Michael Pollan

speaker

2,844 appearances 8 recordings 8 series first heard Mar 2025 last heard 28 May

Michael Pollan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.

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The Book Review · The Ezra Klein Show: Michael Pollan’s Journey to the Borderlands of Consciousness · 22 May 2026 podcast

between the fMRI showing activity in the hippocampus and the person being aware of that thought.

So what is happening?

Four seconds in the brain time is like an eon.

What is happening for a thought to transit from the unconscious to the conscious?

And why does it take so long?

And she doesn't know.

I'm sorry, I can't pay this off.

But one of the theories called global neuronal workspace theory, which is that there are thoughts competing with one another for access to our conscious awareness.

And they're kind of, you know, this Darwinian process.

And only the most salient ever gets into the workspace and then broadcast to the whole brain.

The problem with this theory is there's a lot of trivial stuff that somehow gets through, at least in my case.

I think there's a lot of traffic going back and forth.

And that's something also that you happen, not just during meditation, but during psychedelic experiences.

There's lots of unconscious material that comes up.

Yeah.

So there's a meditation teacher I really like whose meditations are on YouTube named Michael Taft.

And his attitude is like, look, the machinery of the mind is going to go on, but just put it down the way you'd put down your phone.

And just...

You know, let it do its thing.

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