The Giants Shoulder

Epizode

• #138 - Meet The Greatest Ayahuasca Psychedelic Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of. 17.07.2026 1h 14min

  Download the most scientifically rigorous nutrition app MacroFactor! Use code GIANTS for a 2 week FREE trial: https://onelink.to/giantsWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutDráulio Barros de Araújo is a physicist who spent twenty years pointing MRI scanners at the ayahuasca experience, and ran the world's first controlled trial proving a single dose of a psychedelic could lift treatment-resistant depression in a week. He thinks DMT entity encounters are not hallucinations, and he wants to know if they could be real.Expect to learn why calling ayahuasca visions "hallucinations" is scientifically wrong, why you can't overdose or build tolerance to ayahuasca the way you can with alcohol or cocaine, why vomiting is considered part of the medicine rather than a side effect, how a physicist measured the entropy of a mystical experience and watched it rise, why your eyes physically won't stay open during a vision, the hippocampal memory glitch that may explain why DMT entities feel real, and why psychedelic science may be measuring altered states with the wrong tools entirely.Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:50 Who Is the Physicist Studying Ayahuasca Visions0:05:05 The 1930s Origin of Brazil's Ayahuasca Churches0:10:13 Why You Can't Buy Ayahuasca Like a Coca-Cola0:11:22 What a Typical Ayahuasca Trip Actually Feels Like0:16:53 Why LSD Visions Happen With Eyes Open, Ayahuasca Doesn't0:17:22 Your Brain on Ayahuasca Looks Like a Dream, Not a Hallucination0:21:08 Why Ayahuasca Visions Never Feel Like "Just a Dream"0:22:23 There's No Such Thing as an Ayahuasca Overdose0:24:18 Why Vomiting and Diarrhea Are Part of the Medicine0:28:34 The Hippocampus Theory of Why DMT Entities Feel Real0:33:22 Would Irish People See Snakes on Ayahuasca Too?0:35:40 We're Measuring Trips With the Wrong Scientific Tools0:40:44 Speech Analysis: A New Way to Study the Trip0:44:31 The Flawed Questionnaire Behind Every Psychedelic Study0:50:23 Why Dráulio Refuses to Ask a Single Direct Question0:55:19 The Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Explained by a Physicist1:02:01 Why Psychedelics Dissolve Your Career Ambitions1:04:02 The Most Important Psychedelic Question Science Avoids: Death1:06:09 What the West Should Learn From Indigenous Ayahuasca Traditions... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedDavid Luke — Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKD1gt1X5oRobin Carhart-Harris — No. 1 Psychedelic Scientist: The Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Consciousness & DMT Entities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-GkE4YtLRkDavid Nutt — Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They Are to Quit! Tier List Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEgbv6IHYaYGuest LinksUFRN Brain Institute — Faculty Profile: https://neuro.ufrn.br/institute/members/investigators/draulioGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NoO4Rt0AAAAJCentro Avançado de Medicina Psicodélica (CAMP): https://www.camp-sci.com/ptLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/draulio-araujo-06ab47125
• #137 - Dennis McKenna: "I've Spent 50 Years Investigating The Entities That Exist Within Ayahuasca" 13.07.2026 1h 31min

