Michael Pollan tried psychedelics at 55. What he found changed everything he thought he knew.

Michael is not a mystic or a guru. He is the kind of writer that scientists, doctors and serious intellectuals trust - someone who changed the way millions of people think about food, farming and the natural world. So when Michael Pollan tried psychedelics at 55 and came back saying the certainties had started to dissolve - the world began to listen in a way they simply wouldn't have for anyone else.

In this conversation, Michael and Elizabeth explore what it actually means to be conscious — and whether we're squandering it. Why does every psychedelic trip seem to arrive at the same slightly cliché and yet, beautiful conclusions? What have we lost by building a science of the mind that brackets out the body, the emotions and everything that actually feels like something? Why is the cool, analytical part of our brain so much louder than the part that knows how to be present — and who benefits from keeping it that way? And what are the algorithms really stealing when they steal our attention?

They cover:

• Why science keeps getting within reach of explaining consciousness — and then losing its nerve

• What psychedelics reveal that embarrasses serious researchers (and why that embarrassment is the clue)

• The Silicon Valley bid to upload consciousness

• How to protect your attention in an age designed to steal it

• Why not-knowing might be the most important skill of our time

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Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all👇

The Sacred is produced in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations.

🎙️Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡Produced by Theos Think Tank: www.theosthinktank.co.uk/👉 Michael Pollan's book on Consciousness: https://michaelpollan.com/books/how-to-change-your-mind/

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Chapters

0:00 - Intro trailer

01:45 - What is Sacred to you? Michael Pollan answers

3:45 - When the ego dissolves: what psychedelics actually do

4:25 - Growing up with an alcoholic father and becoming the man with all the answers

6:01 - 'How to Change Your Mind; shifted culture

6:25 - Michael's lifelong obsession with nature

7:22 - Why feelings became an embarrassment to science

8:16 - First experience of psychedelics

9:18 - Is consciousness being polluted — and do we even notice?10:18 - Silicon Valley wants to upload the soul. Here's why that's terrifying

26:13 - Why being a sceptic, not an expert, made the psychedelic book so influential

28:33 - How writers sense a cultural shift before it happens

30:25 - The president who colonised our consciousness and won't leave

32:06 - Elizabeth's encounter with God at age 11

36:33 - The Zen cave, Roshi Joan Halifax, and learning to not know

41:27 - We can't afford to be anything less than present

43:24 - How men get scripted out of their own inner lives

46:10 - Consciousness as the secular word for soul

49:04 - Protect your inner life from the algorithm

52:12 - Why don't they just make a baby? The funniest moment in the book

54:24 - Ayahuasca, idealism and the scientist who changed his mind twice

56:06 - Cultivating the don't-know mind

56:32 - Elizabeth's reflections