The Giants Shoulder

Get One Month Free of Consensus (The Best Ai Science Tool): https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeUpgrade Your Shaving Experience With Henson (100 FREE BLADES): https://hensonshaving.com/thegiantsshoulderWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutSteven Barker is the world's longest-running DMT researcher and the analytical chemist who helped prove the molecule exists in the mammalian brain. He argues your brain manufactures its own psychedelic at the same concentration as serotonin — and floods your cortex with it under stress and as you die.Expect to learn why Steven believes your brain produces DMT at serotonin-level concentrations, how 29 years of drug-testing racehorses gave him the tools to find it, why he says David Nichols is wrong about endogenous DMT, why stress can make brain DMT spike tenfold, how a hidden receptor inside your neurons may explain how psychedelics rewire the brain, why the DMT trip might be neuroplasticity you can actually feel, what DMT entities really are, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:40 The Recurring Dream That Started a 50-Year Obsession0:06:53 Hunting For The Brain's Own Psychedelic In 19720:12:54 The Discovery That We ALL Make DMT0:19:07 Were Psychedelics Ever Meant To Be Medicine?0:22:17 How The War On Drugs Killed The Research0:24:02 Funding Psychedelic Science With Racehorse Drug Tests0:34:56 Why You Can't Patent A Psychedelic0:36:31 The Psychedelic Trip Is Just An "Overdose"0:41:58 Why David Nichols Is Wrong About DMT0:50:16 The "Pineal Is Too Small" Argument Is Ludicrous0:54:20 DMT Is In Your Brain At Serotonin Levels1:01:00 Stress Floods Your Brain With DMT1:02:32 Why Everyone Else Failed To Detect DMT1:12:05 The Hidden Receptor Inside Your Neurons1:19:54 Is The DMT Trip Just Neuroplasticity You Can Feel?1:26:09 What DMT Entities Actually Are1:32:15 Are We Building A New Psychedelic Religion?1:42:11 50 Years of DMT and The Nature of Consciousness1:44:26 Why He's Still A "Proud Reductionist"...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] Episodes MentionedDavid Nichols — Meet The Greatest Living Psychedelic Scientist You've Never Heard Of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umTgXsW1lQBryan Roth — Meet The World's Greatest Psychedelic Receptor Scientist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEmmmMma8QsAndrew Gallimore — No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgWrxEFWDAGuest LinksResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven-Barker-8Cottonwood Research Foundation: https://www.cottonwoodresearch.org

Get One Month Free of Consensus (The Best Ai Science Tool): https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeGet Muse EEG Headband (15% off): https://choosemuse.com/giantsshoulderWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community (100% free): https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutDavid Luke is the world's first and only Professor of Exceptional Experience — a parapsychologist and psychedelic researcher at the University of Greenwich who has spent two decades running experiments on the phenomena mainstream science refuses to touch. His naturalistic DMT field study found that 90% of participants encountered autonomous entities, 85% believed they were real — and some were blocked from returning by the entities themselves.Expect to learn why 90% of DMT users encounter entities and 85% say they're real, what happens when the entities refuse you entry, how your body responds to images before you've seen them, why someone with zero visual imagery can still meet elves on DMT, how entity encounters shift people's sense of purpose and meaning more than any other psychedelic effect, what the telepathy tapes are and why they show 100% success rates, why physics gets to be weird but consciousness doesn't, what a neo-pagan shamanically-informed lazy mystic actually believes about reality, and much more…0:00:00 Trailer0:04:03 Double Career Suicide0:07:32 The DMT Field Study0:13:45 Your Body Predicts the Future0:16:01 Huxley's Reducing Valve Theory0:20:23 Chris Timmermann's DMT Research0:23:20 90% Encounter Entities0:24:48 Punched in the Head by God0:27:17 The DMT Entity Taxonomy0:29:03 Experiencing Entities Without Vision0:48:28 The Aphantasia DMT Trip0:53:47 Entities Leaking Into Other People's Trips0:54:23 DMT Blocking0:56:30 The Entities Said Bugger Off0:59:57 Endogenous DMT and the Pineal Gland1:02:55 David Nichols Dismantles the Pineal Theory1:05:52 Giant Mantis Entities1:11:12 Purpose & Meaning: The #1 Wellbeing Shift1:12:06 The Telepathy Tapes1:19:54 The Ganzfeld Experiment1:24:16 Physics Gets To Be Weird But We Can't1:26:33 Why DMT Entities Are So Reliable1:29:33 Pablo Amaringo's Ayahuasca Art1:36:34 Do You Have a Stable Ontology?1:38:12 The Lazy Mystic1:39:34 In the Province of the Mind There Are No Limits...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Want to go deeper on consciousness? Join our community where we run live discussions, inner experience challenges and early ad free access to every episode: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutPhilip Goff is a professor of philosophy at Durham University and author of Galileo's Error and Why? The Purpose of the Universe. Stephen Fry called him the most persuasive panpsychist alive.Physics tells us everything about what matter does — but nothing about what it actually is. Goff argues this isn't a gap we'll close — it's a permanent hole. And the best candidate to fill it is consciousness itself.Expect to learn why physics can only describe what stuff does and not what it is, how Evan's sister discovered at 31 she has zero mental imagery, why Bertrand Russell may have already solved consciousness a hundred years ago, what 5-MeO-DMT revealed to a philosopher about the nature of reality, the difference between weak and strong emergence and why it matters for AI, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Trailer02:21 What Makes Consciousness Radically Different05:24 Evan's Descriptive Experience Sampling Experiment06:42 Discovering Aphantasia at 3108:27 Change Blindness and the Invisible Gorilla10:40 Mary's Room: What Red Looks Like13:21 Why Consciousness Theories Ignore Subjective Experience16:48 The Resurgence of Panpsychism18:14 Bertrand Russell: The Darwin of Consciousness20:13 Evan's Psychedelic Journey Toward Biopsychism22:12 Taking 5-MeO-DMT as a Philosopher24:38 Michael Pollan, Plants and Psychedelic Openness28:45 Is Consciousness Computational or Biological?30:43 The Combination Problem: How Tiny Minds Become One37:17 Russell's Inversion: Start With Consciousness40:21 The Hole in Physics: What Stuff Does vs What It IS41:50 Why Bernardo Kastrup Gets Cross44:41 Galileo's Error: The Decision That Broke Science47:20 Aphantasia, Visual Decoding and the Consciousness Gap49:50 Front Brain vs Back Brain: Where Is Consciousness?52:40 Eric Schwitzgebel's Snail Problem55:40 Philosopher-Scientist Teams: A New Model1:03:01 Strong Emergence and New Causal Dynamics1:04:47 Will We Fall in Love With Robots?1:07:22 The Genome Didn't Solve Life1:10:54 The $10 Billion Consciousness Experiment...GS Episodes MentionedAnil Seth — Consciousness, Controlled Hallucination, Perception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1oPhilip Ball — Quantum Mechanics, Brain Organoids, How Life Works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNbG5lnp51EKevin Mitchell — Free Will, Neuroplasticity, Strong Emergence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VGWzGqA32EMatthias Michel — Consciousness Philosophy, Aphantasia, Fish Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtVWgpVPr1sRussell Hurlburt — Inner Experience, Descriptive Experience Sampling: https:/

Want to truly understand your own conscious inner experience? I built a tool and its free - https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutDr Simon Ruffell is a clinical psychiatrist and the CEO of Onaya Science, the research organisation that studies Amazonian ayahuasca healing alongside Shipibo curanderos in the Peruvian rainforest. His team ran the first-ever study on a psychedelic and human epigenetics — finding that ayahuasca methylates the trauma-memory gene SIGMAR1, mapping precisely onto what the Shipibo have called "cleaning ancestral lines" for thousands of years.Expect to learn why a Maudsley-trained psychiatrist walked away from the NHS to apprentice as a Shipibo shaman, what happens when a curandero performs an exorcism on you mid-ceremony, how 80% of veterans no longer met PTSD criteria six months after a two-week retreat, why the curandero traditionally drinks the ayahuasca and the patient doesn't, what happened when Simon gave a Shipibo curandero a hit of pure crystal DMT, why DMT entities might be real and where Robin Carhart-Harris and Andrew Gallimore disagree about it, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Trailer03:20 What is Shipibo Curanderismo?04:52 From disillusioned NHS psychiatrist to the Peruvian Amazon10:14 First ayahuasca: shown two versions of myself15:41 The demon attack and the three suckers26:13 Bridging Western psychiatry and Amazonian shamanism36:04 Are DMT entities real? Carhart-Harris vs Gallimore49:50 Inside the multimodal veteran PTSD study52:41 DMT vs ayahuasca — what's actually different57:11 Should you try this? Preparation and "gringo wasca"1:04:52 The first-ever psychedelic epigenetics study (SIGMAR1)1:12:17 "Cleaning ancestral lines" — when Indigenous science met Western1:16:51 80% no longer meet PTSD criteria — the real numbers1:20:37 The shaman drinks, not the patient — traditional protocol1:30:41 The spiritual mechanism of action1:34:54 The dream experiment — plant personalitiesEmail for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] FOLLOW SIMON:Website: https://www.drsimonruffell.comInstagram: @sgdruffellOnaya Science: https://www.onaya.ioHeroic Hearts UK: https://www.heroicheartsuk.orgPAST EPISODES MENTIONED:Robin Carhart-Harris — Entropic Brain, How Psychedelics Really Work and Consciousness: https://youtu.be/t-GkE4YtLRkAndrew Gallimore — DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgWrxEFWDAGrace Blest-Hopley — Psychedelics Expert: Who is Blocking Psychedelic Research?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBcLxMfUzxw

Join the #1 Community Dedicated to Rigorous & Radical Biology: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutBrett Kagan is the Chief Scientific Officer at Cortical Labs, the Australian startup that fuses living human neurons with silicon chips to create a fundamentally new kind of intelligence. His team's DishBrain paper showed that neurons in a dish learned to play Pong in under five minutes — without any reward signal — providing some of the strongest experimental evidence for Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle.Expect to learn how neurons on a chip actually play Pong and Doom, why unpredictable stimulation drives learning better than reward, what the Free Energy Principle really says and where Brett disagrees with Friston, why 200,000 neurons outperform 800,000 on certain tasks, how Brett's baby daughter staring at fractals led to a new theory of intelligence, why no AI system can walk into your kitchen and make a cup of tea, what biological data centres look like and why they already exist, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer02:30 Brett Kagan — Neurons Playing Doom03:04 The stepping stones from Pong to Doom04:00 What is the CL1 and Cortical Cloud?05:20 The moonshot goal of Cortical Labs06:46 Giant buildings of neurons as computation hubs07:13 The biocomputing data centre already running in Melbourne07:38 Not building a brain in a dish09:00 What does a biological computer actually look like?09:29 Electricity as the shared language between biology and silicon10:49 How neurons on a chip play Pong11:10 Topographic mapping inspired by the whisker barrel system13:10 Why the neurons hit the ball — and what happens when they miss14:33 The Free Energy Principle explained simply16:03 The trap door analogy for unpredictable stimulation18:42 How the structure of neuron cultures shapes performance19:19 Bees vs elephants: why bigger brains aren’t always better21:37 Growing hippocampal place cells in a dish24:12 Teaching neurons Morse code28:27 The Free Energy Principle — cups, predictions and surprise32:29 Where Brett disagrees with Friston37:03 The dog treat problem — how do you reward a neuron?39:40 Complexity as a hidden driver of intelligence41:53 His baby daughter’s obsession with fractals43:57 Defining agency — the three orders of information processing50:33 Change how you change over time53:27 Why scientists are incentivised to be vague instead of wrong59:42 J.D. Bernal’s 1929 vision for brains beyond bodies1:02:38 Standing on the shoulders of iPSC pioneers1:03:14 Can neurons play chess? Moravec’s Paradox1:04:12 No AI can walk into your kitchen and make tea1:05:16 Augmenting what silicon is bad at1:06:35 Is general intelligence even possible for silicon?1:09:40 Why 200,000 neurons

Do you really inner speak? Join my Skool community and find out: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutCharles Fernyhough is the world's leading Inner Speech Researcher, Cambridge-trained Psychologist, and author of *The Voices Within*. His three decades of research have uncovered something most people never suspect: the voice in your head isn't a monologue — it's a compressed conversation between internalised versions of everyone you've ever spoken to, and when that compression fails, you hear voices.Expect to learn why inner speech is a Swiss army knife you use against yourself as often as you use it to plan your day, what "thinking in pure meanings" actually feels like when language gets stripped away, why spontaneous inner speech lights up completely different brain regions than scientists expected, how the dialogic structure of your inner voice explains human creativity, why 1 in 7 fiction readers hear characters as vividly as a real person in the room, what experiential crossing is and why a reader walked into Starbucks as Mrs Dalloway, why prayer might just be a specific kind of inner speech, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Intro02:30 Inner Speech as a Swiss Army Knife05:39 Is Inner Speech the Same as Thinking?06:58 Why We Should Abolish the Word "Thinking"08:42 Chess Experts Don't Use Language to Think10:03 Evan's 10-Week DES Experiment with Hurlburt12:19 Condensed Inner Speech vs Unsymbolized Thinking17:11 What Brain Scans Actually Show About Inner Speech20:58 Spontaneous vs Elicited Speech Light Up Different Areas25:16 Does It Matter How Much Inner Speech You Have?30:02 When Inner Speech Becomes a Weapon Against Yourself32:41 Are People Without Inner Speech NPCs?36:02 It's Not How Much You Speak — It's What You Say38:44 Why People Refuse to Believe Others Think Differently42:26 Neurodiversity and the Inner Speech Revolution44:35 The Dialogical Inner Speech Model Explained49:55 Multiple Identities Inside Your Inner Dialogue52:00 Prayer as Inner Speech with a Spiritual Being54:20 Hearing Voices Without Being Mentally Ill57:17 1 in 7 Readers Hear Characters Like Real People58:34 Experiential Crossing — Walking Into Starbucks as Mrs Dalloway59:48 Do Writers Actually Hear Their Characters?1:01:57 Predictive Processing and Fictional Selves1:04:20 Why Children Create Imaginary Companions...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected]

