0:15

Pushkin from

0:21

Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background,

0:23

the show where we explore the stories behind

0:26

the stories in the news. I'm Noah

0:28

Feldman. Every generation

0:31

has a handful of thinkers and writers

0:34

who profoundly shape the way we

0:36

experience the world by tapping

0:38

into the seitgeist, the spirit

0:41

of the Times. Today's guest,

0:43

Michael Pollen, is one of those rare

0:46

individuals. First, he did it

0:48

for food, with a series of important

0:50

and influential books and articles

0:52

for The New Yorker and The New York Times that

0:54

change the way we thought about how our food was made

0:57

and about what sorts of foods we should

0:59

eat. In recent years, he's

1:01

been doing it again, this time

1:03

with psychedelics, with books

1:05

like How to Change Your Mind and most

1:07

recently, This Is Your Mind on

1:10

Plants. Throughout this body

1:12

of work, Michael has focused on

1:14

the intersecting point between

1:16

nature and culture, and he

1:19

tries both to tell our stories and

1:21

to guide us directionally and how

1:23

we ought to experience the world. Michael

1:26

therefore writes about power, one of our central

1:28

themes here on Deep Background this season. But

1:31

he is also someone who, in

1:33

his own gentle way, deploys a

1:35

substantial amount of power in

1:37

our culture because here today to talk

1:39

about his new book and the trajectory of his career

1:42

and how it all fits together. Michael,

1:49

thank you so much for being

1:51

here. There are so many questions

1:53

that I want to ask you, but let me

1:55

start with one

1:58

aspect of your fascinating

2:00

new book. This is your Mind on Plants.

2:04

And this book is many different things, but one

2:06

of them is a kind of philosophical

2:10

meditation on the fates

2:12

of different plant based substances

2:15

and how we end up regulating

2:17

them. And I'm wondering

2:20

how you came to that thematic

2:23

arrangement for the book,

2:26

with your three substances

2:28

and the different status that

2:30

each has. So I looked

2:32

at three plants and the chemicals

2:35

they produced, the psychoactive chemicals they

2:37

produced, and I wanted to make sure one of them was legal

2:39

and completely acceptable in our society

2:42

and virtually invisible for that reason,

2:44

and that was caffeine. And I wanted

2:47

to change the context of opium

2:49

and mescal in two by putting

2:52

the three together. Had the book

2:54

been all illegal substances, it would

2:56

have been a drug book. But it's much

2:58

more interested in looking past

3:01

the categories, which are interesting

3:03

and arbitrary in some ways

3:06

logical and others to this

3:08

base human drive to change

3:10

consciousness, which I think is such a curious

3:13

thing that we were born

3:15

with this apparently this desire,

3:17

and it manifests itself even in children

3:20

who loved to spin and get dizzy, to

3:23

very normal consciousness, to transcend

3:26

the ego or reinforce

3:28

it in the case of some drugs, and we

3:30

have these remarkable tools presented

3:32

to us by plants. So I wanted

3:35

to sort of change the context because people

3:37

go right to these categories illicit drug,

3:40

acceptable drug, pharmaceutical drug,

3:42

but if you go back in time, you know they've been

3:45

upside down. I mean, there was a time

3:47

I described in the Opium chapter where

3:50

the farmer on the land where I now

3:52

live in Connecticut, he was making

3:55

alcohol from his apples,

3:58

making hard cider, which is a very common drink

4:00

in rural America for a long time. That

4:02

was a federal crime that could have put him in jail.

