A science journalist spends four episodes tracing how substances once dismissed as dangerous curiosities became the subject of serious clinical study.
What is How to Change Your Mind about?
Michael Pollan anchors this documentary series with the same inquisitive, first-person approach that shaped his writing career, walking viewers through the twentieth-century arc of psychedelic compounds from early promise to decades of prohibition and back into research labs. Each episode isolates a single substance — LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, mescaline — and uses it as a lens on a different corner of medicine, culture, and law. Rather than a straight chronology, the series moves between historical footage, interviews with researchers, and Pollan's own on-camera reflections, building a picture of how public perception of these compounds shifted sharply more than once. It treats its subject with curiosity rather than advocacy, letting scientists and former skeptics describe what changed their thinking.
About the cast
Michael Pollan serves as host, narrator, and on-screen presence throughout, drawing on his own reporting rather than a dramatized cast. The format leans on real researchers and subjects rather than actors, giving the series a grounded, conversational tone closer to long-form journalism than typical documentary narration.
Context & significance
The series arrived in 2022 as part of a broader wave of mainstream attention to psychedelic research, following renewed interest from universities and medical institutions in compounds that had been largely off-limits to study for decades. Its documentary structure — one substance per episode — makes it easy to watch in any order, though the opening chapter sets up context the later episodes build on.
Watching How to Change Your Mind on Ktime
How to Change Your Mind streams on K-Time with a free account login, and viewers can switch to a Persian dub or follow along with Persian subtitles, both available for this title. The full interface is in Farsi, built for Persian-speaking audiences who want documentary programming without hunting for language support elsewhere.