Michael Pollan Returns (on consciousness)
Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
Armchair Umbrella
4.6 • 69.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 131 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Pollan (A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness) is a science and environmental journalist. Michael returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss why choosing surrender is liberating in both psychedelics and life, what the “hard problem” of consciousness is and how we get to it, and how sentience serves homeostasis in living beings. Michael and Dax talk about asking what the world would be like without consciousness, the remarkable fact that plants can see, hear, and fight, and experimental evidence via the ginger test that disgust originates in the gut. Michael explains the qualitative redness of red, that there’s so much more going on in consciousness besides computation, and what strange places to visit our minds are.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert. |
| 0:03.5 | I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Miniature Mouse. Hi. Tweet, tweet, tweet. Returning guests, but first time in person? I think it was a Zumi. He was Zumi, yeah. He had the Zumbies. But he's here in person. He's wearing a very cute sweater. And it was very fun to have him in 3D. Michael Pollan, an award-winning author and journalist. |
| 0:24.7 | How did you? wearing a very cute sweater and it was very fun to have them in 3D. |
| 0:24.0 | Michael Pollan, an award-winning author and journalists. |
| 0:25.6 | How to Change Your Mind? |
| 0:26.9 | A movement. |
| 0:29.4 | A sociological phenomena. |
| 0:31.2 | Yeah, changed people's minds. |
| 0:31.7 | That's right. |
| 0:33.4 | This is your mind on plants. |
| 0:35.1 | I think that's what we spoke to him about. |
| 0:39.5 | The Omnivores Dilemma, another big, huge hit, in defensive food, |
| 0:44.4 | and his new book, which is the trippiest by far, I enjoyed the hell out of it. |
| 0:48.0 | A world appears a journey into consciousness. |
| 0:50.3 | Please enjoy Michael Pollan. |
| 0:57.9 | This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. From websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytics, |
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| 1:08.7 | When we first got the armchair expert website up and running, Wobby Wob used Squarespace. |
| 1:13.5 | And honestly, it made sense right away. |
| 1:15.5 | It looked polished. |
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