Thursday, November 18th from 12:00-1:30pm PST
Join Michael Pollan, renowned author of nine best-selling books, most recently This Is Your Mind on Plants, which explores the history and culture behind three mind-altering substances, opium, caffeine and mescaline. In this special conversation with Bia Labate, they will dive into some of the questions explored in his book, to better understand human society’s complex relationship with plants that change our consciousness, and the unique history, science and cultural landscape that surrounds them.
Michael Pollan is a writer, teacher and activist. His most recent book, This Is Your Mind on Plants, was published in 2021. He is the author of eight previous books, including How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times Bestsellers. The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of the year by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Pollan teaches writing in the English department at Harvard and at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he has been the John S. and James, L. Knight Professor of Journalism since 2003. Several of his books have been adapted for television: a series based on Cooked (2015) is streaming on Netflix and both The Botany of Desire and In Defense of Food premiered on PBS. In 2010 Time Magazine named Pollan one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Pollan lives in Berkeley with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer.
Bia Labate is a queer Brazilian anthropologist based in San Francisco. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil. Her main areas of interest are the study of plant medicines, drug policy, shamanism, ritual, religion, and social justice. She is Executive Director of the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines (https://chacruna.net, https://chacruna-iri.org, https://chacruna-la.org). She serves as Public Education and Culture Specialist at the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), and Adjunct Faculty at the East-West Psychology Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). She is also Diversity, Culture, and Ethics Advisor at the Synthesis Institute. Additionally, she is a co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Group for Psychoactive Studies (NEIP) in Brazil and editor of its site. She is author, co-author, and co-editor of twenty-four books, two special-edition journals, and several peer-reviewed articles (https://bialabate.net).
This talk will be recorded and immediately available for rewatch for all attendees.
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