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b'Michael Pollan is one of our most revelatory explorers of the interaction between the human and natural worlds \\u2014 especially the plants with which we have, as he says, co-evolved \\u2014 from food to caffeine to psychedelics. In this episode of our series, The Future of Hope, Wintering\\u2019s Katherine May draws him out on the burgeoning human inquiry and science to which he\\u2019s now given himself over \\u2014 the transformative applications of altered states for healing trauma and depression, for end-of-life care \\u2014 and the thrilling matter of grasping what consciousness is for. This is an informative, intriguing, utterly uncategorizable conversation.\\n\\nYou may know Katherine May from her On Being conversation with Krista about \\u201cwintering\\u201d as a season in the natural world \\u2014 and a recurrent season in every human life. She too operates out of a deep curiosity about the human mind \\u2014 the remarkable complexity of mental states and well-being \\u2014 informed in part by her own welcome mid-life diagnosis of autism and her love of cold-water swimming. Her books of fiction and memoir include: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, The Electricity of Every Living Thing, and Burning Out. She is also the editor of an anthology of essays about motherhood, called The Best, Most Awful Job. Her podcast is The Wintering Sessions.\\n\\nMichael Pollan is a professor at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His many bestselling books include The Omnivore\\u2019s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, and most recently, This Is Your Mind on Plants. In 2020, he co-founded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.'