  Get Manta Sleep Mask: https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL and Code GIANTSMANTA10Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutDennis McKenna is an ethnopharmacologist who spent fifty years decoding the chemistry of psychedelic plants, producing the first hard pharmacological proof of why ayahuasca actually works. He's also the younger brother of Terence McKenna, and in 1971 the two of them ran an experiment on their own minds in the Colombian Amazon that ended in a two-week psychotic break neither has ever fully explained.Expect to learn why the McKenna brothers thought DMT was a portal to another dimension rather than a drug trip, what happened during Dennis's two-week dissociation from reality in the Amazon, how ayahuasca's DMT and MAO-inhibitor plants actually work together in the body, why Dennis still calls the entire 1971 expedition "an act of science fiction, not science," how his PhD research became the first pharmacological proof of why ayahuasca works, why he thinks his own brother unintentionally seeded the "machine elf" into everyone else's DMT trips, why a career pharmacologist has never personally seen one himself, and why DMT entity encounters may be linked to real mental health outcomes, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:03:07 How Dennis Got Into Psychedelics0:06:07 Terence The Philosopher vs Dennis The Scientist0:11:11 The 1971 Expedition To The Colombian Amazon0:16:05 Why DMT Was "The Holy Grail"0:17:50 The Ayahuasca Chemistry Nobody Understood Yet0:18:45 Hunting For The Legendary Oo-Koo-Hé0:22:00 Stumbling Into A Mushroom Paradise0:27:05 When The Mushrooms Started "Talking"0:28:38 The DNA Resonance Experiment0:36:01 The Two-Week Psychotic Break0:40:46 Psychotic Break, Shamanic Initiation, Or Alien Encounter?0:47:08 From Psychotic Break Back To The Lab0:53:16 Proving How Ayahuasca Actually Works0:58:47 The Book That Seeded Mushrooms Into Society1:05:39 Sasha Shulgin And The Chemistry Of Psychedelics1:11:02 "I've Never Seen A Machine Elf Myself"1:17:56 Pushing The DMT Experience To Five Hours1:20:02 What Makes DMT Different From Psilocybin1:26:18 DMT Entities And Mental Health Outcomes...... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedAndrew Gallimore — No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgWrxEFWDADavid Luke — Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKD1gt1X5oGuest LinksHeffter Research Institute Bio: https://www.heffter.org/dennis-j-mckenna-phd/McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy: https://mckenna.academy/mka-team/dennis-mckenna/X: https://x.com/DennisMcKenna4Book — The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss: http://brotherhoodofthescreamingabyss.com/ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dennis-Mckenna
• #136 - Denis Noble: Neo-Darwinism, Michael Levin & Why The Last 70 Years of Genetics Is Wrong 10.07.2026 1h 30min

  Get Jenni Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off) - http://jenni.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=thegiantsshoulderGet Manta Sleep Mask: https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL and Code GIANTSMANTA10Denis Noble is the physiologist who built the first computer model of the heart in 1960 — and has spent the sixty years since using it to dismantle the gene-centric view of life that dominates modern biology. He took Richard Dawkins's Selfish Gene and rewrote its most famous passage word for word in reverse — and every single experiment still fits.Expect to learn why the central dogma of molecular biology is provably wrong, how your immune system rewrites its own DNA to fight off new viruses, why the peppered moth story in every biology textbook turns out to be false, what happened when Denis told Richard Dawkins "Lamarck is back" to his face, why a cell corrects roughly 800,000 DNA replication errors before it's allowed to divide, how epigenetic inheritance can persist indefinitely if the environment stays changed, whether plants might have a form of experience, and where exactly agency ends and pure chemistry begins.Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:27 Meet The Man Who Modeled The Heart By Hand0:04:43 Why The Central Dogma Of Biology Is Wrong0:06:39 The 1866 Split Between Darwin And Wallace0:09:02 The Infinite Monkey Theorem, Tested For Real0:17:30 The Peppered Moth Myth Textbooks Still Teach0:20:19 The Nobel Laureate Textbooks Forgot To Cite0:22:53 Telling Richard Dawkins "Lamarck Is Back"0:27:43 Was Lamarck's Giraffe Neck Story Actually Right?0:29:40 How Your Body Talks To Your DNA0:38:17 A New Species Evolved In Two Generations0:44:18 So What's Actually Controversial Here?0:48:09 Cellular Agency: When Cells Act Like Organisms0:53:04 Steelmanning The Case Against Cellular Agency0:55:05 The 17th-Century Prediction That Proved Purpose Works1:04:20 Your Cells Correct 800,000 DNA Errors Per Division1:13:14 Life Lives On The Edge Of Order And Chaos1:15:27 Do Plants Have Experience?1:27:31 How Does Consciousness Fit Into Systems Biology?...... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedMichael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyMPhilip Ball — Philip Ball: "Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SseGx0R0fYGuest LinksOxford Faculty Page: https://www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/denis-noblePersonal Website: https://www.denisnoble.comGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J6kLmsIAAAAJ&hl=enUnderstanding Living Systems (Book): https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Living-Systems-Life/dp/1009277367The Third Way of Evolution: https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people/view/denis-noble
• #135 - Consciousness Expert Explains The 5 Levels Of The Psilocybin Experience 06.07.2026 1h 20min

