149 episodes
#140 - Meet The DMT Explorer Who's Had 100+ Encounters With Non Human Entities
23/07/2026 | 2h 4 mins.Try Mind Lab Pro, The Universal Nootropic For A Sharper Brain: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Want a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutAdam Butler is a DMT researcher and author who has taken the molecule over 100 times and completed the same Monroe Institute consciousness program the CIA funded during the Cold War. He went from suicidal alcoholic to sober and mission-driven through a molecule his own brain already produces -- and then, one day, found himself completely locked out of the DMT space with zero pharmacological explanation for why.Expect to learn why DMT stops working for some people with no pharmacological explanation for it, how the body produces its own DMT internally, what the Monroe Institute's Hemi-Sync binaural beats protocol has in common with a DMT trip without any substance at all, why a declassified CIA-linked report took remote viewing seriously enough to fund it for decades, what DMT entities actually look like across 100+ trips, the controversial DMT laser experiment that claims to reveal a rigid code-like grid in the visual field, why effect sizes in psychedelic-assisted therapy trials are becoming impossible to ignore, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:17 Who Is Adam Butler? From Rock Bottom to a Mission0:07:18 The Story That Changed Everything0:13:21 Inside His First DMT Session0:24:22 Why DMT Doesn't Build Tolerance0:31:56 Blocked: The Night DMT Just Stopped Working0:38:22 The Telepathy Tapes and the DMT Laser Experiment0:40:38 Huxley's Reducing Valve and the DMT "Cheat Code"0:44:29 What Is a DMT Entity, Really?0:48:21 Jesters, Mantis Beings, and the Entity Portfolio0:54:48 Carhart-Harris's Theory vs Alien World-Building1:02:52 Do DMT Entities Have Their Own Agency?1:09:20 The Mantis "Technicians" and the Body Upgrade1:11:23 Meeting His Future Self on DMT1:17:28 Inside the Monroe Institute1:32:17 The Declassified CIA Gateway Project1:41:10 Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and DMT-Like States1:44:27 The DMT Laser Experiment Explained1:53:21 Debating the "Code of the Simulation" Claim1:58:37 Near-Death Experience and Why It All Matters... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.comGS Episodes Mentioned:Robin Carhart-Harris — No. 1 Psychedelic Scientist: The Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Consciousness & DMT Entities: https://youtu.be/t-GkE4YtLRkAndrew Gallimore — No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgWrxEFWDAAndrés Gómez Emilsson — Consciousness Expert Explains The 6 Levels Of The DMT Experience: https://youtu.be/xMdl7zF2MWEGuest Links:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/booksbyadambutlerYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ButlersDMTFieldGuidePatreon: https://www.patreon.com/BooksByAdamButlerBook — Butler's DMT Field Guide: https://www.amazon.com/dp/196050505XBook — Butler's Psychedelic Integration Field Guide: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4GL8H6V...Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com#139 - Meet The Greatest Ibogaine Psychedelic Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of
20/07/2026 | 1h 42 mins.Download the most scientifically rigorous nutrition app MacroFactor! Use code GIANTS for a 2 week FREE trial: https://onelink.to/giantsGet 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/aboutDalibor Sames is the chemist who reverse-engineered ibogaine into a version that appears to erase heroin addiction in a single dose, without the cardiac risk that can kill people on the original drug. He also took his own medicine — and says he watched the molecule's exact 3D structure rotate in front of him for 36 hours straight.Expect to learn why ibogaine breaks every rule of classical pharmacology, what "matrix pharmacology" means and why it's heresy to a one-drug-one-target industry, how editing a single atom deletes ibogaine's fatal heart risk, why a common antidepressant turned out to be a secret opioid for thirty years, what it's like to watch a molecule's structure appear during a 36-hour flood dose, why ibogaine seems to erase interest in alcohol overnight, whether the "DMT block" phenomenon researchers describe is real, and much more…Timestamps0:00:00 Trailer0:02:39 Meet the Chemist Who Fell for a Molecule's Shape0:04:13 The Dogma That the Adult Brain Can't Heal0:09:00 Why Synapses Might Explain Every Brain Disorder0:10:28 Reverse-Engineering Nature's Own Drugs0:16:44 The Paper That Changed Everything About Addiction0:20:01 Why Ibogaine Breaks Every Rule of Pharmacology0:33:08 The Weakest Drug That Works the Strongest0:38:21 The Traffic Jam That Explains Matrix Pharmacology0:44:18 A Human Genome Project — For One Molecule0:47:48 Deciding to Take Ibogaine Himself0:50:02 Inside a 36-Hour Flood Dose0:54:38 The Chapter Called "Treatment"0:56:26 Ibogaine Shows Him the Future of Design1:00:01 Seeing Ibogaine's 3D Molecular Structure1:03:14 High-Fiving a Molecule1:06:47 "This Is a Computational Technology"1:16:36 The Simulation So Real It Panicked Him1:24:26 Did He Earn This Experience?1:30:56 Six Months Later — What Actually Changed1:36:01 Did This Change His View of Consciousness?...... 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 LinksColumbia Chemistry faculty page: https://www.chem.columbia.edu/content/dalibor-samesSames Lab: https://www.samesgroup.org/professor-dalibor-samesGilgamesh Pharmaceuticals: https://www.gilgameshpharmaceutical.com/Oxa-Iboga paper (Nature Communications, 2024): https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51856-yBeond Ibogaine Clinic (where he took ibogaine): https://beondibogaine.com#138 - Meet The Greatest Ayahuasca Psychedelic Scientist You’ve Never Heard Of.
17/07/2026 | 1h 14 mins.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 31 mins.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 30 mins.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
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A Biology & Consciousness podcast chronically the bio-singularity. Three times per week I speak with leading scientists at the bleeding edge of AI synthetic biology, consciousness & inner experience, genetics, psychedelics and drug science.
Giants Shoulder is intended to be accessible & entertaining for all ages. No idea is too strange, tackled with genuine curiosity and technical rigour. Come follow the journey as I have my brain melted and ontology warped on a regular basis.
Evan has a Neuroscience degree from Trinity College Dublin and is founder of Giants Shoulder.
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