Michael Pollan: This Is Your Mind on Plants
When you start your day with a cup of tea or coffee you are ingesting a consciousness-altering drug, which you are quite likely to be addicted to. That drug of course is caffeine, the stimulant used by 90 per cent of people on earth, and it is one of three mind-altering molecules that bestselling author Michael\xa0Pollan\xa0has been investigating for his new book This Is Your Mind on Plants, alongside morphine, produced by the opium poppy, and mescaline, found in certain cacti.\xa0In conversation with the medical doctor and broadcaster Guddi Singh,\xa0Pollan\xa0explores humanity\u2019s longstanding and powerful attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and why do we then hedge this desire with laws, customs and fraught feelings? And why do we categorise these compounds so reductively \u2013 calling them either a licit or an illicit drug? For, as\xa0Pollan\xa0will argue, when we take these psychoactive plants into our bodies and let them change our minds, we are engaging with nature in one of the most profound ways possible.\xa0Click here to get the Intelligence Squared discount on the book:\xa0https://www.primrosehillbooks.com/product/this-is-your-mind-on-plants-michael-pollan/\n\nSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.\n\nSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices