The concept of free will is inescapable. We see it in religion and morality, in law and public policy, but also on more personal levels in our thoughts and feelings. According to Sam Harris, the author of Free Will, the concept of free will “touches nearly everything we care about.” His argument, however, states that this concept is an illusion and that “our wills are simply not of our own making.”

Harris is the bestselling author of The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, and The Moral Landscape. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA. In Free Will, Harris utilizes both his philosophical and scientific backgrounds to break down this fundamental concept.

In regards to the science, Harris cites the EEG results from physiologist Benjamin Libet that showed the brain makes decisions before consciousness becomes aware of them. Three hundred milliseconds may not seem a big distinction, but how can we claim to be the conscious authors of our actions if the results suggest that the brain has already determined what we will do before we are aware of it? Harris expands on these findings by stating, “You can do what you decide to do – but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.”

The most interesting aspect of the book is when Harris examines the illusion of free will as a necessary one. He seems to fully recognize how ingrained we are with the concept and how initially the dismantling of the idea can appear off putting. For Harris though, he claims that losing the belief in free will has not made him fatalistic but in fact increased his feelings of freedom due to a deeper understanding of his biochemistry.

Free Will may not be considered beach reading, but if Sam Harris should be applauded for anything, it should be for how accessible he makes the material – and not just for PhD candidates in philosophy or science. The book is not as heavy as it seems. He uses simple, concise language to construct his argument and pulls it together in fewer than seventy pages. It’s the kind of book you can finish in one sitting but think about for days and days.

Mary Roach’s new book, Gulp, is not for the squeamish. But then, none of her books are, and that’s what makes them all so delightful. Her first work, Stiff, looked in detail at everything we think we know about cadavers. Now, this is not a topic that most people find humorous, but she somehow found a way to talk about the science of death in a way that was informative and yes, frequently hilarious. In her newest book, subtitled “Adventures on the Alimentary Canal,” she takes on chewing, spitting, digesting, and, uh, so on. She’s got a chapter called “The Ick Factor.” Sign me up!

Roach takes an immersive approach. To learn about taste science, for example, she visits a company that makes pet food flavor additives. Discussing a new product being tested, “one of the techs mentiones that she tried some earlier, and that the white morsels are chicken. Or rather, 'chickeny.' I must have registered surprise at the disclosure, because Theresa jumps in. ‘If you open a bag and it smells really good -- ‘ The tech shrugs. ‘And you’re hungry …’  Eeew. But, why? For that matter, why do Americans have such a hard time with the idea of eating horse, or dog, or even inner organ meats, when other cultures are clearly comfortable with the idea? (Hey, don’t look at me. I’m a vegetarian.) Anyway, she looks at that too.

When Roach gets to the stomach, things get weirder. Gulp takes on a rumor about swallowing something that could eat its way out from the inside, Alien-style. This really is science, so we find ourselves soon enough at the University of Nevada, where a professor obligingly sets up an experiment. At one point, they are calling around to local markets, trying to find a fish stomach. “’No stomachs of anything? No. Okay.’ John Gray lifts his head and says, in his quiet way, ‘I’ve got a dead leopard frog in the freezer.’ Everyone takes a break while Gray goes to defrost his frog under a warm tap.” The scientific method eventually yields an answer: urban legend.

By the time we get to the bottom half of the tube, I found myself frequently laughing out loud. Emergency rooms and what people put inside themselves? Check. Death by constipation? Check. A visit to a prison to discuss how people smuggle iPhones into the big house? Check. (An inmate tells her, “The rectum will stretch. Believe that.”) There is a chapter titled “Fun with hydrogen and methane,” and a visit to a research institute that investigates flatulence. Look, someone invented Beano. And if you found the anecdote about pet kibble troubling, imagine what these researchers are smelling all day. It’s not just hydrogen sulfide.

In the introduction, Mary Roach addresses her reader. “I don’t want you to say ‘This is gross.’ I want you to say, ‘I thought this would be gross, but it’s really interesting.’ Okay, and maybe a little gross.” She nailed it.

Everyone does it, but not everyone talks about it. Some do it alone, some with another person. Some do it only at night, and some do it any time the mood strikes them. Some do it with the television on, or their senses muffled by earplugs and eye masks. Some, it’s said, even do it with one eye open. People do it all different ways, sticking with whatever feels best for them. But how often does one peek into the science behind the action? Or, rather, the science under the sheets? And even then, how often do the findings make it to the curious ears of the layperson? Thanks to David K. Randall, chalk one up for pop science with Dreamland: Strange Adventures in the Science of Sleep.

