MICHAEL POLLAN: Life is Short (How to Spend It Wisely)

1. 0:00 – 0:32

   Intro

   1. JSJay Shetty0:00

      [intro music]

2. 0:32 – 2:32

   Why Great Thinkers Start With Questions

   1. JSJay Shetty0:32

      Is there such a thing as a bad question?

   2. MPMichael Pollan0:35

      No, but some questions are more interesting than others.

   3. JSJay Shetty0:38

      How do you decide?

   4. MPMichael Pollan0:39

      It's just something that if I really care about learning the answer, and, and I know other people do as well, um, like there was when I started writing about food, it began with that very simple question. I don- I realized, "I don't know where my food comes from." It's not the supermarket. How do they produce this thing? I remember starting out with a, a, I wrote a story about, um, the cattle industry, and I wanted to learn how a steak, a prime steak gets to a steakhouse in Manhattan. And I, and I followed it all the way back to, to a ranch in Idaho and, and then to a feed lot and then to a slaughterhouse. And I had no idea, um, how many pharmaceuticals were given to these animals, how miserably their lives were when they left the ranch. It was just a revelation. And, you know, if you think about it, it's such an obvious question, where does my food come from? And everyone used to know the answer. If you go back a hundred years or a hundred fifty years, that would have been a stupid question 'cause everybody either was a farmer or knew a farmer or went to farms. But our food chain got so long and intricate that we lost track, and we don't know what happens be- behind the supermarket. So, you know, these are not complicated questions, but the answers end up being very complicated sometimes, and that's certainly true with consciousness. I got interested in that two ways, one through meditation and the other through the psychedelic experiences I had for, from my book, How to Change Your Mind. And psychedelics and meditation both have a way of kind of smudging the windshield of our consciousness, you know, and, and suddenly we... 'Cause normally we don't have to think about consciousness. It's just the water we swim in, you know? But when you smudge that pane, you realize, "Hey, there is something between me and the world."

   5. JSJay Shetty2:22

      Mm-hmm.

   6. MPMichael Pollan2:23

      It's this way, but it could be that way. It's subject to change. What is that? And that, you know, that became the question that drove this new book.

3. 2:32 – 5:53

   Is There Such a Thing as a Bad Question?

   1. JSJay Shetty2:32

      Why do you think science has brushed aside research and exploration of consciousness in the way that you've chosen to approach it? What's, what's been the reason?

   2. MPMichael Pollan2:39

      Well, science is now all over it, but it didn't start until around 1989 or '90, which is incredible.

   3. JSJay Shetty2:47

      That feels so late.

   4. MPMichael Pollan2:49

      This is such a, a huge phenomenon in, of our lives, and there are reasons for that. One is it's really hard. It's not called the hard problem for nothing. Um, it was considered disreputable if you were a scientist to work on consciousness. It was a little too vague and woo-woo. You can go all the way back to Galileo, and he made a decision that was really fateful for the future of science, which was, we are gonna focus... And remember, the church was very suspicious of science back then. We are gonna focus on objective, measurable, third-person reality, and we are gonna leave to the church the soul, by which he meant subjectivity and personal ex- interior experience, qualities also. We're gonna do quantities. We'll leave qualities alone. He w- he knew those other things existed and were important, but he also knew he'd be on the church's, he'd be stepping on the church's toes by getting into it. So he put science on this course, which it has followed ever since. It's been incredibly productive. We've figured out all sorts of stuff by using, you know, math is very good for a lot of things. But along the way, we, we dropped this whole area, and it was only picked up in a serious way... I mean, Freud did some work on it. William James did some work on it. But in terms of the physical sciences, it doesn't really happen until Francis Crick, who was the discoverer of DNA, uh, the double helix, um, uh, with, uh, Watson and, uh, another colleague. He decided, having cracked the code of heritability in life, that now he was gonna nail down consciousness, damn it. And he was a very, he was a very brilliant but also arrogant scientist, and he, and he thought the same reductive science that had discovered the alphabet of DNA could discover the source of consciousness. And he predicted it would be a group of neurons in the brain that were responsible, and he called these the neural correlates of consciousness. Uh, and he worked on that, and he wrote some papers, and he, and he found correlations between consciousness and certain, um, frequencies of brainwaves. But at a certain point, I think he realized that it doesn't really tell you anything. You're still facing this huge question, like, how does three pounds of brain tissue, uh, this gray matter between our ears, generate subjective experience, internal perspective, self-awareness, uh, and even basic perception? And we still don't know. It's, it's... And, and it may not be possible to know. But there's a flurry of activity, and there's a lot of people working on consciousness now. There are 22 leading theories, which sort of tells you the field is lost. Um, and, uh, so that's what I delved into. You know, like, what, well, what can we say?

   5. JSJay Shetty5:42

      Yeah.

   6. MPMichael Pollan5:43

      And, um, and I learned a lot of very interesting things along the way, but I mean, I'll give away the fact that I did not solve the hard problem [laughs]

   7. JSJay Shetty5:51

      [laughs] What-

   8. MPMichael Pollan5:52

      And we're a long way

4. 5:53 – 7:55

   What is Consciousness?

   1. MPMichael Pollan5:53

      from solving it.

   2. JSJay Shetty5:54

      Yeah. Why, why do you think, why do you think it's important to understand consciousness when today people may even feel like we don't have time for it? We're just busy at work. We're, got an unlimited amount of entertainment to catch up on. We're all late on a TV show that everyone else loves. We have families, friends, travel. There's so much. What, what would learning about consciousness do for us?

   3. MPMichael Pollan6:16

      I think learning about consciousness allows us to be more conscious. Uh, I don't think we're as conscious as we could be. If you compare us to any animal, and many animals are conscious, um, that's one of the things we've learned through this research is that consciousness goes way down. You know, Descartes thought we had a monopoly on consciousness, and it's clearly not the case. Um, I, I explore plant consciousness in the book, um, which is, you know, there's a group of scientists who are convinced that plants are conscious. The value of being conscious is this is the space of our freedom, this interiority. Um, it- without this, we are zombies, and, um, we should be cultivating this space. It has enormous power to, uh, basically allow us freedom from, um... You know, there are a lot of companies, there are a lot of technologies that wanna think our thoughts and occupy our consciousness. Um, when you're on social media, sure, you're conscious, but minimally so. You're basically scrolling through and allowing some corporation or some individual or some political ideology to occupy your consciousness, and I think we give up a lot when we do that. You know, the machines have design on, designs on our time. We have a phenomenon now where people are forming strong emotional attachments with machines, with chatbots. Um, I think this is... And, and essentially giving away their consciousness in the process.

   4. JSJay Shetty7:41

      Is that worrying?

   5. MPMichael Pollan7:42

      Very worrying. I mean, we are starting to see-- I just read a report on AI psychosis. These are people who have formed stronger emotional attachments with machines than with people.

   6. JSJay Shetty7:53

      Why is that?

   7. MPMichael Pollan7:54

      [laughs]

   8. JSJay Shetty7:54

      Why

5. 7:55 – 12:54

   Why Consciousness Matters in Daily Life

   1. JSJay Shetty7:55

      is it that we can-

   2. MPMichael Pollan7:56

      Well-

   3. JSJay Shetty7:56

      ... easily form-

   4. MPMichael Pollan7:57

      I think we're desperate for attachment and, and have trouble finding it in real life, and machines are a kind of a frictionless-- AI is a very frictionless way to form an attachment. You know, they suck up to you, right? I mean-

   5. JSJay Shetty8:10

      It's agreeable.

   6. MPMichael Pollan8:11

      It's totally agreeable, and it's, it's telling you how brilliant you are, and it never, uh, criticizes you. I mean, attachment, you know, relations with real human beings has friction, has complexity, has surprise. Whereas if you're doing this with a chatbot, um, it's basically gratifying every wish you have and telling you you're brilliant and, um... But these chatbots have been designed to maximize the time you'll spend with them, just like social media, and this was especially true of ChatGPT-4, which was very sycophantic. It just sucked up to people in just embarrassing ways, but, but effective ways. It convinced a couple people to commit suicide, and, but it also commit, convinced others they had solved problems in mathematics and physics even though they weren't physicists [chuckles] or mathematicians. Uh, it was kind of nuts. But I think we're suckers for, um, praise, and I think we have a, a built-in tendency to anthropomorphize everything. Um, you know, y- if you see, you think about children with their stuffed animals, you know? They're alive to them. They, they, they, they, they speak. They have conversations. I think we're all animists until it gets drummed out of us in school, and then we become these rational materialists. But part of us always wants to go back, and these chatbots give us an opportunity to. So I think we have... You know, we've learned about the mental health problems of social media, which are really serious, especially for, um, adolescents. Social media has essentially hacked our attention very effectively. Um, attention is part of consciousness, but in a way it's the most passive and easiest part of consciousness to reach. It's, it's somewhat superficial compared to emotions and attachment. And so now we're moving on from hacking, uh, attention to, to hacking attachment, hacking consciousness at a very deep level, and I think that's very worrying. Um, and I think we need to, we need to claim our consciousness for ourselves. And, you know, think twice before, you know, you're, you're online at the bank or the supermarket and, and you, how do we fill that time? We immediately open our phones, and we start scrolling because we're have, we have trouble being alone with ourselves. You know, the mind, our minds can be a scary place in some ways, you know? They're the source of self-criticism and rumination and things like that. But how much better, I think, was it when we didn't have that distraction, and we're standing online at the supermarket and instead we're daydreaming? We're thinking about what we're gonna make for dinner. We're, um, we're looking at the, the clothes on the person in front of us. We're looking, we're, we're overhearing conversation. We're just present to the world. And if you think about it, we're the only species that can't, that can afford not to be present to the world. I mean, every animal, right, has to be, like, fully conscious all the time they're awake because they may be turned into food. Um, they may be prey for something, and so they have a level of presence that we're giving up. Now, there are ways to reclaim it. Meditation, of course, is a great way to reclaim it. And, you know, you're kind of drawing a line around your consciousness when you meditate, right? You're turning off all other stimuli and, um, and, and being in that space and, and realizing how interesting and weird it is.

