Person
Michael Pollan's books and book recommendations
Across 8 podcasts. Every show Michael Pollan appears on, in one place — not just one.
Michael Kevin Pollan is an American journalist, specializing in food, who is a professor and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where in 2020 he cofounded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, in which he leads the public-education program. During podcast appearances, Pollan recommended several books, including George Plimpton's Paper Lion, which he cited as the inspiration for his own use of participatory immersion journalism. He also recommended The Blind Spot by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson as a critique of Western science, and Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport as a stream-of-consciousness novel. Furthermore, he recommended Anil Seth's Being You as a primer on consciousness and the self, and James Fadiman's The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide as a manual for navigating psychedelic experiences.
Books by Michael Pollan
-
Omnivore's Dilemma. A Natural History of Four Meals
-
The Botany of Desire
-
Food rules
-
In Defense of Food
-
A Place of My Own
-
This Is Your Mind On Plants
-
Second Nature
-
How to Change Your Mind
-
Cooked
-
Bringing it to the table
-
Cannabis, Forgetting, and the Botany of Desire
-
Michael pollan collection 3 books set
Books recommended by Michael Pollan
-
The doors of perception
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is a classic philosophical essay chronicling the author's psychedelic experiences and exploring the nature of human consciousness.
Discussed“and Aldous Huxley believed this and talked about it indoors of perception that he had had some access to this field.”
Where to get it
-
The Varieties of Religious Experience
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience is a foundational exploration of human spirituality, religious sentiment, and psychological states of consciousness.
Discussed“In my case, I thought back to William James who had written in varieties of mystical experience that you can't really judge the veracity of a big insight on a mystical experience”
Where to get it
-
Being You
Being You by Anil Seth is an illuminating exploration of consciousness and the self written by an English neuroscientist.
Recommended“There were several books on consciousness I like, but the one I want to recommend is Being You by Anil Seth. He's an English neuroscientist, and it's a book about the self, and he treats the self as a perception.”
Where to get it
-
Ducks, Newburyport
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann is a massive, highly experimental stream-of-consciousness novel told almost entirely through a single, sprawling sentence spanning roughly one thousand pages.
Recommended“Another book that was really influential as I was working on the stream of consciousness is a stream of consciousness novel by Lucy Ellmann called Ducks, Newburyport. It's a thousand pages, one sentence, and that sounds really daunting”
Where to get it
-
The Blind Spot
The Blind Spot by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson is a philosophical critique of Western science that examines the limitations of materialism and advocates for the inclusion of human experience in scientific inquiry.
Recommended“Well, a book that was really influential in the writing of this book is a book called The Blind Spot. It's by a philosopher, Evan Thompson, and two physicists, Adam Frank and Marcelo Gleiser. It's a critique of Western science.”
Where to get it
-
Paper Lion
Paper Lion by George Plimpton is a classic work of participatory journalism that chronicles the author's daring attempt to join the Detroit Lions football team as a rookie quarterback.
Recommended“And that goes to, um, my parents, when I was like 13, gave me a copy of a book by George Plimpton called Paper Lion.”
Where to get it
-
Descartes' Error
Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio is a foundational work in neuroscience that examines how emotions are deeply intertwined with human reasoning and decision-making.
Discussed“And in a way, this is the lesson of Antonio Damasio's first book in 1994, Descartes' Error it was called. And he was basically showing that feelings and emotions should be admitted into the decision-making process.”
Where to get it
-
How to Change Your Mind
How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan is a compelling non-fiction investigation into the history, science, and cultural renaissance of psychedelic substances like psilocybin and LSD in therapeutic settings.
Discussed“and also in the underground therapies that I describe in the book they know what to say when you reach a point of you know uh that you're melting or disappearing or going crazy”
Where to get it
-
The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness
The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness by Mark Solms is a work of neuroscientific exploration that bridges psychoanalysis and modern brain science to propose a novel theory regarding subjective experience.
Discussed“And he's written a really interesting book called The Hidden Spring. And his theory is that consciousness arises when you can't automate things.”
Where to get it
-
What Is It Like to Be a Bat?
What Is It Like to Be a Bat? by Thomas Nagel is a famous philosophical essay exploring the nature of subjective conscious experience and the limits of physicalist explanations of the mind.
