What if everything you think you know about your own mind is only part of the story? In A World Appears, our Season 29 selection, Michael Pollan unpacks 10 surprising facts that will change how you see consciousness—and yourself.
1. The paradox of studying consciousness.
To investigate consciousness scientifically, we use consciousness itself—our own subjective experience and our ability to observe others. It’s like trying to see your own eyes without a mirror. We’re using the thing we want to understand as the tool for understanding it.
2. The narrator in your head.
One striking feature of thought is its often-linguistic character. Many of us experience a running internal monologue—a voice narrating our experience, commenting on it, planning what to do next. But here’s a puzzle: Who is speaking, and who is listening? If there’s only one “you,” why does it feel like a conversation?
3. Controlled vs. spontaneous thought.
We can sometimes direct our thinking deliberately—working through a math problem, planning a project. But much of the time, thoughts simply arrive, unbidden. You don’t decide to suddenly remember a childhood friend or to have a random song stuck in your head. Thoughts appear in consciousness as if from nowhere.
4. Consider the lobster.
Modern science is making steady progress in overcoming its anthropocentrism and, in the last few years, has granted sentience to all kinds of creatures. Recent beneficiaries of this newfound generosity have included lobsters, some insects, and even unicellular organisms, though these cases remain controversial.
5. Plants can learn and form memories.
Mimosa pudica, a tropical plant, instantly folds its leaves when touched to protect itself from being eaten. It can be taught to ignore a stressor (its pot being dropped) that would normally trigger it to react, and it can remember what it has learned for more than twenty-eight days. (By comparison, a fruit fly can remember something it was taught only twenty-four hours).
6. The “dirty windshield” effect.
Michael Pollan compares consciousness to a windshield we usually look through, not at. Most of the time, it’s invisible—we’re focused on the world beyond it. But alter your state with psychedelics, meditation, or deliberate attention, and the glass itself comes into view. Suddenly, you notice the smudges, the distortions, the fact that there’s a pane there at all. Consciousness, normally transparent, becomes an object of awareness.
7. Newborns and consciousness.
Today, most scientists agree that infants—even newborns—are conscious, despite being unable to describe their mental states. That consensus is surprisingly recent. As late as the 1980s, some surgeons operated on babies without anesthesia, assuming that because infants couldn’t report pain, they didn’t truly experience it. The reversal of that belief marks a profound shift in how science understands consciousness—and who gets counted as having it.
8. Panpsychism, in a nutshell.
Panpsychism is the idea that mind isn’t limited to brains. Instead, every grain of sand, every drop of ink, every particle of matter or energy carries the faintest flicker of psyche. These tiny sparks of awareness, however minimal, somehow combine to create the rich inner lives of complex beings like us. In other words, consciousness doesn’t suddenly appear at a certain level of complexity; it’s woven into the fabric of reality from the start.
9. Do plants feel pain?
When plants are injured or under stress, they release ethylene—an anesthetic-like chemical—somewhat akin to how humans produce endorphins after getting hurt. So…are they suffering? Not exactly. Plant scientist Stefano Mancuso argues that pain, as we understand it, is tied to movement: you touch a hot stove, you yank your hand away. Pain evolved to help mobile creatures escape danger. Plants, rooted in place, can’t do that. They can sense damage—say, when an animal is nibbling their leaves—but actually feeling pain wouldn’t improve their odds of survival. Awareness, yes. Agony, no.
10. In praise of mind-wandering.
Spontaneous thought may look unproductive, but it’s one of creativity’s great engines. The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought notes that many towering figures—Darwin, Beethoven, Dalí, even Raymond Chandler—worked surprisingly short days, often just four or five focused hours. The rest of their time? Long walks, afternoon naps, unstructured afternoons, extended vacations. Inspiration, it turns out, often arrives when we step away from the desk and let the mind (and body) roam.
