It's the Late Show Potshow with Stephen Colbert.

Welcome back.

Folks, my next guest tonight is a New York Times bestseller and one of my favorite authors,

whose books include The Omnivore's Dilemma in Defense of Food and

How to Change Your Mind. His new book is A World Appears, A Journey Into Consciousness.

Please welcome back to The Late Show, Michael Pollan.

Michael, it's always good to talk to you. The last time you hear, we talked about psychedelics.

You had a book about psychedelics.

And your new book delves even deeper into the recesses of the mind.

Explores the subject of consciousness.

Here is the book right here.

A world appears, a journey to the consciousness.

I do have a plug, unlike the previous case. Exactly. Sorry. It's still great. It's still great to you. What sets you off on the journey? Well, the psychedelic experience, actually, was the inspiration. Psychedelics have a way of kind of smudging the windshield of consciousness. Most of the time were... I thought the doors of perception would be cleansed. Didn't Hux they promise us that? It had the opposite effect. You just smudged them. And suddenly you realize there is a windshield and what is that about? Why is it this way and not that way? Well, let me just say. How do you define consciousness then? It's really not that hard. I mean, people complicate it, but it's basically subjective experience or even just

experience.

You know, you have experience.

Your toaster does not have experience.

Unless your consciousness gets so great to include the toaster.

I guess that's theoretically possible.

You'll get there. You'll get there, Michael.

My toaster will get there.

But the other way, the other definition I really like is by a philosopher named Thomas Nagel, who said that if it is like something to be this creature or that creature, if it feels like something, you're conscious.

He wrote a great essay called, What Does It Like to Be a Bat?

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