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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You know, you have people studying awe and emotions that are not necessarily productive, but awe is very useful.

So she just thinks this is a space of creativity and that a lot of creative thinking comes out of mind-wandering and daydreaming.

And, you know, it's something novelists do all the time, right?

I mean, they get pretty good at daydreaming.

And...

She says we've lost this.

You know, the space of our interiority for this kind of thinking is diminished because of our distractions, our technological distractions.

I think it... Oh, I think it is very productive.

It's just, how are you defining productivity?

And turning off the spotlight.

Mm-hmm.

That the spotlight gets in the way because of those blinders.

And I think when you're daydreaming or mind-wandering, the blinders are kind of opened up and you're taking in information from more places.

She argues that it's just the belief that this is unproductive thought because nobody wants mind-wandering workers.

Right.

Right?

The capitalists want us to be, you know, spotlight consciousness.

And the example she gave is like, right now, my job is to grade blue book exams, and that's what I should be doing.

But my real life project is making sense of my life and having a fulfilling life, and I would be better off taking a walk or mind wandering.

So there's a tension.

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