4:05

At that very moment, the

4:08

women for temperance were

4:10

commonly enjoying their

4:13

women's tonics, which were these preparations

4:15

you could buy at drug stores that contained

4:17

opium and cannabis, and that was perfectly

4:20

legal, So I'm trying to kind

4:22

of defamiliarize ourselves with these categories

4:24

a little bit and get us to start read thinking

4:27

them. It was really fascinating

4:29

to me reading the book,

4:31

because, as you've just very

4:33

well described, we haven't yet gotten to

4:35

a peyote, the third substance you talk about. You

4:38

wanted three substances with different legal categorizations

4:41

because you were trying to move us away

4:43

from thinking about the legal categorizations

4:46

and towards the plants and the human impulse

4:49

to ingest the psychoactive and

4:52

yet or maybe, and also the

4:54

book that Emerged spends

4:56

some time talking about the basic human urge,

4:59

sometime about the experiential

5:01

relationship we have to these different

5:03

plant based substances, But a

5:06

lot of the book ends up being devoted

5:08

to telling the story. You're

5:10

such a good storytelling you couldn't help yourself but tell

5:12

the story of how each of

5:14

these substances came to occupy

5:17

the regulatory category, whether

5:20

social or legal or both

5:23

that it did come to occupy. So, in a way,

5:25

a book that sets out to be a book about the power

5:27

of plants is

5:30

also a book about human

5:32

power and the way humans categorize

5:35

and engage with these same plants,

5:37

Oh, without question. I mean I'm fascinated

5:39

by that. I'm fascinated by history and

5:42

how at different times in history we

5:44

see nature and culture in very

5:46

different ways. And drugs

5:49

are a great example, since they're constantly

5:51

evolving in our estimation

5:53

of them. I mean, right now, we're in the midst of

5:55

a re categorization

5:57

of psychedelics. I mean, there's still a Schedule

6:00

one drug with no accepted medical

6:02

use and a high potential for abuse,

6:04

neither of which is true, but nevertheless

6:07

that's the official category for psychedelic But

6:09

because of this renaissance of research

6:11

into their value as therapeutic

6:14

aids to help people deal with mental illness

6:17

and dying, they're undergoing

6:19

a shift. And I think if we did this interview

6:22

in five or ten years, they will no longer

6:24

be on Schedule one and they will be

6:26

part of the pharmacopeia. And nobody

6:29

would have guessed that back in the late

6:31

sixties when they were first prohibited.

6:33

So we're in the midst of a sea change right

6:35

now, I think, and obiits

6:38

are going in the opposite direction, of course. But

6:40

my message is too in the book, is it's not all

6:42

one or the other. We need to think

6:44

about drugs with the kind of negative

6:47

capability or suppleness that the Greeks

6:49

did. They called all these drugs pharmacon,

6:52

which can mean both poison or

6:55

medicine, and also scapegoat by

6:57

the way, which is I think not an accident, because

6:59

we tend to blame these drugs for all sorts of things.

7:02

But it's very hard for us to hold

7:04

two contradictory ideas in our head. And

7:07

around drugs, you really have to because they

7:09

can be very dangerous. They can

7:11

get people into trouble, they can kill people, but

7:14

they also can heal and give

7:16

people insights into

7:19

existence and shift their consciousness

7:21

in ways that is very productive for them as individuals

7:24

and for the species I believe. Do

7:26

you have any hope that we would ever reach

7:29

a more rational set

7:32

of structures for making

7:34

sense of this and governing

7:36

it? And if so, what would rational

7:39

look like to you? I mean, one could say, well, here's

7:41

the thing about coffee or caffeine. It

7:44

doesn't leave you rampaging in the streets.

7:47

Right Yet,

7:49

in your chapter on caffeine, you make

7:51

the point that we can't just describe

7:54

the effects of caffeine as

7:57

minor or trivial. The

7:59

hope that will ever be rational about this. The

8:03

evidence of history is that we won't, and

8:05

that there is a fundamentally irrational

8:08

part of human life and of

8:10

the human mind that drugs

8:12

plays into. We're constantly, you

8:14

know, we're meaning making creatures, and

8:16

we will make meaning out of everything. And then

8:18

if you take a particularly powerful substance

8:21

that seems to have its own meanings and

8:24

perhaps does, will project

8:26

all sorts of stuff on that. But again, the same

8:28

drug at different times in history can be regarded

8:30

as encouraging passivity or

8:33

encouraging violence. I mean, it's

8:35

interesting how inconsistent we are even about

8:38

the image of these drugs and what they

8:40

do for us. I'm convinced

8:42

that our interpretation of

8:44

psychedelic experience owes

8:47

maybe one part to the chemical

8:49

and nine parts to culture

8:52

and individual psyche. I mean,

8:54

that we construct this experience. I've always

8:56

wondered what would happen if psychedelics

8:59

hadn't first been written about

9:01

by Aldus Huxley, who

9:03

puts a very Eastern spin

9:06

on it. It's more like Eastern religion

9:08

than Christian religion. And that

9:10

orientalizing of psychedelics I

9:12

think descends from him. It gets picked up

9:14

by Leary, who used the Tibetan Book of the Dead

9:17

to interpret the experience. What

9:19

if some Christian mystics had

9:21

written the first modern accounts of a psychedelic

9:24

trip, would it have looked very different?

