The Giants Shoulder
A neuroscience podcast hosted by Evan McGloughlin, who holds a degree in Neuroscience from Trinity College Dublin. Each week, he interviews experts on topics such as consciousness, neuroplasticity, and evolution, with a particular focus on understanding subjective conscious experience. The podcast also touches on Evan's background as a co-founder of edtech startups, a professional tennis coach, and a triathlete enthusiast.
Episodes
#137 - Dennis McKenna: "I've Spent 50 Years Investigating The Entities That Exist Within Ayahuasca"
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 actua
#136 - Denis Noble: Neo-Darwinism, Michael Levin & Why The Last 70 Years of Genetics Is Wrong
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 l
#135 - Consciousness Expert Explains The 5 Levels Of The Psilocybin Experience
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 pe
#134 - Neuroscientist: "Your Brain Doesn't Create Consciousness" — NDEs, Telepathy and Terminal Lucidity
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 worl
#133 - Meet The Most Important Man Alive In The History of MDMA
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 t
#132 - Meet the Psychedelic Scientist Proving The Fields Largest Theory is WRONG!
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 w
#131 Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They Are to Quit! Tier List Part 3
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,
#130 - The Two Greatest Living Psychedelic Scientists Discuss The Insane Future Of Drugs
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 psyched
#129 - Meet The Worlds Greatest Emotion Neuroscientist
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
#128 - Meet the Neuroscientist Proving Scientists Got Conscious Ai WRONG
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
#127 Meet the Neuroscientist Who Gave A Brain to Michael Levins Xenobot’s
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 bui
#126 - Michael Levin & Earl Miller: Bioelectricity, Platonic Spaces, Cell Intelligence & Neurobots
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
#125 Meet The World’s Greatest Endogenous DMT Psychedelic Scientist
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-
#124 - Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's
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 Exp
#123 - Meet The Most Persuasive Panpsychist Alive Today
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 al
#122 - Meet the Psychiatrist Training To Be An Ayahuasca Shaman
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 hum
#121 Meet The Neuroscientist Teaching Neuron's in a Dish to Play Video Games
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 fi
#120 No.1 Inner Speech Expert: NPCs, Hallucinations, Imaginary Friends, Prayer and Experiential Crossing
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 conver
#119 Meet The Inner Speech Expert Proving We Can Conjure Other Conscious Entities
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 anyo
#118 - Meet The MIT Philosopher Proving Aphantasics Have Unconscious Imagery
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 re
#117 Meet The Neuroscientist Proving We Got Imagination & Aphantasia WRONG!
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 n
#116 Meet The World’s Greatest Psychedelic Receptor Scientist
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 pharmac
#115 Consciousness Expert Explains The 6 Levels Of The DMT Experience
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
#114 No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness
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 consciou
#113 - Meet The Neuroscientist Decoding Your Bodies Cannabis System
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
#112 - No. 1 Music Neuroscientist: How Music Hijacks Our Collective Unconscious, Emotion and Imagination
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 "
#111 - Tim Maudlin: Consciousness, Turing Machines, Problems with Quantum Mechanics and Ai
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.Exp
#110 - Meet the Neuroscientist Who Discovered That Waves Produce Memory, Spacetime and Consciousness
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 i
#109 Dr Wendy Suzuki: How The Hippocampus Weaves Your Memories Into Consciousness
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 memor
#108 - Meet The Greatest Living Psychedelic Scientist You've Never Heard Of
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 i
#107 Robin Carhart-Harris: Your Consciousness Exists Between Order and Chaos | Entropic Brain
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 ex
#106 The Story Of How CO₂ Created ALL Life, Intelligence and Consciousness
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 h
#105 Meet the AI Researcher Proving Machines Will NEVER Be Conscious!
