Michael Pollan — The Mystery of Consciousness

Here is how the AI Claude summarized Michael Pollan's body of work to me when I shared that I would be interviewing him, and I couldn't state it better. So much of what Michael Pollan does across food, plants, psychedelics, is essentially an argument for a more conscious relationship with the world we're embedded in. He keeps asking, what are we not noticing? Michael's latest book, A World Appears, is an exploration with scientists and journalists,

technologists and spiritual teachers of what consciousness is and is not or might be. From the plants which have always fascinated him to the new technologies which we are marveling at and fearing in equal measure. Do sentience, feeling, thought or a sense of self amount to consciousness? Does it emerge from inside us, or is it a force beyond us in which we partake?