  Get One Month Free of Consensus (The Best Ai Science Tool): https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeGet Manta Sleep Mask: https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL and Code GIANTSMANTA10Matthew Johnson is a psychedelic addiction scientist who spent over two decades at Johns Hopkins before becoming the senior researcher at Sheppard Pratt's Center of Excellence for Psilocybin Research. He's personally guided over 100 people through high-dose psilocybin sessions and says the "mystical experience" that shows up in the data predicts recovery even after you strip out how strong the drug felt.Expect to learn how the psilocybin experience changes as the dose climbs from one gram to a full "heroic dose," why a mystical-type experience predicts addiction recovery even after controlling for how intense the drug felt, what separates a mystical experience from personal insight and emotional catharsis as predictors of healing, why DMT users around the world keep reporting the same handful of entity archetypes, the peer-reviewed Rupert Sheldrake experiment testing whether people can sense who's about to call them before the phone rings, why he thinks rigorous telepathy research keeps getting ignored rather than debunked, why a hard-nosed behavioral pharmacologist ends up leaning toward an idealist view of reality, and much more…Timestamps:0:00:00 Trailer0:02:28 Who Matt Johnson Actually Is0:04:34 How He First Got Into Psychedelics0:09:07 Did He Sense Addiction Benefits Early On0:15:03 The First Mystical Experience Trial At Hopkins0:16:42 What Counts As A High Dose Session0:22:17 How The Trip Changes From 1 To 5 Grams0:30:41 Why Mystical Experiences Predict Better Outcomes0:33:34 Insight And Catharsis As Separate Predictors0:39:49 DMT Entities And Machine Elves Explained0:44:02 Why 20% Of DMT Users See The Same Beings0:52:58 The Peer-Reviewed Telepathy Experiment That Shocked Him0:59:32 Why No One Has Funded A Real Telepathy Study1:11:04 Attention Schema Theory And The Illusion Of Self1:16:00 Could A Single Cell Have Experience1:17:54 Why He Leans Toward Idealism Over Materialism...Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/about... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedMichael Graziano — Challenging a Famous Neuroscientist On When Consciousness First Emerged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnasmLpY5_8Guest LinksSheppard Pratt Profile: https://www.sheppardpratt.org/news-views/story/sheppard-pratt-announces-dr-matthew-w-johnson-as-senior-researcher-for-the-center-of-excellence-for-psilocybin-research-and-treatment/X: https://x.com/drug_researcherGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fWhYUvwAAAAJ&hl=enResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Johnson-57JHU Faculty Bio: https://hub.jhu.edu/experts/profiles/matthew-johnson/
• #134 - Neuroscientist: "Your Brain Doesn't Create Consciousness" — NDEs, Telepathy and Terminal Lucidity 02.07.2026 1h 38min

  Get One Month Free of Consensus (The Best Ai Science Tool): https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutMarjorie Woollacott is a neuroscientist who spent three decades as a hard materialist and co-wrote the textbook used to train physiotherapists worldwide. After a meditation experience her own field said was impossible, she hid it from her colleagues for over 25 years before concluding the brain does not produce consciousness — it filters it.Expect to learn why a career materialist neuroscientist hid her own paranormal experience for 25 years, the prospective hospital studies that corroborate what patients report while clinically dead, how a comatose man with zero brain activity accurately described a nurse hiding his dentures, what terminal lucidity is and why dying Alzheimer's patients regain full clarity minutes before death, the ongoing lab research into non-speaking autistic children who appear to communicate telepathically, why Christof Koch said the data would turn his world upside down, how Bernardo Kastrup's analytic idealism compares to Woollacott's own theory of consciousness, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:46 Where Her Story Really Begins0:05:05 The Materialist Neuroscientist She Used To Be0:06:15 The Meditation Retreat That Broke Her Skepticism0:14:24 What Actually Caused Her Awakening0:22:59 How Rigorous Is Near-Death Experience Research, Really0:24:19 The Prospective Studies Skeptics Ignore0:25:06 The Coma Patient Who Knew Where His Dentures Were0:35:48 Bernardo Kastrup's Analytic Idealism Explained0:43:19 Is Terminal Lucidity Just Wishful Interpretation?0:46:09 The Three-Year-Old's Last Request Before Dying0:53:07 Can Consciousness Move Physical Objects?0:58:20 Why Jung And A Nobel Physicist Believed In Idealism1:02:59 The Telepathy Tapes, Explained1:19:40 The Autism Vulnerability Problem With This Research1:21:21 The 5% Above Chance Telepathy Effect1:35:13 Designing an Experiment Skeptics Can't Dismiss...... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedChristof Koch — The Psychedelic Trip that Convinced Christof Koch Consciousness is Fundamental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJlV-b2bvaEGuest LinksWebsite: https://marjoriewoollacott.com/University of Oregon Faculty Page: https://ion.uoregon.edu/about/person-page/459Book – Infinite Awareness: https://www.amazon.com/Infinite-Awareness-Awakening-Scientific-Mind/dp/144225033XAcademy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences Bio: https://www.aapsglobal.com/marjorie-woollacott/ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marjorie-Woollacott
• #133 - Meet The Most Important Man Alive In The History of MDMA 29.06.2026 1h 13min

