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 over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 3.

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Making Sense with Sam Harris · #475 — The Hard Problem of Consciousness · 12 May 2026 podcast

And we were talking about psychedelics.

This must be a function of age, but when asked to estimate how much time has elapsed, I'm always off by a factor of at least two, if not three.

I mean, and I'm always wrong in the direction of underestimating.

Yeah, it's been a while.

Yeah.

Well, it's great to see you.

It's great to see that you have a new book and you have written a, not everyone does this, you have written a bestseller on the nature of consciousness.

And the book is A World Appears, A Journey Into Consciousness, which is an all too natural follow on from your last book on psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind.

Before we jump into the deep end of the pool, let's just have you connect that, those dots for me.

How did you convince yourself that you wanted to go deeper in this direction?

You know, I think it's a very common response to psychedelic experience.

I had a series of experiences, research trips, if you will, from when I was working on How to Change Your Mind.

And one of the things psychedelics kind of reliably do for people is defamiliarize consciousness.

You're suddenly made more aware of it.

I describe it in the book as like smudging the windshield through which you normally perceive reality.

And suddenly you realize, hey, there's a windshield.

What is that about?

Because most of the time it's utterly transparent.

You can go a long time without thinking about consciousness.

So that was, you know, so I'd put it in front of me as a set of questions.

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