Michael Pollan, writer

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Michael Pollan’s award-winning writing about plants, nature and food combines anthropology and philosophy with culture, health and natural history. Time Magazine has named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world and his maxim to ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.’ is a central tenet of the sustainable food movement. Michael grew up in suburban Long Island, USA, and planted his first garden when he was eight-years-old. He was an intern at the Village Voice newspaper in New York while he was a student and after he graduated he joined Harper’s Magazine as an editor where he worked with the writer Tom Wolfe among others. Michael’s first book Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education is a collection of essays about gardening and his later titles, including the Botany of Desire and the Omnivore’s Dilemma, addressed modern methods of food production and argued that in an era of fast and processed food, basic cooking skills were being lost. Recently, Michael has written about the use of psychedelic drugs as a potential treatment for some mental health conditions, such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Michael is professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2020 he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. Michael is married to the artist Judith Belzer and they live in California. DISC ONE: Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) by Harry Belafonte DISC TWO: The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel DISC THREE: Going Up the Country by Canned Heat DISC FOUR: Cheek to Cheek by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald DISC FIVE: Shady Grove by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman DISC SIX: California by Joni Mitchell DISC SEVEN: Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles DISC EIGHT: Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1008: I. Prélude, composed by J.S Bach and performed by Yo-Yo Ma BOOK CHOICE: Ulysses by James Joyce LUXURY ITEM: Dark chocolate CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor, BWV 1008: I. Prélude, composed by J.S Bach and performed by Yo-Yo Ma Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Deser Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.9	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.4	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:45.3	My castaway this week is the writer and activist Michael Pollan.
0:49.8	He's a lifelong gardener and his best-selling work explores what he describes as
0:54.1	the troubled borders between nature and contemporary life.
0:58.0	It's seen him named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People.
1:02.4	His books on horticulture, food and farming are central texts in the sustainable food movement
1:08.1	and many follow his maxim to eat food not too much mostly plants.
1:12.5	He's a keen participant as well as a chronicler.
1:15.2	When he was researching the cattle industry, he bought himself a cow
1:18.6	and for his book on architecture he built himself a writing hut.
1:22.1	Recently he's been exploring in several centres of the word,
1:25.6	plants that can affect not just our bodies but our minds,
1:29.1	primarily caffeine, opium and silo-sibon.
1:32.5	Appropriately enough, his lifetime's work cultivating big ideas started with the single water melon seed
1:38.6	he planted when he was four years old growing up in suburban Long Island.
1:43.1	He says, the whole idea that you could plant something and create something of value
1:47.8	with sunlight and water and soil and nothing else to me was a miracle.
	...

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