Dr. Erik Bekkers is an associate professor in Geometric Deep Learning at the University of Amsterdam, an ELLIS Program Director, and one of the most original thinkers working at the intersection of mathematics, AI and consciousness.He reverse-engineered how the human visual cortex processes reality using the geometry of curved spaces — then used those same principles to build AI architectures that
#104 GIANT'S DEBATE - Whats The SECRET to Engineering Artificial Consciousness? Cognition Vs Feeling
Welcome to Giant Conversations — a new format where top experts debate, discuss and unravel the biggest questions in science. Dr. Mark Solms is a neuropsychologist, psychoanalyst and author of The Hidden Spring. Dr. Ryan Smith is a computational neuroscientist at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research who builds mathematical models of how the brain predicts and feels.Together they tackle the qu
#103 Meet The Social Neuroscientist Proving We’re All Living In A Collective Consciousness
Chris Frith is a pioneering neuroscientist who helped launch the field of cognitive neuroscience — and his work has completely changed how we understand reality, consciousness, and mental illness.In this episode, you’ll learn why perception is just a controlled hallucination, how our brains build reality through social connection, why people with schizophrenia see the world differently, how consci
#102 Meet The Scientist Proving Cells Are Conscious and Intelligent
William B. Miller Jr. is a Medical Doctor, Evolutionary Biologist, and author of Bioverse and co-author of The Sentient Cell — one of the most radical rethinks of biology published in decades.Every cell in your body is conscious, intelligent, and making decisions right now. Evolution is not random. Cancer is not a genetic accident — it's a highly intelligent system we've been fighting comp
#101 Meet The Physicist Who Believes Time Doesn’t Exist
Dr. Julian Barbour is an independent theoretical physicist who has spent over sixty years working from a 17th-century farmhouse in Oxfordshire on the deepest question in physics — what is time? His answer: it doesn't exist.He completed the project Newton declared impossible and Einstein never finished, built two bestselling books around it, and at 88 remains one of the most original thinkers a
#100 Meet The Scientist Who Wrote the Blueprint for Conscious Machines
Dr. Michael Timothy Bennett is an award-winning AI researcher at the Australian National University and author of "How to Build Conscious Machines" — a mathematical blueprint for why anything is conscious and what it would take to engineer a machine that truly experiences the world.Expect to learn why information processing feels like anything at all, how consciousness is built from a hi
#99 Matt Segall: Panexperientialism, God, Metaphysics and What Neuroscience Is Getting Wrong!
Matt Segall is a process philosopher, Associate Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and author of Physics of the World-Soul and Crossing the Threshold — two books arguing that consciousness isn't produced by the brain but is woven into the fabric of reality itself.Expect to learn why there is no scientific evidence that consciousness exists, how one Fren
#98 Chris Fields: Whats Wrong With Quantum Mechanics, Cellular Intelligence and Consciousness
Support The Channel:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1Get Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder Dr. Chris Fields is an independent researcher with one of the most extraordinary careers in modern science — from nuclear physics to decoding the first comple
#97 Matt Ridley: COVID Lab Leak, Jeffrey Epstein and Failures In Science
Matt Ridley is an evolutionary biologist, bestselling science writer and author of eleven books including The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19.He co-investigated the origin of SARS-CoV-2 with molecular biologist Alina Chan — and what they found may be the biggest cover-up in the history of science. A secret Pentagon proposal describing the e
#96 Stuart Hameroff: Meet The Anaesthesiologist Who Started The Quantum Consciousness Revolution
Dr. Stuart Hameroff is an anesthesiologist, consciousness researcher, and co-creator of the Orch-OR theory — a radical and controversial model proposing that consciousness arises from quantum processes inside the brain’s microtubules.For over 30 years, Dr. Hameroff has worked alongside Sir Roger Penrose to explore how the fundamental fabric of spacetime could give rise to awareness itself — and wh
#95 Philip Ball: "Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought"
Philip Ball is a former Nature editor of 20 years and the author of over 30 books spanning quantum physics, consciousness, and the strange frontiers of biology. In How Life Works, he argues that everything we’ve been taught about life — genes, blueprints, biological machines — is deeply incomplete.Get How Life Works: https://amzn.to/46dQRMlBiology isn’t built from instructions. It’s built from sel
#94 Meet The Scientist Who Created The First Living Robot
Dr. Josh Bongard is a computer scientist, roboticist, and co-creator of Xenobots — the world’s first living robots made from frog cells, capable of movement, healing, and even self-replication.Together with biologist Michael Levin, Bongard’s work is upending some of biology’s most sacred assumptions: that DNA is a blueprint, that the brain is the seat of intelligence, and that only neurons can thi
#93 Dr Tommy Wood: "Cognitive Decline Is Not Inevitable. Here’s Why."
