Michael Pollan’s Journey to the Borderlands of Consciousness
3/31/20261 hr 28 min
Consciousness is this amazing, mind-bending riddle. It’s the only thing any of us truly knows. We experience everything else in life through it. And yet we barely understand it. We don’t know what it’s made of or how it works or why it exists.
But scientists and theorists have been trying to answer those questions, and have made some startling discoveries. The science writer Michael Pollan, known for books like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “How to Change Your Mind,” spent five years on the vanguard of this research. And his new book, “A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness,” shows that the closer you look at consciousness, the weirder it gets.
I asked Pollan to walk through some of the places his mind wandered on this journey — including the role of the body and feelings in consciousness, fascinating studies that provide evidence for plant sentience, the researchers who have abandoned their old theories after trying psychedelic drugs, and the possibility that consciousness may not emerge from inside us at all. “I’ve entered this ‘never say never’ realm with this research,” Pollan told me.
Mentioned:
“The Descriptive Experience Sampling method” by Russell T. Hurlburt and Sarah A. Akhter
“What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” by Thomas Nagel
The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms
Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio
“The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought” by Kalina Christoff and Kieran C. R. Fox
Book Recommendations:
The Blind Spot by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser and Evan Thompson
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
Being You by Anil Seth
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Kim Freda. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Aman Sahota and Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Michelle Harris, Rollin Hu, Emma Kehlbeck, Jack McCordick, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsMasha Gessen0:00
[upbeat music] In theory, I knew that this kind of thing can happen in any family. Upstanding citizens are always turning out to be secret criminals, and I wouldn't even call my cousin Alan an upstanding citizen. But it's one thing to know and another thing to understand.
Speaker 10:15
Alan murder me?
Masha Gessen0:18
What the hell was Alan thinking? From Serial Productions and The New York Times, I'm M. Gessen, and this is The Idiot. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Ezra Klein· Host0:28
[gentle music] Here is the amazing thing, the deep paradox of consciousness. It is the only thing we truly know, the only thing we have certain actual firsthand experience of, and yet we don't understand it at all. We don't know what it's made of, we don't know how it works, we don't know why it exists, and the closer we look at it, the weirder consciousness gets. The more we try to describe it, the more our language begins to fail.