The Giants Shoulder

Afleveringen

• #125 Meet The World’s Greatest Endogenous DMT Psychedelic Scientist 02.06.2026 1u 46min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS 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
• #124 - Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's 28.05.2026 1u 45min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #123 - Meet The Most Persuasive Panpsychist Alive Today 26.05.2026 1u 17min

  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://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNgRobert Prentner — Conscious Agent Theory, Mathematics of Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKE8eLo8CUCharles Fernyhough — Inner Speech, Hearing Voices, Memory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJFY6dypPc4 Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com❤️ 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/id1752486249
• #122 - Meet the Psychiatrist Training To Be An Ayahuasca Shaman 21.05.2026 1u 39min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com 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
• #121 Meet The Neuroscientist Teaching Neuron's in a Dish to Play Video Games 18.05.2026 1u 17min

  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 beat 800,0001:11:16 Complexity and structure matter more than scale1:11:58 Could biological neurons end up in your laptop?1:13:36 Edge robotics and the future of biological computing...Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
• #120 No.1 Inner Speech Expert: NPCs, Hallucinations, Imaginary Friends, Prayer and Experiential Crossing 14.05.2026 1u 8min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
• #119 Meet The Inner Speech Expert Proving We Can Conjure Other Conscious Entities 11.05.2026 1u 3min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comEpisodes 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
• #118 - Meet The MIT Philosopher Proving Aphantasics Have Unconscious Imagery 07.05.2026 1u 20min

  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 next breakthrough...Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com GS Episodes MentionedMark Solms — https://youtu.be/nMWaQ1U6dccAdam Zeman — https://youtu.be/SgA2up6-BokRussell Hurlburt (R1) — https://youtu.be/j0gKl-g3DNgRussell Hurlburt (R2) — https://youtu.be/TfSuvAJB3JUMerlin Monzel — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g21AqnSV1X4Joel Pearson — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I_7HrWYMQ0Alfredo Spagna - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SBHefDnEk
• #117 Meet The Neuroscientist Proving We Got Imagination & Aphantasia WRONG! 04.05.2026 1u 29min

  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?...Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #116 Meet The World’s Greatest Psychedelic Receptor Scientist 30.04.2026 1u 2min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #115 Consciousness Expert Explains The 6 Levels Of The DMT Experience 27.04.2026 1u 19min

  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: https://andrsgmezemilsson.substack.comEmail for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
• #114 No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness 24.04.2026 1u 22min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #113 - Meet The Neuroscientist Decoding Your Bodies Cannabis System 22.04.2026 1u 4min

  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@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #112 - No. 1 Music Neuroscientist: How Music Hijacks Our Collective Unconscious, Emotion and Imagination 16.04.2026 1u 21min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #111 - Tim Maudlin: Consciousness, Turing Machines, Problems with Quantum Mechanics and Ai 13.04.2026 1u 37min

  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...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [evan@thegiantsshoulder.com](mailto:evan@thegiantsshoulder.com)❤️ 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/
• #110 - Meet the Neuroscientist Who Discovered That Waves Produce Memory, Spacetime and Consciousness 09.04.2026 2u 13min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #109 Dr Wendy Suzuki: How The Hippocampus Weaves Your Memories Into Consciousness 06.04.2026 1u 26min

  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...
• #108 - Meet The Greatest Living Psychedelic Scientist You've Never Heard Of 02.04.2026 1u 32min

  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: [evan@thegiantsshoulder.com](mailto:evan@thegiantsshoulder.com)❤️ 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/
• #107 Robin Carhart-Harris: Your Consciousness Exists Between Order and Chaos | Entropic Brain 31.03.2026 2u 6min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/
• #106 The Story Of How CO₂ Created ALL Life, Intelligence and Consciousness 26.03.2026 1u 24min

  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: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com ❤️ 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/