Michael Pollan

So the idealism theory is related to this idea.

You bring it up in the book.

I think you're the first person who I'd ever heard about this from.

This idea that the mind may be sort of like an antenna.

Yeah, or a radio receiver.

It's not generating the consciousness.

It is receiving some kind of signal and then interpreting it.

Yeah.

And in the same way that if you break a TV... It's not going to work anymore.

It's not going to work, but that doesn't mean...

What level of plausibility do you assign to that?

To what?

I guess either, but I think I'm thinking of the more novel brain as radio receiver.

It's a very fun tour.

I told you at the beginning of this, I'd give you my theory of the book towards the end of our conversation.

When we sat down around How to Change Your Mind, your book on psychedelics, I told you that I thought that was a book about the mind posing as a book about psychedelics.

And I kind of think this is a book about psychedelics posing as a book about the mind.

Because, and not to do violence to it, both were actually about their subject, but

It is striking to me how often in this book, it's not just Koch, there is the scientist who is building, I think, a robot trying to make consciousness and then does, I think, 5-MeO-DMT and realizes everything is love.

There's your mushrooms, there's a lot of people who note offhandedly that they are...