Summary

“Natural History – Bemushroomed.” The beginning of this chapter picks up where the previous one left off – with Pollan talking with Roland Griffiths. Here, Pollan describes how their meeting concluded – with Griffiths giving him a souvenir coin (one of a collection he had had made, Pollan says, for sharing at Burning Man, a celebration at which there is no actual currency). On the coin: a depiction of the so-called magic mushrooms, and on the other side, a quote from poet William Blake that, the author says, “neatly aligned the way of the scientist with that of the mystic: ‘the true method of knowledge is experiment’” (82) . Pollan then says that as a result of his time spent with Griffiths and considering his research, he realized he wanted to spend some time investigating the history of psilocybin mushrooms. One of the questions he wanted to...