9:27

I'm guessing it could be. It could have been

9:29

constructed differently. But you have to

9:31

tease apart what's really inherent about

9:33

the experience. But people forget

9:36

that everything you experience on a

9:38

psychedelic is not in the

9:40

molecule. The molecule doesn't have

9:43

anything in it. It really

9:45

is a catalyst for a

9:47

process in your own mind that draws

9:50

on everything in your memory,

9:53

from your own personal experiences to

9:55

what you've learned about how the world works. And

9:58

this is one of the reasons I'm so interested in drugs.

10:00

They're one of those interesting rubs between nature

10:03

and culture, between our biology

10:05

and everything we are because

10:07

of the culture we inhabit. But

10:09

then you have this other tradition though, right, the Native

10:12

American tradition ayahuasca and payote

10:14

and mushrooms. And

10:17

I found that really

10:19

fascinating, partly because I didn't know much about it

10:21

and hadn't paid much attention to payote

10:24

or the Native American use of psychedelics

10:27

before, but they have a different

10:29

construction and it's it's very

10:31

religious, it's very social, which

10:34

is interesting. I mean, the drug trip is not an individual

10:36

matter, it's it's it's something that happens

10:39

at the level of the community, so

10:41

they put a different interpretation on it. Yeah,

10:43

I think that's really important, and I agree that that's one of

10:45

the really interesting things in your book.

10:48

And you also show at the same time

10:50

the connection of the

10:53

history of mescaline and

10:55

other cactus derivatives in resistance

10:58

to the process

11:01

of domination and cultural

11:03

and literal genocide perpetrated against

11:06

Native American peoples, especially in North

11:08

America, but also in South and Central America,

11:10

and the way that payote came to

11:12

be part of the resistance to

11:15

that story through the immersions of the Native

11:17

American Payote Church in the late nineteenth

11:19

century, and then it's flourishing again

11:22

in the nineteen seventies and eighties. And that's

11:24

a really rich and important part of

11:26

your book. And I wondered if

11:28

I could ask you about an aspect of

11:30

that that has struck me when I hear contemporary

11:34

non Indigenous people talking about

11:36

the use of payote and that

11:38

is, where do you think that fits into our

11:40

discourse around cultural

11:43

ownership and cultural appropriation,

11:46

especially cultural ownership by indigenous

11:49

peoples. I mean, on the one hand, they are

11:51

in some sense part of the common legacy of

11:53

all humans, and in another sense, they're

11:55

very specifically connected to particular

11:58

cultures, cultures that have suffered

12:00

from destruction. So I

12:03

wonder how you think about that. So

12:05

I struggle with this because I was deciding

12:08

whether I was going to use payote, having learned

12:10

about the sensitivities about it on the part

12:12

of Native Americans. I had interviewed

12:15

many Native Americans who felt

12:17

threatened by the white use or the non

12:19

native use of payote. But

12:22

there are two issues there. There's a cultural appropriation

12:24

issue, and there's a material appropriation

12:26

issue in that there is a shortage

12:28

of payote, and that because of

12:30

overuse. Because approaching this

12:33

cactus, the sacred plant, which has become

12:35

so essential to Native American

12:37

identity among many tribes, hundreds

12:40

of tribes now and has been such a

12:42

powerful tool of healing the unique

12:44

trauma of Native Americans,

12:46

that I came to the conclusion

12:49

that as a non Native, I should leave it alone. That

12:52

that was the way to respect it.

12:54

So I decided, even though

12:56

I had some opportunities there were Native Americans

12:58

willing to let me participate, the

13:02

moral or ethical thing to do was not to

13:04

do it. It's not to say I think that use

13:07

of payote should be illegal. I

13:09

do think we should

13:11

explore what

13:14

Native Americans have taught us about the healing

13:16

potential of this compound, mescaline.