   7. JSJay Shetty11:32

      Mm.

   8. MPMichael Pollan11:33

      You have thoughts that you haven't really thought. I mean, they're just popping up. What is that about?

   9. JSJay Shetty11:37

      [laughs]

   10. MPMichael Pollan11:37

       Say, and on psychedelics too. I mean, you just, there is this flood of mental material, um, and it seems a shame to not be attending to that and to be attending to Twitter instead.

   11. JSJay Shetty11:51

       Yeah. I, I, I spend 30 days a year off my phone, and so I just got back from that, and it's phenomenal what's possible. I, I meditate every day. I have a daily meditation practice, but-

   12. MPMichael Pollan12:02

       Me too

   13. JSJay Shetty12:02

       ... I f- I find that the 30 days away-

   14. MPMichael Pollan12:05

       Yeah

   15. JSJay Shetty12:05

       ... is, is different to having a full workday and, and everything else that comes with, comes after my morning meditation.

   16. MPMichael Pollan12:13

       Yeah.

   17. JSJay Shetty12:14

       And the 30 days I just spent off my phone, it's like you just feel completely clearer. I feel... thoughts connect better. I feel more effective and productive and present. I feel-

   18. MPMichael Pollan12:24

       And more aware of nature, I find

   19. JSJay Shetty12:26

       ... more aware of nature, for sure

   20. MPMichael Pollan12:26

       I mean, nature, nature has a, you know, a subtle, quiet voice, and it gets drowned out very easily by our lives-

   21. JSJay Shetty12:32

       Mm

   22. MPMichael Pollan12:32

       ... and by our technologies. And so I find when I'm off my phone, and I do, you know, we do a lot of hiking, and, um, won't take our phone with us, and you can really attend to the, the, the kind of subtleties of nature and, and suddenly nature speaks more loudly to you.

   23. JSJay Shetty12:51

       Mm. What does your daily meditation practice

6. 12:54 – 14:05

   What Happens When You Put Your Phone Down

   1. JSJay Shetty12:54

      look like?

   2. MPMichael Pollan12:54

      My wife and I meditate together, not, not very long, 20 minutes, um, in the morning a-after we do exercises. Um, we have a long morning r- uh, ritual. Um, and uh, I find that's very useful, um, for kind of setting, setting the day. You know, it, it's not always great. I mean, I have meditation ... You know, there's a tent- when you do it at the beginning, your to-do list is a threat always [laughs] . So some days I can really quiet it, and some days I can't. Um, and then sometimes I'll do a meditation at the end of the day. I recently did a meditation retreat for the first time, and, um, it wasn't very long, but, uh, I was in a, it was a silent retreat for four days. Um, it was only about 30 people, four teachers. It was very privileged in, in many ways. And I was amazed how far and deep you can go, and that was four days without phones, four days without eye contact. You know, we were just in this space of our, of our own minds, and we alternated walking meditation with sitting meditation, and we had Dharma talks at night, um, and two moments where we could address our teachers and ask questions. Um-

   3. JSJay Shetty14:04

      What was the power of

7. 14:05 – 16:05

   Building a Daily Meditation Practice

   1. JSJay Shetty14:05

      the no eye contact?

   2. MPMichael Pollan14:06

      One of the things you try to do in, um, in a meditation retreat is not have any need to socially present.

   3. JSJay Shetty14:16

      Mm.

   4. MPMichael Pollan14:17

      The performance we go through socially all the time, um, when we see people, meet people, and you're ... And these are strangers by and large, and so it just frees you. I don't have to, I don't have to be any way for you. I can just be the way I feel. Um, so it goes along with the silence. And I, and you know, I was also at a Zen center, um, reporting on the book in Santa Fe, uh, Joan Halifax's, uh, Upaya Zen Center, and there too, there's silence and no eye contact. And she, she articulates it is about this, the pressure we have to be a certain way in, in social situations and getting away from that, um, is, I found very powerful. We have so many claims on our attention, and to, um, put them aside for a period of time is, is incredibly powerful. I, I mean, I had some, like, real breakthroughs during that meditation retreat.

   5. JSJay Shetty15:14

      Yeah, I was just visiting the monastery that I used to live at in India.

   6. MPMichael Pollan15:16

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JSJay Shetty15:16

      So I was just there, and I was reminded of the fact that there's no mirrors there.

   8. MPMichael Pollan15:21

      Yeah.

   9. JSJay Shetty15:22

      And it's just this unbelievable experience of dissolving into that feeling, as you were just mentioning, of not performing-

   10. MPMichael Pollan15:31

       Yeah

   11. JSJay Shetty15:31

       ... or not having to be. And I was thinking about the overexposure we have to our own image today.

   12. MPMichael Pollan15:36

       Image, yeah.

   13. JSJay Shetty15:37

       Whether it's FaceTime, whether it's Zoom, you're always looking at your box in the corner.

   14. MPMichael Pollan15:41

       Yeah, the selfie.

   15. JSJay Shetty15:43

       The selfie, the-

   16. MPMichael Pollan15:44

       Yeah

   17. JSJay Shetty15:44

       ... even FaceTiming, you, you have yourself back at yourself and, and-

   18. MPMichael Pollan15:46

       Right, and Zoom. We're spending so much time on Zoom, and we are always in that box.

   19. JSJay Shetty15:51

       And it's probably the first time in history that we've been this overexposed to our own image.

   20. MPMichael Pollan15:55

       That's a good point.

   21. JSJay Shetty15:56

       So no wonder we think we're too fat, too ugly, too-

   22. MPMichael Pollan16:01

       Yeah, it will lead-

   23. JSJay Shetty16:01

       Whatever else it may be

   24. MPMichael Pollan16:02

       ... it will lead to self-criticism-

   25. JSJay Shetty16:03

       Yeah

   26. MPMichael Pollan16:03

       ... without question.

   27. JSJay Shetty16:04

       Yeah.

8. 16:05 – 19:47

   When Consciousness Transcends the Self

   1. MPMichael Pollan16:05

      Yeah. So I mean, you know, the, the beauty of meditation, and this is true of psychedelics, is kind of a shrinking of the self and a kind of partial dissolution, sometimes total dissolution, uh, of the sense of self, and realizing that our consciousness transcends ourself and that you can put down yourself or transcend it in some way and still be very conscious, sometimes even more conscious, because the self or the ego, um, and I think I use those words interchangeably, um, builds walls. It, it, it's a defensive structure finally. It's, it's very useful without question. I mean, it's what allows me to write books and for you to write books and do podcasts. Get, we get a lot done, um, and as a unit of, uh, social interaction, it's, it's necessary. Um, but it disconnects us. Um, it makes us selfish. And so the times I've experienced self essentially dissolving or going away, it's followed by this powerful connection with something larger than yourself. And, um, for me, I, I mean, I, I'll never forget this one experience I had on psilocybin for my, for my book. I had a complete dissolution of self. I just exploded in a little cloud of blue Post-it notes. I wear blue a lot. And then the Post-it notes fell to the ground and coalesced in this pool of blue paint, and I was no more. I was that pool of blue paint, but that seemed fine. And then I had this experience of merging with something larger than, which in this case was a piece of music that my guide was playing, uh, a Bach unaccompanied cello suite. And there was no longer a subject-object distinction. I just was that music. And it was the most profound experience of music I had ever had. Self is so interesting. We spend so much time, you know, self-confidence is important, self-assurance, and we're taught to value ourselves all great, but think about how much time and how many things we do to escape ourselves, too.

   2. JSJay Shetty18:09

      Mm.

   3. MPMichael Pollan18:09

      It's a v- it's a paradox, I think, 'cause self ego can be very oppressive, too. It's that critical voice. It's what does the ruminating that you, you know, those spirals of thought you can't get out ofUm, so finding, you know, healthy, productive ways to transcend the self or shrink it is, I think, really valuable. I have a good friend who's a colleague at Berkeley who teaches, uh, who studies awe, Dacher Keltner, and he does a really cool experiment with people where he, um, he asks, he asks people to draw s- kind of a stick figure of themselves on a piece of graph paper. Then he gives them a awe experience, and it might be video of Yosemite or something like that on a big screen, and then he asks them to draw themselves again, and they draw themselves at half the size.

