I'm currently writing a book about singing for Algonquin Press. It's tentatively titled, The Sopranos: Facing the Music at Middle Age, or How Singing in the Choir Saved my Soul. The book is going to braid together four strands: the music itself, my 27 years + experience of singing in a choir, the stories I'm uncovering from the Grace Church archives, and current research in the science of singing. My mind is still reeling about something I found out at the recent World Science Festival.

My most recent book is Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory (the paperback came out in March, 2010). Scientists have always disdained parapsychology, but there was a brief moment in the early 1930's when the scientific community thought, well, okay, ectoplasm, seances and table rappings aside, maybe there is something going on. Duke opened a lab to study the various phenomena, and for a few decades, a group of serious scientists and graduate students tried to find if there was anything to it all.

The book before that was The Restless Sleep: Inside New York City's Cold Case Squad. When enough time has gone by, I think I'd like to write an article about what it was like to work on a book about the NYPD. (It was very hard.)

My second book, Waiting for My Cats to Die: a morbid memoir, came out in 2001. It's about my mid-life crisis on one level, but really, on a deeper level it's about this: I don't want to die.

In 1990 I founded something called Echo. It's a NYC-based online service filled with people who log in everyday to talk about whatever -- work, love, how hard life can be, and what's on TV (my favorite obsession). I wrote about Echo and the internet in a book called, Cyberville: Clicks, Culture and the Creation of an Online Town. I stopped doing anything to promote Echo years ago, but I'm glad it's managed to survive. In between writing and research, TV, and the occasional movie or book, I love talking to people on Echo.

I grew up on Long Island, got a B.F.A. from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and a graduate degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU. I was once a telecommunications analyst for the Mobil Corporation. It feels like so many lifetimes ago. I can't believe I used to wear a suit almost every day. Still, learning how to function in that environment was useful.

What else? I'm a very occasional contributor to the NPR show, All Things Considered, and I've been a samba drummer with The Manhattan Samba Group since I turned forty. If you go to my personal website you'll find a lot of posts about TV and my cats.