13:19

They did discover mescaline. And

13:21

then there's another argument about reparations

13:24

and reciprocity. So there are companies

13:26

that want to use mescaline in their research

13:28

and possibly as a treatment for alcoholism,

13:31

which is one of the big ways that Native

13:34

Americans use it. Is there any

13:36

obligation on the part of those companies

13:38

to return profit or

13:41

somehow recognize

13:43

or share their intellectual property if

13:45

they develop it with Native Americans. That's a really interesting

13:47

question. I don't know the answer to that. People are struggling

13:50

with that right now. But I do

13:52

believe that even though all drugs should be

13:54

decriminalized, I think as a matter

13:57

of individual conscience, I would discourage

14:00

non natives from using payote,

14:03

especially because there are other ways to get it.

14:06

To get mescaline. One is synthetic mescaline

14:09

doesn't damage native payote stocks.

14:11

And the other is this other cactus I talk about

14:13

sam pedro or watchuma, which grows

14:15

in South America. Very easy to grow here or

14:18

grow your own payote if you're a very patient

14:20

person and a good gardener. It takes fifteen years

14:22

to get from seed to usable

14:25

button. But I see no problem. I don't

14:27

see that as cultural

14:29

appropriation if you have some seeds

14:31

and want to crow it. But again, people

14:34

draw these lines in very different places, and Native

14:36

Americans do. I mean, I talk to

14:38

Native Americans, some of whom would say,

14:42

you know, use all the synthetic

14:44

mescaline and sam pedro you want,

14:46

just leave our payote alone. And

14:49

then I talk to others who said, if you're

14:51

going to use mescaline, you owe us reparations

14:53

because we discovered it. So

14:55

there's not you know, Native American opinion

14:58

on this is not monolithic by any means, and

15:01

my own opinion is not monolithic

15:03

either, as you can tell. We'll

15:05

be right back. I

15:15

want to turn to the magic word

15:18

plants, which seems

15:20

to be something that has almost talismanic quality

15:23

in the body of work of Michael

15:25

Pollen and in the culture at the moment.

15:27

By the way, I mean, have you noticed how many products

15:29

are now plant based in your supermarketing?

15:32

Yeah? And I'm not sure that if you

15:34

know, when future historians do an analysis

15:36

of the evolution of the concept of plant

15:38

based if they won't find you at

15:40

the very beating heart of the birth

15:43

of that movement. So I want

15:45

to ask you about the about that word, about that the

15:47

power of that word. You're a gardener,

15:50

and that has something to do with your long

15:53

term interest in plants, obviously,

15:55

because it's famous to everybody. Now you're a

15:57

dictum about what we should eat started

15:59

with plants and was made

16:02

plant central. I'm not really

16:04

kidding. I think when someday they ask why all these things

16:06

have the word plant based attached, they may come back to you.

16:09

And then this book uses advisedly the

16:11

word plants. You don't say drugs,

16:13

you don't say medicines, which is a word that some

16:15

users of psychedelics prefer, and that some Native

16:18

Americans don't much like to hear used in this context

16:21

because they take it very seriously and are not sure

16:23

that everybody who uses these substances

16:25

does. So talk to me about

16:27

the word plants. Well,

16:31

it's been such a kind of common

16:34

word in my personal vocabulary for a long

16:36

time. I don't have that much perspective on it. I

16:38

used it in the title of this book in

16:41

part to remind people that's where

16:43

drugs come from, and that they

16:46

are part of our relationship to the natural

16:49

world, and we lose track of that.

16:51

We think of drugs coming from laboratories,

16:53

and some of them do, but a great many of them,

16:55

of course, come from plants. And why

16:57

do plants produce them? Then

16:59

that opens up a whole conversation about

17:02

evolutionary objectives

17:04

of plants as opposed to people, the

17:06

fact that they are geniuses chemistry

17:09

and neurochemistry in particular, and

17:12

why they are because they can't run

17:14

away, basically, and so they have to use

17:16

chemistry to either attract or repel.

17:19

And I've been fascinated

17:21

in that fact about plants for

17:23

a very long time. These are not simple molecules

17:26

they're making. And how incredible

17:29

is it that a plant can hit on precisely

17:31

the the chemical formula

17:34

to have a profound effect on an animal

17:36

brain. So I've

17:38

been marveling at plants for a long

17:40

time. I've been trying to win

17:44

them more respect speak

17:46

for them since they can't speak for themselves.

17:49

Michael paulin Lorax. We'll

17:53

put that on in the head notes of this interview.