  Check out Scispace (JNGIANT20: 20% off the monthly plan or JNGIANT40: 40% off the annual plan): https://scispace.com/?via=jun1giantshoulderGet Muse EEG Headband (15% off): https://choosemuse.com/giantsshoulderWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutRick Doblin is the founder of MAPS and the man who spent 50 years dragging the world's most demonized drug into the doctor's office. He taxed legal ecstasy dealers to fund the first MDMA toxicity studies, sued the DEA with the profits, and got a Harvard PhD in public policy to beat the system from inside — then ran the only completed Phase 3 trials in history showing that two-thirds of severe PTSD patients no longer had the diagnosis after MDMA-assisted therapy.Expect to learn how he taxed ecstasy dealers to sue the DEA, why MDMA was a couples-therapy drug before it was a party drug, the real reason Nixon criminalized psychedelics in 1970, why 88% of severe PTSD patients responded to MDMA therapy while half dropped out of standard VA treatment, why you can't get addicted to MDMA the way you can to cocaine, why you'll do more jail time for MDMA than for the same weight of cocaine, his plan for "net zero trauma by 2070," and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:03:03 Winning the Generational Lottery After the Holocaust0:05:27 Dropping Out of College to Study LSD0:08:15 The Forgotten Golden Era of Psychedelic Research0:09:33 When the CIA Weaponized LSD for Mind Control0:13:10 Half a Pound of Mescaline and Ten Years to Recover0:15:09 The Day a Stranger Said "There's This Drug Called Adam"0:15:56 MDMA Was a Therapy Drug Before It Was Ecstasy0:18:39 Sasha Shulgin, the Man Who Invented 200 Psychedelics0:24:12 How Dealers Tweaked Molecules to Stay Legal0:27:21 Why Nixon Really Criminalized the Hippies0:30:04 Going to War With the DEA — and Winning0:33:56 Founding MAPS and $200 Million Later0:39:09 Taxing the Ecstasy Dealers to Fund the Lawsuit0:41:33 The First MDMA Safety Study, Run on a Beach0:42:43 The 1992 Moment That Reopened Psychedelic Science0:44:31 The First PTSD Study, Shut Down for Politics0:48:08 Cannabis Is Palliative, Psychedelics Are Curative0:50:08 The Veteran Suicide Epidemic Nobody Will Fund0:53:33 Why MAPS Bet Everything on MDMA0:58:35 The Effect Sizes That Should Have Changed Everything1:01:01 Why Half of Veterans Quit Standard PTSD Therapy1:02:13 Why the Data Alone Was Never Going to Win1:04:54 The Absurd Reason the FDA Cited: "Euphoria"1:06:34 Why You Can't Get Hooked on MDMA1:07:26 More Jail for MDMA Than for Cocaine1:08:36 Net Zero Trauma by 20701:10:47 MDMA for Couples, and Bringing It to the World...... Email for sponsorship enquiries:evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGuest LinksRick Doblin — MAPS: https://maps.org/people/rick-doblin/Rick Doblin on X: https://x.com/RickDoblinMAPS: https://maps.org
• #132 - Meet the Psychedelic Scientist Proving The Fields Largest Theory is WRONG! 25.06.2026 1h 46min

