Giants Shoulder

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 Lab...

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 t...

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...

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 “...

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 ac...

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 live...

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.html Check out Sen...

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....

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 l...

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...

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...

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 ex...

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...

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 th...

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...

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. Gross...

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 Hyst...

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 Br...

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 regul...

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...

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...

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 tha...

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, an...

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 li...

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 snowfla...