Michael Pollan: How To Change Your Mind | E158

Michael Pollan 0:00 Depression, anxiety, addiction, mental disorders that involve a rigidity of thought, what psychedelics appear to do is break those habits of thought.

Steven Bartlett 0:10 What is the cost of this though?

Michael Pollan 0:12 That's a great question. (dramatic music) One of the 100 most influential people in the world. Please welcome Michael Pollan.

Steven Bartlett 0:19 You've written six New York Times bestsellers.

Michael Pollan 0:22 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 0:22 And they're on such a diverse range of topics.

Michael Pollan 0:25 Two of the topics I've worked on have turned into movements. I was writing a piece on the meat industry and how fucked up it is, and it led to this movement to try to reform agriculture. Then I got into psychedelics. They're much better than the results for antidepressants when they came on the scene, and we're talking about potential cures, not simply symptoms. There are risks with this, and we don't talk about them nearly enough, and people are gonna get hurt.

Steven Bartlett 0:54 One of the immersive journalistic pursuits you embarked on was this topic of caffeine.

Michael Pollan 0:58 It allows us to function better. It allows us to work harder, longer. You're feeling the clearing of the mental fog.

Steven Bartlett 1:05 I can tell you the cost of doing heroin every day, but no one can seem to tell me the cost of having three cups of coffee a day.

Michael Pollan 1:10 If you really want to understand your relationship to this drug, you have to- (record screeches)

Steven Bartlett 1:15 So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO USA Edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. (upbeat music)

Steven Bartlett 1:32 Michael, I have to say, it's a real, a huge honor to speak to you. When I departed from my company and I started investigating what I was interested in, one of the things, alongside DJing and this podcast and many others, was psychedelics. I was so compelled by, um, this apparent, and I didn't have confirmation, this apparent increase in mental health disorders in my country.

Michael Pollan 1:52 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:52 In the UK, as you know, as I know you've talked about many times, is that suicide is the single biggest ki- uh, killer of men under the age of 45. And I thought that the most sort of fulfilling thing I could do with the next chapter of my life was start a company in that space. That's how I came to the psychedelics industry.

Michael Pollan 2:08 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 2:08 That's how I came to actually work in the psychedelics industry. And when I arrived in that industry, people said your name over and over and over again, and they told me, and I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, they told me that I had to... it was like I wasn't allowed in the industry until I'd read your book.

Michael Pollan 2:21 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 2:21 Right? Um, How To Change Your Mind, it was that much of a pivotal book for my colleagues at the time. You've written six New York Times bestsellers, and they're on such a diverse arrange of topics. To be so successful in such a diverse range of topics in writing, my first question to you that I wanted to ask is, as you look back on your life and your career, why were you successful? What was it about you that made you successful?

Michael Pollan 2:50 I think finding the right topics. I, I had a nose for topics that most people weren't paying attention to. I w- I felt very lucky, I was writing in these uncompetitive spaces. Nobody was writing about psychedelics except, you know, the small handful of people within the psychedelic community who write these books for one another that nobody else reads and they... and so I had, I've, I've, I remember thinking the whole time I was writing that book is like, "Where is everybody? Am I making a mistake here investing so much in this? Um, no one else is writing about it." And the same was true with food. There was very, when I started writing about food and agriculture, very little being written, so a willingness to go into places that other people, you know, weren't working in. I don't like writing in competitive environments. I'm not fast enough. (laughs) Um, so that was one thing. Um, I think there's something about the way I structure stories. So I don't start on page one with all the answers, and if you read the first page of anything I've written, I'm kind of an idiot on page one. Um, I've got questions, I don't have answers, and so my books are kind of detective stories or, you know, I, I just tell about the process of my figuring things out and going to this person and learning this and having this experience and learning that. And I think that readers don't like to be lectured at, and, um, and I don't do that. I, I take them along on the journey.

Steven Bartlett 4:12 When, when I think about starting a business, one of the pieces of advice that, um, I would and I think a lot of entrepreneurs would give a young aspiring entrepreneur is to not pursue something that you're not genuinely interested about because-

Michael Pollan 4:22 Oh yeah, th- well, without question. I mean that I write about things that I'm passionate about. Um, curiosity is the driver, and cultivating... Curiosity doesn't necessarily come naturally to everybody. It's a muscle you have to cultivate and you have to see the world in terms of questions rather than answers 'cause questions are always more interesting than answers. Uh, so I do cultivate that when I see something happening. I remember when I first read a little article in the New York Times saying they were giving psilocybin to cancer patients to help them deal with their fear of death. I'm like, "What's that about? Why would you do that? Why would you ever want to take a trip when you got a terminal diagnosis? I don't think I would want to do that." You know, I just had all these questions and the only way to answer them was to do reporting, was to go interview the patients and interview the doctors and satisfy my curiosity. So without question, I, I can't write about things I'm not interested in. I mean, I get, you know, and you can, as you can imagine, editors are always coming to me, "We would like an article on this or, or book on this," and I'm like, "I don't feel it." (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 5:28 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 5:28 So, yeah. So you do have to, you do have to care about it. I mean, writing a book is such a long journey with so many twists and turns and, um, so if you, if you don't have some deep-seated drive to understand something, to tell a story, you're gonna, y- good chance you're gonna sink along the way.

Steven Bartlett 5:48 And you really do go all the way. That's something that you're a fan of.

Michael Pollan 5:51 Well, immersion is a big part of my work, and I think, and I think that's another, that's been another key thing. I can... uh, you know, I've been thinking about this a lot recently, um...But I can trace the moment where I was first exposed to the kind of journalism that I think of myself as doing. And that was when I was 13. My parents gave me a, a book called Paper Lion. It's a book of sports writing. It was about football, by, uh, a writer named George Plimpton. He was a literary person, but a sports writer too, and loved sports writing. And, um, he was kind of bored with how sports writing was done then, which is, you know, it's that cynical cigar-chomping guy on the sidelines with the hat who'd-

Steven Bartlett 6:36 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 6:36 ... just been there, done that, seen it all, has no sense of wonder or excitement anymore. And he thought, "There's a way to reinvent this form." And he, and what he did was he persuaded, uh, the Detroit Lions f- American football team to let him, um, train with them over the summer, summer training camp, and then start in a exhibition game at the beginning of the season as quarterback. So this guy had never played professional sports at all, um, was not an athlete. And there he was, um, facing this line of giant guys coming at him. And he could write about football in a way that no sports writer could, but neither any football player could, because they had been doing it since they were 10 or six, and they no longer saw it freshly. It was a job. But he had this incredible sense of wonder and humor, 'cause he's a fish out of water. And it opened up all these funny narrative possibilities. And I realized, that book just sat with me. I love that book. So when I started writing, I forget which book it was in, um, I real- I think it was my second book, it was a book about architecture, and then I realized I couldn't write this book unless I built something myself. And so finding how to put my, finding the way to put myself in the story is, uh, been key for me, and with, uh, agriculture, you know, I bought a cow and followed him through-

Steven Bartlett 8:06 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 8:06 ... the food system. Um...

Steven Bartlett 8:08 Wait, you, you bought a cow?

Michael Pollan 8:09 I did. I, I, I was writing a piece, uh, that became a chapter in The Omnivore's Dilemma-

Steven Bartlett 8:14 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 8:15 ... on the meat industry and how fucked up it is, and, um, and feedlots and, and the drugs they give the animals. And that was my assignment from the New York Times. And I found this, uh, and I was gonna do the piece in terms of I was gonna follow one animal through the whole system, from insemination to slaughter. And, um, this was a piece called Power Steer that, uh, was published in the New York Times. Uh, and you... It's on my website if you wanna, um, check it out for free. But along the way, the, one of the ranchers said, "If you really want to understand our business, you should buy one of these animals." And I thought immediately, "This is a great idea," because it's gonna do two things. It's gonna give me a character, even though it's an animal, um, which, you know, having an animal hero in a piece is always a good thing.

