Journalist and best-selling author Michael Pollan is joined by noted architectural and urban historian Simon Sadler to discuss the history and new use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes, the subject of Pollan’s new book and an area illuminated by Sadler’s investigation of the philosophy he calls “hippie holism.” The conversation also touches on the counterculture pursuit of “evolved consciousness” and cultural outcomes ranging from the San Francisco Summer of Love to Bay Area ecology and ecopsychology movements. Moderated by Greg Castillo, guest curator of Hippie Modernism.

Michael Pollan, professor of journalism at UC Berkeley, has been writing for the past twenty-five years about the places where nature and culture intersect. His books include Cooked: A Natural History of Four Meals; Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual; In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto; the award-winning The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. His forthcoming book addresses the renaissance of scientific and cultural interest in psychedelics, looking at them from a variety of perspectives: historical, journalistic, phenomenological, neuroscientific, and therapeutic.

Simon Sadler, professor of architectural and urban history at UC Davis, has for decades explored how radical and avant-garde ideas have influenced art, architecture, and culture. He has examined how hippies, Marxists, urban architects, and utopians, among others, have tackled the proverbial question: Do we make the environment or does the environment make us? Sadler has been a UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow, as well as a fellow of the University of California Humanities Research Institute and of the Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London. Among his numerous publications are the critically acclaimed books The Situationist City and Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture.