To understand consciousness, Michael Pollan looked at plants, AI and himself

Summary

Podcast Summary

NPR's Book of the Day

Episode: To understand consciousness, Michael Pollan looked at plants, AI and himself

Date: March 11, 2026
Host: Indira Lakshmanan (for Here Now)
Guest: Michael Pollan

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Michael Pollan joins Indira Lakshmanan to discuss his latest book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. Known for his influential works on food and psychedelics, Pollan delves into the enigmatic phenomenon of consciousness—not just in humans, but in plants and artificial intelligence as well. The conversation explores Pollan’s personal experiences, current scientific thinking, and the philosophical and ethical implications of consciousness research.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Genesis of the Book: Psychedelic Experiences and Plant Sentience

• Pollan’s Magic Mushroom Experience:
  • Pollan recounts a psychedelic trip in his garden that inspired a core theme of the book—whether plants possess consciousness or sentience.
  • Quote:
    • “I had this powerful experience that the plants in my garden were awake, that they were returning my gaze, that they were conscious...It was actually kind of nice. They clearly felt well disposed to me and, you know, their gardener.” (Pollan, 02:14)
• Sentience in Nature:
  • This experience led Pollan to question the depth and spread of sentience in non-human entities, especially plants.

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2. Defining Sentience vs. Consciousness

• Awareness Spectrum:
  • Pollan clarifies the distinction:
    • “Sentience is kind of the base, default case of having a certain awareness of your environment...Consciousness is kind of how we do sentience. For animals like us, we need a much more elaborate sentience.” (Pollan, 03:19)
  • Human consciousness involves social complexity, imagination, and prediction, which goes beyond what is observed in plants.

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3. The Physical Location of Consciousness & Philosophical Theories

• Challenging Materialism:
  • Pollan discusses the traditional scientific view that consciousness resides in the brain, but notes the lack of conclusive evidence.
  • He introduces alternative theories:
    • Panpsychism: The idea that consciousness exists, albeit minimally, in all matter.
    • Field Theory: The brain as a receiver of consciousness, much like a TV receives a signal.
  • Notable Moment:
    • “We have no success connecting a particular address in the brain with conscious experience. So we have to open our minds to other ideas.” (Pollan, 04:24)

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4. Lantern Consciousness vs. Spotlight Consciousness

• Childhood vs. Adult Awareness:
  • Pollan, referencing psychologist Alison Gopnik, describes how children experience the world with “lantern consciousness”—broad, unfocused attention that absorbs everything.
  • By around age six, people develop “spotlight consciousness,” which narrows focus but loses some of that initial wonder.
  • Psychedelics, Pollan notes, can return adults to a temporary state of lantern consciousness.
  • Quote:
    • “[Psychedelics] return us to a state of lantern consciousness where it's very difficult to focus. And we do take in sensory information in these great waves...But it is very sad because there's something beautiful living in a world that seems so magical.” (Pollan, 06:44)

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5. AI and the Possibility of Artificial Consciousness

• Skepticism about Conscious AI:
  • Pollan argues that AI is unlikely to be conscious because consciousness is fundamentally rooted in embodiment and feelings, which machines lack.
  • Distinction between computation (what AI does) and consciousness (rooted in bodily experience, vulnerability, and mortality).
  • Quote:
    • “To have feelings, you need a body, you need vulnerability, you probably need mortality, and computers don't have that.” (Pollan, 08:10)

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6. Personal Takeaways and Reflections

• The Gift and Challenge of Consciousness:
  • Pollan expresses a deeper appreciation for the “incredible gift” of consciousness, emphasizing that many squander this with distractions like smartphones and chatbots.
  • He notes the value of meditation for reconnecting with one’s inner experience.
  • Quote:
    • “We have this private space of incredible freedom and imagination, and that I think we're kind of squandering it.” (Pollan, 09:59)
• Returning to Lantern Consciousness:
  • Meditation offers a non-pharmacological route to reconnect with unfiltered awareness.
  • “...it's a precious time where I put down my phone, I let my mind do what it wants to do, and come out of it feeling this is too precious a gift to squander.” (Pollan, 09:59)

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7. Final Thoughts and the Future of Consciousness Questions