  Check out Scispace (Use Code JNGIANT20: 20% OFF MONTHLY): https://scispace.com/?via=jun1giantshoulderGet Muse EEG Headband (15% off): https://choosemuse.com/giantsshoulderWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutManoj Doss is a cognitive neuroscientist and one of the only people studying what psychedelics actually do to memory — trained inside the field's most prestigious lab at Johns Hopkins, he's now its most rigorous internal sceptic. His claim is heretical: the profound sense of revelation you get on a trip may be a memory glitch — a familiarity signal firing without the detail that would normally justify it, so the trip feels like downloading the truth while your brain quietly degrades what it's actually recording.Expect to learn why the profound insights you get on psychedelics might be a memory glitch, why the entire default mode network story "needs to go to hell", what a 250-subject mega-analysis revealed that small studies missed, why salvia melts you into the couch while DMT builds whole worlds, whether DMT entities and mantises are real contact or just a brain built to see faces, why blocking a single receptor proves psychedelics aren't "keys to reality", the flaw Doss says sinks the entropic brain and REBUS, how you'd ever tell a true revelation from a beautiful lie, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:24 The One Thing Psychedelic Science Ignores: Memory0:05:38 Why Your Worst Beliefs Feel Like Hard Facts0:07:38 The "Sense of Knowing" That Fools Everyone0:09:00 How Psychedelics Rewire What You Remember0:16:11 Why Yoga Feels Better on Psilocybin0:20:27 "The Default Mode Network Story Needs to Go to Hell"0:27:26 How Neuroscience Invents Stories From Noise0:35:42 Why Psychedelic Studies Are Too Small to Trust0:40:31 Salvia: Becoming a Sentient Piece of Corn0:44:13 The Kappa-Opioid Door Into Another Reality0:48:00 Why Salvia Is Heaven and Ibogaine Is Hell0:53:03 Does the Brain Have Two Reality Generators?0:59:24 Has 20 Years of Psychedelics Taught Us Anything?1:05:18 Are DMT Entities Real? The Mantis Problem1:13:28 Why You See Machine Elves (But His Mum Wouldn't)1:24:29 Tearing REBUS and the Entropic Brain Apart1:36:21 "Do Stuff in the Scanner, Stuff Happens in the Brain"1:44:25 The Debate Robin Was Warned Not to Do...... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedKarl Friston — Meet The Neuroscientist Who Created The Best Universal Theory Of Brain Function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IZOFs4qmYRobin Carhart-Harris — No. 1 Psychedelic Scientist: The Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Consciousness & DMT Entities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-GkE4YtLRkMichael Levin — Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyMChristof Koch — The Psychedelic Trip that Convinced Christof Koch Consciousness is Fundamental: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJlV-b2bvaEDavid Luke — Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKD1gt1X5oGuest LinksManoj Doss — Dell Medical School: https://dellmed.utexas.edu/directory/manoj-dossX (Twitter): https://x.com/manojdossGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=KFo44R0AAAAJORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2939-2522
• #131 Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They Are to Quit! Tier List Part 3 23.06.2026 1h 5min

  Check out Scispace (JNGIANT20: 20% off the monthly plan or JNGIANT40: 40% off the annual plan): https://scispace.com/?via=jun1giantshoulderProfessor David Nutt is a neuro­psychopharmacologist, former UK chief drug adviser, and author of Drugs Without the Hot Air, Drink?, Cannabis, and Psychedelics. After two rounds that sparked an overwhelming response, round three goes fringe — ibogaine, salvia, mescaline, peyote, GHB, xylazine, the nitazines, and the Amanita muscaria "Santa Claus" mushroom — ranking each on Nutt's evidence-based harm scale.Timestamps:2:56 Ibogaine7:21 Salvia18:02 Mescaline & Peyote23:59 San Pedro Cactus28:55 GHB40:59 Kratom & 7-Hydroxy46:05 Xylazine ("Tranq")51:34 Nitazines54:53 Amanita Muscaria...Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comBuy Nutt's BooksDrink?: 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 Research: https://www.drugscience.org.uk/research
• #130 - The Two Greatest Living Psychedelic Scientists Discuss The Insane Future Of Drugs 18.06.2026 1h 50min