Dr. Tommy Wood is a neuroscientist and performance expert who trains the brains of elite Formula 1 drivers and studies how cognitive resilience can be built—and rebuilt—across a lifetime.From premature birth to world championship podiums, Tommy’s work spans the full arc of brain health, human performance, and cognitive decline. He’s also at the forefront of research into cutting-edge brain stimula
#92 Joscha Bach: “The Nature Of Reality is Even Weirder Than We Previously Thought”
Joscha Bach is a cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and philosopher of mind whose work has shaped how we think about synthetic consciousness and the architecture of thought itself.He developed the MicroPsi cognitive architecture, has held research roles at MIT and Harvard, and just co-founded the California Institute of Machine Consciousness with Karl Friston — a lab dedicated to building minds t
#91 Meet the Philosopher Questioning Everything Neuroscience Assumes About Consciousness
Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes is a philosopher of mind and leading voice on psychedelics, panpsychism, and the metaphysics of consciousness. He’s a research fellow at the University of Exeter and author of Noumenautics and Modes of Sentience — books exploring whether mind is fundamental to the universe.In this episode, we dive into why your brain might not produce consciousness, how psychedelics could rev
#90 Meet The World’s Leading Executive Function Neuroscientist
Dr. Adele Diamond is one of the world’s most influential developmental cognitive neuroscientists and a pioneer in our understanding of executive functions — the brain’s core control processes that shape attention, self-regulation, problem-solving, and goal-directed behaviour.Her groundbreaking research was the first to show that the prefrontal cortex is active in infants, transforming how we under
#89 The Real Reason We Should Revive Extinct Animals
Andrew Pask is Chief Biology Officer at Colossal Biosciences and a professor of genetics at the University of Melbourne. He’s spent over 30 years on the front lines of marsupial conservation and now leads one of the most ambitious projects in biology: the genetic resurrection and rewilding of the extinct Tasmanian tiger.Sponsors:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoul
#88 Meet The Neuroscientist Who Created The Best Universal Theory Of Brain Function
Karl Friston is one of the most influential neuroscientists alive and the creator of the Free Energy Principle, a unifying theory that aims to explain how brains perceive, act, learn, and remain alive in an uncertain world.SPONSORS:Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9
#87 Challenging a Famous Neuroscientist On When Consciousness First Emerged
Dr. Michael Graziano is a neuroscientist, professor at Princeton University, and creator of Attention Schema Theory — one of the most provocative scientific explanations for consciousness to date.He argues that awareness isn’t magic or mystery — it’s the brain’s simplified internal model of its own attention. A trick of information. A self-portrait painted by neurons. And it just might explain why
#86 Meet The Most Influential Social Scientist Of The Last 50 Years
Charles Murray is one of the most influential — and most cancelled — social scientists of the last fifty years. Whether you see him as a dangerous contrarian or a data-driven truth-teller, Murray’s ideas have transformed how we think about intelligence, inequality, class, and what makes a society thrive.SPONSORS:Get Manta Sleep Mask: https://mantasleep.pxf.io/9LXagy and Code GIANTSMANTA10Mind Labs
#85 Meet the Psychologist Who’s Guided 100+ Mushroom Trips
Dr. Rosalind Watts is a clinical psychologist and one of the most thoughtful voices in the modern psychedelic renaissance, known for her work in psilocybin-assisted therapy for depression and her pioneering focus on psychedelic integration.Psychedelics are often praised for their power to unlock mystical states and treat mental illness, but the real transformation, she argues, happens after the tr
#84 Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They Are to Quit! Tier List Part 2
