What if the thing you understand least is the very thing happening inside you right now? In a wide-ranging conversation with science writer Michael Pollan, Ezra Klein explores one of philosophy’s oldest, and most stubbornly unsolved, puzzles: consciousness itself.

Pollan spent five years researching his new book, diving into everything from plant anesthesia experiments to psychedelic trips to Zen caves in New Mexico. What he found wasn’t clarity; it was deeper, more beautiful mystery. The more rigorously scientists try to pin consciousness down, the more it slips away.

This conversation covers the surprising science of how thoughts actually form (hint: your body usually knows before your brain does), why children may be more conscious than adults, how mind-wandering is secretly your most productive mental state, and what philosophers mean when they say consciousness might be a universal field rather than something your brain generates.

It also asks urgent questions about the modern world: Are our smartphones quietly shrinking the richness of our inner lives? And what would it mean to reclaim sovereignty over your own mind?

A rare conversation that leaves you knowing less, and wondering far more.