Depression, anxiety, addiction, mental

disorders that involve a rigidity of

thought. What psychedelics appear to do

is break those habits of thought. What

is the cost of this though? It's a great

question.

One of the 100 most influential people

in the world.

Please welcome Michael Pollan. You've

written six New York Times bestsellers

and they're on such a diverse range of

topics. Two of the topics I've worked on

have turned into movements. I was

writing a piece on the meat industry and

how [ __ ] up it is and it led to this

movement to try to reform agriculture.

Then I got into psychedelics.

They're much better than the results for

antidepressants when they came on the

scene and we're talking about potential

cures not simply symptoms. There are

risks with this and we don't talk about

them nearly enough and people are going

to get hurt.

One of the immersive journalistic

pursuits you embarked on was this topic

of caffeine. It allows us to function

better. It allows us to work harder,

longer. You're feeling the clearing of

the mental fog.

I can tell you the cost of doing heroin

every day, but no one can seem to tell

me the cost of having three cups of

coffee a day. If you really want to

understand your relationship to this

drug, you have to

So without further ado, I'm Steven

Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO

USA edition. I hope nobody's listening.

But if you are,

then please keep this to yourself.

[Music]

Michael, I have to say it's a real a

huge honor to speak to you. When I

departed from my company and I started

investigating what I was interested in,

one of the things alongside DJing and

this podcast and many others was

psychedelics. I was so compelled by

um this apparent and I didn't have

confirmation this apparent increase in

mental health disorders in my country.

Mhm. In the UK, as you know, as I know

you've talked about many times, it's the

suicide is the single biggest killer of

men under the age of 45. And I thought

that the most sort of fulfilling thing I

could do with the next chapter of my

life was start a company in that space.

That's how I came to the psychedelics

industry. That's how I came to actually

work in the psychedelics industry. And

when I arrived in that industry, people

said your name over and over and over

again. And they told me and I'm not

blowing smoke up your ass, they told me

that I had to It was like I wasn't

allowed in the industry until I'd read

your book, right? Um

How to change your mind. It was that

much of a pivotal book for my colleagues

at the time.

You've written six New York Times

bestsellers.

And they're on such a diverse a range of

topics. To be so successful in such a

diverse range of topics in writing, my

first question to you that I wanted to

ask is

as you look back on your life and your

career,

why were you successful?

What was it about you that made you

successful?

I think finding the right topics. I I

had a nose for topics that most people

weren't paying attention to. I I felt

very lucky. I was writing in these

uncompetitive spaces. Nobody was writing

about psychedelics except, you know, the

small handful of people within the

psychedelic community who write these

books for one another that nobody else

reads and they and

So I had I've I I I remember thinking

the whole time I was writing that book

is like, where is everybody? Am I making

a mistake here investing so much in

this? Um no one else is writing about

it. And the same was true with food.

There was very when I started writing

about food and agriculture, very little

being written. So

a willingness to go into places that

other people, you know, weren't working

in. I don't like writing in competitive

environments. I'm not fast enough.

Um so that was one thing.

Um

I think there's something about the way

I structure stories. So I don't start on

page one with all the answers. And if

you read the first page of anything I've

written, I'm kind of an idiot on page

one. Um I've got questions. I don't have

answers.

And so my books are kind of detective

stories or, you know, I I just tell

about the process of my figuring things

out and going to this person and

learning this and having this experience

and learning that.

And I think that readers don't like to

be lectured at and um and I don't do

that. I I take them along on the

journey. When when I think about

starting a business, one of the pieces

of advice that I would and I think a lot

of entrepreneurs would give a young

aspiring entrepreneur is to not pursue

something that you're not genuinely

interested about because Oh yeah, well

without question. I mean that I write

about things that I'm passionate about.

Um curiosity is the driver and

cultivating Curiosity doesn't

necessarily come naturally to everybody.

It's a muscle you have to cultivate and

you have to see the world in terms of

questions rather than answers

cuz questions are always more

interesting than answers. Uh so I do

cultivate that. When I see something

happening, I remember when I first read

a little article in the New York Times

saying they were giving psilocybin to

cancer patients to help them deal with

their fear of death. I'm like, what's

that about? Why would you do that? Why

would you ever want to take a trip when

you got a terminal diagnosis? I don't

think I would want to do that. You know,

I just had all these questions and the

only way to answer them was to do

reporting. Was to go interview the

patients and interview the doctors

and satisfy my curiosity. So without

question, I I can't write about things

I'm not interested in. I mean, I get,

you know, and you can as you can

imagine, editors are always coming to

me, we'd like an article on this or a

book on this and I'm like,

I don't feel it. So yeah, so you do have

to you do have to care about it. I mean,

writing a book is such a long journey

with so many twists and turns and um so

if you if you don't have some

deep-seated drive

to understand something, to tell a

story,

you're going to you good chance you're

going to sink along the way. And you

really do

go all the way. That's something that

you're

Well, immersion is a big part of my work

and I think and I think that's another

that's been another key thing. I can I

you know, I've been thinking about this

a lot recently um

but I can trace the moment where I was

first exposed to the kind of journalism

that I think of myself as doing. And

that was when I was 13, my parents gave

me a a book called Paper Lion. It's a

book of sports writing. It was about

football by a writer named George

Plimpton.

He was a literary person but a sports

writer too and loved sports writing and

um

he was kind of bored with how sports

writing was done then, which is, you

know, it's that cynical cigar-chomping

guy on the sidelines with the hat who's

just been there, done that, seen it all,

has no sense of wonder or excitement

anymore.

And he thought there's a way to reinvent

this form. And he and what he did was he

persuaded uh the Detroit Lions, American

football team, to let him um train with

them over the summer, summer training

camp, and then start in a exhibition

game at the beginning of the season

as quarterback.

So this guy had never played

professional sports at all.

Um was not an athlete and there he was

um facing this line of giant guys coming

at him.

And he could write about football in a

way that no sports writer could but

neither any football player could

because they had been doing it since

they were 10 or six

and they no longer saw it freshly. It

was a job.

But he had this incredible sense of

wonder and humor cuz he's a fish out of

water and it opened up all these funny

narrative possibilities.

And I realized that book just sat with

me. I loved that book. So when I started

writing,

I forget which book it was in. Um

I real I think it was my second book. It

was a book about architecture and then I

realized I couldn't write this book

unless I built something myself.

And so finding how to put my finding the

way to put myself in the story

is uh been key for me. And with

agriculture, you know, I bought a cow

and followed him through the food

system. Wait, you you bought a cow?

I did. I I I was writing a piece uh that

became a chapter in The Omnivore's

Dilemma

on the meat industry and how [ __ ] up

it is and um

and feed lots and and the drugs they

give the animals.

