Michal Pollan talks about psychedelics

At Mother Jones:

You know Michael Pollan from his blockbuster book The Omnivore's Dilemma, an entertaining exploration of the thorny decisions surrounding what we eat. Or maybe you read his most recent title, Cooked, which was adapted by Netflix as a four-part documentary series.

But the celebrity author hasn't always been so obsessed with what people put on their plates. "Before I started writing about food, my focus was really on the human relationship to plants," Pollan explained on the most recent episode of Bite, Mother Jones' new food politics podcast. "Not only do plants nourish us bodily—they nourish us psychologically."

The thought spurred Pollan to leave the kitchen and take a residency at Harvard, where he's researching flora with psychedelic properties for a new book. Part of the project covers recent experimental trials using psilocybin (a compound found in magic mushrooms) to treat cancer patients' anxiety about death, which he wrote about for The New Yorker.