Try Sentia Spirits this Dry January: https://tinyurl.com/giantsshoulder (10% Discount with Code GIANT10)Professor David Nutt is a neuropsychopharmacologist, former UK chief drug adviser, and author of Drugs Without the Hot Air, Drink?, Cannabis, and Psychedelics. He built the first evidence-based Drug Harm Scale, ran the world’s first LSD brain-scan, and is now engineering hangover-free “alcohol”
#83 Meet The Leading Behavioural Change Neuroscientist for 2026
Dr. Tali Sharot is a cognitive neuroscientist and director of the Affective Brain Lab, whose research reveals the hidden rules that actually change human behavior, beliefs, and motivation.Most people think facts and logic should be enough to persuade someone, quit a bad habit, or finally convince their dad to exercise. But the brain doesn’t work like that. In this episode, Tali explains why our “p
Biology Is Cognition The Whole Way Down! Best of Giant's Shoulder 2025
I've condensed the best moments from a year of Giant conversations with scientists such as Michael Levin, Terrence Deacon, Anna Ciaunica and more on Diverse Intelligence and multi-scale cognitive biology.We explore the radical idea that biology itself is cognitive, all the way down, and that intelligence, agency, and problem-solving did not suddenly appear with brains but emerged gradually acr
52 Minutes Celebrating Inner Experience, Aphantasia & Neurodiversity 2025
I’ve distilled the most revealing moments from a year of Giant conversations on inner experience & neurodiversity into 52 minutes. This episode explores how radically different our minds really are, why most of us misunderstand our own thoughts, and what happens when you rigorously examine consciousness from the inside out using Descriptive Experience Sampling.Through deep discussion and lived
#82 I Spent 90 Days With The No.1 Inner Experience Expert To Discover If I Really Inner Speak
Final episode of the Giant's Shoulder Inner Experience Mini-Series. I spent 10 weeks undergoing the process of descriptive experience sampling in order to peal back the layers of my own inner world. What I discovered truly shocked me. Experiment Website (All 10 Hours of Interviews and transcripts dissecting my experience): https://hurlburt.faculty.unlv.edu/ieo/evan/evan_sampling.htmlCheck out Sent
#81 Meet the Scientist Who Mathematically Proved Reality is an Illusion Round 2!
Dr. Robert Prentner is a philosopher of mind and consciousness researcher whose work bridges mathematics, phenomenology, information theory, and the foundations of reality. In this episode, he offers a rare deep dive into consciousness as a fundamental feature of the universe, the interface theory of perception, and the radical idea that physics itself may emerge from networks of conscious agents.
59 Minutes of The Best Drug Science and Psychedelics Moments 2025
I've condensed a full year of Giant conversations on topics of drug science and psychedelics into just 59 minutes. From life-saving medical cannabis to MDMA therapy, the serotonin myth, DMT entities, and the future of psychedelic mental health care, this episode brings together the most shocking, eye-opening and culturally important insights from leading experts — all in one place.Expect to le
#80 Meet the Scientist Creating The Mathematics Of Consciousness
Dr. Johannes Kleiner is a mathematician, physicist, and one of the leading architects of mathematical consciousness science — an emerging field attempting to describe subjective experience with the same rigour that physics brings to space, time, and matter.He studies the deep structure of awareness itself, from the geometry of colour and time to the dynamics of minimal experience, and is helping r
42 Minutes of the Best Moments in Consciousness Science Giant's Shoulder 2025
I've condensed the best moments from a year of consciousness conversations on The Giant's Shoulder 2025 into 42 minutes. Truly the most Giant episode of the entire year! You’ll hear groundbreaking ideas from Anil Seth, Michael Levin, Nick Lane, Peter Godfrey Smith and Mark Solms as they explore the deepest scientific questions we can ask. Is perception just the brain’s best guess? Do bacte
#79 Adam Frank: Consciousness, Quantum Mechanics, AI & Search for Alien Civilisations!
