Can a Plant, a Chatbot, or Your Gut Be Conscious? With Michael Pollan

In this special live episode, journalist and bestselling author Michael Pollan explains how a psychedelic experience “smudged the windshield” of his consciousness and started the search behind his new book, A World Appears. He explains the difference between sentience and consciousness and shares some surprising plant research: corn that solves mazes, plants that recognize their relatives, and anesthetics that knock out a Venus flytrap. Pollan’s exploration of consciousness reveals a central idea of the Perception Box, a framework developed by Elizabeth R. Koch for understanding the forces within us that shape how we see ourselves, relate to others, and move through the world.

Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. 

Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.

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Chapters:

00:00 Intro

03:29 How psychedelics “smudged the windshield”

08:41 Are plants conscious?

16:03 Can machines be conscious?

18:53 Do we need a cortex to be conscious?

23:53 Materialism vs. idealism

33:17 The microbiome and embodied consciousness

34:53 Why the brain isn’t a computer

40:15 How gut bacteria shape the mind

48:55 Consciousness hygiene

55:00 The Perception Box question