Steven Bartlett 9:02 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 9:03 And it's gonna give me a different kind of access when I get to the feedlot and the slaughterhouse, 'cause I own this animal. I, I'm-

Steven Bartlett 9:10 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 9:10 ... not just a journalist. And so I, I picked out this animal, number 534, um, and I followed him. And I, you know, I, I met him on the ranch where he was born, and then I had a reunion with him in the feedlot where he ended up, you know, several months later.

Michael Pollan 9:26 Um...

Steven Bartlett 9:27 I'm super intrigued by what happened to this cow-

Michael Pollan 9:29 Oh, yeah, well... (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 9:31 ... and how it felt. Were you emotionally attached to it at all when that, when it got, you know, reached its end- end of its days?

Michael Pollan 9:35 I was a little. I didn't, they wouldn't... Something happened. So I had to publish the piece before he was slaughtered.

Steven Bartlett 9:41 Right.

Michael Pollan 9:42 He was sla- Uh, they wanted to publish the piece. I handed it in in February. They wanted to publish it in March, and he wasn't going to get slaughtered till June. I wanted to wait, because I still had very good access, 'cause nobody knew I was writing an expose on the, on the meat industry. I was just some goofball-

Steven Bartlett 9:57 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 9:57 ... following the life of this cow. And, um, but when the piece came out, the slaughterhouse was like, "We're not doing business with Pollan anymore." Um, and, uh, so I was hoping to retrieve the steaks and eat them, or, or try to eat them and see what I thought about it. And, um, uh, but they wouldn't, they wouldn't play anymore. Um, and it's interesting. When this piece came out, there was a, a whole, uh, explosion in the American media of people who wanted to save the cow, 'cause they knew he hadn't been killed yet. And I had people, I had someone in, uh, write me, uh, a, a movie producer in Beverly Hills wrote and say, "I want to buy your, your 534." And I said, "What are you gonna do with it?" "I'm gonna put it on my front lawn." And, uh, I was like, " (sighs) You know-

Steven Bartlett 10:47 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 10:47 ... saving one animal is not gonna fix the food system." And, and everybody thought that way. There was even a telethon on a vegan radio station in New Jersey. They were raising money, and they would pay me anything I wanted for this animal. And I'm like, "This is not, this is, you know, this is not how you change the meat system, by, like, having this poster boy steer." And they actually likened it to the Underground Railroad, that saving one slave was worth it. I was like, "That's interesting." Um, and, uh, so I did not sell it. Um, and it went through the process and-

Steven Bartlett 11:23 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 11:23 ... somebody ate it, uh, but it wasn't me.

Steven Bartlett 11:26 There's something sort of telling about that, about the human condition, where we believe that one-

Michael Pollan 11:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 11:31 ... sort of surface-level act of apparent, probably virtue signaling, but apparent goodness is, is enough, or that we don't really c- care about the systemic resolution.

Michael Pollan 11:42 No. Systems are hard to deal with, right? We're, we're, we evolved to deal with individuals and stories of individuals. And that's why this story was powerful, 'cause it was about an individual cow. But what matters is the system. This, you know, I, I, I chose it because it was representative of the system. It was a very typical animal going through a typical, start out on grass, kind of idyllic situation in, in, um, South Dakota, move on to this horrible feedlot where they stand in their own manure all day and eat corn, which makes them sick, and they have to take drugs.... and then they go through this slaughterhouse process, um, and, uh, which I described even though I didn't get to witness. But I think we have trouble dealing with systems. Um, and so we, we, we always have the poster child, you know. I mean, look how, you know, look at all the, um, nonprofits, how they advertise, right? There's one animal or there's one child that you're gonna save with your donation. And, uh, I, I just think it's a limitation of our imagination.

Steven Bartlett 12:38 That's what I was thinking of, a very recent example of that, which is the tragic death of George Floyd-

Michael Pollan 12:43 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 12:43 ... and how that sparked people around the world, specifically on Instagram, posting a black tile. As a Black male, I looked at that and thought, "This is, like, the easy thing to do," right?

Michael Pollan 12:53 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 12:54 But it doesn't solve the systemic issues o- of sort of race and race relations and discrimination. But, like, we can all do the, like-

Michael Pollan 13:00 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 13:00 ... virtue signaling-

Michael Pollan 13:01 Right.

Steven Bartlett 13:01 ... socially, hashtag whatever, Black tile. But again, the, the complexity of the system below it, that's kind of cau- m- might be the cause of some of these things, is just does anybody really care to deal with that? You know, it's like...

Michael Pollan 13:13 I think it's just overwhelming to people. (sighs) And, (sighs) you know, I don't... I mean, it is virtue signaling. I mean, all over Berkeley where I live, people still have Black Lives Matter signs-

Steven Bartlett 13:23 (sighs)

Michael Pollan 13:23 ... in their windows, you know, everywhere. Like, when are they gonna take them down? Are they ever gonna take them down? I understand the value of expressing that point of view, but, eh, there's so much more that needs to be done.

Steven Bartlett 13:37 What does need to be done when we're thinking about r- sort of rewiring systems? Is it education? Is it political? Is it...

Michael Pollan 13:45 I tend to think it's about law. I think you can't legislate morality, but you can change laws and make certain kinds of, uh, activity, discrimination illegal. Um, you know, we're approaching it in America at the level of everyone's soul. We're trying to reform everyone's soul with anti-racism campaigns and things like that. We'll see if it works. I tend to think it doesn't work. Um, and one of the things that I've been very discouraged by is the collapse in support for Black Lives Matter, which had majority support after that George Floyd summer, and now it doesn't.

Steven Bartlett 14:23 It's been politicized, right?

Michael Pollan 14:25 Yeah, and, and it's been fought against by Republicans, and, um, but I also think shaming people d- is not the way to get them to change.

Steven Bartlett 14:35 Amen.

Michael Pollan 14:36 And there was a lot of that. And, uh, and I see a lot of this on college campuses. I see a lot of this throughout the culture. I understand the instinct, um, but I think you get, I think you invite a backlash. Um, that's not the best way to get people to change. And I think, in fact, it can have the opposite effect.

Steven Bartlett 14:55 I think it, uh, I, from what I've observed specifically around the issue of Black Lives Matter, that shame that I saw in the wake of George Floyd's death only resulted in this kind of, like, apparent social compliance. Not changed, like, "Okay, now I have to pretend to be this person." And that, like, compliance, again, is not what we're looking for. I did a big tweet thread about how I felt white people were being shamed into either speaking out, saying something profound, or, or other, when really, it, it, it, for me, it was actually a ver- the, the least natural reaction to s- to the scenes that I saw in that video of George Floyd's death would be w- ru- doing a tweet or posting. I, even I spent weeks, like, processing it, and then I was being shamed. "Steve, why aren't you speaking up for Black people?" And, and I just thought, you know, like, (sighs) uh, uh, you know, and all of that, again, it made me, it made me... It didn't bring me closer to waving the flags. It just made me feel, like, I don't know, kind of disillusioned by it all all. So you're right. Shame, uh, uh, I guess just becomes-

Michael Pollan 15:54 Yeah, there was a lot of, uh, pressure to immediately express your solidarity-

Steven Bartlett 15:59 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 15:59 ... with Black Lives Matter, and, and if you didn't, there was something wrong.

Steven Bartlett 16:03 Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Pollan 16:04 I s- I definitely saw a lot of that. Um, I don't know. I just think we need... I think our politics has to be organized around, um, more positive emotions. I mean, make people feel really good about social change, about, um... And I think, you know, really concrete, I think the way we hire people needs to change. I think the way we promote people needs to change. I think, I think that there's certain, still certain kinds of discrimination that have to be outlawed. Um, I mean, the biggest thing going on at the same time of Black Lives Matter is taking away the ability of African-Americans (laughs) to vote.

Steven Bartlett 16:39 Hmm.

Michael Pollan 16:39 You know, voter suppression. That is so concrete, and you need those votes in order to change things. And so while we're working on, you know, our souls, we're losing the franchise-

Steven Bartlett 16:52 Hmm.