Do you really inner speak? Join my Skool community and find out: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutBen Alderson-Day is a hallucination researcher, Professor of Psychology at Durham, and author of the award-winning book *Presence*. His work reveals that the line between your inner voice, hearing voices, and deliberately creating a mind inside your own head is far thinner than anyone assumed.Expect to learn why not as many people truly inner speak as you might think, how your parents' voices became the voice in your head, why writers hear their characters talk back, what tulpamancers are and how they build autonomous minds, what really separates inner speech from hallucination, what Evan's LSD experience revealed about the voice in his head, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Intro03:20 What everyone should know about their inner speech05:39 Is my inner speech really me?07:30 Why some people have no inner speech at all11:13 How your parents' voices became the voice in your head13:34 The age your brain learns to think in words15:25 What 10 weeks of sampling your own mind reveals18:13 Peep Show and why we think thinking means talking21:04 What Evan's inner experience was actually like23:00 The field was written by people who talk to themselves25:32 Why people refuse to believe other minds work differently28:39 Why you get furious when a character's voice is wrong in a film34:22 Reader Bank — find out what type of reader you are37:53 Can you train yourself to have richer inner speech?40:20 Writers who hear their characters speak42:27 What is a tulpamancer and how did this start?45:36 How to create a sentient being in your own mind50:20 "This sounds like you're channelling psychosis"52:45 "It's just like hearing a voice in the room"55:50 The time Evan didn't recognise his own voice on LSD58:31 Would a hallucination researcher ever try tulpamancy?...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] mentioned:Russell Hurlburt (Round 1): https://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNgRussell Hurlburt (Round 2): https://youtu.be/N9tO1OLdJtoGualtiero Piccinini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIkDIPLIuRg

Get A Full Breakdown Of Your Own Conscious Inner Experience (100% Free): https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutMatthias Michel is an MIT philosopher and co-founder of the MIT Consciousness Club who has developed one of the most provocative theories of consciousness in recent years: Perceptual Reality Monitoring. He argues your brain runs a constant reality check on every signal it receives — deciding what's real and what's noise — and that this mechanism IS consciousness.Expect to learn how your brain tells the difference between perception, memory, imagination and noise, why conscious vision lags 400 milliseconds behind reality, why every fast action you've ever taken was driven entirely unconsciously, why fish probably have no conscious visual experience at all, how aphantasics may have mental imagery they can't consciously access, why conscious mental imagery might actually be a bug in the system, what blindsight patient GY's experience reveals about unconscious vision, and much more…Timestamps: 0:00 Matthias Michel — What Is Perceptual Reality Monitoring?2:58 How does the brain tell reality from imagination?5:30 Snake fear in Malaysia: when prediction systems misfire6:22 Blood vessel shadows and the stuff your brain erases7:50 Motion-induced blindness: your brain deleting real objects9:50 Is schizophrenia a broken reality monitor?11:02 Where does reality monitoring happen in the brain?12:53 Can you be conscious without a frontal cortex?15:49 Mark Solms and brainstem consciousness18:15 What does it mean to see without conscious vision?18:40 "Tell me what it's like to see behind your head" — blindsight patient GY20:48 Do fish have conscious vision?22:05 Why conscious vision is 350-400ms too slow for action24:07 Two visual systems: one conscious, one not25:30 The hollow face illusion fools your eyes but not your hand26:21 Binocular rivalry: your eyes know things you don't29:24 Sensory horizons: why water limits conscious vision33:17 Could coral reef fish or octopuses be the exception?37:31 Are fish complete zombies? (60% confidence)39:18 Should we still protect fish even if they're unconscious?42:47 Aphantasia through the lens of reality monitoring46:00 Why conscious imagery might be a "bug"48:06 Blank access: using imagery without experiencing it50:17 What is an unconscious visual representation?55:54 The strongest counterevidence to unconscious imagery58:50 Pupil dilation and Joel Pearson's results1:01:18 How do we falsify unconscious imagery?1:04:30 The PRM explanation for aphantasia: threshold differences1:07:50 The future of consciousness and aphantasia research1:10:29 Vividness is multidimensional — lessons from Russell Hurlburt1:13:35 Brain imaging limitations and the ne

Dr. Alfredo Spagna is a Cognitive Neuroscientist at Columbia University who discovered the Fusiform Imagery Node — the brain region that activates every time you imagine anything. But when he scanned people with aphantasia using an ultra-high-field 7T brain scanner, the node was firing perfectly — it just wasn't connected to the frontal lobe, suggesting that consciousness itself might depend not on what your brain computes, but on what it connects.Expect to learn how imagination hijacks the brain's perceptual system, why aphantasia shattered 40 years of assumptions about mental imagery, what the "visualizer fallacy" is and why it affects everything from therapy to education, how a painter with aphantasia creates art without ever seeing it in his mind, why your brain imagining a lemon makes you salivate even though there's no lemon, what the 7T brain scanner revealed about the architecture of imagination, how aphantasia may support the Global Neuronal Workspace theory of consciousness, why Olympic athletes spend hours visualizing routines they never physically perform, and much more…Timestamps00:08 What Happens in the Brain When You Imagine01:02 Where Imagination and Perception Diverge03:44 Would Perfect Imagination Be Hallucination?05:49 Voluntary vs Involuntary Imagination06:50 Why Do People with Aphantasia Still Dream?07:33 What Is Aphantasia — The Discovery That Changed Everything09:30 The Dissociation That Frightened Scientists11:06 The Visualizer Fallacy12:01 How Aphantasics Solve Problems Without Images14:31 Evan's Sister Discovers Aphantasia at 3116:55 Could Imagery Be Unconscious in Aphantasia?18:19 The Architect Who Lost His Imagination21:11 Eric the Painter — Creating Art Without Seeing It24:51 The Inner Speech Fallacy and Neurodiversity29:02 "I Can't Visualize My Mom's Face"29:57 Why Aphantasia Breaks Psychotherapy33:06 Empathy, Conflict and How Inner Experience Shapes Society36:42 The Chemistry Exam Problem39:09 Is Hypervisualization Actually a Disadvantage?41:21 Imagination as a Double-Edged Sword43:37 What Is the Fusiform Imagery Node?46:10 The Cafeteria Conversation That Started It All50:07 Three Bombshells From One Meta-Analysis52:23 Domain-General vs Domain-Specific Imagination54:05 The Brain Still Imagines in Aphantasia — It Just Disconnects56:36 Is Aphantasia a Disconnection Syndrome?58:59 Step-By-Step: What Your Brain Does When You Imagine an Apple1:05:05 Non-Visual Imagination — Taste, Touch, Sound1:09:38 What Aphantasia Reveals About Consciousness1:13:26 Does This Support IIT or Global Workspace Theory?1:15:49 Can Aphantasia Be Trained Away?1:18:53 The Olympic Skier Who Visualized Gold1:22:25 $10 Billion to Solve Imagination — Where Would You Spend It?...Em

Bryan L. Roth is a drug receptor scientist who solved the crystal structure of LSD inside a serotonin receptor and took $26.9 million from DARPA to build a non-hallucinogenic psychedelic — a compound that hits the same receptor as psilocybin, produces antidepressant effects in mice, and doesn't cause a trip.Expect to learn how his mother's schizophrenia launched a 40-year career in pharmacology, why Salvia divinorum has zero serotonin activity and works entirely through the kappa opioid receptor, why serotonin and opioid receptors converge in the claustrum, why DARPA funded non-hallucinogenic alternatives for soldiers, how his lab screens a trillion compounds that don't physically exist, why only 100 of 26,000 protein targets have ever been drugged, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Bryan L. Roth — The Man Who Builds Non-Hallucinogenic Psychedelics02:41 Falling Into Receptor Science by Accident04:58 When Only 5 People on Earth Studied Psychedelic Receptors06:07 Why "Psychedelic" Was Banned From Research Grants07:28 The 2016 Papers That Changed Everything08:26 The Scientist Friend Who Got "Cured" by Psilocybin10:41 The Vietnam Vet With a Gun in His Mouth — Ibogaine's Power12:50 What Is Ibogaine and Why Can It Kill You?18:06 Why the Kappa Opioid System Breaks Reality19:07 The Hidden History of Psychotomimetic Opioids22:16 Why Opioid Researchers Deny Kappa Causes Hallucinations23:18 The Claustrum: Where Serotonin and Opioid Receptors Meet24:14 Multiple Entry Points Into Reality-Altering Brain Systems28:35 Why Psychedelic Experiences Feel So Meaningful29:58 DMT: "More Real Than Reality" — And Nobody Knows Why31:28 Salvia: Becoming Plaid on a Wall33:48 Trump's $50M Psychedelic Order Won't Buy One Clinical Trial35:33 No Other Psychedelic Touches the Kappa Receptor38:10 The Real Reason He Built a Non-Hallucinogenic Psychedelic41:33 DARPA: More Psychiatric Casualties Than Physical in the Military44:48 Biased Agonism: Stripping the Trip From the Therapy47:19 How GPCRs Work and Why Drug Design Is Still Trial and Error49:50 People Who Will Never Touch a Psychedelic But Do Cocaine Weekly52:27 "I Don't Discuss That" — Whether He's Taken Psychedelics52:47 Screening a Trillion Drugs That Don't Exist55:02 The Real Bottleneck: 26,000 Targets, Only 100 Drugged...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Andrés Gómez Emilsson runs research at the Qualia Research Institute and thinks consciousness has a literal mathematical shape. We walk through the six geometric levels of DMT, why phenomenal space goes hyperbolic at high doses, why bad trips are competing symmetries fighting for territory in your visual field, and why he thinks AI on silicon will never be conscious.Expect to learn why pleasure is symmetry, what makes DMT phenomenologically alien at the topological level, why your breath being out of phase with your heartbeat might be most of what anxiety is, where the free energy principle stops being a theory of consciousness, and why a swimming pool full of logic gates breaks every computational theory of the mind.Timestamps00:00 The 6 Geometric Levels of DMT 02:30 Can Subjective Experience Be Studied Like Physics?03:58 Mapping Experience as a Hypergraph09:33 Introducing the Symmetry Theory of Valence12:19 What Symmetry Actually Is (And Why Physics Cares)19:21 Why Energetic Blockages Feel Bad — Yoga, Jhanas and Wave Propagation23:06 Is Pleasure Necessarily Symmetrical?26:31 The Annealing Metaphor: Healing a Broken Cymbal29:18 Symmetries in the World vs Symmetries in the Brain32:54 The Bucket Brigade: Why Coupled Oscillators Have to Be in Phase36:27 Where the Free Energy Principle Stops Being a Theory of Consciousness39:33 Marr's Levels: Why Friston Describes But Doesn't Explain42:12 What's Actually Symmetric in the Brain? (Thalamus and Biorhythms)47:52 Anxiety as Hyperpressurisation50:13 Connectome Harmonics and the Brain as a Musical Instrument52:18 The Six Levels of DMT — Threshold, Symmetry Hotel, Magic Eye55:06 The Magic Eye Level Explained57:31 Crystal Worlds and the Waiting Room59:48 The Breakthrough: When Topology Itself Changes01:01:43 Why Bad Trips Are Competing Symmetries, Not Missing Ones01:04:35 Square vs Hexagon Universes Fighting for Territory01:05:54 The LSD Christianity Example01:07:32 Andrew Gallimore's Alien Worlds — Pre-Configured Reality?01:09:04 Beam Splitter Holography and the Brain as a Non-Linear Optical Computer01:10:21 Why DMT Feels So Real — Cross-Modal Coherence and the Tactile Field01:12:48 The Coupling Kernel and Opposite-Phase Oscillators01:13:53 DMT Archetypes and the Specificity of Encounters...🔗 GS Episodes ReferencedAndrew Gallimore (DMT, alien worlds): https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder/search?query=GallimoreElizabeth Margulis (music neuroscience): https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder/search?query=MargulisMark Solms (homeostatic theory of valence): https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder/search?query=Solms 🔗 Andrés Gómez EmilssonQualia Research Institute: https://qri.orgQualia Computing (blog): https://qualiacomputing.comSubstack: htt