• Humanity at a Crossroads:
  • Pollan suggests that advances in AI and new insights into non-human consciousness are forcing us to re-examine what it means to be human.
  • Quote:
    • “Are we more like the thinking machines or are we more like the feeling animals? And I don't know which team we should be on. I'm kind of leaning toward the animal team.” (Pollan, 11:27)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I had this sense that there was more going on than I had ever realized.” (Pollan, 02:14)
• “Consciousness is kind of how we do sentience.” (Pollan, 03:19)
• “You would never expect to find the weatherman inside your TV set, but your TV set is nevertheless bringing his or her image and sound to you from a field that's outside you.” (Pollan, 05:33)
• “Lantern consciousness... is very difficult to focus. And we do take in sensory information in these great waves...” (Pollan, 06:44)
• “Consciousness begins with our feelings...And so the sensation of hunger is a bodily sensation, travels up to our brainstem, then into our cortex...” (Pollan, 08:10)
• “We have this private space of incredible freedom and imagination, and that I think we're kind of squandering it.” (Pollan, 09:59)
• “Are we more like the thinking machines or are we more like the feeling animals?” (Pollan, 11:27)

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Key Timestamps

• 02:14: Pollan’s garden magic mushroom experience inspires his curiosity about plant sentience.
• 03:19: Distinctions between plant “sentience” and human “consciousness.”
• 04:24 – 05:33: Discussion of philosophical theories of consciousness, including panpsychism and field theories.
• 06:44: Lantern consciousness vs. spotlight consciousness; impact of psychedelics and childhood development.
• 08:10: Why Pollan doubts the possibility of conscious AI; the importance of embodiment.
• 09:59: Pollan’s personal reflections on valuing consciousness and the role of meditation.
• 11:27: The future—AI, non-human consciousness, and the evolving definition of humanity.

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Summary

This episode offers a fascinating overview of Michael Pollan's deep dive into consciousness, ranging from the perspectives of plants and AI to the self. Pollan’s characteristic curiosity and clarity shed light on tricky philosophical questions, while personal anecdotes and scientific insights keep the discussion engaging and accessible. His key message: consciousness is a profound gift, one we risk neglecting amid the tides of modern distractions and technological change.

Transcript

[A]

Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. 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 Here Now's Indira Lakshmanan. They talk about people, sure, but also plants and computers. That's after the break.

[B]

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[C]

Bestselling science writer Michael Pollan has made us rethink how we eat with books like the Omnivore's Dilemma and Food Rules. You've probably heard his famous seven word mantra, either eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Books like this Is yous Mind on Plants and How to Change youe 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 consciousness authors. But did he find answers? Let's ask him. Michael Pollan joins us now to talk about A World Appears. Welcome.

[D]

Thank you, Indira. Thank you very much.

[C]

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.

[D]

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, that they were returning my gaze, that they were conscious and it was not frightening at all. It was actually kind of nice. They clearly felt well disposed to me and, you know, their gardener. But I had this sense that there was more. There Was more going on than I had ever realized. So that became one of the inspirations for a part of the book, which is finding out how deep in nature does sentience, which is a kind of very simple form of consciousness, how far does it go?

[C]

You make a case for plant sentience, and you cite research on plant's ability to learn, remember, or even see. How is that the same or different from being conscious in a human sense?

[D]

Sentience is kind of the base, default case of having a certain awareness of your environment and a sense of the changes taking place in your environment and whether they're good for you or bad for you, and then the ability to move toward the positive and away from the negative. Consciousness is kind of how we do sentience. For animals like us, we need a much more elaborate sentience. We need the ability, say, to imagine what's going on so that we can have counterfactuals. If we do this, this happens. If we do that, that happens. And the reason we need this is because we exist. We're profoundly social beings. We depend on other people. We live in a very complex social reality where we have to anticipate what the other person is going to do and imagine our way into their head. That's all behavior that you can't program in the genes. It's just too complex.

[C]

But where does consciousness lie? Do you believe there is a physical location? Have we been conditioned to think of consc as being located in the brain?

[D]

Yeah. The assumption has always been that, like other phenomena that can be understood by reductive science, which is to say, find the matter or the energy that underlies this phenomenon, that you can reduce consciousness to something we understand, something material. And this is the philosophy called materialism. It's utterly failed when it comes to consciousness. We have no success connecting a particular address in the brain with conscious experience. So we have to open our minds to other ideas. And people are. I'll give you a couple examples. There's panpsychism, which basically stipulates that consciousness is in everything. Any particle, any of the stuff around you is infinitesimally conscious. Other people say that consciousness is a field outside of our brains and that we should think of the brain. The brain is very involved, but more of the way a radio receiver or a television set is involved. You know, you would never expect to find the weatherman inside your TV set,

[C]

But you're Maybe we thought that when we were children, though we probably did, it's true.

[D]

But your TV set is nevertheless bringing his or her image and sound to you from a field that's outside you?

