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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

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Joseph 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…
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:43 From Marketing Student to Neuroscientist
0:06:18 Moving to New York and Meeting Gazzaniga
0:07:37 How Split-Brain Surgery Works
0:09:58 The Chicken and Shovel Experiment
0:12:13 We Are Confabulating 24/7
0:17:13 Why He Chose to Study Emotion in Rats
0:19:26 His Grant Was Rejected for Studying Emotions
0:22:30 Masquerading as a Learning Researcher
0:25:22 Growing Discomfort With the Amygdala Fear Centre
0:28:23 Rethinking the Emotional Brain
0:30:47 Why Fear Isn’t Universal — Danger Is
0:33:19 Emotions as Acquired Schema
0:35:22 The Four Realms of Existence
0:40:36 Cognition vs Consciousness in Animals
0:41:29 Tulving’s Three Kinds of Consciousness
0:47:57 The Brain Region Only Humans Have
0:53:40 Your Model Is Still on the Slide — And You Disagree
0:55:05 The George Martin Analogy
0:56:37 Why Anxiety Drugs Don’t Actually Work
0:58:21 The Three-Step Fix for Fear
1:01:27 Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness
1:05:36 Using AI to Decode Conscious vs Unconscious Speech...
...

Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
Guest Links
NYU Faculty Page: https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/joseph-e-ledoux.html
Personal Website: https://www.joseph-ledoux.com/
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=iAqJssMAAAAJ&hl=en
Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/joseph-e-ledoux-phd
The Four Realms of Existence (Harvard University Press): https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674291003

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Paul 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…
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:33 Why Paul Rescheduled to Watch a Monkey Learn
0:06:13 Probing Electrodes Into a Living Brain
0:13:42 What a Single Neuron Actually Sounds Like
0:20:41 The Brain Is Not a Camera Plugged Into a Computer
0:24:55 How an Outfielder Catches a Ball Without Doing Physics
0:33:24 Why Federer "Lets the Cerebellum Run the Show"
0:38:09 Richard Dawkins Says Claude Might Be Conscious
0:39:11 Every Era Thinks the Brain Is Its Latest Gadget
0:42:36 Why AI Is "Eliza on Steroids" and 100% Illusion
0:45:38 The Mechanical Turk and the Stage Magician
0:48:09 The Mimicry Irony at the Heart of Dawkins' Mistake
0:52:32 The One Thing AlphaFold and ChatGPT Both Lack
0:53:30 Where Meaning Actually Comes From
0:57:55 Language Is Persuasion: The Crying Baby Problem
1:03:14 The Paper With Friston and Clark on What AI Misses
1:04:48 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 You
1:23:18 Population Thinking: It's All Continuums
1:30:36 The Mad Scientist Won't Be Sam Altman — It'll Be Michael Levin
1:36:29 Does Synthetic Biology Deserve Its Own Doomsday?1:39:37 Why Real Intelligence Would Be a Competitor We Should Fear
1:43:20 Why the Real World Humbles Every Robot
...

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Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com...

GS Episodes Mentioned
Paul Cisek Round 1: https://youtu.be/C6frE6nj1tY
Michael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM
Anil Seth — No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1o
Karl Friston — Meet The Neuroscientist Who Created The Best Universal Theory Of Brain Function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IZOFs4qmY
Mark Solms — Meet the Scientist Proving Dreams Hold the Key to Consciousness! Dr Mark Solms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMWaQ1U6dcc...
Guest Links
Paul 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...

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Haleh 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
…
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:05 What Is a Neurobot?
0:02:39 Building a Living Robot From Frog Cells
0:08:46 Why These Cells Secretly Want to Be Neurons
0:10:48 What's the Point of This Research?
0:16:26 Brain Cells in a Dish Playing Doom
0:18:16 A Warehouse Full of Human Neurons
0:19:16 What Happened When the Neurons Grew
0:21:36 The Neurons Reached Out for the Body
0:25:51 Why Each Neurobot Has Its Own Personality
0:28:51 Can a Blob of Neurons Have Goals?
0:39:42 Braitenberg's Vehicles: Complexity From Simplicity
0:42:25 Biology Is Cognition All the Way Down
0:49:12 The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist
0:54:18 Xenobots Grew Genes for Hearing
1:01:16 The Role of Bioelectricity
1:04:02 One Question for Michael Levin
1:06:53 What If You Gave the Neurobots DMT?
1:07:27 The Seizure Drug That Surprised Everyone...
...
Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
GS Episodes Mentioned
Michael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM
Brett Kagan — Meet The Neuroscientist Creating New Forms of Sentient Biological Intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlJc4tu1F8
Philip Ball — Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SseGx0R0fY
Josh Bongard — Meet The Scientist Who Created The First Living Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h908uoH6n4
Guest Links
Allen Discovery Center (Tufts) Profile: https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/haleh-fotowat-ph-d/Art Website: http://www.halehfotowat.com
Google 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

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Michael 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 Trailer
0:02:46 The Vacuum Tubes That Started It All
0:08:36 How to Read and Rewrite the Bioelectric Code
0:12:36 Why No Single Cell Knows What an Eye Is
0:15:22 Your Brain Is Not a Telegraph System
0:19:30 Why They Called It Magic and Bullshit
0:24:56 Flatworm or Human Brain — Same Code?
0:30:00 Where Is Memory Actually Stored?
0:32:24 The Flatworm That Regrows Its Memories
0:34:34 People Living Without Most of Their Brain
0:40:32 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 Works
0:57:21 Three Drugs, One Mystery, One Mechanism
0:58:50 Why Anaesthesia Is Dangerous When You're Old
1:02:12 What Is a Neurobot?
1:08:18 The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist
1:13:28 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 In
1:29:36 Why Physicalism Died With Pythagoras
1:32:52 How Bioelectricity Touches the Platonic Space
...

GS Episodes Mentioned
Anil Seth — No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1o
Guest Links
Michael Levin — Allen Discovery Center (Tufts): https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/michael-levin/
Michael Levin — Website: https://www.drmichaellevin.org
Earl Miller — The Miller Lab (MIT): https://ekmillerlab.mit.edu/
Earl Miller — X: https://x.com/MillerLabMIT