Michael Pollan

I'm listening to a novel or a podcast.

Listening to you.

No, it is important.

But anyway, and I have to remember to take out the AirPods and like listen to what's going on.

And we haven't talked about time in nature, but that's, I think, a very hygienic space for consciousness is being off of all media of all kinds.

Well, and there's a selection bias.

People know they can talk to me about their trips.

And so authoritative.

Yeah, and you're alluding to Christoph Koch, who is a very prominent consciousness researcher.

He was there at the beginning when he and Francis Crick began on this quest to understand consciousness in the late 80s, early 90s.

And he's an exemplary scientist in that he's changed his mind in profound ways several times.

I find that doesn't usually happen among scientists, you know, the saying that science changes one funeral at a time.

Not in his case.

He went to Brazil and had a series of ayahuasca experiences.

Now, this is the prototypical brain guy, right?

He ran the Allen Brain Institute in Seattle.

He's been

messing around with neurons and electrodes for years and years and years, and assumed that the source of consciousness was gonna be in the brain.

He has this experience of mind at large.

This is a term that comes from Aldous Huxley in The Doors of Perception, that consciousness was outside of his brain.