And that was my assignment from the New

York Times and I found this uh and I was

going to do the piece in terms of I was

going to follow one animal through the

whole system from insemination to

slaughter.

And

um this was a piece called Power Steer

that was published in the New York Times

uh and you it's on my website if you

want to um check it out for free.

But along the way, one of the ranchers

said, "If you really want to understand

our business, you should buy one of

these animals." And I thought

immediately, this is a great idea.

Because it's going to do two things.

It's going to give me a character, even

though it's an animal,

um which, you know, having an animal

hero in a piece is always a good thing.

And it's going to give me a different

kind of access when I get to the feed

lot and the slaughterhouse cuz I own

this animal. I'm not just a journalist.

And so I I picked out this animal,

number 534.

Um and I followed him and I you know, I

I met him on the ranch where he was born

and then I had a reunion with him in the

feed lot where he ended up, you know,

several months later.

I'm super intrigued by what happened to

this cow.

Oh yeah, well.

Were you emotionally attached to it at

all when that when it got, you know,

reached its end end of its days? I was a

little. I didn't They wouldn't

Something happened. So I had to publish

the piece before he was slaughtered.

Right. He was slau uh they wanted to

publish the piece. I handed it in in

February. They wanted to publish it in

March and he wasn't going to get

slaughtered till June. I wanted to wait

because I still had very good access cuz

nobody knew I was writing an exposé on

the on the meat industry. I was just

some goofball following the life of this

cow.

And um but when the piece came out, the

slaughterhouse is like, "We're not doing

business with Pollan anymore."

And uh so I was hoping to retrieve the

steaks and eat them or or try to eat

them and see what I thought about it.

And um but they wouldn't they wouldn't

play anymore.

Um

And it's interesting when this piece

came out,

there was a whole explosion in the

American media of people who wanted to

save the cow cuz they knew he hadn't

been killed yet.

And I had people I had someone in

write me

a movie producer in Beverly Hills wrote

and say, "I want to buy your your 534."

And I said, "What are you going to do

with it?" I'm going to put it on my

front lawn.

And

I was like,

"You know,

saving one animal is not going to fix

the food system." And everybody thought

that way. There was even a telethon on a

vegan radio station in New Jersey. They

were raising money and they would pay me

anything I wanted for this animal.

And I'm like, "This is not This is

this is not how you change the meat

system by like having this poster boy

steer."

And they actually likened it to the

underground railroad, that saving one

slave was worth it. I was like, "That's

interesting." Um

And so I did not sell it.

And it went through the process and

somebody ate it. But it wasn't me.

There's something

sort of telling about that about the

human condition where we believe that

one sort of surface-level act of

apparent, probably virtue signaling, but

apparent goodness is

is enough or that we don't really care

about the systemic No. Systems are hard

to deal with, right? We're we're we

evolved to deal with individuals and

stories of individuals. And that's why

this story was powerful cuz it was about

an individual cow.

But what matters is the system. This you

know, I I I chose it because it was

representative of the system. It was a

very typical animal going through a

typical start out on grass kind of

idyllic situation in in

South Dakota, move on to this horrible

feedlot where they stand in their own

manure all day and eat corn which makes

them sick and they have to take drugs.

And then they go through this

slaughterhouse process.

Which I described even though I didn't

get to witness. But I think we have

trouble dealing with systems.

And so we we we always have the poster

child, you know? I mean, you look how

you know, look at all the nonprofits how

they advertise, right? There's one

animal or there's one child that you're

going to save with your donation. And I

just think it's a limitation of our

imaginations. That's what I was thinking

of a very recent example of that which

is the tragic death of George Floyd and

how that sparked people around the

world, specifically on Instagram posting

a black tile.

As a black male, I looked at that and

thought this is like the easy thing to

do, right? But it doesn't solve the

systemic issues of sort of race and race

relations and discrimination. But like

we can all do the like virtue signaling

socially hashtag whatever black tile.

But again, the the complexity of the

system below it that's kind of caught

might be the cause of some of these

things is just

Does anybody really care to deal with

that? You know, it's like I think it's

just overwhelming to people. And

you know, I don't I mean, it is virtue

signaling. I mean, all over Berkeley

where I live, people still have Black

Lives Matter signs in their windows, you

know, everywhere. Like when are they

going to take them down?

Are they ever going to take them down?

I understand the value of expressing

that point of view, but there's so much

more that needs to be done. What does

need to be done when we're thinking

about sort of rewiring systems?

Is it education? Is it political? Is it

I tend to think it's about law.

I think you can't legislate morality,

but you can change laws and make certain

kinds of

activity discrimination illegal. Um

You know, we're approaching it in

America at the level of everyone's soul.

We're trying to reform everyone's soul

with anti-racism campaigns and things

like that. We'll see if it works.

I tend to think it doesn't work.

And one of the things that I've been

very discouraged by is the collapse in

support for Black Lives Matter, which

had majority support after that George

Floyd summer. And now it doesn't. It's

been

politicized, right?

Yeah, and and it's been fought against

by Republicans. And

but I also think

shaming people is not the way to get

them to change.

And there was a lot of that. And and I

see a lot of this on college campuses. I

see a lot of this throughout the

culture. I understand the instinct. Um

but I think you get I think you invite a

backlash.

Um

That's not the best way to get people to

change. And I think in fact it can have

the opposite effect. I think

from what I've observed specifically

around this issue of Black Lives Matter,

that shame that I saw in the wake of

George Floyd's death only resulted in

this kind of like apparent social

compliance, not change. Like, "Okay, now

I have to pretend to be this person."

And that like compliance again is not

what we're looking for. I did a big

tweet thread about how I felt white

people were being shamed into either

speaking out, saying something profound

or or other. When really

for me it was actually

the least natural reaction to to the

scenes that I saw in that video of

George Floyd's death would be

doing a tweet or posting. I even I spent

weeks like processing it and then I was

being shamed. Steve, why aren't you

speaking up about black people? And I

just thought, you know, like

I you know, and all of that again it

made me

it made it didn't bring me closer to

waving the flags. It just made me feel

like

I don't know, kind of disillusioned by

it all.

So you're right, shamed Yeah, there was

a lot pressure to immediately express

your solidarity Yeah. with Black Lives

Matter. And and if you didn't, there was

something wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. I I definitely saw a lot of

that.

Um

I don't know. I just think we need I

think our politics has to be organized

around

more positive emotions. I mean, make

people feel really good about social

change, about um

And I think, you know, really concrete.

I think the way we hire people needs to

change. I think the way we promote

people needs to change. I think I think

that there's certain still certain kinds

of discrimination that have to be

outlawed.

Um

I mean, the biggest thing going on at

the same time of Black Lives Matter is

taking away the ability of African

Americans to vote.

You know, voter suppression. That is so

concrete and you need those votes in

order to change things. And so while

we're working on, you know, our souls,

we're losing the franchise, which

you know, the Civil Rights Movement has

fought long and hard.