   4. JSJay Shetty18:56

      Wow.

   5. MPMichael Pollan18:57

      So experiences of awe-

   6. JSJay Shetty18:59

      Interesting

   7. MPMichael Pollan18:59

      ... are one way to kind of diminish the, the, the claims of the self.

   8. JSJay Shetty19:03

      Yeah. It's, it's fascinating what you talked about, the paradox of how we're infatuated with ourself, and there needs to be this focus on the self because that's all we have, and then there's-

   9. MPMichael Pollan19:15

      And we want to achieve

   10. JSJay Shetty19:15

       ... and we want to achieve.

   11. MPMichael Pollan19:16

       Yeah.

   12. JSJay Shetty19:16

       And we need to grow-

   13. MPMichael Pollan19:17

       Right

   14. JSJay Shetty19:17

       ... and we need to work towards something in order to pursue meaning.

   15. MPMichael Pollan19:21

       Right.

   16. JSJay Shetty19:21

       But then you're saying, actually, there's a part of us, you're so right, that just wants to relieve and escape, and I was thinking about the word mantra as you said there-

   17. MPMichael Pollan19:29

       Mm-hmm

   18. JSJay Shetty19:29

       ... and how man means mind and tra comes from the Sanskrit trayata, which means to transcend.

   19. MPMichael Pollan19:35

       Ah.

   20. JSJay Shetty19:35

       And so it's to transcend the mind is what mantra actually means, even though-

   21. MPMichael Pollan19:38

       Interesting. I didn't know that

   22. JSJay Shetty19:39

       ... now we use it as affirmation or-

   23. MPMichael Pollan19:41

       Right

   24. JSJay Shetty19:41

       ... mantra we use as something repetitive, but mantra in, in its actual definition means to transcend the mind.

   25. MPMichael Pollan19:46

       Mm-hmm.

9. 19:47 – 25:46

   Is Everything Conscious?

   1. JSJay Shetty19:47

      Where did you find that consciousness lives? Because we believed it lives in the brain, I believe.

   2. MPMichael Pollan19:53

      We believe that, but we have not been able to prove it. The assumption has always been that there is some way that a certain arrangement of neurons, um, th- you know, produces, or consciousness ar- ar- you know, emerges from that complexity. But we haven't gotten too far figuring out how that might be. What we've observed, we know there are correlations between the brain and consciousness and that, you know, n- if you, if you anesthetize someone, they become unconscious, and if you remove certain parts of the brain, you become unconscious. But we haven't gotten very far in, in, in, in proving that relationship. There are other theories that are being s- more seriously entertained. Um, one is panpsychism. This is the idea that everything is conscious, um, that in the same way a couple hundred years ago we realized that there was this other force in the world called electromagnetism and that there are these waves all around us that are passing through us and can carry information, TV and radio waves. Is there another thing we need to add to the stock of reality, and is that psychism or psyche, and that every particle has some in- incy-bincy bit of psyche, and that somehow these little bits combine to form the kind of consciousness we have? It seems really far-fetched. It solves the problem, um, of consciousness in a way, but it creates this new problem of, like, well, how do they combine? Then there are theories that usually go under the word idealism, that consciousness precedes matter and that we are sort of pools of, of, of individual consciousness in a larger field. Um, there's also transmission theories, which is that, again, f- consciousness is a field that's outside of our minds, and what our minds do is channel it, and, um, we are like radio or TV in the same way that radio or TV receivers are picking up something. If you look at a TV set, you know the, the, the woman doing the weather cast is not in the set.

   3. JSJay Shetty21:55

      Mm-hmm.

   4. MPMichael Pollan21:56

      Same s- in the same way consciousness is not in here.

   5. JSJay Shetty21:58

      Mm.

   6. MPMichael Pollan21:59

      It's channeled, and we-

   7. JSJay Shetty22:01

      Oh, wow. That's a good-

   8. MPMichael Pollan22:01

      ... let in a certain amount.

   9. JSJay Shetty22:02

      Right.

   10. MPMichael Pollan22:02

       And this was, um... There was a French philosopher, Henri Bergson, who, who developed this theory, and it was, um... Aldous Huxley actually talks about it a lot. He thought what psychedelics did was open wider the, the valve so more consciousness gets in.

   11. JSJay Shetty22:17

       Mm.

   12. MPMichael Pollan22:17

       Because norm- in normal times, we have this thin dribble of consciousness, and that's all we need to survive, but there's a lot more out there, and, and that's what psychedelics acquaints you with. You know, it's a theory. I mean-

   13. JSJay Shetty22:30

       Yeah

   14. MPMichael Pollan22:31

       ... hard to prove. Um, so there's a lot of, a lot of different ideas out there, and one basic idea is, like, you know, can you have consciousness without brains? And, um, and there are people who believe that, that it just... You should be able to do it on s- some people think you can do it on silicon and, uh, in computers, and that consciousness is like an algorithm. The brain is like a computer, and you can run that algorithm on different substrates they're called, including computer memory.

   15. JSJay Shetty23:01

       Yeah.

   16. MPMichael Pollan23:02

       I, I, I don't think that's true, but that's a, that's a very common belief in Silicon Valley.

   17. JSJay Shetty23:06

       So this is different from the more religious, spiritual understanding of consciousness being this spark that animates the body and gives it its, uh-

   18. MPMichael Pollan23:14

       Yes and no. I mean, in, the religious idea is, is close to idealism, that consciousness-

   19. JSJay Shetty23:19

       Right

   20. MPMichael Pollan23:19

       ... is, is something larger than us. There's a giant field or pool of it that we pass in and out of, and, um, and that, if that were true, it ex- it would explain things like telepathy or past lives because time is just a human construct in that, in that idea, and, um, you can go in both directions in the pool of consciousness. Now that I have trouble believing the, the theory [laughs] that brains produce consciousness, I have a very open mind.

   21. JSJay Shetty23:47

       Yeah.

   22. MPMichael Pollan23:47

       And I think we have to. I, I, I don't think we can say with confidence that any of these supposedly woo-woo ideas are necessarily false. I mean, think about what we're learning in physics. I mean, what could be more woo-woo than the idea that, um, two particles separated by light-years can instantaneously affect one another, as has been proven now, uh, entanglement, uh, quantum entanglement. So I, you know, I think the universe is a lot stranger than we know.

   23. JSJay Shetty24:15

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10. 25:46 – 31:16

    What’s the Difference between the Mind and Consciousness?

    1. JSJay Shetty25:46

       the consciousness and the mind?

    2. MPMichael Pollan25:49

       The mind is bigger than consciousness in the sense that it would include everything the brain is doing unconsciously. So your subconscious, uh, the, you know... Probably 90% of what your brain does you're not aware of. It's like managing your body, which is a big project. It's perceiving things in your environment you're not attending to. It's picking up on, um, uh, homeostasis, you know, uh, am I-- is my body at the proper temperature? Do I need food? How's my blood pressure, heart rate? I mean, it's just incredible what it's doing.

    3. JSJay Shetty26:20

       Yeah.

    4. MPMichael Pollan26:20

       It's managing this very complex organism. We should remember that brains exist to keep bodies alive, not the other way around, and they do that by monitoring things and making adjustments. So that's the mind. It's doing all that stuff. Consciousness is this little tip of the iceberg of the stuff we're aware of, and the interesting question is, if we can automate all that, why don't we automate the whole thing? Why aren't we zombies? Why do we need this space of awareness and decision-making? The best guess is because there are... for a creature that exists in a very complex social reality, I mean, we are i-inherently social beings. We, we need connection, and we die without it. You can't automate something as complex as social engagement. You can't automate, like, you need things like theory of mind, so I, I can guess what you're thinking, anticipate what you're gonna do, and all the little signals that go on in a conversation, you can't automate that. It's just too complex, and also there are certain needs you have that may contradict. Let's say you're tired and you're hungry. Which should you deal with first? You need to make a decision, and those kind of conflicting needs may be what drive us to become conscious, um, because we need that space of decision-making. Um, so that's the best guess. Um, nobody knows for sure.

    5. JSJay Shetty27:47

       Yeah, it's... But, but I appreciate the openness and the fascinating questions that you ask in the book because to me, I, that, I mean, I found that so extremely endearing that, that you, you know, start the book going, "You may not know more than you know now." And I was like, "What an interesting way to..." And I was like, but I love that because it is the only way we can approach these really big questions that are so far beyond us.

    6. MPMichael Pollan28:10

       Yeah.

    7. JSJay Shetty28:10

       And, and you know, you're extremely humble in the introduction as well, but just your self-confession of just how, like, you know, who are we to even ask these questions and qualified to look into it? But I think that is your qualification, and that's why I think you're such a great vehicle for this.

    8. MPMichael Pollan28:23

       Yeah, I wondered about that.

    9. JSJay Shetty28:25

       Yeah.

    10. MPMichael Pollan28:25

        Like, why me?

    11. JSJay Shetty28:26

        Yeah.