Andrew Gallimore is a neurobiologist, pharmacologist and chemist who developed the DMTx protocol — a technology that extends the most intense psychedelic experience known to science from minutes to hours. He is the author of Alien Information Theory, Reality Switch Technologies and Death by Astonishment, and is Director of Noonautics, a nonprofit dedicated to the scientific exploration of consciousness. He currently lives and works in Tokyo.Expect to learn why your brain builds alien worlds on DMT, what thalamocortical loops and attractor states actually are, why DMT may have once been an ancient neurotransmitter, why 94% of users encounter non-human entities, what Jungian archetypes can and can't explain about DMT, where Andrew disagrees with Robin Carhart-Harris on the reality of entities, what the DMTx extended state protocol is and how it works, why DMT is the only psychedelic that doesn't produce tolerance, what happens when entities deny you access to the DMT world, what darkness retreats and breathwork have to do with endogenous DMT, and much more...Timestamps:0:00 Trailer2:11 What Is the Building Alien Worlds Thesis?4:06 What Makes DMT Unique Among Psychedelics?6:57 World Space Landscape and Consensus Reality8:11 DMT Entities — Prevalence and Types11:04 Consistency of Entity Interactions13:31 Is the DMT World Real or a Hallucination?17:34 Thalamocortical Loops and World-Model Construction20:34 Attractor States Explained24:21 Why DMT’s Stability Suggests an Evolutionary Role27:25 Parallel Lives — The DMT Sleep Cycle Hypothesis28:36 What Was the Evolutionary Purpose of the DMT World?33:35 Melatonin, Serotonin and DMT — Pharmacological Cousins35:57 Is DMT Still Doing Something Important in the Brain?36:36 Noonautics and Endogenous DMT Research38:43 Debunking DMT Breathwork Courses and Pineal Myths40:45 What Does a Stable Pattern of Brain Activity Actually Look Like?43:53 Order Within Chaos — Chris Timmermann’s DMTx Findings47:16 Robin Carhart-Harris and the Jungian Archetype Debate48:37 What Jungian Archetypes Actually Are53:36 Why Archetypes Can’t Explain Alien Entities54:32 The Directed World Model — Do Entities Control Access?56:55 DMT Lockout — When Entities Deny You Entry58:30 Can You See Entities in Brain Scans?1:00:06 Future Brain Scanning Technology1:01:24 The Speed of the Switch as Evidence1:04:40 Dimensionality and Topology of the DMT World1:06:39 DMTx — What Is the Extended State Protocol?1:09:03 Target-Controlled Intravenous Infusion Explained1:11:23 Sending Specialists Into DMT Space1:13:35 Time Perception on DMT1:16:16 Surprises from DMTx Experiments1:18:15 The Future of DMT Consciousness Research1:19:12 Andrés Gómez Emilsson and the Mathematics of DMT Space...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on A

Dr. Matt Hill is one of the world’s leading cannabis neuroscientists, former president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, and a researcher with over 21,000 citations studying how the endocannabinoid system regulates the brain and body.Cannabis affects different people in completely opposite ways — calming one person while causing crippling anxiety in another — and Hill explains why the biology makes this inevitable, why both sides of the cannabis debate are getting it wrong, and why legalisation in Canada accidentally destroyed the very research that could have answered our biggest questions.Expect to learn why CB1 is the most widely distributed receptor in the brain yet almost nobody has heard of it, how endocannabinoids work backwards across the synapse unlike any other signalling system, why low-dose THC calms the amygdala but high-dose THC causes paranoia and anxiety, why women get higher than men on the same dose of cannabis due to a liver enzyme difference, why only a third of people genuinely benefit from medical cannabis while a third get nothing, how cannabis triggers schizophrenia in genetically vulnerable people without actually causing the disease, why Canadian legalisation killed cannabis clinical trials through a bureaucratic GMP-versus-GPP standoff, what the real cardiovascular risks of chronic cannabis use are, why cannabis users paradoxically have lower obesity rates, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Trailer02:00 Dr. Matt Hill — Cannabis Neuroscientist02:25 The Endocannabinoid System: Your Body’s Own Cannabis04:23 Every Biological Function It Controls06:30 The Most Distributed Receptor Nobody’s Heard Of07:20 Why Cannabis Science Is So Politically Toxic09:35 Both Sides Are Wrong: The Three Blind Men Problem10:23 The Frustrating Polarity of the Cannabis Debate12:37 Your Personal Experience Doesn’t Generalise16:25 Why Cannabis Feels Like a Different Drug for Different People17:52 Retrograde Signalling: How Cannabis Works Backwards20:08 Low Dose Calms, High Dose Causes Paranoia — Here’s Why22:24 Women Produce More 11-Hydroxy-THC Than Men25:52 Why Receptor Distribution Makes Cannabis Unpredictable27:11 The PET Scan Problem: Why We Can’t Map Your Receptors29:04 Why Cannabis Companies Don’t Fund Real Research31:25 How Legalisation Accidentally Killed Cannabis Science34:46 The GMP vs GPP Bureaucratic Disaster38:09 David Nutt: Drug Policy Driven by Politics Not Science43:01 Why You Can’t Standardise Cannabis Dosing Like Alcohol49:44 The Three Thirds Rule: Benefit, Side Effects, or Nothing53:05 The Best Evidence: Where Cannabis Actually Works53:36 Schizophrenia Risk — It’s a Trigger, Not a Cause55:52 Cardiovascular Risk: The Under-Discussed Real Danger57:02 Does Exercise Cancel Out Cannabis Heart Risk?58:14 The Obesity Paradox: Why Cannabis Users Are Thinner01:01:03 Chronic Pain, MS, Epilepsy and PTSD — The Medical Evidence01:03:18 Final Thoughts and a Plea for Billionaire Stoners...Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@t

Upgrade Your Shaving Experience With Henson (100 FREE BLADES): https://hensonshaving.com/thegiantsshoulderDr. Elizabeth Margulis is a professor of music cognition at Princeton University and author of Transported: The Everyday Magic of Musical Daydreams.When strangers listen to the same unfamiliar music, they independently imagine the same vivid stories — down to specific words like "frolic" and "pirates." This may be one of the most surprising findings in modern cognitive science, and it challenges everything we assume about the privacy of our own thoughts.Expect to learn why strangers imagine the same stories when listening to identical music, how a cross-cultural experiment between the US and rural China revealed completely different imagined worlds to the same sounds, how repeated speech spontaneously transforms into song, the surprising link between psychedelic therapy and modern music therapy, why the Mozart Effect misled state legislatures, what makes certain songs irresistibly groovy, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Intro02:45 From Concert Pianist to Cognitive Scientist06:27 What Does a Brain Look Like Listening to Music?09:04 How Musical Processing Differs from Speech10:53 The Irresistible Urge to Dance16:18 Can Animals Keep a Beat? The Snowball Experiment23:42 Why Repetition Changes How You Feel About Music26:31 The Speech-to-Song Illusion32:05 Is Music Evolutionary? The Case for Social Bonding36:36 Psychedelics and Music: What's Really Driving the Healing?42:28 The Mozart Effect Myth47:42 How to Raise a Musical Prodigy49:25 Musical Daydreams: Why Strangers Imagine the Same Stories53:11 The China Experiment: Same Music, Different Stories1:06:57 Psychedelic Hallucinations and Musical Archetypes1:16:17 Can Music Teach Us About Consciousness?...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Upgrade Your Shaving Experience With Henson (100 FREE BLADES): https://hensonshaving.com/thegiantsshoulderTim Maudlin is a philosopher of physics at NYU and founder of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics. In 1989 he published a paper proving that consciousness cannot arise from computation — thirty-five years before the world started panicking about whether ChatGPT can think.Expect to learn why no computer programme will ever be sufficient for consciousness, why large language models operate nothing like human brains, the critical difference between intelligence and consciousness that the AI industry keeps collapsing, why Penrose's arguments about consciousness are wrong, why quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the mind, why the mind-body problem may be the most intractable problem in all of science, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Why Consciousness Is Not Computable02:35 Maudlin's 1989 Paper: Computation and Consciousness06:01 The Thought Experiment: Beer Cans, Windmills and Conscious Machines08:11 Why Running a Programme Can't Be Enough for Consciousness10:36 Counterfactuals: What the Machine Would Have Done13:56 The Cog and Wheel Machine: Stripping It Down16:18 The Strange Anaesthesia: Jamming the Gears19:10 Why Computational Structure Is the Wrong Level20:08 Is This For or Against Computationalism?23:01 The 2026 AI Consciousness Debate25:06 Why the Turing Test Is Trivially Defeatable27:00 Neural Nets Are Nothing Like Brains29:12 Why the Brain Is Far More Than Neurons31:01 HAL 9000 and How Children Actually Learn33:27 The Car Wash Question That Breaks ChatGPT35:18 Defining Intelligence and Consciousness37:53 Twin Earth: Why Definitions Don't Work the Way You Think43:06 Locked-In Syndrome and the Lobster Problem47:08 Computation Can't Explain Pain Either48:01 Intelligence vs Consciousness: Why You Must Separate Them50:45 Can Anything Be Intelligent Without Being Conscious?53:09 Is the Turing Machine Argument About Intelligence Too?54:04 What Does Memory Actually Mean?57:00 Can Mathematics Capture the Structure of Qualia?01:00:02 Scott Aaronson's Demolition of Integrated Information Theory01:03:26 Why Formalising Consciousness Is a Fetishisation of Maths01:09:00 Why There Is No Simple State Space for Vision01:13:22 Does Quantum Mechanics Explain Consciousness?01:18:25 The Problem with Penrose and Hameroff's Microtubule Theory01:21:31 How Do We Actually Make Progress on Consciousness?01:24:45 Does the Body Matter or Is It All in the Brain?01:27:00 The Mysterian View: Why the Mind-Body Problem May Be Unsolvable01:29:47 Could Someone Invent a New Explanatory Framework?01:31:13 Why Pain Hurts: The Evolutionary Story01:33:12 What Newton Would Think of General Relativity<

Upgrade Your Shaving Experience With Henson (100 FREE BLADES): https://hensonshaving.com/thegiantsshoulderDr. György Buzsáki is one of the world’s most influential neuroscientists and the author of The Brain from Inside Out — a radical rethinking of how the brain generates perception, memory, and consciousness.We’ve been asking the wrong questions about the mind. Memory isn’t storage. Perception isn’t passive. Time and space aren’t sensed — they’re constructed. And the rhythms of our own bodies may be the hidden scaffolding behind everything we think, feel, and remember.Expect to learn why the brain doesn’t record the world but predicts it, how neural rhythms act like syntax to structure our thoughts, why time is not an input but a product of the brain’s internal cycles, how space and memory emerge from the same temporal code, why consciousness might just be a performance built from nested oscillations, what happens when brain–body rhythms fall out of sync, how we can think about memory as musical replay not archival storage, how rhythm breakdown may underlie mental disorders, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:22 The Evolution of Neuroscience Techniques05:13 Understanding Feedforward Inhibition08:13 The Paradigm Shift in Brain Function12:07 The Role of Rhythms in Prediction14:28 Overcoming Technological Barriers in Research16:45 Mapping the Hippocampus and Microcircuitry25:30 The Complexity of Brain Connectivity26:24 The Future of Connectomics34:36 The Inside Out Brain: A New Framework42:28 The Brain's Survival Mechanism45:00 Local and Global Brain Interactions48:47 Evolution of Brain Complexity52:56 Inside-Out Thinking in Neuroscience59:32 The Importance of Body Rhythms01:17:42 The Interconnectedness of Mind and Body01:26:43 Understanding Brain Dynamics in Psychiatric Disorders01:29:04 The Future of Diagnosing Mental Health Conditions01:32:56 The Role of Technology in Neuroscience01:35:47 Exploring the Nature of Memory02:06:25 Consciousness and Its Complexities...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Upgrade Your Shaving Experience With Henson (100 FREE BLADES): https://hensonshaving.com/thegiantsshoulderDr Wendy Suzuki is a Neuroscientist and Professor at New York University whose lab was the first to capture neurons firing as new memories are born. Her TED talk has over 65 million views, and she's the author of Good Anxiety and Healthy Brain, Happy Life.The hippocampus isn't just where memories are stored — it's the structure that builds your internal model of reality, imagines futures you've never lived, and may be the engine that constructs your sense of self.Expect to learn how place cells and grid cells map your world inside your skull, why people without a hippocampus can't imagine a tropical beach, how memories become models and models become selves, what the default mode network reveals about consciousness, how exercise physically grows new brain cells even into your 90s, why the boundary between memory and imagination is far blurrier than you think, and much more…Timestamps: 04:31 The Hippocampus: The Brain Structure That Makes You You07:01 Patient H.M.: The Most Famous Brain Surgery in History11:28 Place Cells, Grid Cells, and the Nobel Prize for Mapping Reality17:18 The Patients Who Can't Imagine a Tropical Beach20:41 Is Memory Just a Type of Imagination?24:44 Aphantasia: The People With No Mind's Eye28:55 The People Who Can't Forget Anything36:39 Reconsolidation: Why Remembering Makes Memories Vulnerable42:46 Marian Diamond and the Discovery of Brain Plasticity46:53 Autocatalytic Closure: How Memories Become Ideas51:44 Time Cells: How Your Brain Tracks "When"55:42 What the Hippocampus Does While You Sleep59:34 The All-Nighter Experiment: From A Grades to F Grades01:03:47 Does the Brain Replay Emotions During Sleep?01:07:01 The Amygdala, Fear Conditioning, and Joy Conditioning01:13:13 What Is Consciousness and Does the Hippocampus Create It?01:14:38 Clive Wearing: New Consciousness Every Seven Seconds01:19:30 The Dream Experiment and Optimizing Your Brain for Life...