Um it's we're going backwards.

So um

I think it's I think we should consider

whether this politics is working or not.

Um

I would suggest it might not be.

I would agree. Um we we started talking

about the the topic of like immersive

journalism. One of the

one of the sort of immersive

journalistic pursuits you embarked on

was this topic of caffeine. Which I

found it really really interesting

because I believe there's a cost to

everything in life just generally. And

the cost is always harder to see. And

with caffeine in the culture,

specifically in business, and even I

could see it sort of taking hold in my

own life. This topic of caffeine, I'm

like, people never talk about the cost

of it as if it's the super drug. We take

it, it just sends us up.

There's no free lunch. Exactly, right?

So I and I started thinking, with

anxiety on the rise, is there is there a

risk that this sort of tampering with

our um

our emotional state is going to ruin the

system that regulates us naturally and

make us go up, okay, fine, when we take

caffeine, but then the down, like every

other drug, like heroin and cocaine, is

going to be

equally

destructive?

Yeah, I mean,

I you know, you're talking about the law

of compensation, I think is what Ralph

Waldo Emerson called it.

And that that there is there's always

some compensating thing. There is no

free lunch. And

and that was a real issue as people were

trying to understand how caffeine worked

because it seemed to be a free lunch.

Here was something with zero calories

that gave you more energy.

Caffeine works by blocking the action of

a

neurotransmitter or neuromodulator,

technically, called adenosine. It's a

chemical that we all have in our bodies

that

over the course of the day the levels

rise. And it um

plugs into a certain receptor in the

brain. It's all over the brain. I think

it's other parts of the body, too.

And adenosine is your body's signal to

slow down, get ready for sleep. It

builds sleep pressure. Um

And what caffeine does is it fits

exactly in the same receptor and and

hijacks it. Basically blocks the

adenosine from getting to that receptor.

So the adenosine is still in your body,

but it's not acting on your brain cuz it

can't get into those receptors.

When the caffeine leaves your system,

which takes a while to do,

all that adenosine that's been building

up,

comes in. And so you're more tired than

you were before. So you have this kind

of rebound exhaustion. So you're really

borrowing that energy from the future

rather than creating new energy out of

nothing.

It's still very useful under certain

circumstances. I'm not a critic of

caffeine.

It's it might be my favorite drug.

Um

And And tried a whole bunch. Um

and it was immersive journalism in that

in this case I had to stop doing

something rather than doing something.

So in How to Change Your Mind, I tried

LSD and psilocybin and 5-MeO-DMT and all

these things that were really scary and

hard

for me, but this was harder. Giving up

caffeine for 3 months

um

really was a stretch.

And but it was a really interesting

experiment and it taught me that there's

a great value in giving things up

temporarily

just to understand your relationship to

them, understand your dependence on

them. What was hardest about it?

Well, there was the withdrawal, which

took a few days and was very unpleasant.

I felt like kind of muzzy-headed. I felt

like this veil had fallen between me and

reality.

Uh things seemed less fresh, less

immediate. Um I didn't have headache the

headaches that some people report and I

didn't have the flu-like symptoms, but I

didn't feel myself.

And uh I was sluggish. I couldn't

concentrate. I couldn't write for the

first week. Um I just I I I I said in

the book I felt like an unsharpened

pencil. I just didn't have it. You know,

it takes a certain amount of ego

strength to launch into a writing

project uh or launch into it every day.

And I just didn't have it. And uh so I

was like uh I don't know I don't know if

I can do this for 3 months.

After the first week or so, I found my

way back that I could work, but I still

didn't feel myself. And and it began to

occur to me that how curious is that

because

what does that say if if I feel more

normal on this drug than off this drug

cuz I'm I'm through the withdrawal

period.

But I came to see that my my normal

default consciousness was caffeinated

consciousness as it is for a great many

of us. I mean, 90% of people on Earth

have a daily relationship with caffeine

whether it's in um

tea, coffee, soda, chocolate. Um it's in

a lot of things. You know, you you meet

people who say I I can't talk to you

until I've had a cup of coffee. I you

know, I I'm not civil. I can only read

the paper. You know, people who just

don't enter into social relations till

they have a cup of coffee. The reason is

they're going through withdrawal and

they're cranky and they know it. The

amount of people probably in this room

now there's probably I don't know 12

people in this building and of them I

think probably 12 of them have had that

drug today. Yeah. With the society as

you've said people saying I can't

function I can't have a conversation

till I've had a cup What is the cost of

this though? Because it

I can tell you the cost of doing heroin

every day. Or pretty much Yeah, this is

subtler. Even sugar I can tell you the

cost of doing sugar having you know,

huge amounts of sugar every day. But no

one can seem to tell me the cost of

having three cups of coffee a day. Yeah.

Well,

the costs

I mean, if it it depends on how it

agrees with you. I mean, for some people

on three cups a day they get pretty

jittery. Um and

it passes over from this very positive

feeling to this nervous feeling and

that's that's a cost.

Um I think the larger cost is to our

identity as animals. We were designed I

think to have rhythms as animals do that

you know, you wake up when the sun comes

up and you start going to sleep when it

gets dark and that we were tied into

these natural cycles

dictated by the light. Um

and it broke that connection. It broke

that temporal connection. And so there

may be some cost as species and we

struggle with sleep and sleep is a huge

deal and sleep is a you know,

you need sleep to be healthy and sane.

You need it for your mental health and

coffee does damage your sleep.

Now, I put a little asterisk next to

that because if you can stop drinking it

after that morning cup, you're going to

have very little in your system when you

go to sleep. But

a cup of coffee you drink at noon,

a quarter of that caffeine will still be

circulating at midnight. So it takes a

while to get out of your system.

Most of the caffeine researchers I

interviewed do not drink

coffee or tea.

Interesting.

I mean, these are people who understand

sleep and the importance of sleep. And

one of the benefits I didn't mention one

of the benefits of being off coffee is I

slept like a teenager. It was fantastic.

I had some great sleeps. My sort of

logical mind when it when it understands

how other drugs impact us and the

withdrawals and how they impact our

rhythms our natural rhythms. Even think

like testosterone if you take too much

of it your body stops producing it. If

you do if you have too many sleeping

pills, your body struggles to sleep

without them. So I I reflect on coffee

and go

surely

I'm an idiot so don't take this as a

truth. Surely um if I have coffee every

day, I'm going to struggle to like

self-regulate

um my ups and downs and I and if my if

I'm forcing my body to go up, then my

body will come down even further than it

would ordinarily. Or you'll take

something else to make it come down. Yes

and then I'll have to take a sleeping

pill or alcohol. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So no, people do get into these cycles

of of coffee and alcohol uh or tea and

alcohol. Um

So yeah, there I think there's always a

cost, but I would say

historically there have been the

benefits have outweighed

the costs of I mean, compared to other

drugs

um

I think that uh we've gained a lot. And

there's the whole social aspect of

coffee. I mean, the coffeehouse scene in

London was just so vibrant and you know,

the the

um the insurance in Lloyd's of London

began in a coffeehouse and the the

London Stock Exchange began in a

coffeehouse and

um

you know, English literature was changed

by the rhythms of conversation in the

coffeehouse and it was this place where

the classes could mix in a in a way they

couldn't in the tavern or anywhere else.