    12. MPMichael Pollan28:26

        You know, I'm not an expert. I didn't know a lot about neuroscience, uh, or philosophy when I started. I had to learn whole new fields, but then I thought, "Well, I'm a conscious human being who's pretty good at explaining things, [laughs] and so, so why not me?" I mean, one of the conclusions of science so far, which is really interesting, is that, you know, we, we, we first approach consciousness with this idea of we're gonna find those neurons, you know, the neural correlates. As time has gone on, there's been this general recognition that subjective experience is central to this. So what the philosophers call phenomenology, which is a fancy word for human experience, um, has to be ex- has to be explored, um, and that what any individual is experiencing, what's going on in their minds, is relevant to the science. So I thought, "Okay, I'll offer myself."

    13. JSJay Shetty29:19

        [laughs]

    14. MPMichael Pollan29:20

        And I'll, I'll bring whatever I can from my... by, by looking closely at my own experience. That's why meditation, I think, is gonna be very useful to the scientists also because you have, uh, a group of people, and I'm talking not of people like myself, but really experienced meditators, the people who've done the 10,000 hours, like presumably you got to that number in three years, would have some insight, uh, about consciousness. And, and that's true. There are some interesting experiments going on where, uh, there was one... There's a woman named Kalina Christoff who studies what's called spontaneous thought that I looked at. That includes daydreams and, um, mind wandering, which are a very interesting phenomenon, uh, where the mind just finds its own path, and she put, um, experienced meditators in an MRI and told them to press a button when a thought arose. They were trying not to have any thoughts, and she concluded that you can only go about 10 seconds without a thought. [laughs]

    15. JSJay Shetty30:17

        Yeah.

    16. MPMichael Pollan30:17

        But anyway, when people pressed the button, she saw what was going on in the brain at the same time, and the thought-arises in the brain, she saw that activity in the memory center, which, which she was looking, hippocampus, four seconds before the person was aware of it. So there is a very elaborate and long process before thoughts become conscious. They exist somewhere else and then pop into the, what we call the stream of consciousness. But that it takes four seconds suggests that something's going on. Uh, perhaps the thoughts are competing with one another to get into that workspace, that's one theory, but we don't understand exactly what's going on. So that tip of the iceberg metaphor I think is really important for consciousness. There's a lot going on that, that precedes it, and meditators have, I think, can develop a, a keener sense of what that is.

    17. JSJay Shetty31:15

        Yeah. I wanna, I wanna spend

11. 31:16 – 33:36

    Meditation and Psychedelics: The Overlap

    1. JSJay Shetty31:16

       the rest of our conversation talking about both meditation and psychedelics, because I think these are both what you've shown through your work, pathways to access to consciousness in-

    2. MPMichael Pollan31:25

       Without, without doubt, yeah

    3. JSJay Shetty31:27

       ... in different ways.

    4. MPMichael Pollan31:27

       And very similar. Uh, they're different and similar.

    5. JSJay Shetty31:29

       That's what I was gonna ask you. Like, w- s- let's start with the similarities. What are the similarities in what meditation and psychedelics allow us as access into consciousness?

    6. MPMichael Pollan31:39

       Well, they both take us out of the... They can take us out of the world we're in and, and all the kind of distractions. Um, and y- I mean, there are two ways to use psychedelics. One is, you know, people take mushrooms and they walk out in the woods and they have a profound experience of nature. But in a guided psychedelic experience, you're, you're usually wearing eye shades, you have headphones on, so you are closing off the sens- the sensory, the outside senses, so you can go inside, uh, more like meditation. That building of that fence around your consciousness allows certain things to happen. You can really travel. People don't talk about it nearly enough, but the psychedelic experience, you know, has a, has a, has a path, has a trajectory, right? There's the onset, you know, the coming on. There's this period of intense, uncontrollable visual and, and sensory experience, and then there's this long tail. The long tail is a meditation, and a really profound one, I find, because you... I can meditate better in that space than just about anywhere. You, you've regained some control of your mind. You can decide, "I wanna think about this," but you can do it in a completely, um, undistracted way. Um, you still can close out everything. So that's one aspect that I think is similar. Um, there is spontaneous thought in both cases. Things are just arising from who knows where, maybe your subconscious. Memories are coming up, fantasies are coming up. Um, so there is that just kinda loosening of constraints on consciousness just, just to see what arises. And, you know, sometimes in meditation we fight that, but there's a kind of me- you know, Vipassana med- meditation, we just openly observe that.

    7. JSJay Shetty33:26

       Mm.

    8. MPMichael Pollan33:26

       You can learn to do that in meditation. It's forcible in psychedelics [laughs] . You have no choice.

    9. JSJay Shetty33:31

       Yeah.

    10. MPMichael Pollan33:32

        It's gonna happen whether you want it to or not.

    11. JSJay Shetty33:34

        What do you wish people who

12. 33:36 – 35:30

    Using Psychedelics With Intention

    1. JSJay Shetty33:36

       take psychedelics would do differently in their approach to taking them?

    2. MPMichael Pollan33:40

       Do it more intentionally, I think. I think it's potentially very powerful. I think that, um, you know, at different points in our lives we use them in different ways, and sometimes they're used to just kind of for thrills and to go to concerts and just, you know, groove on nature and things like that. And there's nothing wrong with that, and I know many people who have had really powerful experiences. But I think if you use them more intentionally, they can be incredibly therapeutic. They can teach you things about yourself. It's not that the intention always bears fruit. Um, I've set intentions and then something completely different dominated the experience, which has turned out to be very positive. I remember I went into one guided experience about, I don't know, a year after my father died, and I had this sense that I hadn't fully grieved his passing and that I wanted to sort of be with him and hear his voice and take his advice and connect with him again, which happens sometimes on psychedelics. I, I had my, I took my psilocybin, and the whole trip was about my mother, who's still alive, and the message was, "Your dad's dead. Here's your mom."

    3. JSJay Shetty34:49

       Wow.

    4. MPMichael Pollan34:50

       "Open yourself to that relationship. Go see her." And the next day was a Jewish holiday, I think it was Rosh Hashanah, and they were having a dinner in New York. I was in Cambridge, um, and I couldn't get down 'cause it was a teaching day or something like that. And as soon as the trip was over, I said to Judith, my wife, "We're going to New York" [laughs]

    5. JSJay Shetty35:09

       [laughs]

    6. MPMichael Pollan35:09

       And we completely changed direction. So there was a case where the intention didn't work out, but I, I learned something, and it was a really important lesson that take... you know, don't take your mom for granted. She's still here.

    7. JSJay Shetty35:20

       Thank you.

    8. MPMichael Pollan35:21

       She is still here.

    9. JSJay Shetty35:21

       Thank you for sharing that. That's such a-

    10. MPMichael Pollan35:22

        Yeah

    11. JSJay Shetty35:23

        ... that's, that's-

    12. MPMichael Pollan35:23

        It was-

    13. JSJay Shetty35:24

        ... that's such a, a beautiful experience of d- something being completely the opposite to what you expected. How does science

13. 35:30 – 41:09

    Is the Brain Creating Reality?

    1. JSJay Shetty35:30

       currently explain that experience? Because that, you know, f- at least I, I don't know the scientific explanation, hence I'm asking, but I hear a scientist hear that and go, "Well, you just made that up in your head," that experience. But, like, how did-

    2. MPMichael Pollan35:44

       You make everything up in your head [laughs] .

    3. JSJay Shetty35:46

       Yeah. So how does-

    4. MPMichael Pollan35:47

       What else is there?

    5. JSJay Shetty35:47

       So how, so how does science go ahead and explain that phenomenon?

    6. MPMichael Pollan35:49

       Well, there's some interesting work. So I'm very interested in the science of psychedelics, and I wrote about it in How to Change Your Mind.

    7. JSJay Shetty35:55

       Yeah.

    8. MPMichael Pollan35:55

       I also, um, with Dacher Keltner, who I mentioned earlier, uh, helped start a psychedelic research center at Berkeley, where I, I, uh, do, do work. It's called the Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. There's a couple theories. I mean, one is that there are top-down controls on our, on our consciousness and perception. Most of what we experience is a prediction based on past experience and beliefs. Our senses exist only to correct that. It's a weird idea, but that the brain is essentially hallucinating reality with this error correction, constant stream of error correctionAnd psychedelics relaxes those beliefs. I'll give you an example. Um, there's a famous psych-psychological experiment called the rotating mask. You've seen it. It's that mask used when the happy and sad theater, you know, image and, and it's concave, right? It's just the skin. And one of those masks is on a, um, carousel, and it turns, and first it's convex, and you see it as we normally see faces, and then it turn... You go online and find one of these. Um, and then you turn it, and you start seeing the back of the face, which we've never seen in reality, and you will see what happens. Your mind will refuse to see the back of the face, and this will pop out and become convex, and that's because the brain doesn't believe faces can ever be concave, and since you were a baby on your mother's breast, you've, you've studied faces and you know they're always convex. On psychedelics, you can see the back. It doesn't pop out. Um, there's research showing this. So what that suggests is th-that prediction that this is the way a face has to be is relaxed.

    9. JSJay Shetty37:44

       Wow.

