Interview/Profile Source

  • The efficiency curse

    The first teachable moment of the pandemic, for me, had to do with the supply chain. Early on, supermarkets had shortages, and not just of food; other everyday items were also hard to find. The first example everyone noticed was toilet paper. That mystified people, and the immediate response was to blame it on hoarding.…

  • On November 3, as the country fixated on the incoming presidential election results, voters in Oregon approved a seemingly innocuous ballot measure with revolutionary potential. Proposition 109, which passed with 56 percent of the vote (the same margin by which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the state), legalizes the use of psilocybin, the main…

  • 60 Minutes on Psychedelic Medicine

    Study participants at some of the country’s leading medical research centers are going through intense therapy and six-hour psychedelic journeys deep into their minds to do things like quit smoking and worry less. Watch the whole 60 Minutes episode here.

  • A quiet renaissance of serious medical research has once again arisen to study the therapeutic benefits of LSD and other psychedelics, including overcoming addiction and depression, and easing the existential terror of terminal illness. In this program, acclaimed journalist Michael Pollan shares a travelogue of his reportorial and personal journey with psychedelics. He slips through…

  • A renaissance is underway in the scientific study of psychedelics, both as a mode of therapy for mental illness and as a tool for understanding the mind. Tim Ferriss takes up these issues and more in a conversation with Michael Pollan.

  • After decades of being forbidden by law for recreation or research, psychedelics are legally enjoying a renaissance in the scientific community as a potential way of treating a wide variety of ailments including PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, OCD, anxiety, and dependence on alcohol and nicotine.

  • Michael Pollan on the Science and Sublimity of Psychedelics

    Michael Pollan has long been fascinated by nature and the ways we connect and clash with it, with decades of writing covering food, farming, cooking, and architecture. Pollan’s latest fascination? Our widespread and ancient desire to use nature to change our consciousness.

  • Are psychedelic drugs, like youth, wasted on the young? Could middle age be the ideal time to try some consciousness expanding – to “shake the snow globe” as one neuroscientist puts it.

  • Pollan’s new book How to Change Your Mind, dives deep into the world of psychedelics, through meetings with shamans, magic mushroom hunts, and using yourself as a guinea-pig, he takes the readers on a journey to the frontiers of the human mind.

  • On this week’s show, we’re talking to Michael Pollan. You may know him from his food writing – books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Botany of Desire, or Cooked, which is also now a Netflix show. His latest focus, however, is something quite different – still something consumable – it’s psychedelic drugs.

  • Professor and author Michael Pollan joins Bill to discuss his latest book: “How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

  • This week’s Spectator Books Podcast asks: is LSD good for you? I’m joined by the author Michael Pollan, who talks about the fascinating lost history of psychedelic drugs, speculates on what they may tell us about the human mind and the universe, recalls his own mind-blowing encounter with toad venom, and reveals that serious scientific…