And you know, you can make a case and I

try to in the book that the

Enlightenment and the Age of Reason owed

a lot to caffeine.

So I think it had really positive effect

in that it got people who were

enibriated on alcohol all the time to

think clearly.

Um and that was a big deal cuz I don't

think people realize how much alcohol

people drank um prior to 1650. It was

the safest thing you could drink because

the water was contaminated with disease

and people understood that. That's how

you got plague was you know, using the

wrong water pump and things like that.

Um alcohol the fermentation process and

the alcohol itself disinfected water to

some extent, but not as effectively as

boiling it.

And coffee and tea the first time we

boiled water to drink.

Um so the the the countries that

embraced coffee and tea suddenly their

public health was much improved. They

had much lower rates of disease. So that

was also a boon. So there are a lot of

positives. You talk about the reason why

why coffee is addictive anyway from a

pollination perspective which I found

really No one's ever said that before.

Yeah, so that was a one of the

interesting um bits of research that I

came across. Um so like a lot of drugs

that plants produce, it begins its life

as a pesticide. Um most of these

alkaloids that we think are so great

whether it's cocaine or um

uh caffeine or

um oh god, there's so many of them and

they're not occurring to me right now.

Plants evolved these as chemicals that

would um kill insects or discourage

insects from eating them.

And then we found that they had

interesting effects on our brains if you

got the dose right. And um so caffeine

was designed

it kills insects at high doses. It also

stops other plants from germinating

nearby. So it you get more habitat if

you if you if your leaves contain

caffeine and and they drop. Um

but the cleverness of plants is such

that some of them figured out that a

really low dose of caffeine in their

nectar

would attract bees.

And the uh the orange the citrus family

does this reliably. So they've

repurposed this pesticide as an

attractant cuz you don't put pesticide

in your nectar. That's where you attract

insects.

And um it turns out bees really like

caffeine

and they will go preferentially to

flowers that offer them caffeine. We

don't know if they get a buzz.

Um

but they do prefer it. And it does for

them what it does for us. It improves

their memory. They're more likely to go

back to the flower that gave them

caffeine than any other flower and

remember where it was. They will also

work harder as um so they become better

workers basically. So the plants are

manipulating the bees to do their

bidding. We knew that, but in a much

deeper way than we understood by

essentially, you know, drugging them.

And then humans came along and just got

humans yeah. Yeah. But but the curious

thing is why should a pesticide have

these mental effects for us?

And the theory I advance in the book is

that if you're a plant and you're and

you're bothered by pests,

the best strategy is not to kill the

pest. Because if you do that, if you

just put out a lethal chemical, um

you're going to kill

a bunch of the pests, but the resistant

members and there are always some

mutations that give resistance, they're

going to explode. Their population will

explode and you will and your tool will

be gone. It won't work anymore.

But if you merely discombobulate

your

predator, your pest, confuse it, which

psychedelics and other drugs do, uh make

it lose its appetite, which most drugs

do, um

you're much better off cuz it won't it

it won't have this kind of selective

pressure. Interesting. So I got this

insight from my cat Frank who

um had a real issue with catnip. I I had

a catnip plant in my garden and my

garden was fenced.

And every night when I was going to out

to the garden to pick something for

dinner, Frank would follow me

and look up at me, and he wanted to be

shown where the catnip was. And I would

show him to the catnip, and he would

roll in it and get really stoned. And um

and then forget where he had seen the

catnip. And he had to be reminded every

single day. This is an intelligent cat.

Like, where was that plant?

The plant had drugged him so that he

would lose track of where it was.

Oh, wow. So, I thought that was a pretty

clever plant. Certainly more clever than

Frank was.

Speaking of clever plants, then.

Transition, yes.

wasn't bad, was it?

Um

I on the topic of psychedelics, which is

I referenced at the start,

when I first heard about the concept of

psychedelics, I, like you cuz I've heard

you talk about your initial sort of

perception of them, was terrified by the

thought of losing my consciousness. I

also thought as you know, you talked

about cancer anxiety in your writing and

how patients with suffering with cancer,

I think the last thing I'd want to do is

trip if I had cancer. But also, another

point that you made in in a talk you you

gave was I saw myself as a very logical,

scientific, physical person, and I

thought that I couldn't be that and Mhm.

spiritual or whatever however you want

to describe it or really anything I

couldn't think or feel.

Tell me about your journey then from

going from that place

to psychedelics. I I I I know you it's

well well documented in um the journey

you've taken, but I but I really want to

understand how your perception shifted

and where it sits today as a spiritual

Yeah. individual.

So, I did see myself as a very

materialist uh in my philosophy. Um

I thought that the laws of nature we

knew explained everything and anything

else was supernatural, you know? And I'd

talk to a lot of people who'd done

psychedelics and had this big spiritual

experience. And so, I was curious about

it cuz I did I I said somewhere that I

thought I was kind of spiritually

[ __ ] I just It was a part of myself

I hadn't developed.

And I but I did have this misconception

that uh to be spiritual is to believe in

supernatural things. Yeah. Okay. And

that's kind of a scientific view. It's

an assumption, you know, scientists

assume this about spiritual people.

I had a couple big experiences on

psilocybin at the as I was uh

researching the book, more immersive

journalism. And um Nice excuse. Uh I

know I you know, I did feel

I was curious to try these things, but I

also felt compelled. I think my readers

expect me to do stuff, you know, that

I'm writing about and not just be on the

sidelines. And so, I did feel some real

pressure to do it. But I was I did these

conversations with volunteers in these

studies and individuals who had, you

know,

amazing experiences that completely

changed their attitude toward death. I

mean, people who who lost their fear of

death after one 4-hour experience on

psilocybin. I mean, how does that

happen? You I mean, you you have to be

curious about that.

Um Psilocybin being the active

ingredient in magic

In in magic mushrooms, yeah. Um but in

these trials, they get it in a pill

form. It's kind of purified, but it's

the same same drug exactly.

Um

So, I had a couple really interesting

experiences um that reset my

understanding of what spiritual meant.

Um and

my experiences had to do with powerful

connection to something bigger than me

that I felt.

Um specifically for me, it was the

plants in my garden

that I mean, I'm a gardener. I've been

writing about plants one way or another

for a long time.

