Embracing Not Knowing and Layers of Inquiry

In this episode of Science Quickly, journalist Michael Pollan joins Scientific American’s Bri Kane to unpack why consciousness is so hard to define in a discussion that explores what brain science, artificial intelligence experiments and even psychedelics might reveal about how awareness works.

Recommended Reading:

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. Michael Pollen. Penguin, 2026

Your guide to 29 wildly different theories of consciousness

Why consciousness is the hardest problem in science

E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover!

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Science Quickly is produced by Kendra Pierre-Louis, Fonda Mwangi, Sushmita Pathak and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited by Alex Sugiura, with fact-checking by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith.

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