Booksmith & ExtendedSession Present

Michael Pollan

in conversation with Dacher Keltner

Celebrating the release of

This Is Your Mind on Plants

Recorded: 07/06/2021

Booksmith & ExtendedSession Present

Michael Pollan

in conversation with Dacher Keltner

Celebrating the release of

This Is Your Mind on Plants

Recorded: 07/06/2021

Join acclaimed author Michael Pollan live to celebrate the release of This is Your Mind on Plants.

“Building on his lysergically drenched book How to Change Your Mind (2018), Pollan looks at three plant-based drugs and the mental effects they can produce. . . . A lucid (in the sky with diamonds) look at the hows, whys, and occasional demerits of altering one’s mind.” Kirkus

Since the 2018 publication of his instant New York Times bestseller How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan’s work on psychedelics has steered the national conversation on the medical potential and stigmas surrounding some of the most powerful, naturally-derived drugs. This is Your Mind on Plants (on-sale July 6) is in part a follow-up to the last book, with a chapter that takes a close look at the psychedelic molecule mescaline.

Michael explores its biomedical effects and reveals how the compound has been used as a healing tool by indigenous peoples of North and South America for thousands of years. There’s a chapter on his experiences growing opium in the 1990s at the height of the War on Drugs (originally published in Harper’s Magazine, but here extensively updated in light of the opioid crisis). And there’s a chapter on caffeine, the psychoactive compound that’s used by 90% of our species on a daily basis, which he has now expanded from his Audible Original audiobook. As you might expect, Michael engaged in some self-experimentation with these three drugs, and he shares his experience in the book. (In the case of caffeine, it was a matter of abstaining rather than indulging, which proved much harder for him to do!)

Juxtaposing these three compounds from the taboo to the everyday, This is Your Mind on Plants asks us to reconsider the whole notion of what a drug is.

Michael Pollan

About Michael Pollan

Michael Pollan writes 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. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers; three of them (including his latest, How to Change Your Mind) were immediate #1 New York Times bestsellers. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine since 1987, Pollan’s writing has received numerous awards and in 2010 he was chosen by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He lives in the Bay Area with his wife, the painter Judith Belzer.

If you have already purchased a ticket for this event, please use your email address to sign in now.

If you need a ticket, use the BUY TICKET button just below.

Please enter the email address with which you made your purchase.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you’d like a refund, we can happily credit the card you used to register for the event. Please send a note to pre.event@extendedsession.com, and we’ll confirm receipt as soon as we see it (We don’t need your credit card info – just your email address and date of purchase.)

There are two things to know:

  • Unfortunately, we can only accept cancellations and refunds up to 48 hours before a scheduled event.
  • There is sure to be a lapse in time between the time we refund your order and the time a corresponding credit appears on your credit card statement. So that you’re not left waiting and wondering, we’ll contact you as soon as we’ve processed the credit in our system.

If you’ve purchased a ticket for this online event and you find that for some reason you can’t make the live event, we’ve got you covered:

We’ll make an archive of this event available within 48 hours of the live event, and we’ll send every ticket holder details on how they can view it.

Ticket holders can view this full event archive any time they like – as often as they like.

We take data security and your privacy as seriously as you do.

That’s why we use Stripe to process your registration transaction. They take your credit card and secure your data – in fact we don’t even have access to your credit card number. Which is just the way we like it!

The information we do retain we protect carefully.

We’re committed to keeping personal information collected from those individuals who visit our website and make use of our online programming and services confidential, secure, and private. Our privacy policy ensures that we meet – and when we can – exceed most existing privacy standards.

Want to know more? Read the ExtendedSession Online Privacy Policy Agreement.

Still have a question? We’d be please to hear from you:

Still have a question? We’d be please to hear from you: pre.event@extendedsession.com.

.

The receipt you receive via email immediately after you register is all you need to know you’re set for the upcoming event.

About 48 hours before the live event is scheduled to begin, we’ll send you a personalized email confirming everything’s on schedule and containing easy instructions for accessing the event.

We’ll send another reminder on the day of the event itself, and we’ll be available online just before the event begins to make sure you have no problems joining when the time is right.

If you’ve not received confirmation of your purchase, it’s not because we haven’t sent it. In fact, we send a confirmation right away to make sure that we can reach you with event details.

If you haven’t received a confirmation, check your “junk” or “promotions” email first — some people’s email programs group unfamiliar emails in these types of folders. The email date and time should match closely the time you purchased your ticket online.

If the confirmation email is not there, there’s a small possibility that your email address wasn’t entered as you intended when you registered (You’d be surprised, but this happens). If we don’t have your proper email address, we can’t contact you.

In any case, if you can’t find your confirmation email, please send us a note at pre.event@extendedsession.com. We’ll get back to you right away!