Michael Pollan

And she studies spontaneous thought, which I didn't realize is a whole field.

There's even an Oxford handbook of spontaneous thought.

And spontaneous thought are things like mind wandering and daydreaming and creative thought and flow.

And this is all – and this doesn't get a lot of attention.

Most of science has been focused on productive kinds of thought like rationality and logic because –

It has more use in our culture.

But she argues that spontaneous thought is really important to our well-being and happiness and that we don't get as much of it as we should.

And that she does some interesting experiments.

She'll put someone in an fMRI machine.

She'll do this with experienced meditators, and she'll give them a button to press when a thought intrudes.

Because even if you're an experienced meditator, she says every 10 seconds or so, a thought will intrude.

And you press the button.

And what she's discovered is really spooky.

She sees activity in the hippocampus.

where our memories are stored and other things too, four seconds before the meditator realizes the thought had entered consciousness.

So there's something going on, some processing of these subconscious thoughts before they enter our awareness.

It may be they're competing with other thoughts to get there.

We don't really know.

But we talked a lot about the value of spontaneous thought, and she says it's how we make meaning of our lives.

And she worries, and I worry too, that with media, with our technologies, we are shrinking the space in which spontaneous thought can occur.