And

I've always admired plants and I think,

you know, as we were talking about the

the the the citrus plants with the

caffeine, I think they're really

intelligent um in a very different way

than we are.

But it was that was kind of an

intellectual conceit. I didn't feel them

as

um

conscious beings.

And during this trip I did, I was in my

garden and all the plants were like

talking to me. I mean, not literally

talking to me, but they were returning

my gaze. They were present. They had uh

sentience. Um and it was and they were

very benign. They They liked me.

I took care of them, you know, what do

you I fertilized them.

Um

but it was a very powerful connection to

nature that I hadn't felt before. Most

of us when we walk through the natural

world, we we sort of feel we're sort of

part of nature, but we're sort of not

part of nature. We're all alienated from

nature. That's our human thing. And it's

our human arrogance, actually, but um

uh but it's also a failure of

imagination to see ourselves as animals.

And but that's what we are.

Um we're a little different. And in

their ways in which we have transcended

nature or think we have. But anyway,

I felt more one creature among many than

I had ever felt in my life. I was just

another creature in the garden. And and

it was kind of liberating. It was this

wonderful feeling. It was It was a great

moment. So, I had that experience, and

then I had another experience of

uh you know, what people call ego death

of, you know, total ego dissolution on a

high dose psilocybin, a guided

psilocybin trip. It's not something you

want to try on your own.

And um

uh I saw myself kind of explode in a

cloud of Post-it notes, blue Post-it

notes, and then they fell to the ground,

and there I was this

this um pool of paint on the ground. And

that was me, but I was observing it from

this new perspective that was completely

untroubled by what should have been a

catastrophe. And it was fine. This is

how things are. And then having no ego

anymore,

I had no walls, and I just merged into

this piece of music that the guide was

playing, this Bach unaccompanied cello

suite.

That was

undescribably beautiful. And I but there

was no subject-object relationship. I

just became the music. I just joined it.

It was the most profound experience

listening to music I'd ever had.

So, I came out of these experiences like

rethinking what is spiritual mean.

And I came to understand it. It means

having a profound connection with

something larger than you.

Um it's a kind of love.

It's um

it could, you know, some people have it

with the universe. I had it with the

plants in my garden uh and this piece of

music. Um

And that um

that sense of profound connection,

that's what I think of as spiritual now.

Um and there's nothing um

there's nothing supernatural about it.

You could say, well, your plants weren't

really conscious,

but they are sentient beings. And

we're the first culture in history

that's forgotten that. You know, our

scientific worldview has given us this

incredible blind spot about the

sentience all around us, you know, going

back to Descartes

um

who, you know, thought that we were the

only thinking creature and and no other

creature felt pain or had consciousness.

Um

And most of us still sort of believe

that, I think, even though we're

learning that sentience goes way down.

Um

and that I just read a paper saying that

insects may have consciousness.

Wrap your head around that. Um

Christ. Yeah.

Think about all the Well, there there

are a lot of ethical There are a lot of

ethical implications. Um

So, so my point is though that

the perception that you're surrounded by

sentient beings is not supernatural. We

are.

And what the um psychedelics are

removing is this is this filter that's

allowed us to see things in this very

narrow, materialist, scientific

worldview. Paper was published uh just

this week

by the group at Johns Hopkins. Roland

Griffith was the author. He's the guy I

was just telling you about who studies

both caffeine and psilocybin.

And they they did a big uh observational

study of people who've had a psychedelic

experience to see if their uh how their

beliefs changed. And they And the thing

they looked at was really interesting.

They looked at attribution of

consciousness to other beings.

Um and it went up dramatically.

Um so, people who

I think normally 13% of people think

plants have some consciousness, it went

up to like 58%. And that was the most

dramatic gain, but everything did. I

mean, people attributing consciousness

to animals, to cats and dogs, to

insects,

uh it all went up. Now, you might think,

okay, psychedelics increases your

magical thinking, but they also checked,

did you believe in the Loch Ness Monster

and a bunch of other kind of magical

nature things?

Um and they didn't. There was no change

there.

But this attribution of consciousness

went way up across the board.

And so, what does that tell us? Well,

every traditional culture has believed

that there are many species that are

conscious, that are sentient.

Um

and that um this is something we've

unlearned.

And I think you one way to interpret is

psychedelics

um

you know, unlearns the unlearning,

basically, and and allows us to see

something that all children see and most

traditional people see,

which is the fact that we're not the

only thinking

being.

Um So,

that's a that's a spiritual question,

too.

I my first real experience with a

psychedelic was San Pedro. Uh-huh. You

know the cactus? Yeah, I have. Really

interesting experience. So, I drunk this

drink um with my partner, and we

you? Peru. Okay. So, I don't think it

grows that well in England. No. No,

yeah. You can grow it out here. Yeah,

well, yeah, I yeah, I I have I've heard,

but I but it was a really interesting

experience. I first two two three hours,

the guy the shaman takes us to a to a

cave cuz it's raining, and nothing. I'm

sat there for three hours, nothing.

I leave the cave and I go back out into

the hills, the beautiful sort of grassy

hills with trees and everything. And the

minute I got outside, I think within 2

minutes, I was convinced and I've said

it to my team before, I was convinced

that me and the plants

were the same thing and really that they

were like they were like looking at me.

Mhm. I was looking at them and they were

like looking at me and it was the first

time I felt like I had, as you describe

it,

a almost human relationship, even with

the the grassy hills, but it was really

these plants in front of me. It was like

they were an audience now. Were they the

cactus? Or not? They were just they were

just these these these tall plants and

it felt like they were like looking at

me and trying to tell me something and

you're right, the experience I had was I

totally

didn't matter in the same way that I'd

mattered 3 hours ago. My all sort of

sense of self-importance had had gone

and I was just as important as this this

little plant.

Mhm. And it was and as you describe it,

it was we were the same thing and I was

in awe of that that feeling.

Obviously, you don't forget the feeling.

You don't forget the memory, but you

almost you lose the feeling a little

bit. You do. I think you do. I think you

go back to baseline to some extent, not

completely.

Um

I can

I don't know. I find that I can

return to some of those ways of

thinking. So, my involvement with

psychedelics led to a meditation

practice.

And um

I think psychedelics are very good for

starting a meditation practice.

Um

I could never do it. You know, I was I

was just a very frustrated meditator

before that when I tried and um

but I'd had certain kind of paths of

consciousness laid down during the

psychedelic experience that I could get

on again.

Not so much the peak experience, you

know, the fireworks. Um

and that's what people end up talking

about or writing about, but a lot of the

psychedelic experience is this long

tail, this long denouement.

Uh as you're coming down, you're

regaining control over what you're

thinking about, you can direct your

attention here or there, yet you're not

distractible. You are really

in a zone.