Get One Month Free of Consensus (The Best Ai Science Tool): https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeDr. David E. Nichols is a pharmacologist, medicinal chemist, and widely regarded as the greatest living psychedelic scientist. He personally synthesized the psilocybin, MDMA, and DMT used in the most landmark psychedelic studies ever conducted — and founded the institute that funded most of them. He is 81 years old, has published nearly 300 scientific papers, and there is no one alive who can replace him.Expect to learn how he made a kilogram of MDMA for $4,000 and changed the course of psychiatry, what his first LSD trip revealed about the function of the universe, why psilocybin may be the most effective depression treatment we have, how his research was stolen and turned into street drugs that killed people, why the DMT pineal gland theory is scientifically impossible, whether consciousness lives in the brain at all, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 The Greatest Living Psychedelic Chemist05:09 Making MDMA for $4,000 and Changing Psychiatry08:25 How Do You Explain a Kilo of MDMA to Your University?10:50 What Was Known About MDMA in the 1980s?12:06 The LSD Trip That Showed Him the Function of the Universe14:52 A Psychedelic Healed His Relationship With His Abusive Father19:26 MDMA, PTSD, and a New Paradigm in Healing21:17 Psilocybin for Alcohol Addiction: The Stories That Changed Everything24:30 Why Is Psychedelic Research Still So Painfully Slow?30:05 Big Alcohol, Big Pharma, and the Economics of Prohibition33:24 The Paradigm Shift Happening in Real Time39:35 What Psychedelics Actually Do to Your Perception of Life42:06 Music and Psychedelics: Why Lyrics Can Ruin a Trip44:56 Can You Separate Real Insight From Hallucination?46:19 Is Consciousness in the Brain at All? The Transducer Theory52:36 His Wife's Paranormal Prediction of Her Father's Death55:56 Eating Disorders, OCD, and the Untapped Frontier59:25 Why Psychedelics Work Like Rebooting Your Computer01:00:08 The Bureaucratic Nightmare of Studying Schedule I Drugs01:06:11 The MDMA Analogue Nobody Will Fund01:08:16 A Plea to Billionaires: Fund Psychedelic Research01:09:32 Structure Activity Relationships: Sculpting Molecules to Fit Receptors01:12:07 AlphaFold, AI, and the Future of Drug Discovery01:14:36 The Golden Question: What Happens After a Drug Binds?01:17:39 DMT and the Pineal Gland: Debunking the Myth01:21:21 Is There Any Evidence DMT Is Released at Death?01:22:33 DMT Transfusions and Machine Elves01:26:09 What Excites Him About the Future of Psychedelics01:28:19 The Legacy of the Greatest Psychedelic Chemist Alive...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - h

Get One Month Free of Consensus (The Best Ai Science Tool): https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeDr Robin Carhart-Harris is the world's leading psychedelic researcher, founder of the first Centre for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, and the scientist who put the first person on LSD inside a brain scanner in over 40 years.His Entropic Brain Hypothesis proposes that consciousness exists on a spectrum from order to chaos — and that psychedelics work by dissolving the brain's confidence in its own model of reality. His landmark trial in the New England Journal of Medicine showed two doses of psilocybin matched six weeks of antidepressants for depression.Expect to learn why psychedelics don't activate the brain but scramble it, what the entropic brain hypothesis actually means and why entropy may be the best biomarker for consciousness, how the default mode network holds your ego together and what happens when psychedelics melt it, the difference between DMT entity encounters and 5-MeO-DMT ego obliteration, why Robin thinks we could still get psychedelic medicine catastrophically wrong, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Introduction to Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris03:01 The Journey into Psychedelics06:10 First Brain Scans with Psychedelics12:06 Understanding Brain Activity and Psychedelics17:49 The Entropic Brain Theory24:02 Consciousness and Brain Entropy30:10 Decoding Conscious Experience40:49 Exploring the Entropic Brain Model45:24 The Limits of Consciousness and Ego50:11 Psychedelics and Evolutionary Perspectives53:31 Shared Psychedelic Experiences and Archetypes01:00:06 The Nature of Hallucinations and Collective Unconscious01:04:34 Entropy, Connectivity, and Brain Function01:17:02 The Role of Serotonin Receptors in Psychedelic Experiences01:20:46 The Mechanisms of Psychedelics01:30:18 Cultural Perspectives on Psychedelics01:39:13 Psychedelics and Self-Understanding01:48:36 Cross-Cultural Studies in Psychedelic Research01:53:25 The Future of Psychedelics in Mental Health...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist and the author of The Story of CO₂ Is the Story of Everything — a mind-bending journey through deep time that reveals how a single molecule shaped life, climate, intelligence, and mass extinction.Carbon dioxide isn’t just a climate statistic. It’s the raw material of all biology, the original building block of your brain, and the molecule that has repeatedly rebooted life on Earth. Understanding it means rethinking everything from the origin of life to the future of civilization.Expect to learn how CO₂ helped spark the first cells at the bottom of ancient oceans, why hydrothermal vents may hold the key to alien life, how volcanoes rewrote evolution, the truth about the most catastrophic extinction in Earth’s history, how CO₂ shaped your metabolism, brain and the rise of humans, why mass extinctions can reboot evolution, why today’s climate experiment is unlike anything in the fossil record, why the planet has a natural thermostat — and how we’re breaking it, why life might be a universal process of energy dissipation, how the story of Earth challenges our ideas of uniqueness, and much moreTimestamps: 02:14 How CO₂ Became the Most Misunderstood Molecule on Earth07:31 Life as a Carbon-Fueled Energy Dissipation Machine12:45 The Origins of Life and the Vents That May Have Sparked It19:08 Why Mass Extinctions Keep Rewriting Life’s Blueprint26:27 CO₂ as Climate Stabilizer — Until It Isn’t35:40 What the Permian Extinction Tells Us About the Future42:55 Deep Time and the Psychology of Geological Thinking49:18 Why the Anthropocene Might Be a Cosmic Joke55:36 How Life Changes the Planet — And Gets Changed in Return01:04:02 The Story of CO₂ as the Story of Everything01:10:15 Is Earth’s Climate Crisis a Rehearsal of Past Catastrophes?01:15:49 Carbon, Consciousness, and Why We’re Here to Begin With01:22:06 What Would a Geologist See If They Dug Up 2024?01:27:31 Hope, Humility, and What Deep Time Teaches Us...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Erik Bekkers is an associate professor in Geometric Deep Learning at the University of Amsterdam, an ELLIS Program Director, and one of the most original thinkers working at the intersection of mathematics, AI and consciousness.He reverse-engineered how the human visual cortex processes reality using the geometry of curved spaces — then used those same principles to build AI architectures that outperform standard deep learning. He recently published a paper arguing that AI will never be conscious, introducing a framework called Biological Idealism.Expect to learn why your brain lifts reality into a higher-dimensional space just to see a straight line, what autopoiesis is and why it might be the dividing line for consciousness, why psychedelics decreasing brain activity while increasing experience is a problem for materialism, why firing neurons are an appearance of experience not the cause of it, why AI leaders claiming machines might be conscious is dangerous, and much more...Timestamps:00:00 Why Erik Wrote the Biological Idealism Paper02:00 The Materialist Bias in Society04:23 Does a Machine Have Consciousness?06:29 Can You Be a Materialist and Value Experience?08:24 The Map vs The Terrain: What is Matter Really?11:03 Bernardo Kastrup and the Path to Idealism14:11 Psychedelics: Less Brain Activity, More Experience?15:57 The Idealist Explanation of Neural Correlates19:54 What Primes Someone Towards Idealism or Materialism?24:17 Autopoiesis: The Self-Creation of Life27:32 How Autopoiesis Works in an Idealist Framework33:30 Where Physicalism and Idealism Actually Agree41:15 Finding Common Ground Across Metaphysics47:17 Why Are Some Creatures More Conscious Than Others?50:18 Donut-Shaped Geometry in Brain Activity54:46 Can Mathematics Ever Model Consciousness?59:33 The Geometry of Experiences Explained01:04:31 Continuity of Brain Structures Across the Animal Kingdom01:06:03 Can We Make a Machine Autopoietic?01:09:37 The Robot That Plugs Itself In: Is That Consciousness?01:14:00 What Would You Do With 100 Billion Dollars?01:20:20 Will We Ever See a Conscious Machine?01:24:11 AI Propaganda and Emotional Manipulation01:27:56 Hinton and Amodei: Is It Dangerous to Call AI Conscious?01:31:43 The Ethics of Machine Consciousness Research01:35:39 Animal Suffering, AI Spending and Asking the Right Questions01:38:10 Closing Thoughts and Anna Ciaunica's Influence...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Do

Welcome to Giant Conversations — a new format where top experts debate, discuss and unravel the biggest questions in science. Dr. Mark Solms is a neuropsychologist, psychoanalyst and author of The Hidden Spring. Dr. Ryan Smith is a computational neuroscientist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research who builds mathematical models of how the brain predicts and feels.Together they tackle the question: what does it take for a system to become conscious — and can we engineer it?Expect to learn why consciousness might be raw feeling rather than complex cognition, why your cortex may not actually be conscious, what's architecturally missing from current AI that rules out consciousness, what a machine would need to genuinely feel something, where these two brilliant scientists agree and exactly where they clash, and much more…Timestamps:00:01 Introduction to the Giant's Debate00:46 Mark Solms: What Makes a System Conscious?05:31 Ryan Smith: The Cognitive Case for Consciousness13:02 Where Mark and Ryan Agree and Disagree17:32 The Selection Problem: What Gets to Be Conscious?27:07 Can We Scientifically Prove Something Is Conscious?30:02 Blindsight: Behaviour Without Experience34:20 The Fish on Cocaine Problem41:25 Different Meanings of Consciousness54:57 How the Free Energy Principle Explains Consciousness01:03:02 Ryan Smith: Taking Consciousness Out of Biology01:12:17 How Do You Give a Computer Survival Needs?01:18:20 The Brain in a Vat: Does the Body Actually Matter?01:19:59 What Would Prove AI Is Conscious?01:22:32 Mark Solms: Why He Believes We Can Build Consciousness01:27:25 Why Current LLMs Have Zero Consciousness01:30:36 Mark's Final Word: Goals Must Be Real01:31:15 Rapid Fire with Ryan Smith01:37:52 The Neuron Replacement Thought Experiment01:42:10 Computation vs Architecture: A Middle Ground01:44:06 Final Thoughts...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Chris Frith is a pioneering neuroscientist who helped launch the field of cognitive neuroscience — and his work has completely changed how we understand reality, consciousness, and mental illness.In this episode, you’ll learn why perception is just a controlled hallucination, how our brains build reality through social connection, why people with schizophrenia see the world differently, how consciousness evolved to help us coordinate with others, and why your sense of self might be an illusion shared to stay sane.Timestamps: 02:12 What Is Consciousness? A Brain-Built Social Model06:34 Predictive Processing and Why You Never Really See the World11:29 Controlled Hallucinations: How the Brain Manufactures Reality16:45 Optical Illusions, Schizophrenia, and Seeing Too Much21:08 What Schizophrenia Teaches Us About the Nature of Belief27:10 Social Models, Sanity, and the Idea of a Collective Mind32:43 Consciousness as a Social Adaptation — Not a Solo Experience38:50 Generative Models and the Brain’s Simulation Engine45:02 Why Solitude Breaks the Mind and Social Sync Holds It Together50:31 Can AI Be Conscious? What’s Missing From Machines56:07 Free Will, Agency and the Brain’s Self-Narrative01:00:45 The Myth of a Single Reality: Delusions, Politics and Group Models01:06:58 Consciousness, Intelligence, and the AI Illusion01:11:41 Why the Self Is Just a Useful Story01:17:09 Do Octopuses Have Consciousness?01:21:16 Where Does the Line Fall Between Conscious and Not?01:25:20 Frith’s Thoughts on the Future of Consciousness Research01:30:03 AI, Prediction, and the Limits of Machine Minds01:34:38 Final Reflections: Social Brains, Sanity, and Shared Reality...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

William B. Miller Jr. is a Medical Doctor, Evolutionary Biologist, and author of Bioverse and co-author of The Sentient Cell — one of the most radical rethinks of biology published in decades.Every cell in your body is conscious, intelligent, and making decisions right now. Evolution is not random. Cancer is not a genetic accident — it's a highly intelligent system we've been fighting completely wrong. And the central dogma of molecular biology, the foundation of modern medicine, is broken.Expect to learn why biology begins with intelligence not chemistry, why every cell has preferences goals and experiences, why natural selection is only half the story, how cancer cells are intelligent agents and why that changes everything about treatment, why genes are tools not bosses, why consciousness can never exist in silicon alone, and much moreTimestamps:00:00:00 Introduction & The Biology Revolution Nobody Is Talking About00:01:40 Biology Begins With the Intelligent Measuring Cell00:05:09 Cognition All the Way Down: Is Even mTOR a Smart Molecule?00:07:20 Are Viruses Intelligent? The Strange World of Social Virology00:09:39 Defining Intelligence, Cognition and Consciousness00:16:09 What Is True Biological Agency and Where Does It Begin?00:17:20 The Constructal Law and The Biogenic Principle00:21:09 What Separates a Biological Agent From a Machine00:24:51 Free Will, Doubt and Why Miller Would Refuse To Stop Believing In Agency00:28:20 The Stem Cell That Searches For Its Identity00:44:55 The Toxoplasmosis Moment: The Medical Observation That Changed Everything00:50:21 Slime Mould vs Water: How Do We Separate Agency From Gradient Descent?00:53:49 Why We Stopped Having Children: States of Preference Are Running Evolution00:56:06 Where Is Preference Encoded in a Cell?01:03:30 The Senome: The Sensory Organ That Replaces Gene-Centric Biology01:07:17 Why Crick's Central Dogma Was Wrong: Information Never Flows One Way01:10:23 The Six Cellular Principles That Should Govern Human Ethics01:14:47 How Single Cell Consciousness Becomes One Unified Experience01:18:16 Symbiogenesis, Mitochondria and The Birth of the Eukaryotic Cell01:20:36 Why It Took 1.4 Billion Years For Multicellular Life To Appear01:28:09 Cognitive Selection: The Real Driver of Evolution01:34:02 Michael Levin, Morphogenesis and Where the Body's Blueprint Actually Lives01:39:47 You Never Truly Die: Your Intelligence Flows Back Into the River of Life01:43:30 What Does All This Mean For Medicine, Biotech and Society?01:45:50 Why Cancer Is Intelligent and We Are Fighting It Wrong01:48:31 AI Cannot Be Conscious — And That Might Make It a Better Tool01:49:21 The Future: Marrying AI to Conscious Biological Cells...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our

