The untold story of an iconoclastic scientist: a psychiatrist who dedicated his career to documenting consciousness after death.
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From God to sex to suicide to the afterlife, Jesse uses humor and science to explore, at the deepest levels, what it means to be—and to think—human.
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A research psychologist and the author of several acclaimed popular science books, Jesse and his work have been featured on numerous documentaries, television shows and radio programmes, including ‘Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman’, ‘Conan’, ‘Chelsea Lately’, ‘Q&A’ (Australia), NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’ and the BBC. He has written for Scientific American, Slate, Guardian, The New York Times, Discover, Chicago Tribune, New Republic, Vice and many others. He currently writes the weekly sex and science column LE BON COUP DU DIMANCHE SOIR for the French magazine Le Point.
Jesse is Professor of Psychology and Head of the Science Communication Programme at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He lives on the Otago Peninsula with his partner Juan and their border terriers, Hanno and Kora.
“Bravo! This deeply researched and engagingly written biography does much more than tell the story of Ian Stevenson’s life and work on children with past-life memories, mediumship, apparitions, and extrasensory perception—it is a meditation on the implications of Stevenson’s findings for the relation of mind to body and the survival of consciousness after bodily death. Bering’s account is especially powerful because he comes to Stevenson from the perspective of cognitive psychology. It should inspire others who think they know what Stevenson was about, but have not read anything he wrote, to take up his extensive writings and form their own opinions about them.”
James G. Matlock, author of “Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory”
“Jesse Bering’s Perv is a copiously researched, scientifically solid, fascinating and fun ride through a museum of sexual oddities that makes a strong argument for why we need to ease up on our sneers at the ‘erotic outliers’ and admit the reality: To perv is human.”
Amy Alkon , author of I See Rude People
“Anyone interested in reading about the latest developments in sex research told with a generous dose of self-deprecating humor will enjoy this essay collection.”
Library Journal
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