17:55

That did have a big influence on me, the

17:57

Loax? Did it actually say? Would you say

17:59

something about that? How old were you when you first heard of

18:02

or read the Loax? You think, I don't remember.

18:04

I don't. I think it came out a little late in my childhood.

18:07

I'm not sure, but it was one of my sons

18:09

favorite books, and this whole time I was beginning

18:11

this work in the nineties, I

18:14

read it to my son over and over and over again.

18:16

I've got it pretty much committed to

18:18

memory. I think at this point i'd have to go back

18:20

and check what year the Lorex came out. I

18:22

think of that as kind of late and tied to the environmental

18:25

movement. It has sentiments in it

18:27

that it's hard to imagine

18:30

before nineteen sixty nine or so,

18:32

when when the environmental movement is starting.

18:34

Have you found it published June twenty three, nineteen

18:37

seventy one, So historical analysis

18:39

is confirmed in a real time. It's nice

18:41

to when that happens. But the language is

18:43

very much you know post Rachel Carson

18:45

post the First Earth Day. So

18:48

my exposure to it I was fifteen then or sixteen

18:50

then, So I wasn't reading Doctor SEUs at

18:53

sixteen, but I did read it over and over again

18:55

to my son, who loved it. I also know I've

18:57

written a lot about plant intelligence and

19:00

the whole effort to figure out how

19:02

intelligent are plants? Are they conscious?

19:05

And what does that mean? I mean, I think we're learning

19:07

some incredible things about plant

19:09

intelligence, plant sociality. This

19:12

is a kind of interesting moment for

19:14

plant science, which has been a very sleepy

19:16

field for a long time. If you talk to botanists,

19:19

nobody was paying attention to them. But

19:21

now you have all

19:24

this work on how plants connect

19:26

to one another, and the trees

19:29

in a forest are very social. Suzanne Simard

19:31

has a new book on this that's really interesting.

19:33

She's done pioneering research showing

19:36

that they can swap nutrients using these fungle

19:38

networks. They can send messages, plants

19:41

can hear. There's interesting

19:43

research that if you play the sound of caterpillars

19:46

chomping on leaves to other plants,

19:48

they will arm themselves and produce defense

19:50

chemicals. You know, they don't have ears,

19:53

but they can hear, they don't have eyes,

19:55

but they can see. I mean, they're just bizarre.

19:58

So it takes a lot of human imagination

20:00

to see the world from their

20:02

point of view. And I've been

20:05

eager to do that for a very long time and wrote

20:07

a book in fact who's subtitle was

20:09

A Plant's eye View of the World. And

20:12

it's exciting to see there is, though,

20:14

I worry a slightly mystical

20:17

strain coming into some of this work about

20:19

trees. I mean, there've been books out on trees

20:21

that are more mystical than scientific that

20:24

really strain credulity, at least

20:26

mine. But in general, I think plants are

20:28

getting a new respect and that does tie

20:30

into, you know, what we're learning about nutrition.

20:32

However, the twinkie is plant based

20:34

too, I think we need to remember. And there's

20:37

a lot of crap sold as plant based in

20:39

the supermarket right now. Yeah,

20:41

as is tobacco, as is

20:43

you know, there are plenty of you know, plenty of

20:45

other substances. I wouldn't

20:48

put a caffe and quite in the tobacco category, but it's not in

20:50

one of the good categories. I mean, as one

20:52

expands the category of the plant, it

20:54

can come to include not

20:57

everything, but a large percentage

20:59

of everything. I was interested to hear you say

21:01

that sometimes the mystical tone

21:03

of some of the plant work, the plant based

21:05

work, strains creduli

21:08

because you're interested in mysticism

21:10

right in your work, there's a kind of

21:13

you're on the edge. You're skirting the edge

21:15

between giving us a rationalistic,

21:18

scientific and social scientific contextualization,

21:22

and you're at just

21:25

at the edge, especially in your interest in consciousness.

