Beyond the Page: The Best of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference
Sep 23, 2026 · 33 min · 12 segments
In this episode of Beyond the Page, Michael Pollan talks to Sun Valley Writers Conference Literary Director John Burnham Schwartz about his bestselling book *A World Appears: A Journey into…
Michael PollanGuest
John Burnham SchwartzHostSo in the book, you roadmap your investigation into consciousness with stops through a few foundational tunnels, I guess I would describe them.
First comes sentience, and then emotion, and then thought, and finally the self.
These are the terms that not so long ago, especially the first three, would have been considered almost interchangeable.
Sentience, emotion, thought, there wasn't a lot of sense of the difference.
And I guess one question is, how do you think of sentience and why does it come first?
The book kind of progresses from really simple forms of consciousness or possible consciousness, like plants, and it moves up toward more complicated forms and ends with the self, which is the most elaborate manifestation of consciousness.
It's simply the ability to be aware of your environment and be able to distinguish between good or bad changes in your environment so you take appropriate action.
I think bacteria who have chemotaxis, they can recognize a molecule that's dangerous and one that's food and move appropriately.
We need a self because we're social beings and it's very useful in navigating a social world.
We also need imagination because we exist in a very intricate social world where you could not program everything we have to do in a social environment.
You have to be able to read someone else's minds and predict what they're going to do and say.
So we have things like theory of mind, the ability to imagine our way into someone else.
So in the book, you roadmap your investigation into consciousness with stops through a few foundational tunnels, I guess I would describe them.
First comes sentience, and then emotion, and then thought, and finally the self.
These are the terms that not so long ago, especially the first three, would have been considered almost interchangeable.
Sentience, emotion, thought, there wasn't a lot of sense of the difference.
And I guess one question is, how do you think of sentience and why does it come first?
The book kind of progresses from really simple forms of consciousness or possible consciousness, like plants, and it moves up toward more complicated forms and ends with the self, which is the most elaborate manifestation of consciousness.
It's simply the ability to be aware of your environment and be able to distinguish between good or bad changes in your environment so you take appropriate action.
I think bacteria who have chemotaxis, they can recognize a molecule that's dangerous and one that's food and move appropriately.
We need a self because we're social beings and it's very useful in navigating a social world.
We also need imagination because we exist in a very intricate social world where you could not program everything we have to do in a social environment.
You have to be able to read someone else's minds and predict what they're going to do and say.
So we have things like theory of mind, the ability to imagine our way into someone else.
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