  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: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutDavid Nichols is the chemist who made the molecules behind the entire psychedelic renaissance; Bryan Roth is the pharmacologist who cracked how those drugs actually work inside the brain. Together they reveal how little we still understand about the compounds now entering mainstream medicine — and how the same technology could, in Roth's own words, build a literal zombie apocalypse.Expect to learn why the word "psychedelic" could once kill a research grant, how Nichols hand-made the MDMA, DMT and psilocybin behind the field's most famous trials, what profiling 41 psychedelics against 318 receptors actually revealed, why we still don't know what half of those receptors even do, whether the trip itself is the medicine or a side effect that can be engineered away, why a twitching mouse is the most reliable predictor of a human trip, how Roth's "remote control for neurons" could rewrite memory, pain and aggression, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer3:22 Two Godfathers of Psychedelics, Together4:03 The Man Who Made the Molecules by Hand7:34 How Roth Fell Into Serotonin by Accident16:46 When "Psychedelic" Was a Forbidden Word20:18 318 Receptors, 41 Psychedelics: The Big Paper31:18 Nobody Knows What Half These Receptors Do35:46 How Nixon's Drug War Killed the Science46:06 The LSD in the Famous Structure Was Dave's55:52 1.4 Kilos of MDMA for $4,00057:29 The Psilocybin That Stunned Johns Hopkins1:00:19 The Real-Life Walter White1:01:20 Where Psychedelic Medicine Goes Next1:07:13 "It's Just GQ": How Psychedelics Actually Work1:11:35 The Hidden Proteins Behind Mental Illness1:20:03 Is the Trip Itself the Medicine?1:34:33 Why a Twitching Mouse Predicts a Trip1:38:14 Your Personalised Psychedelic, Designed by AI1:45:51 The Tech to Build a Zombie Apocalypse...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=sEmmmMma8QsGuest LinksBryan Roth — UNC Pharmacology: https://www.med.unc.edu/pharm/directory/bryan-roth-md-phd/Roth Lab & NIMH Psychoactive Drug Screening Program: https://pdspdb.unc.edu/rothlab/David Nichols — Heffter Research Institute: https://www.heffter.orgThe 318-receptor psychedelics paper (Neuron, 2025): https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(25)00470-2
• #129 - Meet The Worlds Greatest Emotion Neuroscientist 16.06.2026 1h 15min

  Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant’s Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutJoseph LeDoux is, by almost any measure, the greatest emotion neuroscientist who has ever lived. His work has been cited more than 185,000 times, he wrote The Emotional Brain — the book that defined the field — and he put the amygdala on the map as the brain’s fear centre. Then he spent a decade arguing that everyone, including himself, got the lesson wrong.Expect to learn how a marketing student accidentally became the most-cited emotion researcher alive, what split-brain experiments reveal about why your brain invents fake explanations for your behaviour, why the amygdala is not a fear centre and what it actually does, how every act of remembering chemically rewrites the memory, why anxiety drugs have been targeting the wrong brain circuit for 50 years, what the Four Realms of Existence means for the concept of self, why emotions are culturally acquired schema rather than universal hardwired states, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:43 From Marketing Student to Neuroscientist0:06:18 Moving to New York and Meeting Gazzaniga0:07:37 How Split-Brain Surgery Works0:09:58 The Chicken and Shovel Experiment0:12:13 We Are Confabulating 24/70:17:13 Why He Chose to Study Emotion in Rats0:19:26 His Grant Was Rejected for Studying Emotions0:22:30 Masquerading as a Learning Researcher0:25:22 Growing Discomfort With the Amygdala Fear Centre0:28:23 Rethinking the Emotional Brain0:30:47 Why Fear Isn’t Universal — Danger Is0:33:19 Emotions as Acquired Schema0:35:22 The Four Realms of Existence0:40:36 Cognition vs Consciousness in Animals0:41:29 Tulving’s Three Kinds of Consciousness0:47:57 The Brain Region Only Humans Have0:53:40 Your Model Is Still on the Slide — And You Disagree0:55:05 The George Martin Analogy0:56:37 Why Anxiety Drugs Don’t Actually Work0:58:21 The Three-Step Fix for Fear1:01:27 Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness1:05:36 Using AI to Decode Conscious vs Unconscious Speech...... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGuest LinksNYU Faculty Page: https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/joseph-e-ledoux.htmlPersonal Website: https://www.joseph-ledoux.com/Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iAqJssMAAAAJ&hl=enPsychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/joseph-e-ledoux-phdThe Four Realms of Existence (Harvard University Press): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674291003
• #128 - Meet the Neuroscientist Proving Scientists Got Conscious Ai WRONG 11.06.2026 1h 50min

