Michael Pollan

Really?

Yeah, no, I didn't.

And it seemed like a very academic topic.

And I think two things have changed that.

One is the fact that

I think we feel our consciousnesses are just full of bullshit right now.

There's so much stuff we don't want to be thinking about that we're thinking about.

And you take phones away from kids and they're actually grateful, even once they get over the shock of living without a phone for a day or while they're in school.

Because our consciousness is...

under pressure from everyday life, capitalism, and the need to succeed financially.

We happen to have a president who intrudes on our consciousness for a lot more of the day than any of us have had experience before with previous presidents.

So I think there's some desire to get back to some more sovereignty around our consciousness, and psychedelics are part of that too.

And there is also AI.

I say in the book, we're entering a Copernican moment, a possible redefinition of what it means to be human.

On the one hand, we have all these animals and even plants that turn out to be conscious, what we used to think was our special thing.

And on the other side,

We have these machines that are going to be smarter than we are.

And some people think they'll be conscious.

But whether they can or not, we're going to think they're conscious and act on that basis, which raises all sorts of problems.

So who are we exactly if we're not the smartest, most conscious being?