    10. MPMichael Pollan37:44

        And you're actually seeing more of reality in a sense 'cause you're-- the prediction is not accurate in that case. So-

    11. JSJay Shetty37:52

        That's, that's so cool.

    12. MPMichael Pollan37:53

        Isn't that cool?

    13. JSJay Shetty37:54

        Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating.

    14. MPMichael Pollan37:55

        So your beliefs about how the world is are relaxed, which allows new beliefs to form, and it allows more information to come up from the bottom. So that's one theory. Um, another is that there's a structure, a network in the brain called the default mode network, which is really interesting, and it's in the midline, and it connects several different structures, but it's involved with... It w- it was called that because if you put someone in an fMRI and say, "Okay, we need a baseline, no task, just mind wander, think," that lights up. It's, it's where we go when we're not dealing with incoming, a lot of incoming or outgoing, um, tasks and things like that, and the default mo- It connects memory and emotion and, um, and a structure called the posterior cingulate cortex. It seems to be where the ego is. If the ego has an address in the brain, it's in this network. Uh, time travel is-- it takes place there, and if you think about it, self depends on time travel, right? You need a sense of the future and the past to construct this is who I am. Um, if you, if you let the future and the past go, you sort of dissolve.

    15. JSJay Shetty39:05

        Mm.

    16. MPMichael Pollan39:05

        It also is where we construct the story of who we are. In other words, we have this narrative of who we are, and everything that happens, we kind of fit into that story. Um, and all this is deactivated during psychedelics, and that, and that probably explains the ego dissolution that happens on a high dose or often happens on a high dose. So that would be another way that the, that the usual structures, things like rumination, um, break down and temporarily, and the brain is rewired for a time.

    17. JSJay Shetty39:37

        And so I assume that's extremely helpful for people who struggle even with overthinking and anxiety.

    18. MPMichael Pollan39:42

        Yes, rumination in particular.

    19. JSJay Shetty39:44

        Yeah.

    20. MPMichael Pollan39:45

        And rumination, and that's getting stuck in a, in a groove of thought, and it's often negative. You know, "I'm unworthy, I'm ugly, I'm too fat, um, nobody loves me." Um, people get stuck in these spirals, and, um, by relaxing the default mode network or taking it offline for a period of... You get a relief from that, and that feels really good, and when you come back online, it, it can change. Um, same with addiction, which if you think about it, is a form of rumination, right?

    21. JSJay Shetty40:14

        Yeah.

    22. MPMichael Pollan40:14

        It's, it's you're stuck.

    23. JSJay Shetty40:16

        I need this. I have to have this.

    24. MPMichael Pollan40:17

        Yeah.

    25. JSJay Shetty40:18

        This is the only-

    26. MPMichael Pollan40:18

        I can't live without a drink.

    27. JSJay Shetty40:20

        Yeah.

    28. MPMichael Pollan40:20

        I can't, I, I can't get through life without a cigarette. These are narratives that our ego is telling us, and they're deep grooves, and they get deeper the longer we live with them. Um, psychedelics gives you a path, a temporary path out that can become a permanent path. Um, a beautiful metaphor that one of the neuroscientists I interviewed, uh, said is, think of... He said, "Think of the mind as a hill covered in snow, and there are all these... And every thought is a sled going down the hill, and over time, the sleds form these grooves, and after a while you can't go down the hill without falling into one of those grooves. The psychedelic is like a fresh snowfall. It fills all the grooves and allows you to take another path down the hill."

    29. JSJay Shetty41:04

        Mm.

    30. MPMichael Pollan41:04

        Isn't that a beautiful metaphor?
14. 41:09 – 44:24

    Breaking OCD Thought Loops

    1. JSJay Shetty41:09

       talks about that connection with things like OCD and ADHD? Has there been a lot of research done in that space?

    2. MPMichael Pollan41:14

       OCD, definitely. I don't know about ADHD, but, uh, OCD is, of course, getting stuck in deep grooves, um, and patterns that you, and habits you absolutely cannot escape. There was a study done at Yale, um, by a, a psych- a psychiatrist named Ben Calamendi with, uh, OCD patients and got o-on psilocybin, and he got terrific results. Psilocybin seems to be really good at breaking patterns, all different kinds of patterns, patterns of depression and anxiety, patterns of addiction, so patterns of thought and behavior. It's been... Johns Hopkins did some really remarkable work on with cigarette smokers, getting them to quit smoking. It seems almost too easy. Um, 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'd smoked for 50 years had, had this incredible trip. "I went all, I, I went all over the world and all through history, and I, I went back to Shakespearean England, and I went to India, and I went here and there, and, and, and I realized there's so much beauty and so much experience in the world that shortening your life with cigarettes was really stupid." [laughs]

    3. JSJay Shetty42:28

       [laughs]

    4. MPMichael Pollan42:28

       Now, I'm sure she's had that thought at other times, but the thoughts you have on psychedelics have a particular weight or authority that no other thoughts have. William James called it the noetic quality, the idea that this is not just an insight or an opinion. This is a revealed truth. Um, that allows you... When you say, when you have that feeling, "I'm done smoking, this is, I'm, I, I want my, I want more of my life-"Um, it sticks. It's sticky in a way resolutions never are. So that seems to be one of the way... We don't understand why that is, but the brain is particularly plastic during a psychedelic experience and for a period of time after. There's some very interesting research about, um, what are called these critical windows that open. Um, you know how kids can learn language very quickly at age three, four, and five? They have a window for, a, a developmental window for learning language, and then adolescents have a developmental window for forming social attachments, and that's a time when their friends matter more than anything else in their lives. These windows close. Psychedelics, this is the work of, uh, uh, one of the members of the Psychedelic Research Center at Berkeley, Gül Dölen. She has shown that psychedelics can reopen these critical windows and allow people to learn in a powerful way. It's fascinating research. It's been in animals so far. She's done it with octopuses and rats and mice. Um, but now she's starting to work on, on humans. Um, and if you think about it, it has huge implications for, um, possibly things like autism, um, where the window for forming social connection has closed prematurely. It's one theory. Um, for stroke, recovery from stroke, there's a window after a stroke for, I think, six weeks, where if you do intensive, uh, work, you can make a lot of progress, and then it closes. Could you reopen that with psychedelics? She's actually testing that right now.

    5. JSJay Shetty44:23

       Wow. Are

15. 44:24 – 49:04

    The Real Risks of Psychedelics

    1. JSJay Shetty44:24

       there any known negative impacts of psychedelics on the brain?

    2. MPMichael Pollan44:27

       Some people have, um, really bad experiences, and there have been cases of psychotic breaks, so people have their first psychotic break, and they become schizophrenic. Is this a side effect of the psychedelics, or is it something that was gonna happen anyway? I mean, it... Big, big experiences lead people to have psychotic breaks at certain windows, like, like in their twenties. Um, so it isn't really clear whether the psychedelics are, uh... I mean, they may have precipitated it, but it probably was gonna happen anyway. Um, then the people just have bad trips, um-

    3. JSJay Shetty45:01

       Yeah, of course. Yeah

    4. MPMichael Pollan45:01

       ... that can be absolutely terrifying. And, um, there are people who shouldn't mess around with them. I mean, if there's, if you have any risk of schizophrenia, they don't allow you in these studies. Ditto, um, mania, um, manic depression. They don't want you in these studies. I mean, this sounds really weird, but they're remarkably safe drugs from, by the usual standards. The classic psychedelics, psilocybin, um, DMT, which is in ayahuasca, LSD, they have no known lethal dose, which is extraordinary. I mean, Tylenol has a lethal dose around seventeen pills or something. Um, they're not, they're not habit-forming. Uh, they're not addictive. There is this psychological risk that people will, um, who are unstable will get, you know, still less stable. So they're serious. You know, you have to take... You, you, you don't take them lightly. But they have, especially in the, in the context of a guided situation where somebody is with you the whole time, somebody's prepared you for what to expect and then helps you integrate, which is to say help you make sense of what can be a very confusing experience, they're very productive, um, and they may revolutionize mental health. Um, you know, we're close to approval on two of them right now. Um, and, and the... Whatever you think of RFK Jr. and what he's doing to public health in America, he's very supportive of psychedelic medicine and, um, there's a good chance that both, um, psilocybin and MDMA will be approved in the next year or so.

    5. JSJay Shetty46:33

       Yeah, I was about to ask, how, how is the world reacting, the healthcare world reacting to the inclusion of psychedelics in the way that you're saying?

    6. MPMichael Pollan46:41

       Well, it's a great question.

    7. JSJay Shetty46:42

       Yeah.

    8. MPMichael Pollan46:42

       You know, I, I wondered about that too, and, um, I, I remember interviewing, um, Tom Insel, who was a very prominent psychiatrist. He was head of the National Institute of Mental Health. I called him and, and I, I was kind of surprised that when I was writing about it, I wasn't hearing more resistance from psychiatrists, many of whom have treated people who took psychedelics at one point. And he said something that surprised me. He said, "You know, the field is desperate for new tools," that if you, if you compare mental health treatment with infectious disease, cardiology, oncology, they have made huge strides in the last twenty years, um, actually curing people, extending lives. You can't say that about mental health treatment. We are really stuck. The last big innovation were SSRI antidepressants, and they don't work very well, actually. Um, they help some people, but, um, they perform a little better than placebo in s- in s- head-to-head studies. And he said, so-

    9. JSJay Shetty47:45

       Really?

