The New Yorker

  • The New Yorker Out Loud: Psychedelics as Therapy

    Michael joins host Amelia Lester, the executive editor of newyorker.com, to discuss the history of psychedelics research, the difference between a recreational psychedelic journey and a therapeutic one, and why he finds the effects of these drugs so intriguing. Listen here.

  • The Trip Treatment

    On an April Monday in 2010, Patrick Mettes, a fifty-four-year-old television news director being treated for a cancer of the bile ducts, read an article on the front page of the Times that would change his death. His diagnosis had come three years earlier, shortly after his wife, Lisa, noticed that the whites of his eyes had…

  • The Intelligent Plant

    In 1973, a book claiming that plants were sentient beings that feel emotions, prefer classical music to rock and roll, and can respond to the unspoken thoughts of humans hundreds of miles away landed on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction. “The Secret Life of Plants,” by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, presented…

  • Michael Pollan’s outstanding “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” is a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our current eating habits.