[C]

Well, you actually mention, do we imagine things when we're children that we don't imagine when we're adults? And it makes me think about how we think of ourselves as an eye that never changes. But as we grow up, it seems that our consciousness changes. And you use the phrase lantern consciousness, where you say that children have a really broad, unfocused attention whereby they experience the world in an almost magical way every single day up until the age of six. They take in everything. The beauty, the sound, the light, everything is amazing and surprising. But that upon age 6, and this seems very sad to me, that suddenly we start to develop spotlight consciousness where we're focused on something, and that is what allows us to go to school, to have jobs, but we lose something of that magic. And you talk about the lantern consciousness as something that you were able to regain through your experience with psychedelics. Talk about that.

[D]

Yeah. So that distinction I learned from Allison Gopnik, who's a psychologist at Berkeley, a colleague of Min. One of the things she says is that psychedelics return us to a state of lantern consciousness where it's very difficult to focus. And we do take in sensory information in these great waves of information, whether it's visual or auditory or whatever, and that we give something up. It's a trade off, though. I mean, spotlight consciousness allows us to get a lot done. It allows us to focus, and we insist on it in school, obviously, and that's when we sort of knock it out of children. Um, but it is very sad because there's something beautiful living in a world that seems so magical. Kids need that kind of consciousness to learn their way around reality. And that's what they're doing. That's their job, is figuring out how the world works.

[C]

I have to ask. Robots and AI are everywhere in our life now. Everything from a Roomba to a smart refrigerator to, you know, asking questions in our browsers that get answered by AIs. Can these machines and programs be considered conscious? Can artificial consciousness be created? And if so, wouldn't that necessarily imply that we are enslaving robots and enslaving AI?

[D]

Well, you're making a big leap there. It's a big if. And I don't accept that it can happen. I think there are very good reasons to doubt AI can be conscious. The belief that they can is based on a faulty metaphor. It's this metaphor that the brain is a computer. The brain does do computations. It has neurons that fire on and off a Little bit like transistors. But if you press on that metaphor, you realize it doesn't hold up. Every experience you have physically rewires your brain. Your brain is the product of your life experiences. It's been shaped and pruned in a completely different way than mine, and they're not interchangeable. So this idea that consciousness. Consciousness is an algorithm you could run on something else is nuts. The other reason I don't think they can become conscious is that there's good reason to think that consciousness begins with our feelings, that it's our body talking to our brain that generates feelings that then become thoughts. And so the sensation of hunger is a bodily sensation, travels up to our brainstem, then into our cortex, where we make a plan to find some food. But it begins with these simple bodily feelings. And I don't see computers having feelings. To have feelings, you need a body, you need vulnerability, you probably need mortality, and computers don't have that.

[C]

All right, well, you looked at plants, you looked at robots, you looked at AI, and of course, you looked at yourself and the human race in general. In the end, what did you take away from your journey? And do you feel like at the end, you know anything more about consciousness than you did before?

[D]

Oh, I think I know a lot more about it. I may not know how it springs from brains or wherever it springs from, but I acquired just a deep appreciation of this incredible gift we have. We have this private space of incredible freedom and imagination, and that I think we're kind of squandering it. I think by forming relationships with chatbots, by filling our time scrolling on our phones rather than looking at what's going on around us, we're squandering this gift we have. You know, I found that meditation was a wonderful way to kind of put a fence around my consciousness for a certain period every day. You know, just 20 minutes. But it's a precious time where I put down my phone, I let my mind do what it wants to do, and come out of it feeling this is too precious a gift to squander.

[C]

Well, that's a lovely thought. The idea that meditation can possibly bring us into a deeper connection to our own consciousness and also perhaps a return to the lantern consciousness that you talked about that children have. And I should note that we, of course, are not endorsing the use of psychedelics. I feel I need to say that. That you can certainly say that it's worked for you, but we are not endorsing that. That is obviously up to each individual. All right, any last thought you would like readers to take away from your book?

[D]

Only this, that I really think we're approaching a very interesting moment for humanity. It has to do with AI. There may be machines that, even though they're not conscious, are smarter than we are and can do things we can't do. And at the same time, we are learning that more of nature is conscious. And so who are we? Are we more like the thinking machines or are we more like the feeling animals? And I don't know which team we should be on. I'm kind of leaning toward the animal team.

[C]

Michael Pollan's new book is a World Appears A Journey Into Consciousness. Michael, thank you so much. Much.

[D]

Thank you, Indira. It's a pleasure talking to you.