And

that state is a meditative state and

having laid down those tracks, you can

get back to them, I think. Um with work

and sometimes it's a matter of thinking

about an image I saw on a psychedelic

trip that helps me get there.

Um

So,

I think that's one way you keep it

alive.

Um because psychedelics aren't a

practice. You just you can't do it that

often. You don't want to do it that

often. It it takes a toll. It's hard

work. Um and and that's one of the

reasons that I think they're not

habit-forming and they're not is that

after a big psychedelic trip,

you're not saying when can I do it

again, you're saying do I ever have to

do it again? And um cuz it's it's hard

work and it can be overwhelming.

But

there is a residue that stays with you.

And some people I've, you know, really

have seen their lives turned around and

they have a big

uh you know, they take away a lot.

Um I I for me it's been subtler things

like that, but I I I can use meditation

to kind of

nurture that flame.

One of the as you you talked there about

people's lives turning around after a

psychedelic experience. Obviously, the

the studies that have been done on

psilocybin and many other psychedelic

compounds

um

are pretty profound when you read about

them. The the impact of one dose, one

trip in the right set and setting on

things like treatment-resistant

depression are really like almost hard

to believe. Yeah. And um

and I think we should take them with a

grain of salt. I mean, I think that one

of the things to understand, they're

very impressive results. They're much

better than the results for

antidepressants when they when they came

on the scene. They were approved with

like marginal utility. I think they they

scored like two percentage points better

than placebos.

You know, but it doesn't take a lot to

get a drug approved. Um here you're

seeing substantial sustained changes in

people, um which is great. But it's

important to understand the early

studies on any drug tend to be more

positive than they are later.

Part of the reason is that that the

researchers are optimizing everything.

They have very trained well-trained

guides. They they can exclude anyone

who's too depressed or

has some other problems. So, they're

they're you know, they're they're not

giving it to thousands of people,

they're giving it to hundreds of people.

So, I think we could expect as we get to

phase three and then introduction that

the effects won't be quite as good as

they've been. But so far, they've been

like two-thirds of people in most of

these trials, whether it's MDMA for

trauma or psilocybin for depression or

addiction,

have um you know, lost their diagnosis.

And that's pretty extraordinary. And

we're talking about potential cures, not

simply symptoms, dealing with symptoms.

Um so, it's very exciting research. I

think I'm a little concerned about the

kind of irrational exuberance that's

surrounding the space. There's all this

investment money. There's there's more

capital than there are good ideas, I I

would say. That's my reading of the

situation. Um

and people are going to get hurt, you

know. So, I I just see a bubble here

that concerns me, but there is something

real here. Um

and I just hope we can be careful about

how we, you know, that we don't uh build

up people's expectations, especially

people with mental illness that they

think they've got a cure. It doesn't

work for everybody.

And and some people have really hard

experiences on psychedelics.

That tends to be the case with that sort

of bubble that you described tends to be

the case with all new industries, the

internet, cryptocurrencies,

psychedelics. They have this euphoria

bubble and then there's a a flattening

where the the true value emerges over

time. Especially on Silicon Valley,

which is some like some

fashion-conscious money. Um And cuz I've

seen this, you know, having worked in

the food space, uh agriculture, there

was I remember this moment in 2008 or

so, uh where all the Silicon Valley

people were investing in ethanol. They

thought this was the green this green

energy. This is turning corn into fuel.

And it was clear to anybody close to the

situation that in fact it took more

energy to make ethanol than you got out

of it. It was just a way to get rid of a

surplus of corn on the part of the

farmers and the government.

But everybody jumped in. Bill Gates, um

you know, the the Sand Hill Road crowd

and um and you could watch this and then

they very quickly realized, oh, this

isn't such a good business. And and then

then they got into food and they got

into mock meats and that's where they

are now. They're in the food industry as

well as psychedelics and they're going

to be very disappointed at the returns

in the food industry, which like if

you're lucky you're two or three

percent. Um it doesn't scale like

software.

Some of the evidence in these clinical

trials does show the efficacy of the

psychedelics psychedelic compounds. And

one of the questions I had and I know

that, you know, you've done a huge

amount of research on this is if

psychedelics are effective, even in some

cases, what does that say about the

causes of these It's a great question.

Yeah.

The honest, complete answer is we don't

know, but the best theory that that I've

come across is that if you look at the

different disorders that psychedelics

appears to be effective in treating,

depression, anxiety,

uh obsessive-compulsive disorder,

addiction, all of these are mental

disorders that involve a kind of

rigidity of thought.

People stuck in loops of rumination, um

inflexible thinking. They need this drug

to get through the day. Um

they have this narrative in their head

that they're a bad person, that nothing

is working in their life or they have

anxiety and they replay loops about, you

know, what makes them anxious. Um

what psychedelics appear to do, what

psilocybin appears to do is break those

habits of thought.

It's it's kind of a solvent. Um and so

that it uh shakes things up in a way

that makes the brain more plastic, more

able

to learn new patterns. Because this is

essentially people stuck in old

patterns.

And so, I think that this is probably

its contribution. The most beautiful

metaphor of this that I I I heard from a

a neuroscientist,

he said, I I think of I think think of

your mind as a hill covered in snow

and uh it would have been a mountain

except he was from Holland and they

don't have mountains. Um and your

thoughts are um sleds going down the

hill.

After a while, your thoughts are going

to keep getting drawn at like attractors

into the same grooves and it's going to

be very hard to get down the hill

without falling into those grooves.

Think of the psychedelic experience as a

fresh snowfall filling the grooves

allowing you to take any path you want

down the hill.

Um so, I think it has to do with

habitual thinking.

Rigid brains, stuck brains, uh brains

that have too much order

and need to be disordered a bit.

Um

So, you know, this all remains to be

proven. There's actually a

a group at uh Mass General at Harvard

that is looking at the whole question of

rumination and psychedelics and seeing

if that is indeed the common

denominator. Cuz we think of all these

diagnoses as

actual real things, but they're really

conventions of the psychiatry industry.

And if you read the DSM, the

the whole encyclopedia of diagnoses,

every 5 years they throw out a bunch,

they add a bunch. They don't really know

what they're doing. So, I remember

asking a psychiatrist, I said, isn't it

a little weird that this same drug works

on these five different things, you

know, addiction and obsession? And he

said, well, how do you know they're

different things?

Maybe they're all different symptoms of

the same brain, same kind of brain.

And so, you know,

I mean, if you if you think about it,

anxiety is is worry about the future.

Depression is really a being a victim of

the past, but it's a similar mental

construct. And psychedelics appears to

weaken it. I read that that in that sort

of analogy of the hill and I and it

really stayed with me. That hill with

the snow, this idea that our trauma or

whatever it might be, our past

experiences have created these grooves

which we just you know, slide down every

single day and over and over again. And

you talked about previously how um

that's why there might be a case for

doing psychedelics later in life.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I I do feel I

mean, as life goes on, we become more

creatures of habit. I mean, it's just a

given.

