How's it going everybody? Welcome to another episode of The Genius Life. I'm your host Max Lugovira

Filmmaker, health and science journalist and the author of The New York Times Best Selling Book

Genius Foods. I am so excited for this episode of the show in which I am going to interview

Michael Pollan. Now Michael Pollan is a very well-known journalist who's covered the food system

over the past couple of decades in a number of best-selling books, probably the most famous of which

being the omnivores dilemma. But he's turned his focus for his latest book on psychedelics and

particularly what they can potentially offer to those of us struggling with issues related to mental

health. His new book is called How to Change Your Mind, what the new science of psychedelics teaches

us about consciousness, dying, addiction, depression and transcendence. And whether or not you have any

interest in psychedelics, I highly recommend listening to this episode of The Show. Nonetheless,

because of the insights that Michael is going to share with us about the mind. Now just to touch on

the value of finding new modalities to treat mental health issues for a moment, more than 4% of the

world's population live with depression and women, young people and the elderly are the most prone

to its disabling effects. Unestimated 322 million people suffered depressive disorders in 2015

arise of about 18% in a decade. Depression is the single largest contributor to years lived with

disability and it's one and a half times more common in women than in men. A further 250 million

people suffer from anxiety disorders, including phobias, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive

behavior and PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder. And we're going to give you a novel framework

in which to think about these conditions, that research involving psychedelics has helped to

elucidate. So I'm very excited. Before we get into it, I want to give a shout out to the sponsor

of this episode of The Show. I'm very grateful for all of the sponsors that have supported the

genius life over the past couple of months. And this episode is brought to you by my good friends

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