Discussed“You know, there's the famous definition of Thomas Nagel, who wrote this great essay called What Is It Like to Be a Bat? And he his test for consciousness is if it is like anything to be a creature, that creature then is conscious.”
Where to get it
-
The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide
The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide by James Fadiman is a manual that offers practical advice for navigating psychedelic experiences and finding qualified guides.
Recommended“there's a very good book called the psychedelic explorers manual”
Where to get it
-
A World Appears
A World Appears by Michael Pollan is a non-fiction journey into consciousness that explores meditation, psychedelics, and the nature of the self.
Discussed“So, basically it yeah, the book grew out of the psychedelic experiences and some meditation experience.”
Where to get it
-
Drug Use for Grown-Ups
Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Carl L.
Discussed“and i just read his book um yeah drug use for grown-ups it's a really interesting and courageous book”
Where to get it
-
Fast Food Nation
Discussed“This is before I wrote Omnivore's Dilemma, but there was a sense beginning in 2002, and I can date this to uh when Eric Schlosser uh published Fast Food Nation, which uh was a a surprise bestseller.”
Where to get it
-
Finding the Mother Tree
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard is a scientific memoir detailing the author's pioneering research into how trees communicate, share resources, and function cooperatively within complex forest ecosystems.
Discussed“suzanne simard just wrote this really interesting book about this called searching for the mother tree”
Where to get it
-
Frankenstein
Frankenstein by Mary W.
Discussed“You know, in Frankenstein Dr. Frankenstein made a monster that was intelligent, but he also gave it consciousness.”
Where to get it
-
The Botany of Desire
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan is an insightful non-fiction book that explores the co-evolutionary relationships between humans and four key plants—the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato—satisfying human desires for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control.
Discussed“and back when I was working on botony of Desire I got very interested in the in the the the desires that other species gratify in us as part of their evolutionary strategy”
Where to get it
-
The Omnivore's Dilemma
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a celebrated non-fiction investigation into the modern American food chain, tracing the origins of what people eat from industrial agriculture to organic farms and foraged meals.
Discussed“I was writing a piece uh that became a chapter in The Omnivore's Dilemma on the meat industry and how [ __ ] up it is and um and feed lots and and the drugs they give the animals.”
Where to get it
Appearances
Other mentions (17: passing, ad reads, own books)
“And he, you know, actually, when I was writing my first book, Second Nature, I was trying to figure out how to behave in the garden”
“I wrote a book called botany desire, which really looked at how plants have mastered our desires as their, as their evolutionary strategy”
“that's the subtitle of Botany desire was a plant's eye view of the world.”
“I remember how nervous I was when I published how to change your mind. I was talking about my own psychedelic experience.”
“I subsequently put it in a book called This Is Your Mind on Plants, which came out a couple of years ago. And it's one of three chapters in that book.”
“I wrote about it in uh Botany of Desire when I was writing about cannabis.”
“Oh, my my writing, my professional magazine writing really began with uh some pieces I wrote for my first book, Second Nature, that uh are about the garden.”
“It's certainly after Un Vogue's Dilemma, which is 2006.”
“I got interested in that two ways, one through meditation and the other through the psychedelic experiences I had for for my book how to change your mind.”
“I mean, I'll never forget this one experience I had on psilocybin for my for my book. I had a complete dissolution of self.”
“So I'm very interested in the science of psychedelics and I wrote about it in How to Change Your Mind.”
“I interviewed some of these people for How to Change Your Mind, and I would ask them to describe their trip, and this woman who smoked for 50 years had had this incredible trip.”
“cooked was a book i wrote a few years ago about cooking”
“So in How to Change Your Mind, I tried LSD and psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT and all these things that were really scary and hard for me, but this was harder.”
“So I I decided I like the word psychedelic and I try and I would try in my book to rescue it from all the incrustation of '60s dayglow, you know, acid rock, all that stuff, ‑ and see if we could we could reclaim it cuz cuz it means the right thing.”
“I wrote about Anam botany of desire there's a long chapter on cannabis and I've always been curious about that desire because it doesn't seem on its face to be so helpful or adaptive”
“and in fact I've written about this abiding and universal desire of humans to change their consciousness for a long time I wrote about Anam botany of desire there's a long chapter on cannabis and I've always been curious about that desire because it doesn't seem on its face to be so helpful or adaptive”