Dr. Adam Frank is a theoretical astrophysicist, NPR science commentator, and professor at the University of Rochester whose work spans the cosmos—from dying stars to the deep nature of consciousness.In this episode, we explore why life—not black holes—is the most mind-blowing problem in physics, how bacteria challenge our view of machines, and why the science of the future must take subjective exp
#78 Dr Kevin Mitchell: Bad Science, Autism, Tylenol & The Gut Microbiome!
Dr. Kevin Mitchell is a neurogeneticist at Trinity College Dublin and author of Innate and Free Agents, two very influential books on how brain wiring shapes who we become.Autism is one of the most heritable conditions in psychiatry — yet for years, headlines have claimed gut bacteria, probiotics, and mouse models could explain or even treat it. Kevin’s new paper tears that story open, revealing h
#77 Lee Cronin: Origin Of Life, Aliens, Controversial New Theories, Digitising Chemistry & Consciousness
Professor Lee Cronin is one of the world’s most visionary chemists — the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow — whose work is redefining how we search for alien life, invent new drugs, and understand the fundamental rules of the universe.He’s the creator of Chemputation, the first real attempt to program matter itself, and co-author of Assembly Theory, a radical new framework tha
#76 Meet the MIT Neuroscientist Proving Brain Waves Are the Secret Engine Behind Consciousness
Earl K. Miller is an MIT neuroscientist and one of the most influential thinkers in modern brain science. His 2001 paper on prefrontal cortex function is one of the most cited in the entire field, transforming how we understand thought, control, and the architecture of the mind.Miller’s research reveals that the brain doesn’t compute like a digital machine — it builds models of the world and uses
# 75 Meet the Greatest Scientist You've Never Heard Of
Dr. Stephen Grossberg is the founder of computational neuroscience and creator of Adaptive Resonance Theory, one of the most important and misunderstood breakthroughs in brain science. Often called the Einstein of the Mind, he wrote the first neural network equations at just 17 years old, laying the mathematical foundations for modern AI decades before computers could even measure the brain.Grossb
#74 Psychedelics Expert: Who is Blocking Psychedelic Research? Cannabis Vs Alcohol, MDMA & Ayahuasca
Dr. Grace Blest-Hopley is a neuroscientist and psychedelics researcher whose work is transforming how we understand trauma, addiction, and mental health. From cannabis and psychosis to MDMA and ibogaine, she sits at the frontier of how brain science meets healing.Grace has led research with the Heroic Hearts Project, helping veterans recover from PTSD through psychedelic therapy, and founded Hyste
#73 Mysteries of the Female Brain: The Pill, Attraction, Sex, Emotions & Hormones! Dr Sarah McKay
Dr. Sarah McKay is a neuroscientist, author, and science communicator whose work is redefining what we know about women’s brains — from hormones and birth control to motherhood and mental health. She’s the author of The Women’s Brain Book, Baby Brain, and Brain Health for Dummies, and host of ABC’s Catalyst, where she brings neuroscience to life on screen.Check Out Sarahs Books The Women's Bra
#72 Neurofeedback Expert: Training Your Brain To IMPROVE Mental Health, ADHD and Motivation!
Michael Cohen is a neurofeedback pioneer and director of the Center for Brain Training, where he’s spent over two decades helping people rewire their brains — not with medication, but with real-time feedback from their own brainwaves.According to Michael, Neurofeedback could one of the most powerful — and misunderstood — tools in mental health. It uses EEG signals to teach your brain how to regula
#71 Meet the Neuroscientist Who Proved Every Cell in Your Body Has a Memory!
