Name: Are Insects And Plants Conscious? The Answer Might Be Yes. - Michael Pollan
Uploaded: 2026-02-20T17:13:25.000Z
Duration: 4 min 22 s
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My next guest tonight is a New York Times bestseller and one of my favorite authors, whose books include the Omnivore's dilemma, in Defense of Food, and

His new book is A World, A Journey into Consciousness.

Please welcome back to the Late Show, Michael Pollan.

Michael, it's always good to talk to you.

Last time you were here, we talked about psychedelics.

And your new book delves even deeper into the recesses of the mind, explores the subject of consciousness.

Right here, A world appears, A journey to the consciousness.

Well, the psychedelic experience actually was the inspiration.

Psychedelics have a way of kind of smudging the windshield of consciousness.

I thought the doors of perception would be cleansed.

And suddenly you realize there is a windshield.

Well, let me ask, how do you define consciousness, then?

I mean, people complicate it, but it's basically subjective experience, or even just experience.

Well, you know, to include the toaster, I guess that's theoretically possible.

But the other definition I really like is by a philosopher named Thomas Nagel, who said that if it is like something to be this creature or that creature, if it feels like something, you're conscious.

He wrote a great essay called what is it like to be a Bat?

And even though bats are very different than us and they hang upside down most of the day and they get around by echolocation, we can sort of imagine that.

We can imagine that they have some kind of experience.

Well, let me ask you, so what is the difference then between awareness?

Because I can imagine a bat or almost any creature of any kind, any living thing, having an awareness.

They're aware of where the sun is, that sort of thing.

Differentiate between awareness and consciousness.

Is consciousness somewhere along the scale of awareness?

I would say that there's a spectrum that begins with what I would call a sentience.

And that is this basic awareness of your environment and an ability to tell good changes from bad and to gravitate toward the good things.

And so I think sentience is the default for life.

And when you say some other animals, how many would you include in that?

Like the greater, like, you know, megafauna, stuff like that, or.

Most mammals, some birds, cephalopods, octopuses.

But now what's happening right now is we're extending, we're democratizing consciousness to more and more species.

And I think it's bringing us to this interesting Copernican moment.

When Copernicus came along, we suddenly realized we weren't the center of the universe, that the sun did not revolve around us.

And that was like, mind blowing to everybody.

And I think we're getting there now because on the one side, you've got consciousness now being extended down to insects and possibly plants, which I talk about in the book.

We're right back with more Michael Pollan.