Film Version of Michael Pollan’s Botany of Desire Now Online

Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, Botany of Desire, is now a film, and you can watch it online, courtesy of PBS. (Click to watch complete film.) The film takes you inside our relationship with the plant world, and shows “how four familiar species — the apple, the tulip, cannabis and the potato — evolved to satisfy our yearnings for sweetness, beauty, intoxication and control.” According to a piece in The San Francisco Chronicle, it took eight years to pull together the funding for the film, and that’s simply because marijuana was in the mix. The film runs close to two hours. The preview is above, the full film is here. For more films, please visit our collection of Free Movies Online.


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  1. cricket says . . . | November 1, 2009 / 10:16 am

    That was great — thank you so much! I'm definitely buying the book.

  2. David S says . . . | April 24, 2010 / 5:19 pm

    PBS says its not online but stay tuned,lol.

  3. rolodexter says . . . | June 15, 2010 / 9:42 pm

    The psychology and the economics, particularly the mechanics of the futures “exchanges” that were set up, where trading was done just about as irrationally, as emotionally, and sporadically, wildly as the futures on securities are traded today. So interesting to see this being done about, among all things possible to trade, tulip bulbs.

  4. Costantino Bonomi says . . . | December 8, 2010 / 10:00 am

    that is called CO-EVOLUTION
    it is neither us exploiting the plant or vice-versa
    beware no teleologism here (it means the belief that purpose and design control the development of the universe and are apparent through natural phenomena)
    Costa

  5. Zubair Ahmed says . . . | April 14, 2011 / 6:26 am

    Awesome video this. Well-done Michael.

    Zu
    classifieds

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