A WORLD APPEARS

What does it mean to be conscious?

In his 2026 book A World Appears, bestselling author Michael Pollan takes readers into one of the deepest and most enduring mysteries of human life: the fact that it feels like something to be us.

Blending science reporting, philosophy, literature, and personal inquiry, Pollan traces the evolving effort to understand consciousness, not just as a function of the brain, but as a lived, subjective experience. He brings readers to the frontiers of neuroscience, psychology, and speculative science, introducing researchers who are questioning long-held assumptions about where consciousness arises and how widely it might exist. Along the way, Pollan explores radical and emerging ideas: from plant intelligence to artificial consciousness, from altered states to the everyday “stream” of awareness we move through without noticing.

Both rigorous and deeply readable, A World Appears invites us to slow down and pay closer attention to our inner lives — to the feelings, perceptions, and sense of self that shape how we relate to one another and the living world. This book club offers space to read closely, ask big questions, and explore Pollan’s ideas in thoughtful conversation with fellow readers.

Exclusive Author Session

This book club culminates in a rare opportunity to hear directly from Michael Pollan during a live virtual author session. Join us as Pollan reflects on the making of A World Appears, the thinkers and experiments that shaped the book, and what the study of consciousness reveals about being human in a time of rapid technological and ecological change.

Participants will have the chance to ask questions, explore the book’s central themes, and engage in conversation with a community drawn to inquiry at the intersection of science, meaning, and lived experience.

Michael Pollan is the author of ten books, including This Is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author of the audiobook Caffeine. A Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow, Pollan has taught writing at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard University. In 2010, Time named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.