MICHAEL POLLAN'S "The Botany of Desire" to Air on PBS

THE BOTANY OF DESIRE brings Michael Pollan's best selling book to PBS, showing how human desires are an essential, intricate part of natural history.

The program will explore the natural history of four plants; the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato; and the corresponding human desires– sweetness, beauty, intoxication and controlling nature, that link their destinies to our own.

This two-hour documentary (from Kikim Media), which will air on PBS on October 28,  begins in Pollan’s garden, and roams the world, from the potato fields of Idaho and Peru to the apple orchards of New England, from a medical marijuana hot house to the tulip markets of Amsterdam.

One of the biggest errors of human civilization is to believe that we are outside of nature and that we can continue to re-shape the wild for our own purposes; people as subjects, and plants as objects. In part thru this program, taking a plants’ eye view of the world will help viewers understand the need to restore human activity to its proper place in the matrix of nature.

For a clip of The BOTANY OF DESIRE, click here. 

UPDATE 10/30/09 - View the entire program online @ Video.PBS.org