About this episode

Michael Pollan discusses the complexities of consciousness and the role of art in understanding it.

“We have language. That’s the best tool we have for understanding the consciousness of another,” says Michael Pollan on this week’s episode of The World in Time . “You can go pretty far with it, as Proust himself showed, but that is, in the end, the function of art: to translate one consciousness into another. That’s the only way we know how to do it right now, and it’s pretty powerful, but there’s still a remnant, some residue that can never be translated. Even Proust, who wrote millions of words and was a great believer in the power of words, said consciousness is not a verbal construction. He didn’t think that consciousness was made of words. The visual arts can tell us things, too. A Rothko painting conveys so much consciousness. That’s the importance of art—helping to ferry us from one island of consciousness to another.”   This week on the podcast, Donovan Hohn speaks with Michael Pollan, award-winning author and journalist, about his new book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness , in which Pollan explores one of our most complex and enduring mysteries: the “hard problem” of consciousness. Initially, he seeks the headwaters of consciousness in neuroscience…

People in this episode

Host: Donovan Hohn

Guest: Michael Pollan

Topics covered

• consciousness
• art
• neuroscience
• philosophy
• literary history
• Buddhism

Keywords

• consciousness
• art
• neuroscience
• philosophy
• literary history
• Buddhism
• Michael Pollan
• Proust
• Rothko

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, Rothko painting

More episodes of The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly

• America's Violent Birth (with Joseph J. Ellis and Holger Hoock) · July 17, 2026 · 1h 10m
• Lapham’s Revolutionary America: Jill Lepore and Gordon S. Wood · July 3, 2026 · 1h 24m
• Lapham's Revolutionary America [Teaser] · June 30, 2026 · 3 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The World in Time / Lapham’s Quarterly podcast page.