Jesse Bering is a science writer, research psychologist, and head of the Science Communication program at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the author of The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life; Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? And Other Reflections on Being Human; Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us; and Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves, which was published by the University of Chicago Press. His writing has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Discover, The Guardian, The New Republic, The New York Times, Playboy, Scientific American, The Telegraph, Slate, Vice, and other outlets. He currently writes a weekly column for the French magazine Le Point.