Michael Pollan
American author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism (b. 1955)
Michael Kevin Pollan (; born February 6, 1955) is an American journalist, specializing in food, who is a professor and the first Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer at Harvard University. Concurrently, he is the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where in 2020 he cofounded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics, in which he leads the public-education program.
Pollan is best known for his books that explore the sociocultural effects of food, such as The Botany of Desire (2001) and The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), as well as books that explore the effect of drugs on society and consciousness, such as How to Change Your Mind (2018) and This Is Your Mind On Plants (2021).
The popularity of his books has led to widespread awareness about various parts of the food system, including the local food movement, understanding the connections between climate change and food, and problems with industrial food. Recent books have made Pollan a popular part of the modern education around psychedelics and other mind-altering foods and plants.
His 2018 book How to Change Your Mind, in particular, is considered a cultural turning point for how it contributed to the revival of positive and accepting attitudes toward the potential benefits of psychedelics.
Early life and education
Michael Pollan was born to a Jewish family on Long Island, New York. He is the son of author and financial consultant Stephen Pollan and columnist Corky Pollan. His sister is actress Tracy Pollan.
After studying at Mansfield College, Oxford, through 1975, Pollan received a B.A. in English from Bennington College in 1977 and an M.A. in English from Columbia University in 1981.
“Michael Pollan” enters the record as american author, journalist, activist, and professor of journalism (b. 1955). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michael, Pollan and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1138996. VIAF identifies the subject as 302856676. The Library of Congress control number is n85346809. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 2020, 2001 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Pollan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.