Michael Pollan’s journey to understand consciousness
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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. Forgive me, I'm a little bit hoarse today. One of the many things you may know my guest journalist Michael Pollan for is his book How to Change Your Mind, where the new science of psychedelics teaches us about consciousness, which was published in 2018. It was in part about the therapeutic use of psychedelics to change your consciousness to relieve trauma or help tone down the fear of death for people who were terminally ill.
His new book explores consciousness, but from a different perspective, like what does it mean to be conscious? What creates consciousness? And how it distinguishes humans from, for example, plants, but many botanists are starting to believe plants have some form of consciousness. Another question Pollan deals with is one many of us have been asking can artificial intelligence ever develop consciousness? Would that be a good thing?
Or not? The book ends with Paulan in a cave, sent there by a Buddhist teacher who founded a Zen monastery and wanted Paulan to explore the idea of consciousness in a cave and experience how consciousness can change by meditating all alone in a remote area for an extended period of time. He's a longtime meditator, but this extreme version was something new. Pollan has kept up with new developments in psychedelics. He co-founded the University of California Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, which, among other things, publishes a newsletter about the latest research into the use of psychedelics in therapeutic settings and the latest laws that are loosening or restricting the ability to conduct such research.
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