Michael Pollan in Conversation with Dacher Keltner — A World Appears
Pollan explores consciousness through science, philosophy, and psychedelics in conversation with UC Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner.
Why we picked this
The author who made psychedelic science mainstream now tackles the biggest question in neuroscience: what is consciousness?
Michael Pollan’s “How to Change Your Mind” brought psychedelic research into mainstream conversation. His new book “A World Appears” goes further upstream, asking the question that psychedelics force you to confront: how does subjective experience arise from the brain at all?
Dacher Keltner, a UC Berkeley psychologist who studies awe and emotion, is the ideal conversation partner. Together they navigate the intersection of neuroscience, philosophy, and first-person experience — the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness that has frustrated scientists and philosophers for centuries.
This is Pollan at his most ambitious. Not food, not drugs, but the nature of experience itself. At Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco.