Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Michael Pollan's books on food and psychedelics have a way of informing conversations. I don't mean that figuratively or abstractly. I mean, I've been in multiple conversations about those topics and someone has brought up one of his books. His latest A World Appears is about consciousness.

I almost said human consciousness there, but that's not fully true.

In this interview with Hiranes Indira Lakshmanan, they talk about people, sure, but also plants and computers.

That's after the break.

Best-selling science writer Michael Pollan has made us rethink how we eat with books like

The Omnivores Dilemma and Food Rules.

You've probably heard his famous seven-word mantra, eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

Books like This is Your Mind on Plants and How to Change Your Mind asked us to rethink drugs like

caffeine, opium, and psychedelics. The latter he famously explored himself. And now Michael

Pollan's new book, A World Appears, takes on a huge subject, consciousness itself. What happens

when we open our eyes in the morning? It's a topic that sent him down many rabbit holes.

The book explores the work of psychologists, cognitive scientists, plant biologists, and stream of consciousness authors.

But did he find answers?

Let's ask him.

Michael Pollan joins us now to talk about A World Appears.

Welcome.

Thank you, Indira. Thank you very much.

It felt to me as a reader that this whole journey began with a magic mushroom trip in your garden,

where you felt as if plants around you were somehow sentient. Tell us about that.

Yeah, so as part of my research into psychedelics for how to change your mind,

I did a few trips with psilocybin and some other substances. And there was one I did in my garden

on a late summer afternoon where I had taken some mushrooms and had this powerful experience that the plants in my garden were awake,

...