Dr. Julian Barbour is an independent theoretical physicist who has spent over sixty years working from a 17th-century farmhouse in Oxfordshire on the deepest question in physics — what is time? His answer: it doesn't exist.He completed the project Newton declared impossible and Einstein never finished, built two bestselling books around it, and at 88 remains one of the most original thinkers alive.Expect to learn why the Wheeler-DeWitt equation implies the universe is frozen and nothing evolves, what Shape Dynamics is and why only ratios and relations are real, why your brain is a "time capsule" containing the complete illusion of a past, how consciousness might add all the colour and motion to a bare mathematical skeleton, why Newton's gravity might secretly be a theory of variety, and why Barbour believes quantum mechanics itself could be replaceable, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00:00 What Is Time? Julian Barbour's Life Question00:03:07 Weather Observer in the Canadian Arctic00:05:31 The Dirac Article That Changed Everything00:08:28 Phoning Paul Dirac at Cambridge00:12:23 Why Dirac Rejected Four-Dimensional Spacetime00:15:28 Hamilton, Quaternions and the Dublin Bridge00:19:36 The Straw Poll with Hawking That Made Spanish Headlines00:22:08 The Titanic Analogy for the Problem of Time00:27:26 What the Wheeler-DeWitt Equation Actually Says00:31:00 Time Capsules: Why Your Memories Don't Prove Time Passed00:35:03 Flow States and the Experience of Time00:37:08 The Kingfisher in Flight: Consciousness Plays the Movie00:40:47 Psychedelics, Pollan and Consciousness00:44:13 Materialism vs Idealism: Where Does Barbour Stand?00:48:33 Complex Wavefunctions and the Born Density00:53:16 The Three-Body Collision Problem00:55:33 Leibniz, Monads and the Living Mirror of the Universe00:58:10 "I Am the Universe Seen from My Point of View"01:04:01 The Punchline: Gravity Equals Variety01:08:43 Buzsáki and How the Brain Keeps Time01:13:46 Did Science Take a Wrong Turn in 150 BC?01:19:32 Barbour's Ontology: Points, Distances, Ratios — That's It01:25:34 "Invisible Time Is a Monumental Lie"01:28:08 What Was There Before the Universe?01:31:46 Newton's Gravity as a Theory of Recognisability...Buy Barbours Books The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics: https://amzn.to/4liP9zyThe Janus Point: A New Theory of Time: https://amzn.to/4bw3ZPIEmail for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience

Dr. Michael Timothy Bennett is an award-winning AI researcher at the Australian National University and author of "How to Build Conscious Machines" — a mathematical blueprint for why anything is conscious and what it would take to engineer a machine that truly experiences the world.Expect to learn why information processing feels like anything at all, how consciousness is built from a hierarchy of selves, why a fly has experience but a slime mold does not, why current AI is fundamentally incapable of consciousness, how cancer is an alignment problem between cells, what building a conscious machine actually requires, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Why Does Information Processing Feel Like Anything?01:05 The Cosmic Ord: How the Universe Deletes What Doesn't Work03:59 Where is the Line Between Non-Conscious and Conscious?05:53 Multi-Scale Competency: Cells, Organs, Organisms, Ecosystems07:43 The First Order Self: Phenomenal Consciousness Explained08:27 Access Consciousness: Predicting Your Prediction of Me13:04 When Do Enough Abstraction Layers Produce Experience?18:40 Liquid Brains vs Solid Brains: Ant Colonies and Human Networks21:03 Bioelectricity: How Cells Signal and Cooperate24:03 Human-AI Hybrids: Prosthetic, Cooperative and Integrated30:30 Is There a Bottom to the Abstraction Stack?37:07 Why a Single Thread CPU Will Never Feel Anything40:56 Feeling Pain vs Knowing You Feel Pain42:52 Do Dogs Model Your Mind?46:58 The Paper He Wrote as a Joke That Won Best Student Prize48:11 Cancer as a Breakdown in Cellular Cooperation53:22 Why Elephants Don't Get Cancer and What That Means for AI56:47 How Do You Actually Build a Conscious Machine?01:01:36 Does a Tesla Robot Have Grounding?01:04:17 Should We Build Conscious Machines?01:06:46 If You Design a Robot to Love Cleaning Your Toilet01:08:25 His Biggest Fears About the Future of AI01:13:09 The Rise of Anti-Natalism and Losing Hope01:14:34 The Library of Babel: Why Modern Life Feels Overwhelming...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Matt Segall is a process philosopher, Associate Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and author of Physics of the World-Soul and Crossing the Threshold — two books arguing that consciousness isn't produced by the brain but is woven into the fabric of reality itself.Expect to learn why there is no scientific evidence that consciousness exists, how one French philosopher broke Western science in 1637 and we still haven't fixed it, why the brain is a condition for consciousness but not the producer of it, what panpsychism actually claims and why it's making a serious comeback, why the hard problem of consciousness and the origin of life might be the same problem, what it might feel like to be water or a photon, how psychedelics reveal something philosophy has been saying for centuries, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 The Nature of Consciousness02:52 Evidence and Experience06:09 Consciousness and the Brain09:09 Emergence vs. Production of Consciousness12:11 Panpsychism and Process Philosophy15:08 Information and Consciousness17:47 Biopsychism and Early Consciousness21:11 The Hard Problem of Consciousness24:08 Subjectivity and Objectivity27:06 The Role of Information in Reality29:47 Consciousness and the Universe48:25 The Relational Nature of Truth51:10 Beyond Space and Time54:55 The Self in a Panpsychist View56:30 The Evidence for Panpsychism01:00:01 Sociological Influences on Worldviews01:03:34 Psychedelics and Consciousness01:10:56 Navigating Reality and Hallucination01:15:13 Falsification and Progress in Panpsychism01:19:57 The Ethical Implications of Panpsychism...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Support The Channel:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1Get Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder Dr. Chris Fields is an independent researcher with one of the most extraordinary careers in modern science — from nuclear physics to decoding the first complete genome to quantum information theory — now collaborating with Michael Levin and Karl Friston to rewrite how we understand life and consciousness.His central claim: nothing in the universe has a real boundary. Every object you see — including yourself — is a decision, not a discovery.Expect to learn how quantum theory became a theory of communication, why cells might be goal-directed agents, whether bacteria can experience space, and much more...Timestamps:00:00 The Evolution of a Scientific Career02:06 Understanding Boundaries in Science09:59 Quantum Information Theory Explained14:55 Neurons and Quantum Communication40:07 Collaboration and Implications in Biology40:17 Exploring Biological Systems as Information Processors43:44 Agentive Thinking in Biology48:40 Understanding 3D Space Representation in Cells56:14 Conscious Agent Theory and Information Exchange01:15:02 Future Directions in Biological Communication Research...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Matt Ridley is an evolutionary biologist, bestselling science writer and author of eleven books including The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19.He co-investigated the origin of SARS-CoV-2 with molecular biologist Alina Chan — and what they found may be the biggest cover-up in the history of science. A secret Pentagon proposal describing the exact genetic manipulation that may have created the pandemic. Private messages showing virologists publicly denying a lab leak while privately admitting they thought it was likely. And an establishment that chose silence while millions died.Expect to learn what a furin cleavage site is and why it stunned virologists worldwide, what the secret DEFUSE proposal reveals about the experiments happening in Wuhan, why the virus was suspiciously well-adapted to human lungs from day one, what the recently released Epstein files reveal about how a convicted sex offender directed research at Harvard and compromised elite science, why no major funding body has investigated the lab leak despite 25 million deaths, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 The Origins of COVID-19: A Lab Leak Theory03:11 Investigating the Wuhan Institute of Virology06:00 The Role of Genetic Engineering in Virus Research09:08 The Furin Cleavage Site: A Key to Infectivity11:58 The Defuse Proposal: A Shocking Revelation14:51 The Pangolin Narrative: A Red Herring?18:10 The Call for Transparency in Science33:16 Controversies in Virus Origins35:35 Evaluating Zoonotic Narratives37:30 The Role of Markets in Virus Transmission40:22 Lab Leaks vs. Natural Origins42:05 Genetic Manipulation and Furin Cleavage44:42 Passaging Theory and Virus Evolution49:10 Implications of High Infectivity51:22 Suspicion of Early Vaccine Development54:48 The Need for Transparency56:24 The Future of Gain of Function Research01:00:57 The Lab Leak Hypothesis: Recklessness in Research01:10:01 Trust in Science: The Impact of COVID-19 on Public PerceptionEpstein01:20:20 Epstein's Influence: Compromising Science and Ethics01:23:32 Reforming Science Funding: Addressing Systemic Issues...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist, consciousness researcher, and co-creator of the Orch-OR theory — a radical and controversial model proposing that consciousness arises from quantum processes inside the brain’s microtubules.For over 30 years, Dr. Hameroff has worked alongside Sir Roger Penrose to explore how the fundamental fabric of spacetime could give rise to awareness itself — and what that means for AI, life after death, and the mystery of subjective experience.Expect to learn why microtubules inside neurons might be the real seat of consciousness, how anesthetics switch off awareness by dampening quantum vibrations, what happens to consciousness when the brain flatlines, why current AI models may never be truly conscious, how quantum coherence can persist in the warm, wet brain, what a "quantum soul" might actually mean, why critics have called this theory absurd — and how new research may finally be proving them wrong, how ultrasound could treat depression by targeting the roots of awareness, and much more...Timestamps: 00:00 The Misconception of the Brain as a Computer03:00 The Journey to Understanding Consciousness05:51 Microtubules: The Key to Consciousness09:00 Anesthesia and Its Role in Consciousness11:51 The Historical Context of Anesthesia15:06 The Mechanism of Anesthesia18:01 The Quantum Nature of Anesthesia21:06 The Role of Microtubules in Anesthesia24:00 The Unitary Mechanism of Anesthesia26:56 The Evidence Supporting Microtubules30:02 The Future of Anesthesia Research36:35 The Quest for Consciousness Evidence37:42 Microtubules and Information Processing39:15 AI, Neural Networks, and Consciousness41:09 Roger Penrose and the Heart Problem42:36 Gödel's Theorem and Quantum Physics44:03 Superposition and Spacetime Curvature46:54 Objective Reduction and Consciousness49:16 Microtubules as Quantum Devices51:30 Fibonacci Geometry and Consciousness54:49 Integrating Biology and Physics57:48 Criticism and Defense of the Theory01:01:26 The Impact of the 1995 Paper01:05:02 Decoherence in Biological Systems01:07:11 Experimental Evidence for Quantum Effects01:09:46 Conductance and Quantum Effects in Microtubules01:11:41 Experiments and Anesthesia's Impact on Consciousness01:14:06 The ORCH-OR Theory and Its Explanatory Power01:18:41 Integrating ORCH-OR with Other Consciousness Theories01:27:30 The Mechanism of Consciousness and Quantum Collapse01:36:11 Free Will, Quantum Mechanics, and Consciousness...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [email protected] ❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts

Philip Ball is a former Nature editor of 20 years and the author of over 30 books spanning quantum physics, consciousness, and the strange frontiers of biology. In How Life Works, he argues that everything we’ve been taught about life — genes, blueprints, biological machines — is deeply incomplete.Get How Life Works: https://amzn.to/46dQRMlBiology isn’t built from instructions. It’s built from self-organising systems that sense, evaluate, predict and act. Cognition didn’t start with brains. Purpose isn’t mystical. And causation may not live where we think it does.Expect to learn why genes aren’t in control, how cells make decisions without neurons, what combinatorial explosion means for biology, why self-organisation shapes development, how agency emerges from physics, and what all of this means for consciousness — and much more…Timestamps00:00 The Evolution of Biological Understanding04:54 Rethinking Genes and Their Functions10:59 The Complexity of Biological Systems15:50 Metaphors in Biology: The Need for New Narratives25:12 Robustness in Biological Systems30:26 Hierarchies and Interactions in Biology35:36 The Impact of Genetic Mutations38:09 Redundancy and Compensation in Biological Systems39:26 Understanding Noisy Cellular Activity43:53 The Role of Noise in Cell Differentiation46:45 Navigating Developmental Landscapes49:48 Canalization and Robustness in Biology53:27 The Dynamics of Energy Landscapes in Biology57:01 Self-Organization and Developmental Goals01:00:52 The Interplay of Genes and Non-Equilibrium Systems01:10:54 The Limitations of Genetic Metaphors01:12:36 Understanding Causal Emergence01:15:19 Neural Networks and Causal Power01:17:29 The Complexity of Protein Functions01:21:05 Cognition Across Biological Systems01:23:32 The Future of Biology Education01:29:30 Rethinking Genetic Determinism01:33:17 Agency and Meaning in Biology01:44:40 Continuity of Agency in Biological Systems01:47:02 Defining Genuine Agency in Proteins01:50:55 Exploring Sentience and Awareness in Cells01:56:53 Ethical Considerations in Generative Biology01:59:51 The Future of Synthetic Biology and Regulation...Episodes MentionedMeet the MIT Neuroscientist Showing Brain Waves Are the Secret Engine Behind Consciousness: https://youtu.be/7OFb-NG3jIwMeet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyMSponsors:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.s

