Michael Pollan Returns (on consciousness)

Michael Pollan (A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness) is a science and environmental journalist. Michael returns to the Armchair Expert to discuss why choosing surrender is liberating in both psychedelics and life, what the “hard problem” of consciousness is and how we get to it, and how sentience serves homeostasis in living beings. Michael and Dax talk about asking what the world would be like without consciousness, the remarkable fact that plants can see, hear, and fight, and experimental evidence via the ginger test that disgust originates in the gut. Michael explains the qualitative redness of red, that there’s so much more going on in consciousness besides computation, and what strange places to visit our minds are. Take printer ink off your to-do list with HP Smart Tank | hp.com/SmartTank Check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds: See Privacy Policy at and California Privacy Notice at .

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Michael Pollan Returns (on consciousness) is an episode from Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard by Armchair Expert | Wondery.

This episode is 02:09:42 long.

This episode was published on Apr 1, 2026.

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