Media Outlets
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In 1938 Albert Hofmann, a chemist at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, created a series of new compounds from lysergic acid. One of them, later marketed as Hydergine, showed great potential for the treatment of cerebral arteriosclerosis. Another salt, the diethylamide (LSD), he put to one side, but he had “a peculiar presentiment,” as he…
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When Pollan agrees to take psychedelic drugs, he presents himself as a stand-in for the skeptical reader; he is an LSD-virgin turned “psychonaut” for the purposes of journalistic and scientific inquiry.
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Psychedelics, Pollan argues, eject us from our habitual consciousness to invite a pure experience of reality that calls to mind Jeanette Winterson’s notion of “active surrender” and Emerson’s exultation in “the power to swell the moment from the resources of our own heart until it supersedes sun & moon & solar system in its expanding…
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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…
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In December of 1934, an unemployed stockbroker named Bill Wilson checked himself into Towns Hospital in Manhattan. He had a habit of consuming more than two quarts of whiskey per day, and his wife had implored him to get help. The doctor gave Wilson an extract of belladonna, a plant with hallucinogenic properties, which at…
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In his new book, “How to Change Your Mind,” Michael Pollan turns his attention from food systems to the history, and current renaissance, of psychedelics. A growing body of research suggests that psychedelics may in fact have health benefits and help people cope with depression, anxiety and addiction. Pollan joins Forum to discuss his journey…
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With “How to Change Your Mind,” Pollan remains concerned with what we put into our bodies, but we’re not talking about arugula. At various points, our author ingests LSD, psilocybin and the crystallized venom of a Sonoran Desert toad. He writes, often remarkably, about what he experienced under the influence of these drugs. (The book…
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In this episode the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Michael Pollan about his new book How to Change Your Mind. They cover the the resurgence of interest in psychedelics in clinical practice and end-of-life care, the “betterment of well people,” the relationship between thinking and mental suffering, the differences between psychedelics and meditation, the…