Longform

  • Podcast
  • Best Of
    • 2021
    • 2020
    • 2019
    • 2018
    • 2017
    • 2016
    • 2015
    • 2014
    • 2013
    • 2012
  • Archive

    • Sections
    • Publications
    • Writers
    • Tags
  • Random Article
  • Contact

    • podcast@longform.org

Writers

Michael Pollan

Health

The Invisible Addiction: Is It Time to Give Up Caffeine?

Caffeine makes us more energetic, efficient and faster. But we have become so dependent that we need it just to get to our baseline.

Michael Pollan Guardian Jul 2021 15min Permalink

Health

My Adventures With the Trip Doctors

The people bringing psychedelic drugs into the mental health mainstream.

Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine May 2018 35min Permalink

Food Health

Why Did the Obamas Fail to Take on Corporate Agriculture?

Activists hoped President Obama would fight for stronger regulation. Eight years later, they’re still waiting.

Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine Oct 2016 25min Permalink

Science

Opium, Made Easy

It’s legal to buy poppy seeds in America and it’s legal to plant them—unless you’re familiar with the simple process of turning them into opium, that is. Then having poppies in your garden is a felony.

Michael Pollan Harper's Apr 1997 1h10min Permalink

The Trip Treatment

A good trip on psilocybin might be just the ticket to relieve anxiety and depression, particularly in the terminally ill. But are we ready to dive back in to psychedelic research?

Michael Pollan New Yorker Feb 2015 40min Permalink

Science

Power Steer

Raising a cow on an industrial feedlot.

Michael Pollan The New York Times Magazine Mar 2002 Permalink

The Intelligent Plant

On the neurobiology of flora.

Michael Pollan New Yorker Dec 2013 40min Permalink

Science

Some of My Best Friends Are Germs

Medicine used to be obsessed with eradicating the tiny bugs that live within us. Now we’re beginning to understand all the ways they keep us healthy.

Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine May 2013 20min Permalink

Arts Food

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch

“That learning to cook could lead an American woman to success of any kind would have seemed utterly implausible in 1949; that it is so thoroughly plausible 60 years later owes everything to Julia Child’s legacy.”

Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine Jul 2009 35min Permalink

Science

How Pot Has Grown

A trip to the Cannabis Cup serves as a backdrop for the story of how the War on Drugs revolutionized the way marijuana is cultivated in America.

Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine Feb 1995 30min Permalink

Arts Food

The 36-Hour Dinner Party

A one fire, one goat, many cooks experiment.

Michael Pollan New York Times Magazine Oct 2010 15min Permalink