Michael Pollan 16:53 ... which, you know, the Civil Rights movement has fought long and hard. Um, it's, we're going backwards. So, um, I think it's a, I think we should consider whether this politics is working or not, um, and I, I, I would suggest it might not be.

Steven Bartlett 17:09 I would agree. Um, we, we started talking about the, the topic of, like, immersive journalism. One of the, s- one of the sort of, uh, immersive journalistic pursuits you embarked on was this topic of, of caffeine-

Michael Pollan 17:21 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 17:21 ... which I found really, really interesting because I believe there's a cost to everything in life-

Michael Pollan 17:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 17:27 ... just generally, and the cost is always harder to see. And with caffeine in the culture, specifically in business, and even I can see it sort of taking hold in my own life, this topic of caffeine, I'm like, "People never talk about the cost of it," as if it's this super drug, we take it, it just sends us up-

Michael Pollan 17:40 There's no free lunch. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 17:41 ... and then... Exactly, right? So I, and I started thinking, with anxiety on the rise, is there a, is there a risk that this sort of tampering with our, um, our emotional state is going to ruin the system that regulates us-

Michael Pollan 17:57 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 17:57 ... naturally and make us go up okay, fine, when we take caffeine, but then the down, like every other drug, like heroin and cocaine, is gonna be e- e- equally, um, d- destructive?

Michael Pollan 18:09 Yeah, I mean-I, you know, you're talking about the f- the law of compensation, I think is what Ralph Waldo Emerson called it. Um...

Steven Bartlett 18:16 I love that. I've heard of that before.

Michael Pollan 18:17 And that, that there's, there's always some compensating thing. There is no free lunch. And, um, and that was a real issue as people were trying to understand how caffeine worked, um, because it seemed to be a free lunch. Here was something with zero calories that gave you more energy.

Steven Bartlett 18:31 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 18:32 Caffeine works by, um, blocking the action of a, a neurotransmitter, a neuromodulator, technically, uh, called adenosine. It's a chemical that we all have in our bodies that, um, over the course of the day, the levels rise, and it, um, plugs into a certain receptor in the brain. It's all over the brain. I think it's other parts of the body too. And adenosine is your body's signal to slow down, get ready for sleep. It builds sleep pressure. Um, and, uh, what caffeine does is it fits exactly in the same receptor and, and hijacks it. Basically, blocks the adenosine from getting to that receptor. So, the adenosine is still in your body, but it's not acting on your brain 'cause it can't get into those receptors. When the caffeine leaves your system, which takes a while to do, all that adenosine that's been building up, boom, comes in. And so you're more tired than you were before. So, you have this kind of rebound exhaustion. So, you're really borrowing that energy from the future rather than creating new energy-

Steven Bartlett 19:39 Uh-huh.

Michael Pollan 19:39 ... out of nothing. Um, it's still very useful under certain circumstances. I'm not a critic of caffeine. Um, I, it's, it might be my favorite drug, um, and I've tried a whole bunch.

Steven Bartlett 19:51 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 19:51 Um, and it was immersive journalism in that, uh, in this case, I had to stop doing something rather than doing something. 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. Giving up caffeine for three months, um, really was a stretch. And, but it was a really interesting experiment and it taught me that there's a great value in giving things up temporarily just to understand your relationship to them, understand your dependence on them.

Steven Bartlett 20:25 What was hardest about it?

Michael Pollan 20:26 Well, there was the withdrawal, which took a few days and was very unpleasant. I felt like kind of muzzy-headed. I felt like this veil had fallen between me and reality. Uh, things seemed less fresh, less immediate. Um, I didn't have headach- the headaches that some people report, and I didn't have the flu-like symptoms, but I didn't feel myself. And, uh, I was sluggish. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't write for the first week. Um, I just, I, I, I, I said in the book, I felt like an unsharpened pencil. I just didn't have it. You know, it takes a certain amount of ego strength to launch into a, a writing project, uh, or launch into it every day, and I just didn't have it. And, uh, so I was like, "Uh, I don't know h- I don't know if I can do this for three months." After the first week or so, I found my way back that I could work, but I still didn't feel myself. And, and it began to occur to me that, how curious is that? Because what does that say? If, if I feel more normal on this drug than off this drug, 'cause I'm, I'm through the withdrawal period, but I came to see that my, my normal default consciousness was caffeinated consciousness, as it is for a great many of us. I mean, 90% of people on Earth have a daily relationship with caffeine, whether it's in, um, tea, coffee, soda, chocolate. Um, it's in a lot of things. You know, you, you meet people who say, "I, I can't talk to you until I've had a cup of coffee." "I, you know, I, I'm not civil. I can only read the paper." You know, people who just don't enter into social relations till they have a cup of coffee. The reason is they're going through withdrawal and they're cranky and they know it.

Steven Bartlett 22:04 The amount of people probably in this room now, there's probably, you know, 12 people in this building, and of them, I think probably 12 of them have had that drug today.

Michael Pollan 22:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 22:14 With this society, as you've said, people saying, "I can't function. I can't have a conversation until I've had a cup." What is the cost of this, though? Because it, uh, the, you know, I can tell you the cost of doing heroin every day.

Michael Pollan 22:23 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 22:23 Or pretty much any other drug.

Michael Pollan 22:24 Yeah, this is subtler.

Steven Bartlett 22:25 Even sugar. I can tell you the cost of doing sug-

Michael Pollan 22:27 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 22:27 ... having, you know, huge amounts of sugar every day, but no one can seem to tell me the cost of having three cups of coffee a day.

Michael Pollan 22:33 Yeah. Well, the costs, I mean, if, it, it depends on how it agrees with you. I mean, for some people on three cups a day, they get pretty jittery. Um, and it passes over from this very positive feeling to this nervous feeling, and that's, that's a cost. Um, I think the larger cost is to our identity as animals. We were designed, I think, to have rhythms as animals do, that, you know, you wake up when the sun comes up and you start going to sleep when it gets dark. And that we were tied into these natural cycles dictated by light, um, and it broke that connection. It broke that temporal connection. And so there may be some cost as species, and we struggle with sleep, and sleep is a huge deal, and sleep is a, you know, you need sleep to be healthy and sane. You need it for your mental health, and coffee does damage your sleep. Now, I put a little asterisk next to that because if you can stop drinking it after that morning cup, you're gonna have very little in your system when you go to sleep. But a cup of coffee you drink at noon, w- a quarter of that caffeine will still be circulating at midnight. So, it takes a while to get out of your system. Most of the caffeine researchers I interviewed do not drink coffee or tea.

Steven Bartlett 23:59 Interesting.

Michael Pollan 24:00 I mean, these are people who understand sleep and the importance of sleep. And one of the benefits, I didn't mention one of the benefits of being off coffee, is I slept like a teenager. It was fantastic.

Steven Bartlett 24:10 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 24:10 I had some great sleeps.

Steven Bartlett 24:11 My sort of logical mind, when it, when it understands how other drugs impact us and the withdrawals and how they impact our rhythms, our natural rhythms, even think like testosterone. If you take too much of it-

Michael Pollan 24:20 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 24:20 ... your body stops producing it. If you do s- if you have too many sleeping pills, your body struggles to sleep without them. So, I, I reflect on coffee and go, uh, surely...I'm an idiot, so don't take this as the truth. Surely-

Michael Pollan 24:32 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 24:33 ... um, if I have coffee every day, I'm going to struggle to, like, self-regulate, um, my ups and downs.

Michael Pollan 24:40 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:40 And I- and if my- if I'm forcing my body to go up, then my body will come down-

Michael Pollan 24:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:44 ... even further than it would ordinarily.

Michael Pollan 24:46 Or you'll take something else to make it come down.

Steven Bartlett 24:48 Yes, and then I'll have to take-

Michael Pollan 24:49 Alcohol.

Steven Bartlett 24:49 ... a sleeping pill or alcohol.