21:27

Here of a field of endeavor

21:29

that is fundamentally mystical and

21:32

that needs presumably to be processed

21:34

mystically to make any sense out of it at

21:36

all. Right, I mean to say meaning

21:38

making is a rationalizing process. No, I

21:40

mean, one way to make meaning is by making something

21:43

rational. But another way to make meaning

21:45

is to embrace its mystical quality. And it seems

21:47

to me, with respect to psychedelics, that if we

21:49

tried to reduce everything to its rational it

21:52

seems like we would be missing the point. Yeah,

21:56

so I flirt with mysticism,

21:58

but I am very grounded in

22:00

the scientific worldview. I get grief

22:03

for this from certain people. In How

22:05

to Change Your Mind, there were many people who objected

22:08

to the fact that I didn't take seriously enough

22:11

this idea I presented that consciousness

22:13

is a field outside

22:15

us, like the electromagnetic field that we

22:17

tune into. That our brains are tuners or

22:19

television sets. And I think

22:21

that's a beautiful idea. But

22:24

my mind goes to a more

22:26

materialistic understanding that even

22:28

though we don't understand how,

22:31

consciousness is the product of our brains,

22:33

and it's tempting

22:35

to think otherwise. And I'm more open

22:37

to that idea than I was before experience

22:41

with psychedelics, but I haven't yet

22:43

been persuaded, and I'm curious to learn more

22:45

about it. But psychedelic experience

22:47

for many people causes

22:49

them to lose faith in the materialist

22:52

view of consciousness. And it's important to mention

22:55

that that material's view of consciouness is not well

22:57

developed at all. Right, Okay, it's an

22:59

easy thing to lose faith in my view. I

23:01

mean, there are propositions of science

23:04

that are well established, and if someone

23:06

were to say, you know, I no longer believe

23:08

in Newtonian mechanics, I

23:11

would say something's not totally

23:13

right there. On the other hand, when

23:16

it comes to consciousness, there isn't really a respectable

23:18

materialist account of consciousness at all. There is simply

23:21

the commitment to the view that materialism

23:24

must be true in light of what we observe, and

23:26

therefore the consciousness must

23:28

be reducible to the material which is, you know, that's

23:30

a plausible inference, but it's

23:33

a form of inductive

23:35

reasoning. It's not deductive or demonstrated

23:37

reasoning. That's right, And I think

23:39

the Dalai Lama was quite correct when he said

23:42

at the first Mind and Life conference where

23:44

they brought together neuroscientists and Buddhists,

23:47

that the material theory of consciousness

23:49

is a very interesting hypothesis

23:51

and we should give it no more credit

23:53

than that. And so, you

23:56

know, I'm open, but it

23:58

must be my training and background. But

24:00

even when I'm writing about plant intelligence, I'm

24:02

always hanging out with people going a lot further

24:05

than I'm willing to go in terms of saying plants

24:07

are conscious. I have some sense

24:09

that they have a point of view,

24:12

but I don't think they're conscious the way

24:14

we are. I don't think they're aware that they're aware.

24:16

I think they have an awareness of their environment. I

24:18

think they mostly run

24:20

algorithms that are set

24:23

in advance, although there is some interesting research

24:25

that suggests they can learn There were some

24:27

studies done recently that suggests that

24:29

they can learn from experience,

24:31

remember and apply those lessons to future

24:34

events, which is pretty mind blowing. So,

24:37

you know it, maybe too many years writing

24:39

for the New York Times and the New Yorker and being

24:41

fact checked that can limit your

24:43

willingness to imagine radical alternatives.

