Michael Pollan

In his new book, A World Appears, A Journey Into Consciousness, the science writer Michael Pollan takes a tour of those efforts, of those theories, of those experiments, of those psychedelic trips and meditation retreats.

And he keeps finding himself in stranger and stranger territory, deeper inside the mystery.

So I wanted to have him on to talk about it.

As always, my email, EzraKleinShow at NYTimes.com.

Michael Pollan, welcome back to the show.

Thank you.

Good to be back.

So I wanted to begin with an experiment that you participated in during the reporting of this book, where you wore a beeper and tried to record what was going on in your mind when that beeper went off.

What did he learn from that?

I want to stay on that for a second.

I would say that a lot of thoughts I have, if you push me, they're the feeling of a thought.

I know it's there, but it's not spoken.

I'm not looking at lettering on the projector screen of my brain.

I love that.

Gossamer wisps of mentation is how you put it in the book.

Oh, man.

You finish this up and he says that you are low on... Very little inner life.

That raises a question for me, which is,

To what degree was what you were recording in this experiment different than your perception of how your mental life feels to you in a day?

Very different.