Michael Pollan 24:50 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Pollan 24:51 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:51 And-

Michael Pollan 24:51 So, no, people do get into these cycles of, of coffee and alcohol, uh, or tea and alcohol. Um, so yeah, there are- I think there is always a cost. But I would say, historically, there have been- the benefits have outweighed the costs of- I mean, compared to other drugs. Um, I think that, uh, we've gained a lot. And there's the whole social aspect of coffee. I mean, the coffee house scene in London was just so vibrant and-

Steven Bartlett 25:18 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 25:19 ... you know, the, the, um, the insurance in Lloyd's of London began in a coffee house.

Steven Bartlett 25:23 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 25:24 And the London Stock Exchange-

Steven Bartlett 25:25 Stock Exchange.

Michael Pollan 25:25 ... began in a coffee house. And, um, you know, English literature was changed by the rhythms of conversation in the coffee house. And it was this place where the classes could mix in a- in a way they couldn't in the tavern or anywhere else. And, you know, you can make a case, and I try to in the book, that the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason owed a lot to caffeine. So, I think it had really positive effect, in that it got people who were inebriated on alcohol all the time to think clearly, um, and that was a big deal. 'Cause I don't think people realize how much alcohol people drank, um, prior to 1650. It was the safest thing you could drink, because the water was contaminated with disease and people understood that. That's how you got plague was, you know, f- using the wrong water pump and things like that. Um, alcohol, the fermentation process and the alcohol itself disinfected water to some extent, but not as effectively as boiling it. And coffee and tea, the first time we boiled water to drink. Um, so the, the, the countries that embraced coffee and tea, suddenly their public health was much improved. They had much lower rates of disease. So, that was also a boon. So, there are a lot of positives.

Steven Bartlett 26:37 You talk about the reason why- why coffee is addictive anyway from a pollination perspective, which I found really-

Michael Pollan 26:42 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 26:42 No one's ever said that before.

Michael Pollan 26:43 Yeah, well... Yeah. So, that was a- one of the interesting, uh, bits of research that I came across. Um, so like a lot of drugs that plants produce, it begins its life as a pesticide. Um, most of these alkaloids that we think are so great, whether it's cocaine or, um, uh, caffeine or, um... Oh, God, there's so many of them and they're not occurring to me right now. The- plants evolved these as chemicals that would, um, kill insects or discourage insects from eating them. And then we found that they had interesting effects on our brains if you got the dose right. And, um, so caffeine was designed- it kills insects at high doses. It also stops other plants from germinating nearby, so it- you get more habitat if you- if you- if your leaves contain caffeine and- and they drop. Um, but the cleverness of plants is such that some of them figured out that a really low dose of caffeine in their nectar would attract bees. And the, uh, the orange, the citrus family does this reliably. So, they've repurposed this pesticide as an attractant, 'cause you don't put pesticide in your nectar. That's where you attract insects.

Steven Bartlett 27:55 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 27:56 And, um, it turns out bees really like caffeine.

Steven Bartlett 27:59 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 27:59 And they will go preferentially to flowers that offer them caffeine. We don't know if they get a buzz, um, but they do prefer it. And it does for them what it does for us. It improves their memory. They're more likely to go back to the flower that gave them caffeine than any other flower and remember where it was. They will also work harder as, um ... so they become better workers, basically. So, the plants are manipulating the bees to do their bidding. We knew that, but in a much deeper way than we understood by essentially, you know, drugging them.

Steven Bartlett 28:33 And then humans came along and just got hooked. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 28:34 And then humans, yeah. Yeah. But- but the curious thing is, why should a pesticide have these mental effects for us? And the theory I advance in the book is that if you're a plant and you're- and you're bothered by pests, the best strategy is not to kill the pest. Because if you do that, if you just put out a lethal chemical, um, you're going to kill a bunch of the pests, but the resistant members, and there are always some mutations that give resistance, they're going to explode. Their population will explode, and you- and your tool will be gone. It won't work anymore.

Steven Bartlett 29:14 Interesting.

Michael Pollan 29:14 But if you merely discombobulate your predator, your pest, confuse it, which psychedelics and other drugs do, uh, make it lose its appetite, which most drugs do, um, you're much better off. 'Cause it won't- it- it won't have this kind of selective pressure.

Steven Bartlett 29:35 Interesting.

Michael Pollan 29:35 So, uh, I got this insight from my cat, Frank, who, um, had a real issue with catnip. I- I had a catnip plant in my garden and my garden was fenced, and every night when I was going out to the garden to pick something for dinner, Frank would follow me and look up at me. And he wanted to be shown where the catnip was. And I would show him to the catnip and he would roll in it and get really stoned.

Steven Bartlett 30:03 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 30:03 And, um, and then forget where he had seen the catnip. And he had to be reminded every single day. This is an intelligent cat. Like, "Where was that plant?" The plant had drugged him so that he would lose track of where it was.

Steven Bartlett 30:17 Oh, wow.

Michael Pollan 30:18 So, I thought that was a pretty clever plant.

Steven Bartlett 30:20 Wow.

Michael Pollan 30:20 Certainly more clever than Frank was.

Steven Bartlett 30:22 Speaking of clever plants then. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 30:26 Transition, yes.

Steven Bartlett 30:27 Yeah, that wasn't bad, was it? Um, I- on the topic of psychedelics, which is- I referenced at the start-When I first heard about the concept of psychedelics, I, like you, 'cause I've heard you talk about your initial sort of perception of them, was terrified by the thought of losing my consciousness. I also thought, as you, you know, you talked about cancer anxiety in your writing and how patients with, suffering with cancer, I th- think the last thing I'd want to do is trip if I had-

Michael Pollan 30:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 30:52 ... cancer. But also, another point that you made in, in a talk you, you gave was, I saw myself as a very logical, scientific, physical person and I thought that I couldn't be that and-

Michael Pollan 31:04 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 31:04 ... spiritual or what-

Michael Pollan 31:05 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 31:05 ... however you want to describe it or really-

Michael Pollan 31:07 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 31:07 ... anything that I couldn't think or feel. Tell me about your journey then from going from that place to psychedelics. I, I, I know you, it's w- well-documented in, um, the journey you've taken, but I, but I really want to understand how your perception shifted and where it sits today a- as a spiritual-

Michael Pollan 31:23 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 31:23 ... individual.

Michael Pollan 31:25 So, I did see myself as a very materialist, uh, in my philosophy, um, I thought that the laws of nature we knew explained everything and anything else was supernatural, you know. And I'd talked to a lot of people who'd done psychedelics and had this big spiritual experience and so I was curious about it 'cause I did, I, I said somewhere that I thought I was kind of spiritually retarded. I just, it was a part of myself I hadn't developed and, uh, but I did have this misconception that, uh, to be spiritual is to believe in supernatural things.

Steven Bartlett 31:55 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 31:55 Okay? And that's kind of a scientific view, it's an assu- you know, scientists assume this about spiritual people. I had a couple of big experiences on psilocybin at, as I was researching the book, more immersive journalism, and um-

Steven Bartlett 32:10 (laughs) Nice excuse (laughs) .

Michael Pollan 32:11 Uh, and no, I, you know, I did feel, I was curious to try these things, but I also felt compelled. I think my readers expect me to do stuff, you know, that I'm writing about-

Steven Bartlett 32:22 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 32:22 ... and not just be on the sidelines and so I did feel some real pressure to do it. But I was, I did these conversations with volunteers in these studies and individuals who had, you know, amazing experiences that completely changed their attitude toward death. I mean people who, who lost their fear of death after one four-hour experience on psilocybin. I mean, how does that happen? You, I mean, you, you have to be curious about that. Um-

Steven Bartlett 32:46 Psilocybin being the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.