24:46

Let me ask you about that, because you talked

24:48

just now about your grounding

24:51

and the scientific and then you talked about the institutional

24:53

framework in which a lot of your journalism

24:55

was embedded. You're also writing books pretty much the

24:57

whole time, but the New Yorker and

25:00

the New York Times embody a certain

25:02

kind of cultural power that's connected to a

25:04

kind of scientific, liberal, rationalist

25:06

worldview, broadly speaking, still an enlightenment

25:09

you and I guess

25:11

I wanted to ask you about how you conceptualize

25:14

your role as an idea maker

25:16

and idea disseminator in

25:18

the world with respect to those different

25:20

kinds of audiences, the kind of Times New York

25:23

or audience versus the bigger

25:26

world audience. Because you're one of the

25:28

very small number of people who come out of journalism

25:31

who transcend a journalism at a fundamental

25:33

level. You've become a central figure

25:35

in the culture, and your ideas matter to

25:37

a lot of people in a wide range of

25:40

spaces, and you have moments

25:42

in your work where you sound like

25:45

a rationalist prophet, still a bit of a

25:47

prophet, though this happens sometimes the climate

25:49

change writers too. I mean, I think Bill mcibbon might

25:51

be another example of somebody who you

25:54

know, who transcended in some sense the rationalist

25:57

account of what's happening in the climate and was

25:59

both a prophet in the wilderness and now a prophet that many

26:01

people are are listening to. When you

26:03

think of the sort of trajectory of your messages

26:05

out there to the world, how

26:07

do you think of yourself? Well,

26:10

there's an evolution here. I mean,

26:12

I used the

26:14

platform of the New York Times and the

26:17

New Yorker to give

26:20

substance to ideas that were pretty edgy

26:22

at the time. You know,

26:24

before I wrote How to Change Your Mind, I wrote a piece

26:26

for The New Yorker in twenty fourteen

26:29

called the Trip Treatment, and

26:31

this presented early research

26:33

on psychedelics being used to treat, not

26:36

treat, but help people who were dying of cancer

26:38

or you know, had a terminal

26:41

diagnosis, and this

26:43

research wasn't pure reviewed yet, and

26:46

much to my amazement, David Remnick gave me,

26:48

you know, ten thousand or so words to talk about

26:50

this, and it gave credibility to ideas

26:53

that had I published them first independently,

26:57

might not have might have struggled for that. So

26:59

having access to those platforms has been critical

27:02

to my career. You know, I was a magazine

27:04

editor for many years, and I have some sense of how

27:07

the media ecosystem works and

27:09

where the edge of acceptable opinion is,

27:11

having run up against it a couple of times. But

27:15

I feel like I'm free of that now to a

27:17

large extent, and that's kind of liberating.

27:20

But there's you know, you mentioned mckibbon,

27:23

and there's also an interesting transition

27:27

or evolution that happens from being a journalist

27:29

to being an advocate, and that's

27:31

an awkward line to follow,

27:34

and that happened with me with my food

27:36

journalism. I was writing,

27:38

you know, very opinionated

27:41

pieces about the food system and

27:43

how fucked up it was for the New York Times

27:46

magazine and there was oddly no

27:48

pushback for a long time, and from

27:50

my editors or from the culture until the

27:52

industry kind of woke up in two thousand and eight

27:55

and realized there's this

27:57

critique getting currency. We better fight

27:59

back, and they have been fighting back ever since with

28:01

some success. And you're writing also shifted

28:04

there. I mean you started saying, look at

28:06

the structures and how bad they are, and

28:08

then you went full normative by

28:10

saying this is what you should eat.

28:13

You know, listen up, world, here's what

28:15

you ought to eat. I mean, it doesn't get more vatic

28:18

and peremptory and voice

28:21

from one high than that. Yeah,

28:24

although I have to say I sort of felt

28:26

pushed into that position because my

28:29

first book about food, Omnivorous

28:31

Dilemma, was an attempt to

28:33

show people the system and let them draw their

28:35

own conclusions based on the system of what you should

28:37

eat and dilemma right right

28:40

exactly, And I was not as vatics

28:43

as you put it in that book at all. But

28:45

all I heard from people, I mean thousands

28:48

of people, is like, okay, okay, environmental problems,

28:50

animal rights, all this kind of stuff, but what should

28:53

I eat? And nobody

28:56

would leave me alone until I said, well,

28:58

this is this is how I think we should eat,

29:00

right, so they demanded it of

29:02

you, that your flock demanded it of you, that we

29:05

hear that story a lot from religious leader show.

29:07

I know it's an old story, but I felt

29:09

awkward doing it. Initially I felt awkward

29:12

becoming an advocate because I had been

29:14

brought up in a different, more

29:17

innocent time in journalistic history, where

29:19

you didn't do that. But on

29:21

the other hand, I was digging

29:24

so deeply into the food system that

29:27

it was inevitable. I was drawing conclusions.

