Michael Pollan: Humans Are a Lot Like Bees

If you’ve ever owned plants, then you know it takes a good amount of effort just to make sure they survive, let alone thrive and prosper. Take mums. They look so low maintenance at the Greenmarket, but bring them home and they need lots of water – more than I anticipated, so I accidentally killed one of mine. Then I brought back more mums from a party, carting them hundreds of miles in a rental car. At a certain point, you have to wonder: Why? Why did I take on the responsibility of these plants?

Mums. The one on the right had a near-death experience.

Michael Pollan explained it on the Brian Lehrer show the other day while talking about tulips, potatoes, marijuana, and apples. His first book about food, The Botany of Desire, has been made into a PBS documentary airing October 28th at 8pm.

Domestication is a two way street. We didn’t just tell the apple what to do, to be big and red and sweet. We were being manipulated by the apple also, to attract our attention, get us to spread its genes. We humans are a lot like bees. We get duped by flowers, by fruit, into doing work for them. Once you start to look at nature this way, from the plants eye view, everything looks very different.

The next time you find yourself drawn to something at the Greenmarket, whether its flowers, apples, or even a fairly useless non-sweet pumpkin, remember: it’s because you are their slave.

The Brian Lehrer Show: Junior Omnivores