  Get Jenni, Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off): http://jenni.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=thegiantsshoulderGet the Muse EEG Headband (15% off): https://choosemuse.com/giantsshoulderPaul Cisek is a control neuroscientist at the University of Montreal who records from single neurons in the brains of monkeys as they think, and who has spent decades reconstructing how the brain evolved across hundreds of millions of years. His verdict cuts against everything Silicon Valley believes: the brain was never a computer — it's a control system built to keep a body alive, and the most advanced AI on Earth understands nothing it says.Expect to learn why Richard Dawkins is wrong that Claude could be conscious, why every era wrongly compares the brain to its fanciest technology, how a baseball outfielder reveals what the brain is really doing, why large language models are "Eliza on steroids" and 100% illusion, where meaning actually comes from and why LLMs can never have it, why the real danger isn't ChatGPT but the agentic systems that come next, whether a paramecium could be conscious, what Michael Levin's neuron-growing biobots tell us about minds, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:33 Why Paul Rescheduled to Watch a Monkey Learn0:06:13 Probing Electrodes Into a Living Brain0:13:42 What a Single Neuron Actually Sounds Like0:20:41 The Brain Is Not a Camera Plugged Into a Computer0:24:55 How an Outfielder Catches a Ball Without Doing Physics0:33:24 Why Federer "Lets the Cerebellum Run the Show"0:38:09 Richard Dawkins Says Claude Might Be Conscious0:39:11 Every Era Thinks the Brain Is Its Latest Gadget0:42:36 Why AI Is "Eliza on Steroids" and 100% Illusion0:45:38 The Mechanical Turk and the Stage Magician0:48:09 The Mimicry Irony at the Heart of Dawkins' Mistake0:52:32 The One Thing AlphaFold and ChatGPT Both Lack0:53:30 Where Meaning Actually Comes From0:57:55 Language Is Persuasion: The Crying Baby Problem1:03:14 The Paper With Friston and Clark on What AI Misses1:04:48 Could You Build a Machine That Wants Things?1:10:23 Build a Mind, Build a Rival: Do We Even Want To?1:13:32 Is a Paramecium Conscious?1:18:11 Why There's No Line Between a Lump of Cells and You1:23:18 Population Thinking: It's All Continuums1:30:36 The Mad Scientist Won't Be Sam Altman — It'll Be Michael Levin1:36:29 Does Synthetic Biology Deserve Its Own Doomsday?1:39:37 Why Real Intelligence Would Be a Competitor We Should Fear1:43:20 Why the Real World Humbles Every Robot...Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience?Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutEmail for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com...GS Episodes MentionedPaul Cisek Round 1: https://youtu.be/C6frE6nj1tYMichael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyMAnil Seth — No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1oKarl Friston — Meet The Neuroscientist Who Created The Best Universal Theory Of Brain Function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IZOFs4qmYMark Solms — Meet the Scientist Proving Dreams Hold the Key to Consciousness! Dr Mark Solms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMWaQ1U6dcc...Guest LinksPaul Cisek — Faculty page, Université de Montréal: https://neurosciences.umontreal.ca/en/our-team/staff-directory/staff/cisek-paul/Cisek Lab: https://www.ciseklab.umontreal.ca/Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Bbk0DEcAAAAJX / Twitter: https://x.com/PaulCisek...
• #127 Meet the Neuroscientist Who Gave A Brain to Michael Levins Xenobot’s 08.06.2026 1h 10min