It's about learning. We learn what

works. We learn the algorithms that get

us through the day, get us through a

fight with our spouse, get us through

negotiating with our children, whatever

it is. We have these algorithms, they're

handy, they work, they save us time. And

we are efficient creatures.

Um

But but habits blind you to reality. You

know, they they they you're one step

removed from experience. You're you're

saying, "Okay, that's the situation. I'm

going to play this tape." And you don't

you lose your sense of wonder. And

that's so important and and awe. You

know, awe is one of the most important

emotions and as we get older, you know,

kids are have this awe experience every

day, every minute, you know, it could be

a cookie, it could be walk down the

street. I mean, it's just incredible.

And the reason is that it's all new to

them and they haven't formed these

habits.

Um

And as we get older, I think that's

where the value of psychedelics is

really important because they are

reliable awe inducers

and that they

make you see things freshly. And

you know, I talk in the book about

this very common psychedelic insight

that love is the most important thing in

the world.

And we laugh and it sounds like a

Hallmark card and such a cliche, but

what is a cliche? It's just it's a truth

that's been overused and and and we

protect ourselves with the sense of

irony and banality, but love is the most

important thing in the world. So,

there's truth to that. And that the line

between banality and profundity is very

fine. And um and so you know, you're

always hearing people who have

psychedelic experiences and they come to

you with this revelation of the obvious.

Um but we need to be reminded of the

obvious.

Do you think there's another way to to

remain fresh in the mind other than

needing to do a psychedelic trip?

Because I I even relate I'm 29, but I

relate to me getting stuck in the same

patterns of thought which can diverge

into like a bitterness or like they can

So, you know, some of the some of my

patterns and habits result in happiness

and fulfillment and feelings of

contentment. And then others can result

in like bitterness and resentment and

other negative things. So, I'd love to

be able to do some a fresh fall of snow

on some of those.

Yes, I know. I know and without using

psychedelics.

I mean

learning something new, doing something

new is incredibly

revitalizing. Travel is. I mean, think

of think of like how

when you travel somewhere, you're in a

new country, you've never been there.

All your algorithms fail. Like you know

the menu is has full of unexpected

things.

Walking down the street, you don't see

the same brand names you see everywhere.

You You're So, your senses are are are

really working hard cuz you're taking in

lots of new information. That's why it's

so exhausting, but it's it's so

wonderful, too. So, I think travel is

one thing. I think learning a new skill.

You know, I think that for me, that's

really important. It's what I love about

journalism. You know, I get paid as an

adult to learn whole new fields. You

know, I'm I'm getting paid now to learn

about neuroscience and consciousness.

It's so great. Um

but you know and and some jobs don't

allow you to do that. That is in the

nature of journalism. It's in the nature

of what you do. You get to talk to

anybody you want.

say before I get I ask the question, I

was thinking I I was thinking if I was

to answer it myself, it's this. This cuz

when I walk away from these

conversations, I it's almost like

sometimes a psychedelic trip or it just

a a real shaking of what I thought to be

true.

Yeah. And it and it yeah. Oh, I get that

after I do an interview. I you know, I I

I I I came from an interview with this

neuroscientist and I was like so

exciting like to think about I hadn't

thought about things that way. And um

So, I think putting in your yourself in

situations where there's a lot of new

information and you're out of your

comfort zone. The comfort zone is the

problem, right? And um if you can put

yourself in a situation and and and also

you know, we we tend to gravitate to

what we do well. Yeah. We get reward for

that, but you know, try working on

something you don't do well. You know.

I was just thinking then about how when

people get older, they tend to go on

holidays to the same places.

Yes. When people are young, they go to

somewhere new.

They don't Yeah, they don't want to

repeat themselves. No, it's true. I

know, it's So, I found this

at this phase of life,

the psychedelic experience was really

valuable for that reason. Um that it did

cause me to rethink things, have new

perspectives.

Um and have this wonderful feeling of

awe and be reminded of these things. How

much I love plants. How much I love

love. Um relationships. I mean, the

sense of gratitude um that I I I've I

mean, this is a very common emotion for

me in after in a psychedelic trip is

gratitude for

my parents and my son and and my wife

and and um

you know, I mean, we're

we don't we don't spend nearly enough

time expressing gratitude for what we

have. We take it for granted.

And undermining the taken for granted, I

think is the most important thing that

they do.

Breath work. Something I've heard you

talk about as well.

Yeah, so breath work is a

non-pharmacological

mode of changing consciousness. It was

developed by Stan Grof, a Czech

psychiatrist who who worked in the

States for many years.

him as well? I assume for your book.

Stan's wonderful and I interviewed him

for How to Change Your Mind and Um so,

when LSD was banned in 1970,

he want he was having such good luck

with it and really believed that there

were these new you know high super

highways to the unconscious that he

wanted to figure out another way to

induce this state. And so, he studied

yogic breathing and all these

other traditional cultures that had

these trance induced trance. And it's a

pattern of breathing that you do

accompanied by usually rhythmic drumming

that for I think about 2/3 of people

will put you in a trance state that's

very much like a psychedelic state. It

was it was really eerie how it works.

Um

you basically

find yourself losing control of your

limbs. I mean, it's very physical. Yes,

you're on your back and you're dancing

and you're

and you're breathing this very unnatural

pattern of a strong exhalation,

stronger exhalation than inhalation,

very fast. I think you're

hyperventilating. I think that's what

you're doing.

Basically, yeah. And um

and I think that that probably, we don't

know this yet, but that probably is

reducing blood flow to the brain or

oxygen to the brain.

And one of the curious things about

psychedelics is not that they're

increasing brain function, but they're

decreasing it in certain important areas

including something called the default

mode network.

Uh which is the center of the brain

that's very

uh very important control center of the

brain that is involved with your sense

of self time travel into the past, into

the future,

uh the narrative self, the story you

tell yourself about your life, how you

fit everything into the story of who you

are. It's I it's if the if the ego had

an address, it would be the default mode

network.

It may be that starving that of oxygen

gets us similar effect that psychedelics

do.

Um but psychedelics

that's one of the mysteries. It's like

we think of all this extra consciousness

we get from psychedelics or expanded

consciousness, but it may be that it's

closing down certain things which allow

other things to happen. I did breath

work with um with my partner in my

girlfriend in Bali. She's training as a

breath work practitioner.

So, how did it go?

So, again, walked in super skeptical.

This guy starts telling me a bunch of

reasons why it's going to you know, the

sort of physiological reasons why it

works.

It was about 13 minute 20 minute

session.

I mean, 10 minute I didn't even notice.

