Michael Pollan

I mean, are you at all worried that we're on the verge of recapitulating some of the errors of the 60s where we just, we get a little too fast and loose with these drugs and there's a,

We invite some kind of backlash or how are you feeling about the psychedelic part of this conversation?

Yeah.

I mean, well, first to go back a little bit, it was a real surprise.

I thought I would mention psychedelics in the introduction of this book as something that inspired it and set me on this path and that would be it.

And there would be no psychedelics in the book, but they kept popping up and I wasn't bringing them up.

It was the scientists working on the problem who are partly because they're stuck, partly because they're very open-minded to

using any tools at hand.

Many of them, you know, would talk to me unbidden about their experience with psychedelics and how, in many cases, it had influenced them.

They're not doing studies.

They're not involved in the various university studies, but they're personally using them and...

in some cases, getting insights that they think are really important.

In other cases, not sure what exactly to do with them.

But it just kind of was this, it became this motif in the book of scientists telling me about their psychedelic experiences and how it had affected their work.

So I thought that was really interesting.

You know,

The whole issue of psychedelics has changed a lot since 2018.

I mean, it is, first of all, more acceptable for us to have a conversation about it.

I think in waking up, you were kind of ahead of the curve in your willingness to talk about your own experiences.

Many people regarded it as a reputational risk back then.