In Defense of Food: The Omnivore’s Solution:
Real food--the kind of food your great-grandmother would recognize as food—is being undermined by science on one side and the food industry on the other, both of whom want us to focus on nutrients, good and bad, rather than actual plants, animals and fungi. The rise of “nutritionism” has vastly complicated the lives of American eaters without doing anything for our health, except possibly to make it worse. Nutritionism arose to deal with a genuine problem--the fact that the modern American diet is responsible for an epidemic of chronic diseases, from obesity and type II diabetes to heart disease and many cancers--but it has obscured the real roots of that problem and stood in the way of a solution. That solution involves putting the focus back on foods and food chains, for it turns out our personal health cannot be divorced from the health of the soil, plants, and animals that make up the food chains in which we take part. In this talk, Pollan explores what the industrialization of food and agriculture has meant for our health and happiness as eaters, and looks at the growing national movement to renovate the food system.

The Botany of Desire: The Forgotten Power of Plants:
The sweetness of apples, the beauty of tulips, the intoxication of cannabis: these domesticated species and the human desires they’ve evolved to gratify pose an intriguing question about our place in nature, which is this: Who’s really domesticating whom? For these species have surely gained as much by their association with us as we have by associating with them. By looking at our intimate relationship with a handful of everyday plants, Pollan develops a fresh perspective on the human place in evolution, one that takes us beyond the “zero-sum” relationship of Man and Nature to put us back into the reciprocal web of life on earth. He also makes a compelling case for the power of plants—and the importance of botany—in human society.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: Searching for the Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World :
All creatures are defined ecologically by how they fit into a food chain. In the case of humans, the industrialization of food has obscured this once-plain fact, to the point where most Americans are only dimly aware that their food represents their most profound engagement with the natural world. Over the past few years, Michael Pollan has conducted a series of personal explorations of our food chain, growing a genetically modified potato, tracing an organic TV dinner from grocery freezer to farm, buying and following a steer from insemination to steak. In this talk Pollan will use these stories to tease out conclusions about what's gone wrong with the industrial food system and its implication for our health. He'll also explore some of the healthier alternatives to industrial food.

Connecting the Dots: Nutritionism, Health and Agricultural Policy:
Sir Albert Howard, one of the earliest pioneers of sustainable agriculture, said that we ought to “treat the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal, and man as one great subject." What happens when we take that advice seriously? We begin to see how health problems such as obesity, food poisoning (including mad cow disease), heart disease, and many others are connected to the way we grow our food. We also discover that agricultural policy has enormous implications for our health—and that current USDA policies are actively promoting the same epidemic of obesity which other branches of the government are urging us to confront.

The Sun Food Agenda:
By replacing the energy of the sun with energy from fossil fuels, industrial agriculture has made food impressively cheap and abundant. But this achievement has come at a cost. Today, our food system is implicated in three of the most critical problems facing our society: the energy crisis, the climate crisis, and the health care crisis. None of these problems can be addressed without reforming the way America eats. In this inspiring multimedia presentation, Pollan connects the dots between food and health (personal as well as environmental), and introduces us to some of the visionaries who are “resolarizing” the food system. The Sun Food Agenda – involving change at the level of the farm, the marketplace and the culture- promises to improve our health, cut our dependence on fossil fuel, and help solve the climate crisis.

Out of the Garden and Onto the Plate: One Writer's Path
In this autobiographical talk, Michael Pollan tells the story of the path his writing and thinking has taken since he first planted a vegetable garden under the (disastrous) influence of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The folly that ensued convinced him that all the great books about man and nature he had read in school hasn't prepared him --or our culture-- for the practical work of acting in nature. Art is a tool for living, and most American art about nature has done a brilliant job of celebrating, and helping us preserve, the wilderness; however, it is largely silent, and all but useless, about the ordinary places where most of us live and work. Along the way, Pollan discovered that a literature of the garden and farm might offer a useful antidote to the wilderness tradition, and that an exploration on the messy places where nature and culture mix it up --including agriculture-- might help guide our culture through the challenges we face today, especially around eating and the environment. The talk includes brief readings from several of Pollan's books.