258. Michael Pollan with Jon Mooallem: A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
Release Date: 05/14/2026
258. Michael Pollan with Jon Mooallem: A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have a subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that...
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257. Dr. Nicole McNichols with Dr. Julie Gottman: You Could Be Having Better Sex
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
Whether you’re married, dating, or flying solo, Dr. Nicole McNichols has some sex advice for you. And you may want to pay attention because McNichols is not only the professor of University of Washington’s most sought-after class in its history, she’s one of social media’s most popular educators on the topic of sex. Pulling from her book, You Could Be Having Better Sex, McNichols shares the latest data that shows good sex is one of the most powerful and effective sources of joy. Good sex, McNichols argues, is a gateway to better health, stronger relationships, and the diverse...
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256. Psychedelic Salon: Psychedelics & Seniors: With Scott Wright, Abbie Rosner, Dr. Emily Whinkin, and April Pride
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
As life expectancy increases, so does the need for mental, emotional, and spiritual support in later years. This Salon delves into the ways older adults are exploring psychedelics for healing, spiritual deepening, meaning-making, joyful intimacy and making peace with mortality. With insights from geriatric practitioners, researchers, and individuals with lived experience, we’ll examine how today’s older psychonauts are rewriting the narrative around aging. Scott Paul Wright is a filmmaker and screenwriter based in Paris and New Orleans. His adventures in film followed previous...
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255. Blaise Agüera y Arcas: What Is Intelligence?
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
What intelligence really is, and how AI’s emergence is a natural consequence of evolution. It has come as a shock to some AI researchers that a large neural net that predicts next words seems to produce a system with general intelligence. Yet this is consistent with a long-held view among some neuroscientists that the brain evolved precisely to predict the future—the “predictive brain” hypothesis. In What Is Intelligence?, Blaise Agüera y Arcas takes up this idea—that prediction is fundamental not only to intelligence and the brain but to life itself—and explores the wide-ranging...
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254. Psychedelic Law & Nature: What Can Americans Use Legally? Perry Salzhauer, Daniel Shortt, and April Pride
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
Seattle’s 2021 ordinance decriminalized entheogens — plants and fungi that contain psychoactive indolamines, tryptamines, or phenethylamines—such as psilocybin mushrooms, ayahuasca, mescaline cacti, and iboga. This Salon weaves together two threads: the little-known plant and fungal allies often left off the psychedelic main stage, and the laws that shape how we can (and cannot) work with them today. Legal experts Perry Salzhauer and Daniel Shortt explore what this ordinance means in practice, including how it shapes access, cultivation, and community use of approved entheogenic plants...
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253. Therese Huston with Katy Sewall: Everyday Strategies for a Sharper Mind
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
Your brain has a favorite beverage, a surprising way to add new neurons, and strong opinions about multitasking—and it’s not what you think. In this engaging conversation, cognitive scientist Therese Huston and podcast host Katy Sewall unpack the small changes, many of which take 5 minutes or less, that can keep your brain sharp and your body calm. Based on Huston’s new book Sharp, they’ll explore topics like how to turn a scattered mind into focused energy and why switching doctors, while annoying, might be your secret weapon for your health. This is a night filled with...
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252. Psychedelic Salon: Psilocybin & Menopause: With Dr. Patricia Singh, Kelly McGinty, and April Pride
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
Menopause is often portrayed as a period of decline, but what if it could be reframed as an awakening? Join co-authors Dr. Patricia Singh, psychotherapist and psychedelic integration specialist, and Kelly McGinty, nurse practitioner specializing in hormonal and integrative wellness, for a groundbreaking exploration of menopause as a transformative threshold. This session will delve into how psychedelics, especially psilocybin, offer a radical new perspective, easing cognitive rigidity, reducing internal narratives of decline, and fostering emotional and spiritual growth. Attendees will gain...
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251. Dr. Shelley Sella with Amelia Bonow: Beyond Limits — Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
For 20 years, Dr. Shelley Sella saw patients whose diverse backgrounds and circumstances led them to the same difficult decision: to end their pregnancies. In her new book, Beyond Limits, Sella draws from her experiences to offer a window into a typical week at her clinic, weaving together patient stories—including those of a mother navigating a devastating prenatal diagnosis, a woman confronting unexpected test results after IVF, and a parent weighing safety and stability for her existing children. Dr. Sella offers a testament to a standard of care grounded in competence, compassion,...
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250. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian with Taha Ebrahimi: Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
It’s only human to project the notions we already hold onto the world around us. We want to feel connected, and we start from what we know – categories, similarities, rules, expectations. But nature is endlessly expansive, at once wildly different from the societies we are used to and yet surprisingly similar to the nuances we hold as individuals. In her debut book Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, author Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian invites readers to wander off the prescribed trails and embrace the full range of what we can take away from unexpected corners of the...
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249. Blaise Agüera y Arcas with Charles Mudede: What Is Life? Evolution as Computation
Town Hall Seattle Science Series
Explaining how and why our world works the way it does touches on so many fields of science: biology, chemistry, physics, and, of course, technology. However, according to researcher Blaise Agüera y Arcas, computation should also be part of the understanding of life on all levels – and going back further than one might think. In What Is Life? Evolution as Computation, Agüera y Arcas uses computation as a means of examining the complexities of our own universe. Inspired by the work of quantum mechanics pioneer Erwin Schrödinger, he revisits the question that has showcased the...
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When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have a subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual, and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view — assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.
In Pollan’s exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with our deepest selves.
Michael Pollan is the author of ten books, including This Is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author of the audiobook Caffeine. A Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow, Pollan has taught writing at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard University. In 2010, Time named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.
Jon Mooallem is the author of three books, Wild Ones, This is Chance! and the essay collection Serious Face. He lives on Bainbridge Island.
