{"id":521723,"date":"2026-04-09T16:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/521723\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T16:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:23:08","slug":"michael-pollan-on-consciousness-psychedelics-and-his-new-book-a-world-appears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/521723\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Pollan on consciousness, psychedelics, and his new book A World Appears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why does this matter to Pollan so much? After all, if you ask the average Joe, Pollan is the American author, television presenter, film-maker and food activist who coined the time-old adage \u201cEat food. Not too much. Mostly plants\u201d, and whose favourite thing to do is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.standard.co.uk\/lifestyle\/magic-mushrooms-psilocybin-new-drinking-b1102414.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">magic mushrooms<\/a>. His fans include Jay Shetty, Tim Ferriss and Jamie Oliver. Odd, then, to hear him speak so passionately about an issue that seemingly has nothing to do with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.standard.co.uk\/lifestyle\/wellness\/simple-easy-diet-cuts-calories-b1276364.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">diet <\/a>or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.standard.co.uk\/lifestyle\/could-it-be-magic-a-trip-into-the-future-of-psychedelics-with-the-father-of-microdosing-b1268768.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">psychedelics<\/a>. Yet the link between the three topics is more obvious than first meets the eye. Any conversation on AI, culinary choices or psychoactive substances is, ultimately, a conversation about consciousness. Speaking on Brave New World, the Standard\u2019s podcast about science and the future of humanity, this is what Pollan wants to talk about with me today. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why does this matter to Pollan so much? After all, if you ask the average Joe, Pollan is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,6958,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-521723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-longevity","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}