Dr. Josh Bongard is a computer scientist, roboticist, and co-creator of Xenobots — the world’s first living robots made from frog cells, capable of movement, healing, and even self-replication.Together with biologist Michael Levin, Bongard’s work is upending some of biology’s most sacred assumptions: that DNA is a blueprint, that the brain is the seat of intelligence, and that only neurons can think. In his lab at the University of Vermont, he’s building AI-designed organisms that challenge our understanding of life, agency, intelligence, and what it means to be a self.Expect to learn how a pile of skin cells assembled itself into a replicating robot, why biology may be cognitive all the way down, how AI is learning to design living systems from scratch, why memory and learning might emerge in systems without brains, why the illusion of consciousness could be evolution’s greatest trick, how Xenobots are influencing the future of robotics and synthetic life, what moral standing these beings might eventually require, and why your high school biology textbook may have gotten almost everything wrong…Timestamps: 00:00 The Birth of Xenobots03:08 Understanding Xenobots: Science and Implications05:57 Cognition and Intelligence: A New Perspective08:53 Defining Consciousness and Self-Awareness12:09 Memory and Learning in Xenobots14:46 The Nature of Experience and Reality18:00 Exploring Agency and Adaptation20:52 The Future of Xenobots and Robotics28:10 The Evolution of Robotics: Learning from Biology30:21 Human-Like Adaptability in Robots33:10 Xenobots: The Future of Self-Replication37:38 Understanding Agency in Xenobots40:47 The Challenge of Defining Agency43:35 Ethical Considerations of Xenobots45:07 AI and the Future of Biological Robotics47:43 The Role of AI in Understanding Biology52:05 The Potential of AI in Biological Discoveries55:15 The Moral Implications of Synthetic Life01:00:01 Future of Food and Ethical Eating...Episodes Mentioned: Challenging a Famous Neuroscientist On When Consciousness First Emerged: https://youtu.be/ZnasmLpY5_8Meet the Scientist Who Mathematically Proved Reality is an Illusion! Round 2: https://youtu.be/kTKE8eLo8CUPhilip Ball: Why Quantum Mechanics is NOT What you think, Consciousness, Brain Organoids, AI & Life!: https://youtu.be/nNbG5lnp51E❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Tommy Wood is a neuroscientist and performance expert who trains the brains of elite Formula 1 drivers and studies how cognitive resilience can be built—and rebuilt—across a lifetime.From premature birth to world championship podiums, Tommy’s work spans the full arc of brain health, human performance, and cognitive decline. He’s also at the forefront of research into cutting-edge brain stimulation, virtual reality training, and the science of flow and resilience.Expect to learn what separates F1 drivers from the rest of us, why most brain training is a scam (and what actually works), the surprising role of virtual reality in cognitive development, why recovery and adaptation are more important than optimization, how elite performers manipulate arousal to access clutch states, why Sudoku doesn’t make you smarter, how executive function and decision-making can be trained like a muscle, the truth about brain stimulation (tDCS, TMS, vagus nerve) and what’s still pseudoscience, how dancing and martial arts might save your brain, and why cognitive decline is far from inevitable—and what to do to slow or even reverse it.Timestamps:00:00:00 Meet the Neuroscientist Training Formula 1 Drivers00:03:42 The Science Behind Split-Second Decision-Making at 200mph00:05:15 What Sets F1 Brains Apart From the Rest of Us?00:06:20 Is High Performance Born or Built?00:10:13 Why Obsession With Outcomes Can Hurt Your Brain00:11:26 Cognitive Optimization: What’s Real, What’s a Scam?00:13:12 Near vs Far Transfer: How Real Is Brain Training?00:17:01 The Best Activities for Boosting Brain Plasticity00:18:21 Why Complex Skill Learning Is the New Brain Hack00:19:20 How F1 Drivers Train Executive Function Without Driving00:22:09 Optimizing Recovery to Enhance Mental Performance00:23:21 Virtual Reality as the Future of Cognitive Training00:27:14 Why Real-World Complexity Trumps Gamified Drills00:30:00 Can VR Really Make You a Better Athlete?00:33:03 The Secret Behind Federer’s “Average” Reflexes00:34:11 Brain Stimulation in High Performance: Where Are We Now?00:39:41 Flow vs Clutch: What Actually Drives Performance?00:42:00 What Flow Feels Like in a Formula 1 Car00:45:03 Flow Is Overrated for Learning: Here’s Why00:46:34 The “Rule of Thirds” of Human Performance00:47:08 Understanding How and Why the Brain Declines With Age00:48:05 Allostasis: How the Brain Balances Change Over Time00:49:02 Does Routine Shrink the Brain?00:50:04 Can We Reverse Cognitive Aging?00:51:04 Tau, Amyloid and the Story of Dementia00:51:57 Resilience and Reserve: Your Brain’s Emergency Buffer00:53:16 What Triathlons Can Teach Us About Brain Longevity00:53:49 Aerobic vs Resistance Training for Brain Health00:54:54 White Matter and Why Lifting Weights Builds Intelligence00:55:22 The Surprising Brain Benefits of Dance, Martial Arts and Sport00:56:32 The Future of Brain Health: Stimulate or Decline00:57:13 Why Your Cognitive Destiny Is More Controllable Than You Think00:57:59 You Don’t Need Gadgets to

Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher of mind whose work has shaped how we think about synthetic consciousness and the architecture of thought itself.He developed the MicroPsi cognitive architecture, has held research roles at MIT and Harvard, and just co-founded the California Institute of Machine Consciousness with Karl Friston — a lab dedicated to building minds that know they exist.Expect to learn how emotions are compressed value functions for simulated agents, how brains create recursive world models to predict and control experience, why the self might just be a stabilizing hallucination, how synthetic minds could surpass biological ones, why Joscha sees spirits as information processes, and how consciousness might emerge anywhere complex systems learn to model themselves.We also explore the implications of Michael Levin’s work, the ethics of synthetic selves, why nature is already computational, and what’s truly at the bedrock of reality. This conversation is strange, deep, and unforgettable.Timestamps:00:00 Journey into Consciousness and AI02:59 The Intersection of Neuroscience and AI05:52 Understanding Consciousness: A Second Order Perception08:53 Consciousness: An Evolved Property or Fundamental Reality?12:03 The Concept of Spirit in Consciousness14:56 Exploring Consciousness in Non-Brain Systems18:00 The Nature of Consciousness in Organisms21:12 The Role of Software in Consciousness23:52 The Potential of Xenobots and Consciousness37:06 Emergence of Artificial Life40:12 The Nature of Consciousness43:56 Comparing Consciousness Across Species46:58 The Role of Social Structures in Consciousness54:39 Biological Ingredients for Consciousness01:10:55 Building Conscious AI01:16:38 Exploring Ethical Constraints in AI Experiments01:18:11 The Nature of Consciousness in AI01:22:18 Comparing Consciousness: LLMs vs. Xenobots01:24:19 The Binary Nature of Consciousness01:27:01 Agency vs. Consciousness: A Complex Relationship01:32:34 The Horrors of Conscious Existence01:37:41 Concerns About AI and Society01:40:14 The Role of AI in Society's Future01:46:57 The Urgency of AI Development01:51:03 The Future of AI and Society......❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is a philosopher of mind and leading voice on psychedelics, panpsychism, and the metaphysics of consciousness. He’s a research fellow at the University of Exeter and author of Noumenautics and Modes of Sentience — books exploring whether mind is fundamental to the universe.In this episode, we dive into why your brain might not produce consciousness, how psychedelics could reveal deeper truths about reality, the philosophical roots of mystical experience, and why matter itself might be sentient. Expect to rethink everything you thought was solid...Timestamps:00:00 Understanding Panpsychism02:49 The Nature of Consciousness05:56 Defining Mind and Its Ambiguities09:01 Historical Perspectives on Mind11:49 The Evolution of Consciousness14:57 Philosophical Positions on Consciousness17:41 The Intersection of Consciousness and Biology20:33 The Influence of Historical Context on Consciousness23:53 Exploring the Continuum of Consciousness26:41 The Debate on Consciousness Cutoff Points32:22 Exploring the Nature of Electrons and Consciousness34:26 The Interconnection of Consciousness and Physics36:24 Diverse Perspectives on Panpsychism40:13 Historical Context of Panpsychism and Its Reception43:40 Psychedelics: Insights into Consciousness51:52 The Challenge of Describing Psychedelic Experiences01:00:23 The Debate of Universalism vs Contextualism01:01:43 Psychedelics and Consciousness: Fact vs Fiction01:03:46 Hallucinations: Delusions or Deeper Reality?01:05:13 Mental Causation: The Connection Between Mind and Body01:08:55 The Therapeutic Mechanism of Psychedelics01:12:49 Exploring Panpsychism: Consciousness Beyond the Brain01:16:22 The Future of Consciousness Studies01:25:03 Metaphysical Possibilities in ScienceSponsors:Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Get Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder (Paid Partnership by BetterHelp)❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Adele Diamond is one of the world’s most influential developmental cognitive neuroscientists and a pioneer in our understanding of executive functions — the brain’s core control processes that shape attention, self-regulation, problem-solving, and goal-directed behaviour.Her groundbreaking research was the first to show that the prefrontal cortex is active in infants, transforming how we understand child development and reshaping clinical treatment for ADHD and PKU worldwide. She’s also led the charge in redefining education, proving that joy, movement, play, and emotional connection aren’t luxuries — they’re neuroscience-backed necessities.Expect to learn what executive functions really are and why they matter for everything from school performance to lifelong happiness, the overlooked role of the prefrontal cortex in ADHD, how dopamine operates very differently in this brain region, the crucial (and often missed) distinction between types of ADHD, why some kids are misdiagnosed when they’re actually suffering from trauma, why psychostimulants can backfire and how we might be overprescribing the wrong doses, why martial arts might outperform cognitive training, how childhood stress reshapes brain wiring, the profound importance of early encouragement and self-concept, how AI and smartphones are degrading our cognitive systems, why social-emotional connection is a prerequisite for learning, and what Adele believes schools are still getting tragically wrong — even today.This is an episode about rewiring how we think about attention, emotion, learning, and what it means to help human beings thrive.Timestamps: 00:00 Understanding Executive Functions and Their Importance04:48 The Journey to Discovering the Prefrontal Cortex11:04 Behavioral Paradigms: Linking Cognition and Brain Function18:05 ADHD: Understanding the Disorder and Its Nuances25:56 Dopamine, Focus, and Executive Function32:58 The Role of Psychostimulants and Long-Term Effects35:21 Improving Executive Function Beyond Medication38:00 Brain Plasticity: Can We Train Executive Function at Any Age?41:26 Self-Identity and Its Impact on Learning and Growth42:52 The Future of Executive Function in the Age of AI44:03 AI in Education: Opportunities and Challenges45:58 Balancing AI Use in Learning48:04 The Role of Technology in Early Childhood Development51:57 Attention Span and Distraction in the Digital Age53:57 Social Interaction and Mental Health56:03 The Dangers of Over-Reliance on Technology59:12 The Importance of Social-Emotional Learning01:03:05 Integrating Emotional Intelligence in Education01:05:58 The Need for Teacher Training in Child Development01:09:48 Addressing Childhood Trauma and Mental Health01:14:03 The Role of Psychedelics in Healing01:17:08 Conclusion and Future Directions...Sponsors:Mind Lab

