worth reading.

The Harley Poe song wasn’t bad. It sounds like something Tom Waits would have written (and I would have preferred hearing Waits sing it).