    10. MPMichael Pollan47:45

        Yeah. Oh, it's, it's two points better than a placebo. Now, placebos are powerful when you're treating mental health, um, but, and they have lots of side effects. People don't like to take them. Um, they put on weight, they lose their libido, things like that. He said the field is desperate and open for that reason and that this could be a breakthrough. Um, and the other question I asked him that was, he had a really interesting answer. I said, uh, you know, I was a little suspicious. You're talking about one drug, s- let's say psilocybin, to treat anxiety and depression and OCD and, uh, and addiction. Um, isn't that a little too good to be true? It sounds like a, um-

    11. JSJay Shetty48:24

        Yeah, a miracle drug

    12. MPMichael Pollan48:25

        ... a miracle drug. And he said, he s- he a- he answered my question with a question. He said, "Well, what makes you think those things are all different?" It's like, what? They may be p- products of the same brain, different manifestations of a brain that's stuck, uh, stuck in grooves, you know, repetitive rumination, and there may be a common denominator, and those just may be symptoms. I was like, well, that's kind of mind-blowing.

    13. JSJay Shetty48:49

        Hmm.

    14. MPMichael Pollan48:49

        And in fact-

    15. JSJay Shetty48:50

        It is, yeah

    16. MPMichael Pollan48:50

        ... yeah, there is a study going on at Harvard now, Harvard Medical SchoolUh, looking at this question of rumination and psychedelics and see whether maybe that's the common denominator that, that psychedelics addresses

    17. JSJay Shetty49:02

        Wow. I mean, yeah, I feel

16. 49:04 – 51:23

    Why Psychedelics Can Help Break Addiction

    1. JSJay Shetty49:04

       like with what you're speaking about, I'm thinking about so many of my friends who, and my wife's friends who are currently struggling with OCD-

    2. MPMichael Pollan49:10

       Mm-hmm

    3. JSJay Shetty49:11

       ... and extreme forms of it, and I'm thinking, you know, this is one thing they haven't tried. Like, it's, it's... Or maybe it's not possible in the country that they live in. And if, if there's so many great studies that are actually showing the benefits, it's almost like it may be s- worth trying because the other, the other paths are definitely not working.

    4. MPMichael Pollan49:30

       Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would do is look for studies going on around the country. You know, uh, trials.gov is, maintains every drug trial going on around the country, and you can search OCD, and you can search psilocybin and see, um, if there are follow-ups to that Yale study-

    5. JSJay Shetty49:47

       Mm-hmm

    6. MPMichael Pollan49:48

       ... that might be going on. And the other alternative is to work with a really good guide and see if that might help, um, because it ha- I mean, it has helped many people. The Netflix series based on How to Change Your Mind has, uh, an episode, the second episode is about psilocybin, and, um, there are stories of people whose lives were just changed. There's a 30-year-old there who we interviewed who had been just paralyzed by, uh... Af- it was, uh, it really emerged after the birth of his first child, and he was just so terrified, uh, about doing something wrong, and, uh, he was, his just life was completely paralyzed by OCD. And he participated in this trial, and in the course of one afternoon, it, it released its hold on him.

    7. JSJay Shetty50:36

       Wow.

    8. MPMichael Pollan50:36

       It, it's kind of extraordinary.

    9. JSJay Shetty50:37

       Mm-hmm.

    10. MPMichael Pollan50:38

        Um, it does seem too good to be true, but I've, I've interviewed these people, and, and these, these stories of transformation are just so powerful.

    11. JSJay Shetty50:46

        Yeah. Well, the fact that you said that it's not addictive and-

    12. MPMichael Pollan50:49

        It's not toxic

    13. JSJay Shetty50:50

        ... yeah, and it's not toxic, I mean, those two things make it feel so much better than everything else they're telling us, like

    14. MPMichael Pollan50:54

        Yeah. No, the, I, I think, I think the risk is low.

    15. JSJay Shetty50:57

        Yeah.

    16. MPMichael Pollan50:57

        And, and it's lower still when you use a guide, you know, someone who's... Because people do stupid things on, on psychedelics. People do jump up off, off of buildings every now and then and think that they can fly, and if you're with someone who's staying closer to the ground, who's been around the block, um, you're very safe, and the risk, you, you've mitigated the risk to a large extent.

17. 51:23 – 53:54

    How Altered States Change Our Fear of Death

    1. JSJay Shetty51:23

       What have you learned about consciousness that most changed your view about death?

    2. MPMichael Pollan51:27

       One of the more interesting studies of psychedelics that was done early on was giving them to terminal cancer patients, people who were, had what is called existential distress. They were just terrified of either death or recurrence of their cancer. And over the course of a one session, uh, I interviewed people who lost their fear entirely, and the way this happened, it was different in different people. Some people had a vision of an afterlife, and they saw where they were gonna go when they died. But I remember this one woman had this experience of, again, flying through space and seeing all these things and then going underground, and, um, she said, "And then I dissolved in the soil, and my spirit was taken up by the plants." And that was fine. If that's what happened, that was fine. She had acquired a sense of herself not as this narrow little thing that was vulnerable to death but as this energy, as this set of carbon molecules that wasn't gonna die and would go into, into nature. Um, it's actually a very realistic take on things, you know, in a way. But if to the extent you expand your sense of self, your fear of death shrinks. That was the message that a lot of these people had.

    3. JSJay Shetty52:49

       Mm-hmm.

    4. MPMichael Pollan52:50

       I'm not convinced that consciousness survives death. I think a lot of people subconsciously believe that. Um, I think consciousness in a way is the word we use for the soul in our time and the whole... And it has a lot in common with the soul. That's certainly what Galileo thought. And the soul is indestructible, right? So there's a solace in that. We s- as, especially as we get older and we sort of feel our body's falling apart, our consciousness is intact, it seems like it could transcend the body.

    5. JSJay Shetty53:21

       Mm-hmm.

    6. MPMichael Pollan53:21

       Does it really? You know, I, I've learned to be humble enough to say, "I don't really know."

    7. JSJay Shetty53:29

       Mm-hmm.

    8. MPMichael Pollan53:29

       Um, near-death experience is a very curious phenomenon.

    9. JSJay Shetty53:32

       Yeah.

    10. MPMichael Pollan53:32

        Um, as I said earlier, you know, the universe is stranger and more wonderful, literally full of wonder than we know.

    11. JSJay Shetty53:42

        Mm-hmm.

    12. MPMichael Pollan53:42

        My psychedelic experiences have, have tempered my fear of death, um, I would say.

    13. JSJay Shetty53:52

        Mm-hmm. Yeah, I've always been

18. 53:54 – 57:21

    Do Near-Death Experiences Change Science?

    1. JSJay Shetty53:54

       fascinated by the work of, uh, Dr. Ian Stevenson and-

    2. MPMichael Pollan53:57

       Yeah

    3. JSJay Shetty53:57

       ... Old Souls and the near-death experiences and past life experiences, and always been fascinated by seeing more research in that space because I feel like it's not really been-

    4. MPMichael Pollan54:07

       Yeah

    5. JSJay Shetty54:07

       ... evolved since then, at least.

    6. MPMichael Pollan54:09

       He started this little group at UVA. I've been there.

    7. JSJay Shetty54:12

       Yeah.

    8. MPMichael Pollan54:12

       And he, Stevenson had died when I went, but I met some of the other people there, and they have these incredible, um, files on these past life experiences, near-death experience. We have a lot of empirical evidence that contradicts our usual materialist understanding of how the world works. The way science is supposed to work is when you have empirical evidence that contradicts your paradigm, you have to rethink your paradigm. We're not doing it. [chuckles]

    9. JSJay Shetty54:42

       Yeah.

    10. MPMichael Pollan54:42

        We're really, like, addicted to this paradigm.

    11. JSJay Shetty54:44

        We should all, they should all take psychedelics. [laughs]

    12. MPMichael Pollan54:47

        [laughs] That might help.

    13. JSJay Shetty54:48

        Yeah.

    14. MPMichael Pollan54:49

        And I wish more research was done on this too. And it's not taken seriously by most scientists, which I think is a shame because I thinkThey, I mean, they should be open and skeptical. That's the whole idea of the scientific enterprise. I do see some, um, shakiness in the materialist paradigm. I have talked to scientists and including people, you know, brain scientists, real, you know, biologists who have come to the conclusion that materialism can't explain consciousness and that there's something else going on. Um, I have talked to biologists, and I interview some of them in, in, in, uh, A World Appears, who believe that biology is shaped not just by environment and genes, but that there are platonic forms that endow living things with a sense of purpose, agency, um, that in the same way math has certain concepts that are-- seem to be eternal and, you know, platonic in that sense. If you have three angles, it's gonna add up to a hundred and eighty degrees or whatever it is, um, triangle, um, that there's something similar governing more of life. This is a very prominent biologist who believes this. So we may be getting close to a time where reconsidering materialism will happen. Um, certainly physicists are there. They're open to some very, um, seemingly exotic ideas, um, that consciousness may have some effect on the world. Um, you know, the double-slit experiment, um, suggests that an observer seems to change what happens. I mean, that's kind of mind-blowing.