Andrew Pask is Chief Biology Officer at Colossal Biosciences and a professor of genetics at the University of Melbourne. He’s spent over 30 years on the front lines of marsupial conservation and now leads one of the most ambitious projects in biology: the genetic resurrection and rewilding of the extinct Tasmanian tiger.Sponsors:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3De-extinction isn’t science fiction anymore — it’s a toolkit for saving what’s left of the natural world. From woolly mammoths to dodos to genetically edited quolls, Andrew’s work sits at the crossroads of synthetic biology, ecological restoration, and moral philosophy.Expect to learn why de-extinction might be the only way to preserve biodiversity, how CRISPR and ancient DNA are being used to rebuild lost genomes, what species we can and should bring back, the cultural myths and ethical fears surrounding “playing God,” the truth about the dire wolf announcement, why apex predators matter more than you think, how genetically reprogrammed animals might rescue ecosystems, what Jurassic Park got right — and what it absolutely didn’t, and much more...Timestamps:00:00 The Mission of De-Extinction03:03 Genomic Advances in De-Extinction05:52 The Process of Rebuilding Extinct Species08:53 Conservation and Genetic Diversity12:04 Targeting Endangered Species14:48 Rewilding the Tasmanian Tiger18:06 Monitoring and Managing Ecosystems29:23 The Complexity of Ecosystems and Species Interactions32:01 Genetic Diversity and Its Importance38:12 The Role of Genetic Diversity in Climate Resilience40:51 The Urgency of De-Extinction Technology43:19 The Future of Tasmanian Tigers and Rewilding45:39 Woolly Mammoths: Ecosystem Engineers50:09 Funding and Ethical Considerations in De-Extinction53:42 The Moral Obligation of De-Extinction56:42 Navigating the Controversy of Species Classification01:01:04 The Role of Marketing in Conservation01:04:38 Defining Ethical Boundaries in Genetic Engineering01:10:30 Policy Challenges in Genetic Conservation01:14:06 Future Projects in De-Extinction...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Karl Friston is one of the most influential neuroscientists alive and the creator of the Free Energy Principle, a unifying theory that aims to explain how brains perceive, act, learn, and remain alive in an uncertain world.SPONSORS:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3The brain is not a passive receiver of information. It is an active prediction machine, constantly generating expectations about the world and the body, updating those beliefs when they fail, and acting to make its predictions come true. Under this framework, perception is inference, action is prediction fulfilment, emotion is bodily forecasting, and the self is a model the brain uses to explain its own persistence.Expect to learn what the Free Energy Principle actually is, why living systems must minimise surprise, how predictive coding and active inference work, why perception is a controlled hallucination, how attention and precision shape experience, what interoceptive inference reveals about emotion and the self, how psychedelics relax beliefs, where consciousness might fit in a predictive hierarchy, and why this theory may be one of the deepest explanations of mind we currently have.Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to the Free Energy Principle02:54 Deflationary Nature of the Free Energy Principle05:48 Explaining the Free Energy Principle: High Road vs. Low Road09:02 Predictive Processing and Perception11:49 Active Inference and Its Implications15:07 Interoception and Emotional Inference18:02 Generative Models and Selfhood20:54 The Role of Emotions in Predictive Coding23:55 Transformative Experiences and Learning26:44 Conclusion: The Practical Applications of the Free Energy Principle48:58 Understanding the Role of Psychedelics in Therapy52:48 Mechanisms of False Inference and Precision in the Brain57:24 Relaxing Priors: The Impact of Psychedelics on Sense-Making01:01:03 Generative Models: Individual Differences and Shared Structures01:06:49 Cognitively Impenetrable Illusions and Prior Beliefs01:15:15 Sensory Attenuation and the Role of Attention01:19:03 The Free Energy Principle: Implications for Psychiatry01:25:48 The Future of Neuroscience Education and Research...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Michael Graziano is a neuroscientist, professor at Princeton University, and creator of Attention Schema Theory — one of the most provocative scientific explanations for consciousness to date.He argues that awareness isn’t magic or mystery — it’s the brain’s simplified internal model of its own attention. A trick of information. A self-portrait painted by neurons. And it just might explain why you think you’re a “you” at all.Expect to learn why consciousness is a useful illusion, how awareness emerges from neural models, what happens when these models break down in brain damage or stroke, why future AIs might think they’re conscious (and what that means for us), whether subjective experience can be explained without magic, why attention is the gateway to control, how consciousness helps us navigate the social world, what ventriloquism reveals about the mind, and how understanding this theory might shift everything we believe about thought, selfhood, and machine intelligence.SPONSORS:Try Sentia Spirits this Dry January (10% Off with Giant10): https://sentiaspirits.com/giantsshoulderMind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Timestamps: 00:00 Michael Graziano on Consciousness and the Brain03:47 Can Simple Creatures Be Aware?06:56 Where Selfhood Begins: Models in the Brain10:13 Why Awareness Is Useful for Control14:09 The Phantom Limb Illusion and Consciousness17:56 Consciousness as a Model, Not a Magic Spark21:32 What the Brain Tells Itself About Experience24:40 What Are You Actually Conscious Of?27:18 Graziano's Critique of the Hard Problem30:01 How Illusions Like the Body Schema Help Us Understand33:00 Phantom Limbs, Puppets, and Ghost Awareness35:08 What Is Attention, Really?39:02 The Brain’s Internal Sketch of Focus43:00 Attention Schema Theory Explained47:09 How Brains Build the Feeling of Mind50:25 Can Machines Ever Be Truly Conscious?54:18 AI That Says “I’m Aware” — Should We Believe It?58:10 When a Chatbot Starts to Suffer01:02:45 Society’s Slow Acceptance of Machine Awareness01:07:40 What Makes Human Selfhood So Stable?01:12:10 Training AI to Build a Model of Us01:16:05 Does AI Need a Theory of Mind?01:20:00 Graziano on Theory of Mind and Early Development01:24:25 Why Modeling Consciousness Matters in AI01:28:52 Can Language-Free Minds Still Model Others?01:30:28 ChatGPT and the Hinting Task — Reading Minds?01:34:12 Storytelling, Semantics, and Machine Intentions01:38:40 Could an AI Learn a Stable Personality?01:41:01 What the Next Decade of Neuroscience Might Reveal01:43:16 Final Thoughts: The Real Importance of Consciousness...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.c

Charles Murray is one of the most influential — and most cancelled — social scientists of the last fifty years. Whether you see him as a dangerous contrarian or a data-driven truth-teller, Murray’s ideas have transformed how we think about intelligence, inequality, class, and what makes a society thrive.SPONSORS:Get Manta Sleep Mask: https://mantasleep.pxf.io/9LXagy and Code GIANTSMANTA10Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Expect to learn how his years in 1960s Thailand shaped his libertarian worldview, why he thinks welfare programs destroy long-term happiness, what “The Iron Laws of Social Programs” reveal about human behaviour, why he advocates for a Universal Basic Income — and why he believes it could save community, family, and meaning itself. We also cover the controversial genetics of intelligence, embryo selection, the dangers of elite cognitive stratification, and why he thinks Brave New World was more prophetic than 1984.And yes — we go there. Chapter 13. Race, IQ, academic cowardice, media distortion, and why Murray believes honest conversation is the only way forward.This one will provoke, challenge, and surprise you. You won’t walk away thinking the same.Timestamps: 00:00 – Charles Murray’s Mission: Happiness, Policy, and Meaning02:37 – Culture Shock in 1960s Thailand That Changed His Worldview06:07 – What Rural Thai Villages Taught Him About Human Nature12:31 – The Real Argument Behind Losing Ground17:15 – The Iron Laws of Social Programs (And Why They Fail)25:33 – Psilocybin, Cannabis & the Future of Drug Policy29:36 – The Bell Curve: What It Really Said About IQ and Class35:03 – Chapter 13: Race, IQ, and the Media Firestorm40:03 – Why Academia Privately Agreed but Publicly Condemned45:25 – Coming Apart and the Acceptable Version of the Same Argument47:03 – Should Scientists Be Held Responsible for Dangerous Ideas?57:15 – Murray’s Surprising Case for Universal Basic Income01:04:34 – Embryo Selection, Polygenic Scores & IQ Engineering01:12:07 – Brave New World vs 1984: Which Future Are We In?01:16:28 – Fertility Collapse and the Future of Human Societies01:19:11 – What the Internet Gets Wrong About Charles Murray...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Rosalind Watts is a clinical psychologist and one of the most thoughtful voices in the modern psychedelic renaissance, known for her work in psilocybin-assisted therapy for depression and her pioneering focus on psychedelic integration.Psychedelics are often praised for their power to unlock mystical states and treat mental illness, but the real transformation, she argues, happens after the trip ends — in how we integrate what we've seen. And her own harrowing experience with ayahuasca radically reshaped how she now prepares people for the depths they might meet.Expect to learn why integration is the missing key to lasting psychedelic change, how ayahuasca unearthed her own birth trauma, why ego dissolution is often terrifying before it’s healing, how holotropic breathwork can recreate a trip without drugs, what the “pearl dive” teaches us about the gifts hidden inside emotional pain, how connection to self, others, nature, and even ancestors can rewire a life, why trauma may live in the body as much as the mind, the neuroscience of proprioception and the insula, why psychedelics might be blocked by political and corporate interests, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Psychedelic Therapy02:04 Understanding Psilocybin and Its Effects07:20 The Role of Connectedness in Healing10:19 Personal Experiences with Psychedelics13:27 Navigating Challenging Psychedelic Experiences16:01 The Importance of Community in Psychedelic Therapy19:18 Exploring Birth Experiences and Psychedelics29:56 Integration and Personal Growth Through Psychedelics35:55 Preparing for Psychedelic Experiences41:27 The Connection Between Mind and Body47:07 Comparing Different Psychedelics51:44 Frustrations with Institutional Barriers to Psychedelic Therapy57:45 Cultural Disconnection and Hope for Change01:00:02 The Quest for Connectedness01:02:55 Understanding Connectedness Through Psychedelics01:06:32 Cultural Perspectives on Connectedness01:08:45 The Role of Mystical Experiences in Healing01:11:42 Breaking Old Patterns and Embracing Vulnerability01:16:36 Integrating Psychedelic Experiences for Lasting Change...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Try Sentia Spirits this Dry January: https://tinyurl.com/giantsshoulder (10% Discount with Code GIANT10)Professor David Nutt is a neuro­psychopharmacologist, former UK chief drug adviser, and author of Drugs Without the Hot Air, Drink?, Cannabis, and Psychedelics. He built the first evidence-based Drug Harm Scale, ran the world’s first LSD brain-scan, and is now engineering hangover-free “alcohol” with GABA science.After the first drug tier list sparked an overwhelming response, this round two episode goes deeper. In this rapid-fire sequel, Nutt ranks twelve more drugs on the same harm scale, responding directly to audience feedback and tackling substances that viewers demanded we cover. From benzodiazepines and methamphetamine to vaping, ayahuasca, kratom, 2C-B, caffeine, and nitrous oxide, this episode exposes how dose, context, purity, and policy shape real-world risk far more than headlines ever admit.Expect to learn why benzodiazepine withdrawal can be more dangerous than heroin, how meth differs from “speed” at the molecular and historical level, why vaping nicotine is dramatically safer than smoking, how ayahuasca works as indigenous polypharmacy, what we actually know (and don’t know) about endogenous DMT, why kratom sits between medicine and dependence, how edible cannabis changes overdose risk, why nitrous oxide bans backfire, where 2C-B sits between MDMA and psychedelics, why caffeine can induce seizures at high doses, and how harm reduction consistently beats prohibition when it comes to saving lives.Timestamps: 01:00 Benzos 14:45 DMT & Ayahuasca 32:23 Meth & Speed 45:47 Nicotine Vapes 52:28 Kratom 55:40 Sentia 58:07 Edible Cannabis 01:06:26 Caffeine 01:09:35 2-CB01:19:46 Nitrous Oxide ...Buy Nutt's Books Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health: https://amzn.to/4dZTP9ZPsychedelics: The Revolutionary Drugs That Could Change Your Life―A Guide from the Expert: https://amzn.to/3SJXAX6Drugs without the hot air: Making sense of legal and illegal drugs: https://amzn.to/4kyu7eSCannabis (Seeing Through the Smoke): The New Science of Cannabis and Your Health: https://amzn.to/3FOiLo2Check out the amazing work of Drug Science (Dr David Nutt's Charity) Website - https://www.drugscience.org.uk/Prof Nutt Twitter (X) - @ProfDavidNuttDrug Science SocialsFacebook - @DrugScienceISCDTwitter (x) - @drug_scienceInstagram - @drugscienceinfoLinkedIn - @drugscience-ltdBlueSky - @drugscience.bsky.socialYouTube - @DrugScienceMore Resources on Drug SafetyMedical Cannabis: https://www.drugscience.org.uk/medical-cannabis-working-groupMedical Psychedelics: https://www.drugscience.org.uk/medical-psychedelics-working-groupHarm Reduction: https://www.drugscience.org.uk/enhanced-harm-reduction-working-groupAcademic R

Dr. Tali Sharot is a cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Affective Brain Lab, whose research reveals the hidden rules that actually change human behavior, beliefs, and motivation.Most people think facts and logic should be enough to persuade someone, quit a bad habit, or finally convince their dad to exercise. But the brain doesn’t work like that. In this episode, Tali explains why our “priors” and identity make beliefs stubborn, why emotion and storytelling sync brains in a way statistics can’t, and why the real driver of change isn’t knowledge, it’s incentives, rewards, and habit formation.Expect to learn why beliefs and behaviour are only weakly connected, how to use social incentives and immediate rewards to build habits that stick, the surprisingly simple intervention that pushed hospital handwashing compliance to nearly 90%, why punishment often backfires in policy and personal life, how to fight habituation to the best parts of your life through breaks and small changes, and why social media may be the “amygdala of the internet” shaping attention, fear, and belief in the age of AI, VR, and deepfakes…Timestamps: 00:00 Why facts bounce off: priors, identity, motivated reasoning06:06 Stories beat statistics: the emotion engine of persuasion07:52 Brain synchrony: why narratives feel contagious09:27 The “dad won’t exercise” paradox: belief isn’t the problem11:53 The 3 levers of behavior change: social, rewards, progress17:18 Handwashing at 10%: the tiny tweak that hit ~90%19:26 Reward beats punishment: the policy nudges that actually work33:25 Aphantasia: the shocking percentage who can’t visualize34:24 Hedonic adaptation: how to stop taking your life for granted50:03 Social media numbness: when stimulation resets your reward bar55:04 Deepfakes, VR and truth bias: why “corrections” fail01:11:06 Closing: the 17M-view TED Talk and final takeaways...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

