David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action as well as the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. His scientific research has been published in journals from Science to Nature, and his neuroscience books include Wednesday Is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia (with Richard Cytowic) and the forthcoming Live-Wired. He is also the author of the internationally best-selling book of fiction Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.

Susan Orlean is the bestselling author of eight books, including My Kind of Place; The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup; Saturday Night; and Lazy Little Loafers. In 1999, she published The Orchid Thief, a narrative about orchid poachers in Florida, which was made into the Oscar-winning movie, "Adaptation". Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend (2011) was a New York Times bestseller. Orlean has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1992. She has covered a wide range of subjects - from umbrella inventors to origami artists to skater Tonya Harding - and she has often written about animals, including show dogs, racing pigeons, animal actors, oxen, donkeys, mules, and backyard chickens.