Death. It doesn't have to be boring..

I don't write on topics that require a lot of urgency. But in 'Stiff,' I wanted to change people's hearts about organ donation. Whenever I get a chan….

I began thinking about my skeleton, this solid, beautiful thing inside me that I would never see..

Here is the secret to surviving one of these [airplane] crashes: Be male. In a 1970 Civil Aeromedical institute study of three crashes involving emer….

I walk up and down the rows. The heads look like rubber halloween masks. They also look like human heads, but my brain has no precedent for human hea….

The point is that no matter what you choose to do with your body when you die, it won't, ultimately, be very appealing. If you are inclined to donate….

You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place..

The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut d….

Many people will find this book disrespectful. There is nothing amusing about being dead, they will say. Ah, but there is..

The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanz….

You do not question an author who appears on the title page as "T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C.Path. (Lond.), F.F.Path. (R.C.P.I.), F.A.C.….

It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixtee….

Space doesn't just encompass the sublime and the ridiculous. It erases the line between..

Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to..

I very much was inspired by Bill Bryson. He does cover science, but more often, it's a mixture of science and travel, and whatever he happens to be w….

The terms "idiot" and "lunatic" were acceptable diagnostic terms in England up until 1959. "Imbecile" and "feeble-minded person" were, likewise, list….

The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never be….

Life contains these things: leakage and wickage and discharge, pus and snot and slime and gleet. We are biology. We are reminded of this at the begin….

Bodily fluids and solids are universally the most disgusting things we as human beings can come upon, but as long as they are inside us, it's part of….

Sharing a room with a cadaver is only mildly different from being in a room alone. They are the same sort of company as people across from you on sub….

Hormones are nature's three bottles of beer..