Michael Pollan 32:49 In, in magic mushrooms, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 32:50 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 32:50 Uh, but in these trials they get it in a pill form, it's kind of purified, but it's the same, same drug exactly. Um, so I had a couple really interesting experiences, um, that reset my understanding of what spiritual meant, um, and my experiences had to do with powerful connection to something bigger than me that I felt. Um, specifically for me, it was the plants in my garden that, I mean, I'm a gardener, I've been writing about plants one way or another for a long time, and I've always admired plants and I think, you know, as we were talking about the, the, the, um, the citrus plants with the caffeine, I think they're really intelligent, um, in a very different way than we are. But it was, that was kind of an intellectual conceit. I didn't feel them as, um, conscious beings and during this trip, I did. I was in my garden and all the plants were like talking to me. I mean, not literally talking to me, but they were returning my gaze, they were present, they had a sentience, um, and it was, and they were very benign. They, they liked me (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 34:01 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 34:02 I took care of them, you know (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 34:03 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 34:03 ... I fertilized them. Um, but it was a very powerful connection to nature that I hadn't felt before. Most of us, when we walk through the natural world, we, we sort of feel we're sort of part of nature but we're sort of not part of nature, we're all alienated from nature. That's our human thing and it's our human arrogance actually, but, um, uh, but it's also a failure of imagination to see ourselves as animals and, but that's what we are. Um, we're a little different and in the ways in which we have transcended nature or think we have. But anyway, I felt more one creature among many than I had ever felt in my life. I was just another creature in the garden and, and it was kind of liberating. It was this wonderful feeling. It was, it was a great moment. So I had that experience and then I had another experience of, uh, you know, what people call ego death, of, you know, total ego dissolution on a high dose psilocybin, a guided psilocybin trip, it's not something you want to try on your own, and um, uh, I saw myself kind of explode in a cloud of Post-It notes, blue Post-It notes, and then they fell to the ground and there I was, this, this, um, pool of paint on the ground. And that was me, but I was observing it from this new perspective that was completely untroubled by what should've been a catastrophe (laughs) and it was fine. This is how things are. And then having no ego anymore, I had no walls and I just merged into this piece of music that the guide was playing, this Bach unaccompanied cello suite, um, that was undescribably beautiful and I, but there was no subject-object relationship. I just became the music. I just joined it. It was the most profound experience listening to music I'd ever had. So, I came out of these experiences like rethinking what does spiritual mean and I came to understand it, it means having a profound connection with something larger than you. Um, it's a kind of love. It's, um, it could, you know, some people have it with the universe. I had it with the plants in my garden, uh, and this piece of music. Um, and that, um, that sense of profound connection, that's what I think of as spiritual now. Um, and there's nothing, um, there's nothing supernatural about it. You could say, well, your plants weren't really conscious, but they are sentient beings and w- we're the first culture in history that's forgotten that. You know, our scientific w- world view has given us this incredible blind spot about the sentience all around us. You know, going back to Descartes, um, who, you know, thought that we were the only thinking creature and, and, uh, no other creature felt pain or had consciousness, um, it-And most of us still sort of believe that, I think, even though we're learning that sentience goes way down, um, and that, I just read a paper saying that insects may have consciousness. Wrap your head around that. Um.

Steven Bartlett 37:05 Christ. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 37:05 Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 37:06 Thinking about all the...

Michael Pollan 37:07 Well, there, there are a lot of ethical-

Steven Bartlett 37:09 ... (laughs)

Michael Pollan 37:09 There are a lot of ethical implications. Um, so, so my point is though that the perception that you're surrounded by sentient beings is not supernatural. We are. And what the, um, psychedelics are removing is this, is this filter that's allowed us to see things in this very narrow, materialist, scientific w- worldview. Paper was published, uh, just this week by the group at Johns Hopkins, Roland Griffith was the author. He's the guy I was just telling you about who studies both caffeine and psilocybin. And they, they did a big, uh, observational study of people who have had a psychedelic experience to see if their, uh, how their beliefs changed, and they, and the thing they looked at was really interesting. They looked at attribution of consciousness to other beings, um, and it went up dramatically. Um, so people who, I think normally 13% of people think plants have some consciousness, it went up to like 58%.

Steven Bartlett 38:10 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 38:11 And that was the most dramatic gain, but everything did. I mean, people attributing consciousness to animals, to cats and dogs, to insects. Uh, it all went up. Now you might think, okay, psychedelics increases your magical thinking, but they also check did you believe in the Loch Ness Monster and a bunch of other kind of-

Steven Bartlett 38:28 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 38:28 ... magical nature things. Um, and they didn't. There was no change there. But this attribution of consciousness went way up across the board, and so what does that tell us? Well, every traditional culture has believed that there are many species that are conscious, that are sentient. Um, and that, um, this is something we've unlearned, and I think one way to interpret it is psychedelics, um, you know, unlearns the unlearning basically, and, and allows us to see something that all children see and most traditional people see, which is the fact that we're not the only thinking being. Um, so that's a, that's a spiritual question too.

Steven Bartlett 39:15 I, my first real experience with a psychedelic was San Pedro-

Michael Pollan 39:19 Uh-huh. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:19 ... with the cactus.

Michael Pollan 39:20 Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:20 Really interesting experience. So I drunk this drink, um, with my partner and we-

Michael Pollan 39:25 Where were you?

Steven Bartlett 39:26 Peru.

Michael Pollan 39:27 Okay. 'Cause I don't think it grows that well in England.

Steven Bartlett 39:29 No. (laughs) Yeah.

Michael Pollan 39:30 You can grow it out here.

Steven Bartlett 39:31 Yeah. Well, yeah, I've, I've heard, but, uh, but it was a really interesting experience. I, first two, two, three hours, the guy, the shaman takes us to a, to a cave 'cause it's raining, and nothing. I'm sat there for three hours, nothing. I leave the cave, and I go back out into the hills, these beautiful sort of grassy hills with trees and everything, and the minute I got outside, I think within two minutes, I was convinced, and I've said it to my team before, I was convinced that me and the plants were the same thing, and really that they were like-

Michael Pollan 39:59 Oh wow.

Steven Bartlett 39:59 ... they were like looking at me.

Michael Pollan 40:01 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 40:02 I was looking at them, and they were like looking at me, and it was the first time I felt like I had, as you describe it, a almost human relationship. Even with the, the grassy hills, but it was really these plants in front of me. It was like they were an audience now.

Michael Pollan 40:13 Were they cactus or not?

Steven Bartlett 40:15 No.

Michael Pollan 40:15 They weren't?

Steven Bartlett 40:15 They were just, they were just these-

Michael Pollan 40:16 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:17 ... these tall plants-

Michael Pollan 40:18 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:18 ... and it felt like they were l- like, looking at me and trying to tell me something. And you're right, the experience I had was I totally didn't matter in the same way that I'd mattered three hours ago. My all sort of sense of self-importance-

Michael Pollan 40:31 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 40:31 ... had, had gone and I was just as important as this, this little plant.

Michael Pollan 40:34 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 40:35 And it was, and as you describe it, it was, we were the same thing, and I was in awe of that, that feeling. Obviously, you don't forget the feeling. You don't forget the memory, but you almost, you lose the feeling a little bit.

Michael Pollan 40:47 You do. I think you do. I think you go back to baseline to some extent, not completely. Um, I, I can't, I don't know. I find that I can return to some of those ways of thinking. Uh, so my involvement with psychedelics led to a meditation practice, and, um, I think psychedelics are very good for starting a meditation practice. Um, I could never do it. You know, I was, I was just a very frustrated meditator before that when I tried, and um, but I'd had certain kind of paths of consciousness laid down during the psychedelic experience that I could get on again. Not so much the peak experience, you know, the fireworks. Um, and that's what people end up talking about or writing about, but a lot of a psychedelic experience is this long tail, this long ............................

Steven Bartlett 41:37 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 41:37 Uh, as you're coming down, you're regaining control over what you're thinking about. You can direct your attention here or there, yet you're not distractable. You are really in a zone. And that state is a meditative state, and having laid down those tracks, you can get back to them I think-

Steven Bartlett 41:57 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 41:58 ... um, with work. And sometimes it's a matter of thinking about an image I saw on a psychedelic trip that helps me get there. Um, so I think that's one way you keep it alive. Um, because psychedelics aren't a practice. You just, you can't do it that often.

