Episode Details

What if your brain isn’t showing you the world as it truly is?

Journalist, professor, and author of "A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness" Michael Pollan explores one of the deepest questions of all: why do we experience anything in the first place? 

He discusses:

• What consciousness actually is
• Why the brain predicts reality instead of simply taking it in
• How perception may be a kind of “controlled hallucination”
• Why we may see the world in the most useful way, not the most accurate way
• What animals, plants, and AI reveal about consciousness
• Why feelings may be central to being conscious
• Why attention may be one of our most precious resources
• How social media and AI are putting consciousness under siege
• Why consciousness is something we may need to protect and cultivate

The world you see may feel solid, obvious, and real.

But Michael Pollan explains why the experience of being conscious is far stranger, more fragile, and more mysterious than most of us realize.