Michael Pollan

in conversation with André Bernard

August 30, 2024

5:00 PM - 6:00 PM

After a successful launch of the Masters Series last summer, join author André Bernard, Vice President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for a second season of conversations with literary masters. On August 30, Bernard speaks with author, educator, and activist, Michael Pollan.

For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. He is the author of nine books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers. His most recent publication, This is Your Mind on Plants (2021), blends history, science, and memoir to explore three plant-based drugs: opium, caffeine, and mescaline.

Of all the things provided by plants—sustenance, beauty, medicine, fragrance, flavor, fiber—surely the most curious is their capacity to change our consciousness. This is Your Mind on Plants examines cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming, (or explicitly trying not to consume them), and reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings? Pollan’s book explores these plants from several very different angles and contexts—including first-person experience—to shine a fresh light on a subject that is often treated reductively as a drug, whether licit or illicit.

Interested in becoming a Mount Member? Join today!

The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event. The Mount's Health and Safety Guidelines can be found here.

Thanks to our sponsors:

Tickets
  • Sales for all lectures will open for Mount Members on Monday, May 13, and to the general public on Wednesday, May 15. Prices are $15 (Mount Members) and $20 (General Admission). All lectures and panel discussions are free for graduate and undergraduate students, and children under 18. Check back to book online!
  • All lectures will take place in an outdoor, open-sided tent. We look forward to seeing you rain or shine.
  • Books are available for purchase through The Mount's Bookstore before and during the event.

Michael Pollan is a writer, educator, and activist. His most recent books are This is Your Mind on Plants (2021) and the New York Times number one bestseller How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence (2018). He is the author of seven previous books including New York Times bestsellers: Cooked (2013), which formed the basis for a Netflix documentary of the same name, Food Rules, In Defense of Food (2009), which became a series on PBS, the now-iconic The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History in Four Meals (2006), which was chosen by the James Beard Foundation as the best food writing book of 2007 and by The New York Times as one of the five best books of the year. Pollan is Professor of the Practice of Non-Fiction Writing at Harvard University and the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. In 2010, Time Magazine named Pollan one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Photo: Alia Malley

The author of five books of literary miscellany, André Bernard was a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster, Editorial Director of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and VP and Publisher of Harcourt Brace before joining the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation as its Vice President, administering its Fellowship program.