  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/aboutHaleh Fotowat is a neuroscientist who builds nervous systems from scratch — the scientist who gave neurons to Michael Levin's xenobots, the living robots made from frog cells. When those neurons self-organised into a working nervous system, they switched on genes for eyes, in a creature that has never had eyes and never existed in nature.Expect to learn how a clump of frog skin cells becomes a moving biological robot, why these cells secretly default to becoming neurons unless their neighbours stop them, what happened when the neurons grew axons and reached out for the body, why every neurobot develops its own movement personality, how a brainless blob forces you to redefine agency and goals, why the neurons switched on genes for eyes despite having none, what a seizure drug revealed about which biobots truly have nervous systems, what might happen if you gave the neurobots DMT, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:05 What Is a Neurobot?0:02:39 Building a Living Robot From Frog Cells0:08:46 Why These Cells Secretly Want to Be Neurons0:10:48 What's the Point of This Research?0:16:26 Brain Cells in a Dish Playing Doom0:18:16 A Warehouse Full of Human Neurons0:19:16 What Happened When the Neurons Grew0:21:36 The Neurons Reached Out for the Body0:25:51 Why Each Neurobot Has Its Own Personality0:28:51 Can a Blob of Neurons Have Goals?0:39:42 Braitenberg's Vehicles: Complexity From Simplicity0:42:25 Biology Is Cognition All the Way Down0:49:12 The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist0:54:18 Xenobots Grew Genes for Hearing1:01:16 The Role of Bioelectricity1:04:02 One Question for Michael Levin1:06:53 What If You Gave the Neurobots DMT?1:07:27 The Seizure Drug That Surprised Everyone...... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes MentionedMichael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyMBrett Kagan — Meet The Neuroscientist Creating New Forms of Sentient Biological Intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlJc4tu1F8Philip Ball — Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SseGx0R0fYJosh Bongard — Meet The Scientist Who Created The First Living Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h908uoH6n4Guest LinksAllen Discovery Center (Tufts) Profile: https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/haleh-fotowat-ph-d/Art Website: http://www.halehfotowat.comGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=W5KTeEMAAAAJLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haleh-fotowat/ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Haleh-Fotowat-2245482149
• #126 - Michael Levin & Earl Miller: Bioelectricity, Platonic Spaces, Cell Intelligence & Neurobots 04.06.2026 1h 39min

  Get Jenni Your Intelligent Research Assistant (GIANT20 for 20% off) - http://jenni.ai/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=thegiantsshoulderUpgrade 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/aboutMichael Levin is a developmental biologist who builds living creatures that have never existed before, and Earl Miller is a neuroscientist who has spent thirty years arguing that your thoughts live in the brain's electric fields, not its wiring. In the same room together for the first time, they agree on something that sounds insane — that bioelectricity is the engine of mind at every scale of life, from a single cell deciding to grow an eye to a human deciding what to eat for lunch.Expect to learn how cells use a bioelectric code you can read and rewrite to grow an eye on a tadpole's tail, why no single cell knows what an eye is but the collective does, how a flatworm regrows a whole new brain and keeps its old memories, why the brain is an orchestra of electric waves and not a telegraph of wires, how three different anaesthetics switch off consciousness through one mechanism reductionism can't explain, why consciousness may just be the story your brain tells about what it already did, whether memories can be transplanted between bodies, what the Platonic space of minds is and why Levin thinks physicalism died with Pythagoras, and much more…Timestamps: 0:00:00 Trailer0:02:46 The Vacuum Tubes That Started It All0:08:36 How to Read and Rewrite the Bioelectric Code0:12:36 Why No Single Cell Knows What an Eye Is0:15:22 Your Brain Is Not a Telegraph System0:19:30 Why They Called It Magic and Bullshit0:24:56 Flatworm or Human Brain — Same Code?0:30:00 Where Is Memory Actually Stored?0:32:24 The Flatworm That Regrows Its Memories0:34:34 People Living Without Most of Their Brain0:40:32 Can Memories Live Outside the Brain?0:43:26 Will a Rat Pop Down to the 7-Eleven for Smokes?0:49:14 Consciousness Is Overrated (Says a Neuroscientist)0:53:17 Hey Liver, Why Do I Feel Like Crap?0:54:20 Nobody Knows Why Anaesthesia Works0:57:21 Three Drugs, One Mystery, One Mechanism0:58:50 Why Anaesthesia Is Dangerous When You're Old1:02:12 What Is a Neurobot?1:08:18 The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist1:13:28 What Is the Platonic Space of Minds?1:20:44 Devil's Advocate: Have We Just Not Figured It Out?1:24:03 The Free Lunch: More Out Than You Put In1:29:36 Why Physicalism Died With Pythagoras1:32:52 How Bioelectricity Touches the Platonic Space...GS Episodes MentionedAnil Seth — No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1oGuest LinksMichael Levin — Allen Discovery Center (Tufts): https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/michael-levin/Michael Levin — Website: https://www.drmichaellevin.orgEarl Miller — The Miller Lab (MIT): https://ekmillerlab.mit.edu/Earl Miller — X: https://x.com/MillerLabMIT
• #125 Meet The World’s Greatest Endogenous DMT Psychedelic Scientist 02.06.2026 1h 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 1h 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 1h 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 1h 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 1h 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 1h 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 1h 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