29:30

And this is something that still if

29:32

you're a beat reporter on certain beats,

29:35

you have to pretend you don't have conclusions,

29:38

even though you're now an expert. And so

29:40

I had moved from this point

29:42

of following my curiosity

29:45

posing questions to the food system to having

29:47

a pretty good idea what was wrong with it and the

29:50

direction of which it needed to go. And

29:52

gradually you get drawn into that advocacy

29:55

conversation, which is great

29:57

in one way, and I have done my

29:59

share of lobbying before Congress and things

30:01

like that on various food policy,

30:04

but it's also awkward,

30:07

and it sometimes can

30:09

shut you out of the news pages and

30:12

relegate you to the op ed pages, where

30:14

I don't want to be so

30:17

for the interest of journalism and wanting to do narrative

30:19

journalism, it's sometimes

30:21

best not to have reached that point

30:24

of advocacy. The same thing happened with psychedelics.

30:27

I mean, my book is the

30:29

story of an amateur really learning about

30:31

this new world. And I

30:34

remember my first book event at

30:36

Harvard, at the Harvard Bookstore someone

30:39

saying as well as a leader of the psychedelic

30:41

movement. I was like, oh shit, here

30:43

we go again. So

30:46

I don't have very mixed feelings about the roles. It's

30:48

how I do my political work on these two topics,

30:50

and that's my biggest

30:53

contribution politically is advocating

30:55

for things I see as being

30:58

helpful or necessary. But it's not

31:00

where I started out. I really started out as

31:02

a storytelling and it's odd

31:04

that both these things turned into movements.

31:06

They didn't have to. I

31:09

want to thank you for your fascinating body of

31:11

work, and I'm also looking forward to finding

31:13

out what's the next area where you'll start at the boundary

31:16

doing reporting and then gradually shifted

31:18

into advocacy. And I think I will not be the only

31:20

person watching closely, but I realize

31:23

it we'll have to involve the word plants. I'll

31:27

see what I can do. Thank

31:30

you so much. Thank you know, a

31:32

great pleasure talking to you. We'll

31:34

be right back. Listening

31:45

to Michael Pollen, I was genuinely fascinated

31:49

by the story he is telling

31:51

about the human encounter with

31:54

plants and plants substances, and

31:56

with the human impulse to change our

31:58

consciousness. This is in

32:00

some way a story about human power, the

32:02

human power through trial and error to discover

32:05

what plants can do for us and what's

32:07

bad about the things that they do for us.

32:09

But it's also a story about the human impulse

32:11

to regulate. And indeed, Michael

32:13

took the stance that human beings inherently

32:16

seek to regulate the

32:19

uses of plants to shape consciousness,

32:21

and that they've been doing that for as long as

32:24

they knew how to do so. Simultaneously,

32:28

I was personally interested in how Michael

32:30

balances a scientific materialist,

32:33

call it enlightenment worldview. Perhaps

32:35

it makes sense that for someone who thinks about the relationship

32:38

between nature and culture and the human

32:40

power to shape that the question of

32:42

getting beyond the simple conception

32:44

of power through the notion of the mystical

32:47

would be in the margins

32:49

and pushing itself back towards

32:51

the center. Last, and

32:54

definitely not least, I was deeply

32:56

struck by the way that Michael talked about

32:58

his experience in journalism

33:00

and using that to shape

33:02

the way we think about ideas by recognizing

33:05

that there's some outer bound of public opinion,

33:07

and that if you push too hard again that outer bound,

33:09

you lose your audience. I can think of almost

33:12

nobody who's done a better job of expanding

33:14

that outer bound, and it's intriguing

33:17

to hear that from Michael's perspective.

33:19

He did so very much, beginning within

33:21

the system and gradually

33:23

moving from the news pages, as it were,

33:25

to the place of advocacy.

33:29

Those are takeaways that are extremely valuable

33:31

to anybody who's interested not just an understanding

33:34

power, but in altering the way

33:36

power is deployed and what we

33:38

think is an acceptable point

33:40

of view to hold on a given topic. Until

33:43

the next time I speak to you, Breathe deep,

33:46

think, deep thoughts, and if

33:48

they'll let you have a little fun. Deep

33:52

background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.

33:55

Our producer is Mola Board, our engineer

33:57

is Ben Tolliday, and our showrunner is

33:59

Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial

34:02

support from noahm Osband. Theme

34:04

music by Luis Gara at Pushkin,

34:06

Thanks to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton Idea,

34:09

Jean Coott, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori,

34:12

Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob

34:14

Weissberg. You can find me on Twitter

34:16

at Noah R. Feldman. I also write

34:18

a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find

34:21

at bloomberg dot com Slash Feldman.

34:23

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