Michael Pollan Teaches Intentional Eating on MasterClass
Over thirteen lessons, you’ll learn about the past, present, and future of meat, from the ways animals and humans are treated in meat processing plants to emerging meat alternatives.
MasterClass Lesson Plan
- Meet Your Instructor: Bestselling author and award-winning journalist Michael Pollan shares where his fascination with food chains began, and celebrates the start of the class with a surprise.
- Rethink Your Relationship with Food: Michael describes the Western diet, the American paradox, and the values you can express through what you eat. He also teaches members how to plant seeds—literally and metaphorically.
- Confront Barriers to Intentional Eating: Michael demystifies intentional eating. He also walks you through how systemic injustices invade our food systems and why they need to be addressed through government policies.
- Discover Where Your Food Comes From: Learn how to navigate the four food chains—industrial, big organic, regenerative, and first-person—and explore the values each one represents.
- Field Trip: City Slicker Farms: Join Michael for a visit to a regenerative farm and listen in as he talks with farmers about their permaculture practices. Learn how their approach affects animals and plants on the farm, as well as the surrounding neighborhood.
- Explore the Present and Future of Meat: Michael uncovers the truth of the meat industry, including the disturbing realities for animals and workers. He also offers insight on how meat-eating can be more ethical and provides a look at viable meat alternatives.
- Follow Food Rules, Not Diets: Set yourself up for success, and good health. Michael teaches you why diets don’t work and offers his own simple food rules as a more sustainable option.
- Eat Food: Michael explains why you should avoid ultraprocessed foods and how to distinguish real food from food-like substances. Learn how to smartly navigate a supermarket—then embark on a scavenger hunt.
- Not Too Much: It’s not just the food you eat, but the amount. Michael opens your eyes to the psychological tricks corporations employ to get you to eat more, and shows you how to avoid their traps
- Eat Mostly Plants: Michael walks you through the many benefits that a primarily plant-based diet has to offer. He also offers his take on the controversial topic of GMOs.
- Balance Sugar and Caffeine Consumption: Michael explores the unique history of coffee and sugar. Learn how these substances affect your body and mind—and manage your consumption to fit your needs.
- Stir Up a Passion for Cooking: Cooking is the most important skill you can hone to eat intentionally. Michael shows you how to rediscover the joy of preparing your own food.
- Celebrate the Communal Meal: Michael shares his view on the power of communal meals, and he urges you to embrace the ways eating can bring people together.
Harvard Classes (Fall 2024)
Narrative Science Writing
The arc of this writing workshop will follow, step by step, the process of researching and writing a single long piece of science journalism: finding and pitching story ideas; reporting in depth and at length; outlining and structuring your story; choosing a narrative voice and strategy, crafting leads and “overtures,” and forging connections between your story and its larger contexts. As a group, we’ll also work as editors on one another’s ideas and pieces. And since reading good prose is the best way to learn to write it, we’ll be closely reading an exemplary piece of narrative science journalism each week. Students will be expected to complete a draft and a revision of a substantial piece of science journalism by the end of the term.
Books
- Strunk and White, The Elements of Style
- Elise Hancock, Ideas into Words: Mastering the Craft of Science Writing
- Ed Wong, ed, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2021
- Siri Carpenter, ed. The Craft of Science Writing
- Blum, Deborah, ed. A Field Guide for Science Writers
- Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
The I’s Have It
Reading and Writing the Personal Essay
There are few literary forms quite as flexible as the personal essay. The word comes from the French verb essai, “to attempt,” hinting at the provisional or experimental mood of the genre. The conceit of the personal essay is that it captures the individual’s act of thinking on the fly, typically in response to a prompt or occasion. The form offers the rare freedom to combine any number of narrative tools, including memoir, reportage, history, political argument, anecdote, and reflection. In this writing workshop, we will read essays beginning with Montaigne, who more or less invented the form, and then on to a varied selection of his descendants, including George Orwell, E.B. White, James Baldwin, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace and Rebecca Solnit. We will draft and revise essays of our own in a variety of lengths and types, and write pastiches of others, including one longer essay of ambition. A central aim of the course will be to help you develop a voice on the page and learn how to deploy the first person—not merely for the purpose of self-expression but as a tool for telling a story, conducting an inquiry or pressing an argument.
Books
- Strunk & White, The Elements of Style
- Phillip Lopate, ed. The Art of the Personal Essay (anthology)
- Phillip Lopate, To Show and To Tell
- Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd, Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
- Andre Aciman, ed. Best American Essays 2020