It’s not often people think much about sleep – at least, not until a problem arises. It’s the impetus of sleep abnormalities that introduce many of Randall’s chapters in Dreamland. Anecdotes about dreams, health, habits, and even crimes kick off many of the lessons throughout this all-encompassing study of our nocturnal goings-on. Inspired by his own sleepwalking – and injuries sustained during the act – Randall traces the history of sleep habits in culture back to the 1700s, before the invention of artificial light, back to a time when people generally had both a “first sleep” and “second sleep” each night. (It was Edison’s invention that began to change everything, in case you’re looking for someone to blame for the move away from a practice that sounds like a lovely way to spend the night.)

From there Randall makes a case for separate spousal sleeping quarters, touches on the mostly unscientific study of dreams, the connection between sleep and excellence, the effects of sleep deprivation (it’s not pretty), how one might use their own circadian rhythm to their advantage and to the advantage of their gambling habits, the rise of sleep-aiding drugs, and more. Ultimately, Dreamland won’t tell you the meaning of your dreams, nor will it cure your insomnia. It doesn’t provide exhaustive explanations for everything that happens while one snoozes (because, well, there is no known explanation for all of it yet). But if you’ve ever been curious about some of what goes on while you’re slumbering away, or the evolution of how we came to all aim for the same eight or so hours during the same hours, more or less, David K. Randall’s Dreamland is an interesting walk down that road. Just be sure to take that walk with your eyes open.

Now in my mid-thirties, I can admit there are many things I do poorly. But it turns out that for every one of these things, there's a scientist who has studied how to do it well. For my book, Brain Trust, I talked with over 130 of these Nobel, MacArthur, and National Medal of Science winners (cut to ninety-three for the book), and here are six of their top tips for living a scientifically perfect life:

1. Eat for Eight Hours a Day
Satchin Panda of the Salk Institute found that even with calories kept constant, we're much better off condensing the time we eat to eight hours a day. It has to do with the mitochondria in your liver -- if you ask them to work while they're dividing, they have a higher rate of DNA mutation, leading to increased chances of all sorts of metabolic badness including diabetes.

2. Win the Lottery
Emory mathematician, Skip Garibaldi, says that by staying away from the chance of splitting the pot, you can expect to win back more than you pay when playing the lottery. First, look for a drawing with an unusually high pot compared to the number of tickets sold. (Try a state lottery that's rolled over four times without the pot topping $40m.) Then play unpopular numbers -- stay away from the edges of the ticket and from numbers 1, 13, and 15. Instead, go for underused 26, 44, and 46.

3. Avoid Consumption Quicksand
Niro Sivanathan of the London Business Schools told me, "Low self-esteem leads to more consumption on credit, which leads to debt and lower self-esteem, which leads to more consumption -- it's a dangerous positive feedback loop." Stanford neuroeconomist Brian Knutson watched buying decisions in the brain and knows how to break the loop. Don't buy with credit and beware sales, says Knutson -- both anesthetize the rational side of your brain's want/should teeter-totter, leaving you more open to buying things you don't need.

4. Scam-Proof Yourself
Psychologist Stephen Greenspan says that scammers from Madoff to Nigerian spammers use four factors to push dupes toward the precipice of gullibility: situation, cognition, personality, and affect. Scammers offer a believable situation, hope their dupe hasn't the cognition to see through it, look for naturally trusting targets, and ratchet up "affect" with tricks like the now-or-never offer. On the flip side, reign in these factors and you can make yourself immune to scams of all sorts.

5. Get More Pleasure for Less Price
Yale psychologist Paul Bloom shows that information adds "essence" to anything we buy and that essence substitutes for price when calculating enjoyment. In other words, the more you know about a bottle of wine, the less you'll need to spend to get X amount of pleasure from it.

6. Decouple "Comfort" from "Food"
Mark Wilson, neuroscientist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center, says, "Monkeys need X amount of good feeling in the course of a day and there are a couple ways they get it." Monkeys higher in the social order get this X good feeling from being top rhesus; monkeys lower in the social order eat their way to this good feeling. For you? Wilson suggests decoupling the idea of "comfort" from "food" -- get your good feeling from another area of your life and you won't be compelled to get it by eating.