Steven Bartlett 42:13 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 42:13 You don't want to do it that often. It, it takes a toll. It's hard work, um, and that's one of the reasons they're, I think they're not habit forming, and they're not is that after a big psychedelic trip, you're not saying, "When can I do it again?" You're saying, "Do I ever have to do it again?"

Steven Bartlett 42:27 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 42:27 And, um, 'cause it's, it's hard work and it can be overwhelming. But there is a residue that stays with you. And some people, I've, you know, really seen their lives turned around, and they have a big, uh, you know, they take away a lot. Um, I, for me it's been subtler things like that. But I, I, I can use meditation to kind of nurture that flame.

Steven Bartlett 42:51 Well, one of the, as you talk there about people's lives turning around after a psychedelic experience, obviously the, the studies that are being done on psilocybin and many other psychedelic compounds, um-... are pretty profound when you read about them. The, the impact of one dose, one trip in the right set and setting on things like treatment-resistant depression-

Michael Pollan 43:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 43:12 ... are really, like, almost hard to believe.

Michael Pollan 43:15 Yeah. And, um, and I think we should take them with a grain of salt. I mean, I think that one of the things to understand, they're very impressive results, they're much better than the results for antidepressants when they, when they came on the scene. They were approved with, like, marginal utility. I think they, they scored like two percentage points better than placebos, you know, but it doesn't take a lot to get a drug approved. Um, here, you're seeing substantial sustained changes in people, um, which is great. But it's important to understand the early studies on any drug tend to be more positive than they are later.

Steven Bartlett 43:50 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 43:50 Part of the reason is that, that the researchers are optimizing everything. They have very trained, well-trained guides. They, they can exclude anyone who's too depressed or has some other problems. So they're, they're, you know, they're, they're not giving it to thousands of people, they're giving it to hundreds of people. So I think we could expect as we get to phase three and then introduction that the effects won't be quite as good as they've been. But so far, they've been like two thirds of people in most of these trials, whether it's MDMA for trauma or psilocybin for depression or addiction have, um, you know, lost their diagnosis. Um, that's pretty extraordinary. And we're talking about potential cures, not simply, uh, symptoms-

Steven Bartlett 44:34 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 44:34 ... dealing with symptoms. Um, so it's very exciting research. I think I'm a little concerned about the kind of irrational exuberance that's surrounding the space. There's all this investment money. There's, there's more capital than there are good ideas, I, I would say. That's my reading of the situation. Um, and people are gonna get hurt, you know? So I, I just see a bubble here that concerns me. But there is something real here, um, and I just hope we can be careful about how we... you know, that we don't, uh, build up people's expectations, especially pe- people with mental illness-

Steven Bartlett 45:07 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 45:07 ... that they think they've got a cure. It doesn't work for everybody. And, and some people have really hard experiences on psychedelics.

Steven Bartlett 45:15 That tends to be the case with... That sort of bubble that you described tends to be the case with all new industries.

Michael Pollan 45:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 45:20 The internet, cryptocurrencies, psychedelics.

Michael Pollan 45:22 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 45:22 They have this euphoria bubble and then there's a, a flattening where the, the true value emerges over time. Um-

Michael Pollan 45:28 Especially on Silicon Valley, which is some, like, some fashion-conscious money.

Steven Bartlett 45:32 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 45:33 Um, and... 'Cause I've seen this, you know, having worked in the food space, uh, agriculture. There was... I remember this moment in 2008 or so, uh, where all the Silicon Valley people were investing in ethanol. They thought this was the gre- this green energy, this is turning-

Steven Bartlett 45:47 Ah.

Michael Pollan 45:47 ... corn into fuel. And it was clear to anybody close to the situation that, in fact, it took more energy to make ethanol than you got out of it. It was just a way to get rid of a surplus of corn on the part of the farmers and the government. But everybody jumped in, Bill Gates, um, you know, the s- the Sand Hill Road crowd and, um, and you could watch this. And then they very quickly realized, oh, this isn't such a good business. And th- and then, then they got into food and they got into mock meats and that's where they are now. They're in the food industry-

Steven Bartlett 46:16 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 46:16 ... as well as psychedelics and they're gonna be very disappointed at the returns in the food industry, which like if you're lucky are two or 3%. Um, it doesn't scale like software.

Steven Bartlett 46:25 Some of the evidence in these clinical trials does show the efficacy of the psychedelics- psychedelic compounds. And one of the questions I had, and I know that, you know, you've done a huge amount of research on this, is if psychedelics are effective, even in some cases, what does that say about the causes of these, um-

Michael Pollan 46:41 It's a great question.

Steven Bartlett 46:41 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 46:42 The honest complete answer is we don't know. But the best theory that, that I've come across is that if you look at the different disorders that psychedelics appears to be effective in treating, depression, anxiety, uh, obsessive compulsive disorder, addiction, all of these are mental disorders that involve a kind of rigidity of thought. People stuck in loops of rumination, um, inflexible thinking. They need this drug to get through the day. Um, they have this narrative in their head that they're a bad person, that nothing is working in their life or they have anxiety and they replay loops about, you know, what makes them anxious. Um, what psychedelics appear to do, what psilocybin appears to do is break those habits of thought. It's, it's kind of a solvent. Um, and so that it, uh, shakes things up in a way that makes the brain more plastic, more able to learn new patterns. Because this is essentially people stuck in old patterns. And so I think that this is probably its contribution. The most beautiful metaphor of this that I, I, I heard from a, a neuroscientist, he said, "I, I think of, I think- think of your mind as a hill covered in snow." And, uh, it would've been a mountain except he was from Holland and they don't have mountains. "Um, and your thoughts are, um, sleds going down the hill. After a while, your thoughts are gonna keep getting drawn like attractors into the same grooves and it's gonna be very hard to get down the hill without falling into those grooves. Think of the psychedelic experience as fresh snowfall, filling the grooves, allowing you to take any path you want down the hill." Um, so I think it has to do with habitual thinking, rigid brains, stuck brains, uh, brains that have too much order and need to be disordered a bit. Um, so, you know, this all remains to be proven. There's actually a, uh, a group at, uh, Mass General at Harvard that is looking at the whole question of rumination and psychedelics and seeing if that is indeed the common denominator 'cause we think of all these diagnoses as actual real things, but they're really-... conventions of the psychiatry industry. And if you read the DSM, the, the, the whole encyclopedia of diagnoses, every five years, they throw out a bunch-

Steven Bartlett 49:15 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 49:15 ... they add a bunch. They don't really know what they're doing. So I remember asking a psychiatrist, I said, "Isn't it a little weird that the s- same drug works on these five different things, you know-

Steven Bartlett 49:24 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 49:24 ... addiction and obsession?" And he said, "Well, how do you know they're different things? Maybe they're all different symptoms of the same brain, same kind of brain." And so, you know, I mean, if you, if you think about it, anxiety is, is worry about the future. Depression is really, uh, being a victim of the past. But it's a similar mental construct and psychedelics appears to,

Michael Pollan 49:47 um, weaken it.

Steven Bartlett 49:48 I've read that, that, um, that sort of analogy of the hill and I f-... and it really stayed with me, that hill with the snow.

Michael Pollan 49:54 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:54 This idea that our trauma or whatever it might be, our past experiences, have created these grooves which we just s- you know, slide down every single day and over and over again. And you talked about h- previously how, um, that's why there might be a case for doing psychedelics later in your life.

Michael Pollan 50:07 When you're older. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 50:08 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Michael Pollan 50:08 Yeah. I, I do feel, I mean, as life goes on, we become more creatures of habit.

Steven Bartlett 50:12 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 50:12 I mean, it's just a given. It's about learning. We learn what works. We learn the algorithms that get us through the day, get us through a fight with our spouse, get us through negotiating with our children. Whatever it is, we have these algorithms, they're handy, they work, they save us time, and we are efficient creatures. Um, but, but habits blind you to reality. You know, they, they, they... You're one step removed from experience. You're, you're saying, "Okay, that's this situation, I'm gonna play this tape." And you don't... you lose your sense of wonder and that's so important and, um, and awe. You know, a- awe is one of the most important emotions and as we get older... You know, kids are... have this awe experience every day, every minute.

