Envisioning the Afterlife

Image A for the afterlife, if we’ve got one at all, is pretty sketchy. Harps, clouds, angels, pearly gates. Fire and brimstone.

Maybe you picture something else. Strawberry fields. Bliss. Nothingness. Reincarnation.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman has a hobby of imagining afterlives. He’s pictured scores. Really thought them through. Now he’s put forty in a new book. Forty ways of thinking about the afterlife, if there is one.

God is he. God is she. God is they. God is gone. You’re young in heaven. You’re old. You’re a microbe.

This hour, On Point: Imagining the afterlife.

You can join the conversation. How do you picture it? Something? Nothing? Heavenly choirs?Guest:

David Eagleman, neuroscientist at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine and author of the new book "Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives."

You can read four stories from "Sum" on the book's website. And here are short summaries of all 40 stories.