I only noticed on photos after that I

was laying on my back, but my hands were

in the air. So, and I didn't even I did

not put my hands in the

Yeah, it's involuntary.

Yeah, and they were in the air for 15

minutes and it didn't hurt my muscles.

And the other thing was I

I went to the strange emotional place

where I felt huge amount of gratitude

for certain people in my life and I

actually felt the need to like apologize

for recent behavior that I'd carried

out. It just Mhm. Um It was a very

emotional experience as it is for I know

a lot of people, but it was just really

compelled me the thought that doing

something with my breathing could

have such a profound impact. And then it

got me thinking about my day-to-day

breathing which is part of the

the education about how we breathe so

shallowly.

Right.

And especially when I'm anxious, if I'm

ever anxious and I think about it, I'm

I'm I'm breathing Yeah, very shallow.

20% of what I usually breathe. So, one

of my ways now of if I do feel anxious

of counteracting that from that breath

work session

is taking 7 second inhalation, holding

it and then 7 second out. And honestly,

doing that for 20 seconds or 30 seconds

completely seems to flush out any

feelings of anxiousness.

There's a bunch of really interesting

breathing exercises. There's one that

Andrew Weil does called

4-3-7

4-3-8

and it involves

certain amount of I'm not going to

remember it right now, but certain

amount of inhalation, hold your breath,

and then exhale for longer than you

inhaled. And it's it's remarkable. I've

done it before going on stage and things

like that. It just lowers your stress

level very quickly. And I'm guessing it

lowers your blood pressure. There's a

lot we don't know about breath. I mean,

breath is amazing and

I think you can do a lot to fiddle with

your consciousness using breath. It

genuinely, of all the things that people

have prescribed or told me

the simplest thing that I've I've I've

sort of implemented in my own life when

in situations where I'm feeling stressed

before going on stage as well, before my

tour I used to do it in the the green

room, or when I'm feeling anxious or

over

diverging into sort of like overthinking

is just focusing on my breath.

My next question to you, my last

question really is is about what's next

for you. As a as a tremendously

successful author that's written about

such a diverse range of topics

I mean, I think the first question when

you walked in the door was what are you

writing about next? Yeah. It's going to

be something of deep interest. You're

going to immerse yourself. You're going

to buy a cow again, like

I don't know what I'm going to do for

this this topic. So, I'm researching

consciousness, the science and

philosophy and literature of

consciousness.

You know, one of the things that

psychedelics does is raise questions

about consciousness. You know, I talked

to you at the beginning about questions

are more interesting than answers.

It's kind of amazing that we're

conscious. I mean, you know

we could do all this stuff

automatically, but we're not. We have

this space in our heads where we see

things. We we assume other people have

consciousness too, but we can't be sure.

And

and how does 3 lb of tofu in your you

know, between your ears

produce

an experience of subjectivity, of

quality.

It's it's it's one of the greatest

mysteries left.

So, I'm going to explore all of it and

see where it takes me. You know, again,

I don't know where I'm going,

but that's the that's the exciting part

of

writing. Quick one. We bring in eight

people a month to watch these

conversations live here in the studio

when we're here in the UK and when we're

in LA.

If you want to be one of those people,

all you've got to do is hit subscribe.

You know, you said at the start that

your job is to answer questions. What is

the question that you're trying to

answer in your next project? Is it just

what consciousness is?

Yeah, what is consciousness?

There there is a couple questions under

that though. Why do we have it? Do we

What do we need it for? What does it

allow us to do?

Who

else has it? You know, if you you know,

do the insects have consciousness? Do

the plants have There are people who

believe plants are conscious. Are they?

How do you define consciousness? There's

so many subsidiary questions you have to

answer to get to the bottom of it. Um

and I think it has a lot of this

question of who else has consciousness

has a lot of political or environmental

implications.

I think that one of the reasons we got

into such trouble with the environment

is the scientific worldview for all its

power

has blinded us to the self the interests

of other creatures. And

one of the

you know, you look at Native American

culture and there's this sense that

everything is alive, everything has a

spirit to it. Um

that keeps you from doing something to

certain things to those others, right? I

mean, that that you're violating

spirits. We don't have that feeling. I

mean

our worldview allows us to see nature as

something for us to exploit

rather as our relatives as Native

Americans would describe it. So so

getting consciousness right means

getting a lot of things right. Um so,

wish me good luck.

No, I do. I'm sure you're going to do an

unbelievable job on that because you you

always have on your on your on your work

and all the books you've written take a

a different approach and I think that

yeah, you you highlighted how that comes

from a place starts with a from a place

of naivety and curiosity. I'm definitely

naive. I mean, cuz I have to learn

neuroscience for this a lot of it and

and that's a struggle for me. And some

of these theories are really

mathematical and that's really a

struggle for me.

Um but you know, that's that's the job

is finding the good explainers who can

help me to explain it and make it I get

a lot of satisfaction from taking a

subject that people think might be very

dry and difficult and and helping people

make sense of it. You know that there's

a tradition on this podcast where the

previous guest writes a question for the

next guest. They don't know who they're

writing it for. The question is

as you've juggled your life, work,

relationships, friendships, and

self-time, what things have been key to

building your resilience?

Doing new things

including taking psychedelics, which has

definitely

affected me and and

contributed to my resilience.

But I I think it's seeking out new

projects and um

doing things that break you out of

habitual ways of thinking and responding

to things.

Habit is wonderful, it's very efficient,

but it's deadening too.

So, I'm often thinking and I am a

creature of habit. I have like a whole

routine every day to get myself to the

desk to write, but

but breaking it is is I think breaking

habits I would say would be an important

one. You've spoken to that throughout

this conversation, so that's a beautiful

ending. This this idea of leaving your

comfort zones as well. Thank you. Thank

you for all the work you're doing. It's

really inspiring to me that an author

could be so powerful.

And I I hope we can have another

conversation again once your your book

about consciousness is out because I'm

sure it'll be a good conversation.

to that. It's been a great pleasure

talking to you. Thank you, Michael.

Thank you.

I had a few words to say about one of my

sponsors on this podcast. As the seasons

have begun to change, so has my diet.

And

right now, I'm just going to be

completely honest with you. I'm starting

to think a lot about slimming down a

little bit because over the last couple

of probably the last four or five

months, my diet has been pretty bad.

And it's started to show a little bit.

Really over the last two months. I go to

the gym about 80% of the time. So, I

track it with 10 of my friends in a

WhatsApp group and this tracker online

that we all use together. And so, one of

the things I'm doing now to reduce my

calorie intake and trying to get back to

being nutritionally complete in all I

eat is I'm having the Huel protein

shake. Thank you, Huel, for making a

product that I actually like. The salted

caramel is my favorite. I've got the

banana one here, which is the one my

girlfriend likes, but for me, salted

caramel is

the one.

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