Steven Bartlett 50:57 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 50:57 You know, it could be a cookie, it could be walk down the street. I mean, it's just incredible. And the reason is that it's all new to them and they haven't formed these habits. Um, and as we get older, I think that's where the value of psychedelics r- is really important, because they are reliable awe inducers, um, and that they make you see things freshly. And, um, you know, I talk in the book about this very common psychedelic insight that love is the most important thing in the world. And we laugh and it sounds like a Hallmark card and such a cliché, but what is a cliché? It's just... it's a truth that's been overused and, and, and we protect ourselves with this sense of irony and banality, but love is the most important thing in the world (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 51:46 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 51:46 So there's truth to that and that the line between banality and profundity is very fine. And, um, and so, you know, you're always hearing people who have psychedelic experiences and they come to you with this revelation of the obvious. Um, but we need to be reminded of the obvious.

Steven Bartlett 52:03 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 52:04 Do you think there's another way just to remain fresh in the mind other than needing to do a psychedelic trip? Because I, I even relate... I'm 29, but I relate to me getting stuck in the same patterns of thought which can divulge into like a bitterness or like, they can s- you know, some of the, some of my patterns and habits result in happiness and fulfillment and feelings of contentment and then o- others can result in like bitterness and resentment-

Michael Pollan 52:26 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 52:26 ... and other negative things. So I'd love to be able to do some... a fresh fall of snow on some of those. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 52:31 Yes, I know. I know, and without using psychedelics. I mean, learning something new, doing something new is incredibly, um, revitalizing. Travel is. I mean, think of, think of like how when you travel somewhere, you're in a new country, you've never been there, all your ou- algorithms fail.

Steven Bartlett 52:53 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 52:53 Like, you know, the menu is-

Steven Bartlett 52:57 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 52:57 ... has full of unexpected things. Um, walking down the street, you don't see the same brand names you see everywhere. You, you're e- so your senses are, are, are really working hard 'cause you're taking in lots of new information. That's why it's so exhausting.

Steven Bartlett 53:12 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 53:12 But it's, it's so wonderful too. So I think travel is one thing. I think learning a new skill. Um, you know, I think that for me, that's really important. It's what I love about journalism. You know, I get paid as an adult to learn whole new fields. You know, I'm, I'm getting paid now to learn about neuroscience and consciousness.

Steven Bartlett 53:29 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 53:29 It's so great. Um, s-... but, you know, and, and some jobs don't allow you to do that. That isn't the nature of journalism, it's in the nature of what you do.

Steven Bartlett 53:38 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 53:38 You get to talk to anybody you want.

Steven Bartlett 53:40 I was... So before I ge- I asked the question, I was thinking, I, I was thinking if I was to answer it myself, it's this.

Michael Pollan 53:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 53:44 Basically is when I walk away from these conversations, I... it's almost like sometimes a psychedelic trip or e- just a re- a real shaking of what I thought to be true.

Michael Pollan 53:52 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 53:53 And it, and it... yeah. (overlapping)

Michael Pollan 53:55 Oh, I get that after I do an interview.

Steven Bartlett 53:56 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 53:56 You know, I, I, I, I, I came from an interview with this neuroscientist and it was like so exciting like to think abo-... I hadn't thought about things that way. And, um, so I think putting in y- yourself in situations where there's a lot of new information and you're out of your comfort zone. The comfort zone is the problem, right? And, um, if you can put yourself in a situation and le- and, and also, you know, we, we tend to gravitate to what we do well.

Steven Bartlett 54:25 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 54:25 We get reward for that. But, you know, try working on something you don't do well, you know.

Steven Bartlett 54:30 I was just thinking then about how when people get older, they tend to go on holidays to the same places. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 54:34 Yes. Right.

Steven Bartlett 54:35 When people are young, they go to somewhere new. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 54:36 They go... yeah, they don't want to repeat themselves.

Steven Bartlett 54:38 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Pollan 54:38 No, it's true. Uh, no, it's... uh, uh, so I found this... at this phase of life, um, the psychedelic experience was really valuable for that reason, um, that it did cause me to rethink things, have new perspectives, um, and have this wonderful feeling of awe and be reminded of these things. How much I love plants, how much I love love-

Steven Bartlett 55:00 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 55:00 ... um, relationships. I mean, the sense of gratitude, um, that I, I, I've... I'm mean, this is a very common emotion for me in the after... in a psychedelic trip is gratitude for my parents and my son and, and my wife and, and, um-... uh, you know, the, I mean, we're, we don't, we don't spend nearly enough time expressing gratitude for what we have. We take it for granted. And undermining the taking for granted i think is the most important thing that they do.

Steven Bartlett 55:29 Breath work, something I've heard you talk about as well.

Michael Pollan 55:33 Yeah. So breath work is a non-pharmacological mode of, uh, changing consciousness. It was developed by Stan Grof, a psych- a Czech psychiatrist who, who worked in the States for many years.

Steven Bartlett 55:46 I've spoken to him-

Michael Pollan 55:46 Oh, you did?

Steven Bartlett 55:47 ... and his wife.

Michael Pollan 55:47 Oh, that's great.

Steven Bartlett 55:48 I soon called. Yeah. Well, I spoke to his wife, but he was- Stan was there.

Michael Pollan 55:50 Yeah. Stan's wonderful. And I interviewed him for How to Change Your Mind. And, um, so when LSD was banned in 1970, uh, he want- he was having such good luck with it and really believed that there were these new, you know, h- super highways to the unconscious that he wanted to figure out another way to induce this state. And so he studied yogic breathing and all these, uh, other traditional, uh, cultures that had these trance, induced trance. And it's a pattern of breathing that you do, accompanied by usually rhythmic drumming, that for, I think about two thirds of people, will put you in a trance state that's very much like a psychedelic state. It was- it was really eerie how it works. Um, you basically f- find yourself losing control of your limbs. I mean, it's very physical-

Steven Bartlett 56:43 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Pollan 56:43 ... yes, you're on your back and you're-

Steven Bartlett 56:45 Yeah, yeah.

Michael Pollan 56:45 ... dancing and you're, and you're breathing this very unnatural pattern of a strong exhalation, uh, stronger exhalation than inhalation, very fast. I think you're hyperventilating.

Steven Bartlett 56:57 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 56:57 I think that's what you're doing.

Steven Bartlett 56:58 Basically, yeah.

Michael Pollan 56:59 And, um, and I think that that probably, we don't know this yet, but that probably is reducing blood flow to the brain or oxygen to the brain. And one of the curious things about psychedelics is not that they're increasing brain function, but they're decreasing it in certain important areas, including something called the default mode network, uh, which is the center of the brain that's very, uh, very important control center of the brain that is involved with your sense of self, time travel, uh, into the past, into the future, uh, the narrative self, the story you tell yourself about your life, how you fit everything into the story of who you are. It's i- it's, if the, if the ego had an address, it would be the default mode network. It may be that starving that of oxygen gets a similar effect that psychedelics do. Um, but psychedelics, that's one of the mysteries is like, we think of all this extra consciousness we get from psychedelics or expanded consciousness, but it may be that it's closing down certain things which allow other things to happen.

Steven Bartlett 58:04 I did breath work with, um, with my partner in- my girlfriend in Bali. She's training as a breath work practitioner.

Michael Pollan 58:09 So how did it go?

Steven Bartlett 58:11 So again, walked in super skeptical. This guy starts telling me a bunch of reasons why it's gonna, you know, the sort of physiological reasons why it works. It was about a 13-minute, 20-minute session. I mean, 10 minutes, I didn't even notice. I only noticed on photos after that I was laying on my back, but my hands were in the air. So- and I didn't even, I did not put my hands in the air.

Michael Pollan 58:30 Yeah, it's involuntary.

