pollan

Peter Bernhardt reviews Michael Pollan’s book about three mind-altering substances derived from plants.

Michael Pollan is one of our most revelatory explorers of the interaction between the human and natural worlds — especially the plants with which we have, as he says, co-evolved — from food to caffeine to psychedelics. In this episode of our series, The Future of Hope, Wintering’s Katherine May draws him out on the burgeoning human inquiry and science to which he’s now given himself over — the transformative applications of altered states for healing trauma and depression, for end-of-life care — and the thrilling matter of grasping what consciousness is for. This is an informative, intriguing, utterly uncategorizable conversation.

You may know Katherine May from her On Being conversation with Krista about “wintering” as a season in the natural world — and a recurrent season in every human life. She too operates out of a deep curiosity about the human mind — the remarkable complexity of mental states and well-being — informed in part by her own welcome mid-life diagnosis of autism and her love of cold-water swimming. Her books of fiction and memoir include: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, The Electricity of Every Living Thing, and Burning Out. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays about motherhood, called The Best, Most Awful Job. Her podcast is The Wintering Sessions.

Michael Pollan is a professor at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His many bestselling books include The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, and most recently, This Is Your Mind on Plants. In 2020, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.

On today’s episode of THE FOOD SEEN, it may seem like a modern day adage, but “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”, has long been part of the The Pollan Family credo. Credit Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food” for the quote, but his inspiration was long bestowed by his mother Corky, and adopted by sisters, Tracy, Dana and Lori since their teen years. Mostly Plants is a flexitarian’s treatise full of skillet-to-oven recipes, sheet pan suppers, and one-pot meals, that hopes to democratize legumes and grains in place of meat at the center of the plate.

Photo Courtesy of Harper Wave

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