    15. JSJay Shetty56:47

        Mm-hmm.

    16. MPMichael Pollan56:47

        So biology has been more conservative 'cause they had Darwinism, and that kind of explained everything. But I'm starting to see a little crack in the edifice, and it's the study of consciousness, I think, that is causing it.

    17. JSJay Shetty57:01

        Mm-hmm.

    18. MPMichael Pollan57:01

        So we may look back in fifty or a hundred years and realize that, um, you know, when we have another paradigm revolution that, um, oh yeah, there's something, there's something more that this, that the... Maybe we'll be adding something to m- to matter, to what matter

19. 57:21 – 1:02:41

    Redefining Consciousness in the AI Age

    1. MPMichael Pollan57:21

       is, or maybe it'll be a whole different idea.

    2. JSJay Shetty57:24

       What's, what's it gonna take for that to happen? Because I feel like you said, it's, it's happened in places like oncology or there's at least evolution. We talked about AI, you know, we're, we're talking about the fact that you have machines that can think and-

    3. MPMichael Pollan57:38

       Yeah

    4. JSJay Shetty57:38

       ... formulate and-

    5. MPMichael Pollan57:39

       Well, yeah, we didn't talk about AI. Um, we haven't talked about AI. I, I think, you know, our definition of what is human is gonna be, is under pressure now in a way that could be very productive and could be destructive. Um, on the one hand, we're learning we don't have a monopoly on consciousness. All these animals, uh-

    6. JSJay Shetty57:58

       Plants

    7. MPMichael Pollan57:58

       ... and possibly plants and bacteria have some very elemental sense of, I would call it sentience, uh, consciousness being a more complex version of sentience. Consciousness is how humans do sentience, and maybe all living things have sentience. That is, that reanimates the world to a large extent, and that materialist idea that, you know, aside from a handful of species, the world is dead matter that we can do with what we want. That idea, I think, will be gone. On the other side, we have this threat to our sense of specialness from AI, and I, I, I talk in A World Appears of, of, um, people trying to develop conscious AIs. I, you know, for various reasons, I think it's very unlikely they'll be able to. The problem is, though, even if they can't, AIs will fool us into believing they're conscious, and of course, we're seeing that with AI psychosis and people forming these bonds with machines. That is the literal definition of the word dehumanizing, [chuckles] right? But we're going down that path. So, so who are we? What's special about us? I mean, I would argue that we have more in common with the animals who, like us, are mortal and can suffer, um, and are vulnerable than we have with the machines. And the machines are really smart. We, you know, at the level of intelligence, they will outstrip us, I'm sure. I mean, they may have already. Um, but they can't feel, and I don't think they'll ever feel because feelings have no meaning without vulnerability, without our mortality. Um-

    8. JSJay Shetty59:38

       And story.

    9. MPMichael Pollan59:39

       Yeah.

    10. JSJay Shetty59:39

        Right? Like-

    11. MPMichael Pollan59:40

        Yeah

    12. JSJay Shetty59:40

        ... if you don't have a story.

    13. MPMichael Pollan59:41

        A story, yeah, exactly. And so, so I think we're coming to this interesting moment where we will be rethinking what, what is, what it means to be human. We went through this during the Romantic Revolution, during the Industrial Revolution. There was, you know, the rise of Romanticism, and that was really an effort to, like, here's what we are, here's how we're different than machines, um, and it was the celebration of the human and, um, uh, and things like love that machines will never have as far as I'm concerned. Um, so we may be-

    14. JSJay Shetty1:00:11

        You believe that? You believe that-

    15. MPMichael Pollan1:00:12

        Yeah

    16. JSJay Shetty1:00:12

        ... machines will never love?

    17. MPMichael Pollan1:00:15

        I don't, I don't see how they can unless they become mortal in some ways like us. Um, I, I, I just think so much of who we are is tied to the fact that we are flesh and blood that will not live forever, and that shapes our lives, and, um, machines don't, don't do that. And intelligence and consciousness are not the same thing. Um, we all know people who are highly intelligent and marginally conscious and [chuckles] people who are, who are conscious and not very intelligent. Um, they're just separate. Uh, and, and I think that, I think we make a mistake. We also make a mistake in thinking that brains are like computers, and they're so different in so many ways. Um, there's no distinction between hardware and software in a brain. Every experienceIt can be found someday, you know, as a, a, a set of neurons connecting in a certain way. I mean, your brain is different than mine 'cause you've had a different life than mine. They're not interchangeable the way computer hardware is. I mean, there's so many reasons for this, but, um, uh, uh, I don't think that's in our future. I could be wrong, but the fact that we will be fooled is, is, is problem enough, and I think we're gonna have to deal with all those mental health difficulties, um, that, that pe- you know, kids come home from school, I've heard stories of this, and they wanna tell their chatbot what happened that day before they want to tell their parents, and they formed a stronger relationship with that chatbot. I, I, I think that... There's a great line, uh, the sociologist Sherry Turkle says, um, "Technology can cause us to forget what life is about."

    18. JSJay Shetty1:01:52

        Mm.

    19. MPMichael Pollan1:01:53

        And it's really true. If you think about it-

    20. JSJay Shetty1:01:55

        Wow, that's, yeah

    21. MPMichael Pollan1:01:56

        ... we have a c-

    22. JSJay Shetty1:01:56

        Powerful

    23. MPMichael Pollan1:01:56

        ... you know, when we have a conver- a, a conversation with a machine, which now we do routinely, r- whether you're making an airline reservation or dealing with a chatbot, um, we call it a conversation, but in fact we've grossly simplified what a conversation is. There's no eye contact, there's no body language, there's no, there's none of those ineffable, you know, qualities that, that facilitate human interaction. Uh, the emoji is the classic case, right? I mean, that, that substitutes for emotion. So we're meeting the machines on their ground, and they're not meeting us on our ground. Um, so anyway, I think, you know, the defense of human consciousness is, like, a really high priority for me.

    24. JSJay Shetty1:02:40

        Yeah.

20. 1:02:41 – 1:05:06

    What Our Need for Constant Validation Says About Society

    1. JSJay Shetty1:02:41

       I w- I wonder what that says about our ego's need for constant validation and reassurance, and where that-

    2. MPMichael Pollan1:02:49

       Yeah

    3. JSJay Shetty1:02:49

       ... comes from.

    4. MPMichael Pollan1:02:49

       Yeah.

    5. JSJay Shetty1:02:50

       Because-

    6. MPMichael Pollan1:02:50

       Well, a hunger, a basic hunger of-

    7. JSJay Shetty1:02:52

       Yeah

    8. MPMichael Pollan1:02:52

       ... and probably not having enough love in our lives from our parents or enough, um... Yeah, there's a neediness, and we'll satis- you know, look, our, we use our pets to satisfy it, right? The unconditional love of our dogs.

    9. JSJay Shetty1:03:06

       Yeah.

    10. MPMichael Pollan1:03:06

        And, um, and now we have these machines who are, you know, doing it in an even more sophisticated way.

    11. JSJay Shetty1:03:11

        And it almost feels like that's the crux of it. It's how to love again, because the reason why we choose the chatbot over the person is the person says, "Well, just go up to your bedroom. Do your homework," or, you know, the parent in that case, or the parent says something like, "Oh, just, you know, these things happen," or whatever it may be, and it's like, but the chatbot's gonna say, "Well, tell me how you feel. How was your day?"

    12. MPMichael Pollan1:03:33

        Yeah.

    13. JSJay Shetty1:03:33

        And then you're gonna say how your day was, and it was bad, and be like, "Oh, that's unfair that that bully did that to you," and like-

    14. MPMichael Pollan1:03:38

        Right

    15. JSJay Shetty1:03:38

        ... you know, it has the time-

    16. MPMichael Pollan1:03:39

        Empathize, yeah

    17. JSJay Shetty1:03:39

        ... it has the time to be empathetic, and it has the-

    18. MPMichael Pollan1:03:41

        And it doesn't have its own interests.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:03:43

        Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't-

    20. MPMichael Pollan1:03:44

        It's not like-

    21. JSJay Shetty1:03:44

        Yeah

    22. MPMichael Pollan1:03:44

        ... you know, when you're having an exchange, that other person might want a little attention and, and TLC also, not the chatbot. [laughs]

    23. JSJay Shetty1:03:51

        Yeah. And, and what does that say about our need to be self-centered main characters?

    24. MPMichael Pollan1:03:57

        It's not a happy thought. Yeah.

    25. JSJay Shetty1:03:59

        Yeah.

    26. MPMichael Pollan1:03:59

        But I mean, it, I, I think it just speaks to our need and our loneliness. Um, you know, we need more attachment than we have, and we have a f- a, a basic hunger around that. And, you know, hopefully we found it from our parents and our partners, but not everybody does. And there are lots of people who live alone, who eat their meals alone, and this to them is a, is a solace. And, you know, there's talk about, um, using, you know, robots with chatbots in them to take care of the elderly, and, uh, that idea just fills me with, uh, creepiness. [laughs]

    27. JSJay Shetty1:04:39

        Yeah.

