Six Feet Over: Science Tackles the Afterlife

"What happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's that--the million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers: scientists, schemers, engineers, mediums, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die.

ISBN-13: 9781324036043

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Norton - W. W. & Company - Inc.

Publication Date: 10-04-2022

Pages: 320

Product Dimensions: 8.20(w) x 5.30(h) x 0.80(d)

Mary Roach is the author of five best-selling works of nonfiction, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Oakland, California.

Table of Contents

Introduction 11

1 You Again A visit to the reincarnation nation 21

2 The little Man Inside the Sperm, or Possibly the Big Toe Hunting the soul with microscopes and scalpels 55

3 How to Weigh a Soul What happens when a man (or a mouse, or a leech) dies on a scale 77

4 The Vienna Sausage Affair And other dubious highlights of the ongoing effort to see the soul 107

5 Hard to Swallow The giddy, revolting heyday of ectoplasm 121

6 The Large Claims of the Medium Reaching out to the dead in a University of Arizona lab 149

7 Soul in a Dunce Cap The author enrolls in medium school 169

8 Can You Hear Me Now? Telecommunicating with the dead 179

9 Inside the Haunt Box Can electromagnetic fields make you hallucinate? 213

10 Listening to Casper Apsychoacoustics expert sets up camp in England's haunted spots 225

11 Chaffin v. the Dead Guy in the Overcoat In which the law finds for a ghost, and the author calls in an expert witness 239

12 Six Feet Over A computer stands by on an operating room ceiling, awaiting near-death experiencers 261

Last Words 291

Acknowledgments 295

Bibliography 297

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