5×15 Stories – May 20, 2020
For more than thirty years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. He is the author of the multiple New York Times best sellers, including How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (2013). In his latest audiobook Caffeine: How caffeine created the modern world, Michal Pollan offers his provocative look into the profound ways that what we eat affects how we live.
Several of his books have been adapted for television. Netflix created a four-part documentary series based on Cooked in 2016, and documentary adaptations of In Defense of Food (2015) and The Botany of Desire (2009) both premiered on PBS. Pollan also appeared in the Academy Award nominated 2009 feature documentary, Food Inc. In 2015-2016, Pollan was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. In 2013, he was awarded Italy’s Premio Nonino prize. In 2010, Pollan was named to the 2010 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Also in 2010 he was also awarded the Lennon Ono Grant for Peace by Yoko Ono. In 2009 he was named by Newsweek as one of the top 10 “New Thought Leaders.”
Pollan is currently the Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer and Professor of the Practice of NonFiction at Harvard University. Since 2003, Pollan has held the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Recorded at the 5×15 Online Event (via Zoom) on May 18th 2020.
Transition Studies 