    28. MPMichael Pollan1:04:39

        I mean, I get it. Uh, we don't spend enough time taking care of the elderly, but human connection is so important, I mean, more important I think than we realize. And there are things going on when humans take care of humans that you can't quantify, that you can't digitize. You know, we look into each other's souls, and, um, can you fake that? I don't think so.

    29. JSJay Shetty1:05:05

        Yeah. Yeah,

21. 1:05:06 – 1:10:38

    What Makes Humans Different From Machines

    1. JSJay Shetty1:05:06

       you see even with the experience of animals, as you were saying, and almost because we've got so overexposed to humans in maybe uncomfortable ways, in that you see humans every day, and you take them-

    2. MPMichael Pollan1:05:16

       Yeah

    3. JSJay Shetty1:05:16

       ... for granted, and sometimes humans are rude, and sometimes they don't smile, and all the things. I remember when I was fortunate enough to go to a trip, uh, to Rwanda a few years ago and trek with the mountain gorillas.

    4. MPMichael Pollan1:05:28

       Mm.

    5. JSJay Shetty1:05:28

       And so you're obviously in their mountains. They're not in a cage or a, they're not in a space that's controlled.

    6. MPMichael Pollan1:05:33

       Right.

    7. JSJay Shetty1:05:33

       It's their home, and you-

    8. MPMichael Pollan1:05:34

       Right

    9. JSJay Shetty1:05:34

       ... get to visit their home. I have never felt, like, that emotional around any- Like, it was so powerful and special to be that close. And I was just looking at my friends in, uh-

    10. MPMichael Pollan1:05:47

        Do they make eye contact?

    11. JSJay Shetty1:05:48

        They, they... So you're told not to make eye contact-

    12. MPMichael Pollan1:05:50

        Not to, right, 'cause it's aggressive

    13. JSJay Shetty1:05:51

        ... with them because it could intimidate them.

    14. MPMichael Pollan1:05:52

        Right.

    15. JSJay Shetty1:05:53

        Uh, but it is beautiful because we were asked to make this sound when we got closer to them, and the sound is, [clears throat] and it's meant to mean we come in peace. And what's fascinating is when they first told me this, I was like, "Okay, whatever."

    16. MPMichael Pollan1:06:05

        [laughs]

    17. JSJay Shetty1:06:05

        Like, I, I was a bit skeptical. But I did it anyway, and they do it back, and that was-

    18. MPMichael Pollan1:06:10

        Wow

    19. JSJay Shetty1:06:10

        ... really special to have that exchange. And-

    20. MPMichael Pollan1:06:12

        It's like a handshake or something.

    21. JSJay Shetty1:06:13

        Totally. And they were so happy for us to be around them, and they didn't want to push us away. They didn't try to scare us. Like, I was this far away from a silverback.

    22. MPMichael Pollan1:06:22

        Wow.

    23. JSJay Shetty1:06:22

        And we were just watching one of them, like, manspreading. Like, the other ones, the kids were playing around. Like, mothers were carrying their babies on their back. And you don't see one or two. There's families of, like, 16 gorillas walking together, and it's truly one of the most beautiful things. And I was, I was just watching now my friends on safari in Africa with their family.

    24. MPMichael Pollan1:06:41

        Mm-hmm.

    25. JSJay Shetty1:06:41

        And she was just posting these stories of, like, little lion cubs, like, playing together, and I was just messaging her, "Gosh, this is so beautiful." Like, the, the ability... What you're saying is so evident to us that I never feel that way about a machine. I might-

    26. MPMichael Pollan1:06:54

        Yeah

    27. JSJay Shetty1:06:54

        ... I might be blown away by the-

    28. MPMichael Pollan1:06:56

        What it can do, sure

    29. JSJay Shetty1:06:57

        ... size of a building or what it can do, but it doesn't appeal to this-

    30. MPMichael Pollan1:07:00

        Yeah
22. 1:10:38 – 1:12:17

    Why Asking Better Questions Matters

    1. JSJay Shetty1:10:38

       of your-- and maybe it's not yours, but how do you relieve yourself of society's addiction to solving and conclusions in a world where you're offering more questions and openness?

    2. MPMichael Pollan1:10:50

       Yeah. That's a, that's interesting. Um, I don't know. So far it hasn't been a problem. I mean, this is the first time I've, I've, I've said at the beginning of a book, you may know le-less-

    3. JSJay Shetty1:11:00

       [chuckles]

    4. MPMichael Pollan1:11:00

       ...at the end than the beginning as a value proposition. I don't know how that's gonna work out. Um-

    5. JSJay Shetty1:11:05

       I, I don't think it's true. I-- as a reader, I would say that you are being humble and kind and generous, but the topic affords that humility, as in-

    6. MPMichael Pollan1:11:13

       Yeah

    7. JSJay Shetty1:11:13

       ...the, the to- you know, the I understand why you said it, but-

    8. MPMichael Pollan1:11:16

       But also on the way to answering one question, you learn things you weren't-- you didn't expect to learn.

    9. JSJay Shetty1:11:22

       Yeah.

    10. MPMichael Pollan1:11:22

        There's a ton I learned here, and I did go from wanting to answer the hard question, which I was bringing this very kind of Western male point of view, problem, solution. This is how you frame things, right? This is how we've learned to frame things. And by the end, and I don't wanna give away the end, um, but I end up meditating in a cave and realizing that, you know, yes, there's the problem of consciousness, that's interesting, but much more interesting and important is the fact of it, this amazing gift we have. I got in touch with that, and I hadn't thought when I went into this project that attending to, being present to, was really gonna be the answer.

    11. JSJay Shetty1:12:06

        Yeah.

    12. MPMichael Pollan1:12:06

        Um, and that, um... So, so it took a turn. So the question gives you the path, but there's, there's a lot of detours along the way, and, and you learn things you weren't expecting to learn.

23. 1:12:17 – 1:18:58

    Michael on Final Five

    1. JSJay Shetty1:12:17

       Yeah. Michael, we end every On Purpose interview with the final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence maximum.

    2. MPMichael Pollan1:12:23

       Mm.

    3. JSJay Shetty1:12:24

       Uh, we'll probably break our rule at some point, but let's see. Uh, so Michael Pollan, this is your final five. The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

    4. MPMichael Pollan1:12:33

       Here I'm gonna, um, draw on my father, who's a very wise person and kind of a-- he was a lawyer, but really a life coach. And more often than not, people would come to him with a dream. This is not one quest- one sentence. Sorry.

    5. JSJay Shetty1:12:46

       That's fine. It's beautiful so far, so please carry on.

    6. MPMichael Pollan1:12:48

       I won't put a full stop anywhere.

    7. JSJay Shetty1:12:50

       Yeah. Please.

    8. MPMichael Pollan1:12:50

       Um, and they had a dream of some kind. They wanted to start a business. They wanted to have kids. They wanted to get married, um, buy a house. And his advice was always the same: do it. And people are held back by fear, and he could see that these people had a dream, but-They had a voice in their head that often came from their parents urging caution, and he would just say, "Do it." And as my mother reminds me, it worked 90% of the time. People were happier that they did it. The 10% that didn't work were people who wanted to start restaurants [laughs]

    9. JSJay Shetty1:13:29

       [laughs] That's so good

    10. MPMichael Pollan1:13:30

        ... which is a really tough business-

    11. JSJay Shetty1:13:31

        Yeah

    12. MPMichael Pollan1:13:31

        ... and maybe you shouldn't do it.

    13. JSJay Shetty1:13:33

        Yeah, yeah.

    14. MPMichael Pollan1:13:33

        Think twice.

    15. JSJay Shetty1:13:34

        It's hard.

    16. MPMichael Pollan1:13:34

        So it's very simple. It's two word advice. Um, but so many of us are held back, and we spend our lives waiting for the right moment, and we don't make... We, we, we, we- you just have to force the issue sometimes.

    17. JSJay Shetty1:13:47

        Yeah.

    18. MPMichael Pollan1:13:47

        So jump.

    19. JSJay Shetty1:13:48

        Absolutely.

    20. MPMichael Pollan1:13:49

        So that would be my advice.

    21. JSJay Shetty1:13:50

        Yeah. Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever had or received?

    22. MPMichael Pollan1:13:54

        [laughs] Oh, God. Go to law school. [laughs]

    23. JSJay Shetty1:14:02

        [laughs]

    24. MPMichael Pollan1:14:02

        That was very common advice for people-

    25. JSJay Shetty1:14:04

        Yeah

    26. MPMichael Pollan1:14:04

        ... who weren't sure what they wanted to do.

    27. JSJay Shetty1:14:06

        Yeah.

    28. MPMichael Pollan1:14:06

        Um, and there are not gonna be a lot of jobs for lawyers.

    29. JSJay Shetty1:14:09

        Yeah. Uh, question number three, I was wondering, did your cover of your book come to you in a experience of psychedelics or-

    30. MPMichael Pollan1:14:16

        No

Episode duration: 1:18:58