Steven Bartlett 58:31 Yeah. And they were in the air for 15 minutes and it didn't hurt my muscles. So-

Michael Pollan 58:34 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 58:35 ... (laughs) you know? And the other thing was I, I went to this strange emotional place where I felt a huge tr- amount of gratitude for certain people in my life. And I actually felt the need to like apologize for recent behavior that I'd carried out. It just-

Michael Pollan 58:48 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 58:48 ... um, it was a very emotional experience, um, as it is for, I know, a lot of people. But it just really compelled me, the thought that doing something with my breathing-

Michael Pollan 58:56 I know. Could affect-

Steven Bartlett 58:57 ... could have such profound impact. And then it got me thinking about my day-to-day breathing, which is part of the, the education about how we breathe so shallowly.

Michael Pollan 59:05 Right.

Steven Bartlett 59:05 And especially when I'm anxious-

Michael Pollan 59:07 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 59:07 ... if I'm ever anxious and I think about it, I'm, I'm, I'm breathing-

Michael Pollan 59:11 Very shallow.

Steven Bartlett 59:12 ... uh, you know, 20% of what I usually breathe.

Michael Pollan 59:13 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 59:14 So one of my ways now of, if I do feel anxious, of counteracting that from that breath work session is taking seven-second inhalation, holding it, and then seven-second out. And honestly, doing that for f- 20 seconds or 30 seconds completely seems to flush out-

Michael Pollan 59:28 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 59:28 ... any feelings of anxiousness.

Michael Pollan 59:29 There's a bunch of really interesting breathing exercises. Um, there's one that Andrew Weil does called 4-3-7, 4-3-8, and it involves a certain amount of, I'm, I'm not gonna remember it right now, but a certain amount of inhalation, hold your breath, and then ex- exhale for longer than you inhaled. And, um, it's, it's remarkable. I've done it before going on stage and things like that. It just lowers your stress level very quickly. And I'm guessing it lowers your blood pressure. There's a lot we don't know about breath. I mean, breath is amazing and, um, uh, I- I think you can do a lot to, um, fiddle with your consciousness using breath.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:10 It gen- genuinely, of all the things that people have prescribed or told me, the simplest thing that I've, I've, uh, sort of implemented my own life when in situations where I'm feeling stressed, before going on stage as well, before my tour, I used to do it in the, the green room or when I'm feeling anxious or o- over- divelging and sort of like overthinking-

Michael Pollan 1:00:26 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:26 ... is just focusing on my breath. My next question to you, my last question really is, is about what's next for you. As a, as a tremendously successful author that's written about such a diverse range of topics, I mean, I think the first question when you walked in the door was, what are you writing about next?

Michael Pollan 1:00:41 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:41 It's gotta be something of deep interest. You're gonna immerse yourself. You're gonna buy a cow again, like... (laughs)

Michael Pollan 1:00:46 (laughs) I don't know what I'm gonna do for this, this topic. So I'm researching consciousness.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:50 Okay.

Michael Pollan 1:00:50 The science and philosophy and literature of consciousness. You know, one of the things that psychedelics does is raise questions about consciousness. You know, I talked to you-

Steven Bartlett 1:01:00 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:01:00 ... at the beginning about questions are more interesting than answers. It's kind of amazing that we're conscious. I mean, you know, we could do all this stuff automatically, but we're not. We have this space in our heads where we see things, we, we assume other people have consciousness too, but we can't be sure. And, um, uh, and how does three pounds of tofu in your, you know, between your ears produce...... an experience of, uh, subjectivity, of quality, um, it's, it's, it's one of the greatest mysteries left. Um, so I'm gonna explore all of it and see where it takes me. You know, again, I don't know where I'm going, um, but that's the, that's the exciting part of writing. (page flips)

Steven Bartlett 1:01:45 Quick one. We bring in eight people a month to watch these conversations live here in the studio when we're here in the UK and when we're in LA. If you want to be one of those people, all you've got to do is hit Subscribe. (page flips) You know you said at the start that your job is to answer questions. What is the question that you're trying to answer in your next project? Is it just what consciousness is?

Michael Pollan 1:02:06 Yeah, what is consciousness? Uh, there, there's a couple questions under that though. Um, why do we have it? Do we... What do we need it for? What does it allow us to do? Um, uh, who, who else has it? You know, if you lo- you know, do the insects have consciousness? Do the plants have conc- there are people who believe plants are conscious. Are they? How do you define consciousness? There's so many subsidiary questions you have to answer to get to the bottom of it. Um, and I think it has a lot of... This question of who else has consciousness has a lot of, um, political or environmental implications. I think that one of the reasons we got into such trouble with the environment is the scientific world view, for all its power, has blinded us to the self- the interests of other creatures. And, um, uh, one of the... You know, you look at Native American culture, and there's this sense that everything is alive, everything has a spirit to it, um, that keeps you from doing something to- certain things to those others, right?

Steven Bartlett 1:03:08 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 1:03:08 I mean, that, that you're violating spirits. We don't have that feeling. I mean, our world view allows us to see nature as something for us to exploit, um-

Steven Bartlett 1:03:17 Mm-hmm.

Michael Pollan 1:03:17 ... rather as our relatives, as Native Americans would describe it. So, so getting consciousness right means getting a lot of things right. Um, so I guess we'll see. Wish me good luck. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:03:28 No, I do. I'm sure you're gonna do an u- unbelievable job on that because you, you always have on your, on your, on your work and a- all the books you've written take a, a different approach, and I think that, yeah, you, you highlighted how that comes from a place, starts with a- from a place of-

Michael Pollan 1:03:41 Curiosity. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:41 ... naivety and curiosity.

Michael Pollan 1:03:43 I'm definitely naive.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:44 Yeah.

Michael Pollan 1:03:44 I mean, I, I... 'Cause I have to learn neuroscience for this-

Steven Bartlett 1:03:46 (laughs)

Michael Pollan 1:03:46 ... uh, a lot of it and, and that's a struggle for me. And some of these theories are really mathematical, and that's really a struggle for me. Um, but, you know, that's, that's the job is finding the good explainers who can help me to explain it and make it... Uh, I get a lot of satisfaction from taking a subject that people think might be very dry and difficult and, and helping people make sense

Michael Pollan 1:04:08 of it.

Steven Bartlett 1:04:08 You know that there's a tradition on this podcast where the previous guest writes a question for the next guest. They don't know who they're writing it for. The question is, as you've juggled your life work, relationships, friendships, and self-time, what things have been key to building your resilience?

Michael Pollan 1:04:24 Doing new things, including taking psychedelics, which has definitely, uh, affected me and, and in- uh, contributed to my resilience. But I, I think it's seeking out new projects and, um, uh, doing things that break you out of habitual ways of thinking and responding to things. Habit is wonderful, it's very efficient, but it's deadening too, um, so I, I'm often thinking... And I, I am a creature of habit, I have like a whole routine every day to get myself to the desk to write, but, but breaking it is, is, uh... I think breaking habits, I would say, would be an important one.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:05 You've spoken to that throughout this conversation, so that's a beautiful ending, this, this idea of leaving your comfort zones as well. Thank you. Thank you for, um, all the work you're doing. It's really inspiring to me that an author could be so powerful.

Michael Pollan 1:05:16 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:05:16 And, um, I, I hope we can have another conversation again once your, your book about consciousness is out because I'm sure it'll be equally inspiring.

Michael Pollan 1:05:21 I'll look forward to that. It's been a great pleasure talking to you.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:23 Thank you, Michael.

Michael Pollan 1:05:24 Thank you. (instrumental music plays)

Steven Bartlett 1:05:26 I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast. As the seasons have begun to change, so has my diet, and, um, right now, I'm just gonna be completely honest with you, I'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over the last couple of... probably the last four or five months, my diet has been pretty bad, um, and it started to show a little bit, really over the last two months. I go to the gym about 80% of the time, so I track it with ten of my friends in a WhatsApp group in this tracker online that we all use together. And so one of the things I'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete in all I eat is I'm having the Huel protein shake. Thank you, Huel, for making a product that I actually like. The salted caramel is my favorite. I've got the banana one here, which is the one my girlfriend likes, but for me, salted caramel is the one. (instrumental music plays)