I've condensed the best moments from a year of Giant conversations with scientists such as Michael Levin, Terrence Deacon, Anna Ciaunica and more on Diverse Intelligence and multi-scale cognitive biology.We explore the radical idea that biology itself is cognitive, all the way down, and that intelligence, agency, and problem-solving did not suddenly appear with brains but emerged gradually across evolution. Its the most incredible idea in modern biology. Are cells themselves intelligent or even conscious? Is cognition best understood as a spectrum rather than a category? Do xenobots, organoids, and tissues without brains possess goals, preferences, and problem-solving abilities? And what happens to our ethical frameworks if minds exist far beyond animals and humans?Timestamps: 00:48 Michael Levin: “Cells were doing advanced behaviours we could NOT have predicted!”32:42 Philip Ball Meet The Man Who Grew Mini Brains From His Own Skin Cells43:24 Anna Ciaunica Biology is Cognition The Whole Way Down54:00 Individual Cells Are Conscious And Intelligent William Miller 01:08:31 How Many Times Has The Brain Evolved Independantly? Terrence DeaconFull Length Episodes 1) Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin - https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM2) Philip Ball: Why Quantum Mechanics is NOT What you think, Consciousness, Brain Organoids, AI & Life! - https://youtu.be/nNbG5lnp51E3) Meet the Scientist Proving Your Whole Body is Conscious! - https://youtu.be/GCnz1e54GBI4) Meet the Scientist Showing Every Cell In Your Body is Conscious! - https://youtu.be/eNi-_2cOVtc5) Meet the Scientist Exploring Consciousness Through Thermodynamics! - https://youtu.be/sl79x5yti2g❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

I’ve distilled the most revealing moments from a year of Giant conversations on inner experience & neurodiversity into 52 minutes. This episode explores how radically different our minds really are, why most of us misunderstand our own thoughts, and what happens when you rigorously examine consciousness from the inside out using Descriptive Experience Sampling.Through deep discussion and lived examples, Russell Hurlburt reveals why inner speech is far rarer than people believe, how imagery, emotion, sensory awareness, and unsymbolized thinking shape everyday consciousness, and why questionnaires consistently fail to capture the true structure of the mind. The conversation moves from aphantasia and face blindness to meditation, dreaming, and the unsettling discovery that we may be conscious far more often than we think, even during sleep.Expect to learn why people routinely mislabel their own inner experience, how experience sampling exposes hidden forms of thought, why dreaming and imagination rely on different brain mechanisms, how consciousness can persist outside of dreams during sleep, and why the human brain may be best understood as a vast space for cognitive difference rather than a single shared mental template.Timestamps: 02:15 The Five Main Types Of Inner Experience. Which Do You Have? 16:18 Most People With Faceblindness Don’t Even Know They Have it! 23:52 Why Do Most People With Aphantasia Have Vivid Visual Dreams? 34:14 Are We Secretly Conscious When We Think We’re Sleeping? 45:32 Why Does Everybody Think They Inner Speak? Full Episodes 1) No. 1 Inner Experience Expert: Inner Monologue, Aphantasia and How Your Mind Lies to You - https://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNg2) Meet the Woman With Zero Mental Imagery, Face Recognition or See in 3D! - https://youtu.be/4NeY7OwwJzk3) The Blind Mind’s Eye: How Aphantasia Is Rewriting Consciousness ! Dr Adam Zeman https://youtu.be/SgA2up6-Bok4) Inner Experience Expert: Inner Monologue, Aphantasia and Why You Can’t Trust Your Own Thoughts 5) No. 1 Inner Experience Expert: I Spent 90 Days Discovering If I Really Inner Speak (SHOCKING) https://youtu.be/N9tO1OLdJto❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Final episode of the Giant's Shoulder Inner Experience Mini-Series. I spent 10 weeks undergoing the process of descriptive experience sampling in order to peal back the layers of my own inner world. What I discovered truly shocked me. Experiment Website (All 10 Hours of Interviews and transcripts dissecting my experience): https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/ieo/evan/evan_sampling.htmlCheck out Sentia Spirits the future of drinking (Use Code GIANT10 for 10% discount off your first purchase) - https://sentiaspirits.com/mcgloughlin4209355084Dr. Russell Hurlburt is a clinical psychologist and professor, and the creator of Descriptive Experience Sampling, one of the most rigorous methods ever developed for studying inner experience and consciousness from the first-person perspective.We tend to assume our inner world is obvious, continuous, and shared by everyone else — but it isn’t. Inner speech, imagery, emotion, and thought vary radically across individuals, and most people dramatically misunderstand what is actually happening inside their own minds. This conversation follows a ten-week self-experiment using experience sampling to reveal just how unreliable introspection can be.Expect to learn why most people overestimate how much they inner speak, the difference between inner speech and unsymbolized thinking, why sensory awareness dominates conscious experience, how emotion can drive behavior without being consciously felt, what it means to think without knowing the contents of your thoughts, why questionnaires fail to capture inner experience, how language distorts introspection, why individual variation matters more than personality or gender, and what this all means for neuroscience, psychology, and theories of consciousness…Timestamps: 00:00 Why Mapping Inner Experience Changes How You See Reality03:15 The Five Frequent Phenomena Explained (Inner Speech, Imagery, Feelings & More)07:05 Why People Assume Everyone Thinks Like Them10:55 Comment Section Chaos: Why Inner Experience Triggers So Much Certainty14:10 Introducing Experience Sampling and Why the First Day Is Thrown Out17:45 Evan’s Results Revealed: Sensory Awareness Dominates21:30 Bodily Sensations, Color, and the Hidden Structure of Awareness25:10 Why Feelings Appear So Rare in the Data (And Why That’s Misleading)29:00 Emotion vs Feeling: Having Emotions Without Experiencing Them32:40 Thinking Without Knowing What You’re Thinking About36:20 Deep Thought Without Words: Philosophical Thinking Below Language40:10 Echoes of Thought and the Afterimage of Thinking44:00 Why Inner Speech Is Vastly Overestimated47:30 Inner Speech vs Thinking: How to Tell the Difference51:10 Why Questionnaires Fail at Capturing Inner Experience55:00 The Refrigerator Light Problem of Introspection58:30 Are Introverts and Extroverts Expe

Dr. Robert Prentner is a philosopher of mind and consciousness researcher whose work bridges mathematics, phenomenology, information theory, and the foundations of reality. In this episode, he offers a rare deep dive into consciousness as a fundamental feature of the universe, the interface theory of perception, and the radical idea that physics itself may emerge from networks of conscious agents.Consciousness is not just subjective experience. It may be our only window into an underlying structure of reality that is far stranger than space, time, or matter. And understanding that structure could reshape how we think about minds, AI, biology, physics, and the nature of existence itself.Expect to learn why most consciousness researchers quietly converge on “what it is like to be” as their working definition of consciousness, why subjective experience may be far larger than our individual minds, why Prentner thinks a purely physicalist story struggles to explain inner experience, and how the interface theory of perception reframes everything we see as a species-specific user interface rather than a window onto objective reality.Timestamps: 02:30 Defining Consciousness08:25 Conscious Agent Theory Explained14:07 Phenomenal vs Access Consciousness20:05 Materialism vs Fundamental Consciousness25:48 Fitness Beats Truth Theorem31:23 Intuition and Meaning in Consciousness35:56 Exploring Consciousness and Meaning37:53 The Nature of Information in Biology41:04 Information as a Fundamental Concept43:17 Consciousness and Information Theory45:18 The Intersection of Consciousness and Physics49:24 Future of Consciousness and Physics Research52:51 Practical Applications of Consciousness Research54:23 Interface Theory of Perception and Consciousness01:05:13 Exploring the Nature of Time01:10:30 Quantum Entanglement and Reality01:14:40 Conscious AI: Perspectives and Possibilities01:26:26 Biological Properties and Consciousness in AI...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Check out my first conversation with Robert here: https://youtu.be/U9IzFqNGf40Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

I've condensed a full year of Giant conversations on topics of drug science and psychedelics into just 59 minutes. From life-saving medical cannabis to MDMA therapy, the serotonin myth, DMT entities, and the future of psychedelic mental health care, this episode brings together the most shocking, eye-opening and culturally important insights from leading experts — all in one place.Expect to learn from David Nutt on why medical cannabis laws are still failing sick children, from Dr Joanna Moncrief on how the serotonin imbalance theory of depression collapsed under scientific scrutiny and why antidepressants may work for reasons entirely different from what we’ve been told, from David Nutt on how MDMA helps people safely revisit trauma, the real neurobiology of psychedelic experiences and from Adam Saffron on what DMT is doing in the brain, why some users encounter “entities,” how misinformed drug policy has distorted science for decades, and much more…Timestamps: 00:42 David Nutt: "They're Lying To You About Cannabis"09:42 Christof Koch: "The Psychedelic Trip That Convinced Me Consciousness is Fundamental" 23:17 Joanna Moncrief: "Debunking the Serotonin Hypothesis of Depression"37:11 David Nutt: "The Insane MDMA Classification Story" 49:49 Adam Saffron: Why Do People See Mechanical Elves on DMT?...Episode Links: 1) Meet the Neuroscientist Fired For Exposing the Truth! Dr David Nutt - https://youtu.be/BLk6a5Vb2O02) The Psychedelic Trip that Convinced Christof Koch Consciousness is Fundamental - https://youtu.be/kJlV-b2bvaE3) Meet the Psychiatrist Debunking The Chemical Imbalance Myth That Fooled Millions! - https://youtu.be/lJq400heTaE4) Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They Are to Quit! Tier List - https://youtu.be/G-OZ_UBGvvo5) Meet the Neuroscientist Unifying Consciousness, Free Energy & Psychedelics! - https://youtu.be/wlFt7jcaZC0...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

Dr. Johannes Kleiner is a mathematician, physicist, and one of the leading architects of mathematical consciousness science — an emerging field attempting to describe subjective experience with the same rigour that physics brings to space, time, and matter.He studies the deep structure of awareness itself, from the geometry of colour and time to the dynamics of minimal experience, and is helping rebuild major theories like Integrated Information Theory and the Free Energy Principle on clearer mathematical foundations.Expect to learn why experience can be treated as a structured space, how meditation reveals the building blocks of consciousness, why today’s AI systems almost certainly aren’t conscious, how quantum theories both illuminate and confuse the debate, what a “no-go theorem” means for artificial minds, and why the future of consciousness science may depend on mapping the shape of experience rather than its location in the brain.Timestamps: 00:00 Why Consciousness Needs Mathematics02:12 Descartes’ Coordinates and Mapping the Mind05:10 What Phenomenology Really Studies07:40 The Geometry of Experience: Is Mind a Structure?10:25 Colour Spaces and the Mathematics of Seeing13:18 “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” — Explained15:42 Meditation and Minimal Experience18:58 Sensory Expansion and New Human Senses24:55 The Big Problems in Consciousness Science Today27:11 Rebuilding Integrated Information Theory33:39 Predictive Processing in Plain English40:02 The Free Energy Principle: Why Brains Predict Everything49:24 Emergence: How Complex Systems Create Mind52:01 Will Mathematics Become the Next Microscope for Consciousness?54:46 Quantum Theories of Mind: Penrose, Hameroff, and the Debate01:03:59 Why Today’s AI Is Almost Certainly Not Conscious01:13:13 The No-Go Theorem: Why Silicone-Based AI Can’t Feel01:23:05 What Makes a System “Alive” or “Aware”?01:26:25 Neuromorphic Hardware and Future Conscious Machines01:32:32 Does Consciousness Force a New View of Reality?...❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

I've condensed the best moments from a year of consciousness conversations on The Giant's Shoulder 2025 into 42 minutes. Truly the most Giant episode of the entire year! You’ll hear groundbreaking ideas from Anil Seth, Michael Levin, Nick Lane, Peter Godfrey Smith and Mark Solms as they explore the deepest scientific questions we can ask. Is perception just the brain’s best guess? Do bacteria have primitive feelings? Why are nervous systems so central to the evolution of subjectivity? Could machines ever develop inner experience? And is consciousness something we create, or something we reveal?Expect to learn why your brain constantly updates its predictions to control hallucinated reality, how membrane charge and metabolic states may be the physical roots of feeling, why large scale neural oscillations unify experience, and why affective consciousness might be the true foundation of the mind.Timestamps: 00:00 Intro00:31 Anil Seth: The Cognitively Impenetrable Messi Illusion 07:42 Michael Levin: Radical Theories Of Consciousness17:06 Peter Godfrey Smith: How Animals First Evolved Experience 23:39 Nick Lane: How Bioelectricity and Metabolism Creates Consciousness33:27 Mark Solms: How Consciousness is Raw Feeling...Episode Links1) No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI - https://youtu.be/lOSA06K0l1o2) Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin - https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM3) Meet the Neuroscientist Exploring the World of Animal Consciousness - https://youtu.be/DSCX4A8q9sY4) Nick Lane: Origin of Life, Aliens, Metabolism, Bioelectricity, Consciousness and Ai! - https://youtu.be/2Nq-Whmpw5I5) Meet the Scientist Proving Dreams Hold the Key to Consciousness! Dr Mark Solms - https://youtu.be/nMWaQ1U6dcc❤️ Subscribe to our main channel - https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder?sub_confirmation=1💚 Follow on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=Ka2rAQv7TyqiC9wvGwERpA💜 Follow on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-giants-shoulder/id1752486249Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/