Contributing writer

Heidi Lai

Latest Content


The Surprising Origins of Emotion

The brain is “making thousands of guesses at the same time,” Barrett tells us, and she argues that emotions are guesses too. When you feel something in your body — a racing heart, sweaty palms — your brain has to predict its cause: Is it love at first sight, or test anxiety?


Like a Man at a Museum

I could get lost in the jungle, so lost that no one would find me, and months later there would be some notice for a foreigner’s body found in the brush but it would just be a paper notice, stuck on a wooden wall in the village’s main hall, for a foreigner’s body found in the brush of the middle of nowhere. In a way, I feel more myself than I have ever felt before.