Dr. Nikolay Kukushkin is a neuroscientist, molecular biologist, and author of One Hand Clapping: A Natural History of the Mind — a groundbreaking exploration of how consciousness, memory, and intelligence evolved from the simplest forms of life.In this episode, Nikolay reveals the extraordinary idea that memory isn’t just in your brain — it’s a universal feature of life itself. Every cell in your
#70 Meet the Neuroscientist Driving the New Science of Mental Health!
Get Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder (Paid Partnership by BetterHelp)Dr. Camilla Nord is a neuroscientist at Cambridge University and author of The Balanced Brain, a groundbreaking book reframing how we understand mental illness — not as something “in the mind,” but as something deeply r
#69 NASA Scientist Reveals What We Really Found on Mars!
Dr. Amy Williams is a NASA geobiologist and astrobiologist searching for one of the biggest answers in human history — are we alone in the universe?As part of the Curiosity and Perseverance rover teams, Amy helped uncover the largest organic molecules ever found on Mars — long-chain alkanes up to 12 carbons long, potentially fragments of ancient fatty acids, the same molecular building blocks that
#68 Meet the Neuroscientist Who has Scanned Over 5000 Psychopathic Brains!
Dr Kent Kiehl is a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist whose groundbreaking work has transformed how we understand psychopathy, morality, and the criminal mind.He’s the man who put an MRI scanner inside a truck and drove it into prisons across America — scanning over 5,000 inmates to uncover what makes a psychopath’s brain different. His discoveries reveal what happens when empathy, fear, and
#67 Mind-Body Expert: The New Science of Emotion, Nervous System Mastery & Psychedelics!
Jonny Miller is the creator of Nervous System Mastery, a transformative training program that teaches thousands of people how to regulate stress, unlock emotional resilience, and reconnect with their bodies. He’s also the host of The Inner Frontier podcast and a TEDx speaker whose work bridges neuroscience, trauma, and the physiology of calm.Emotions aren’t what you think they are — they don’t liv
#66 Meet the Scientist Exploring Consciousness Through Thermodynamics!
Terrence Deacon is a neuro-anthropologist at UC Berkeley and author of The Symbolic Species and Incomplete Nature, two landmark works exploring how life and mind emerge from the physical world.Deacon’s work connects thermodynamics, evolution, and neuroscience to tackle one of science’s biggest questions — how matter can give rise to purpose, meaning, and consciousness. From the physics of snowflak
#65 Meet the Scientist Proving Every Cell In Your Body is Conscious!
Dr. William B. Miller Jr. is a physician, evolutionary biologist, and author of The Microcosm Within, Bioverse, and The Sentient Cell — books redefining how we understand life, evolution, and consciousness itself.He believes every cell is intelligent — sensing, deciding, and creating information from within. His groundbreaking theory of Cognition-Based Evolution reframes evolution not as a blind p
#63 Inner Experience Expert: Inner Monologue, Aphantasia and Why You Can’t Trust Your Own Thoughts
Gualtiero Piccinini is a philosopher and consciousness researcher whose work is reshaping how we understand our own inner lives.Using descriptive experience sampling — a method pioneered by Dr. Russell Hurlburt — he has uncovered startling truths about the mind. A random beep interrupts your day (or even your sleep), forcing you to capture what was happening in your awareness just moments before.
#62 Meet the Scientist Proving Your Whole Body is Conscious!
Dr. Anna Ciaunica is a philosopher and cognitive scientist, Principal Investigator at the University of Lisbon’s Centre for Philosophy of Science and Research Associate at UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. She leads INTERSELF, a project on how interactions with humans and artificial agents reshape our self-model, and collaborates with Michael Levin on “From Cells to Selves.”Consciousness
#61 Meet the Neuroscientist Unifying Consciousness, Free Energy & Psychedelics!
Check out Sentia Spirits the future of drinking (Use Code GIANT10 for 10% discount off your first purchase: https://sentiaspirits.com/mcgloughlin4209355084Adam Safron is a cognitive neuroscientist and former research fellow at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research, now a staff scientist with Michael Levin at Tufts’ Allen Discovery Center. He’s the architect of the Inte
