LIGHTS ON made it to Spotify’s top 10 nonfiction book list this year! Thanks to all my fellow consciousness nerds and everyone at Spotify for supporting this labor of love! This was a dream project for me.
Click here to see Spotify’s best nonfiction book list for 2025
I’ve started a podcast feed for my audio documentary, LIGHTS ON, where you can now listen to previews from each chapter. Excerpts from every chapter on a wide range of topics—from the neuroscience of perception, to plant biology and behavior, to the physics of space and time—are now available wherever you listen to podcasts. Featuring guests such as Sara Imari Walker, David Eagleman, Anil Seth, Zoë Schlanger, Janna Levin, Brian Greene, Sean Carroll, and more…
Science & Wisdom Live are hosting a special dialogue in collaboration with our North American FPMT partners, including Shantideva Center in New York and Land of Medicine Buddha and Ocean of Compassion in California. What is consciousness, at its core? Is it a product of brain activity, or a fundamental aspect of reality itself? In this thought-provoking evening, author Annaka Harris—known for “Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind” and her new release “Lights On”—joins Buddhist scholar Geshe Tenzin Namdak to unite scientific inquiry with contemplative wisdom.
I had a fun and in-depth discussion about my new documentary project LIGHTS ON with Alex on his “Within Reason” podcast.
In three paragraphs, my new “short” explains why meditation practice might give us a more accurate window onto reality:
Meditation entails the difficult task of cultivating concentrated attention on one’s moment-to-moment experience—the endless stream of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions—without judging or interpreting them, or allowing them to take immediate control of our actions. In its simplest form, meditation is a skill that undercuts all our evolved drives: planning for the future, learning from the past, following our desires to eat, drink, avoid pain, etc…
Click here to continue reading my post, “Meditation and Reality”