The Giants Shoulder

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 "pirates." This may be one of the most surprising findings in modern cognitive science, and it challenges everything we assume about the privacy of our own thoughts.Expect to learn why strangers imagine the same stories when listening to identical music, how a cross-cultural experiment between the US and rural China revealed completely different imagined worlds to the same sounds, how repeated speech spontaneously transforms into song, the surprising link between psychedelic therapy and modern music therapy, why the Mozart Effect misled state legislatures, what makes certain songs irresistibly groovy, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Intro02:45 From Concert Pianist to Cognitive Scientist06:27 What Does a Brain Look Like Listening to Music?09:04 How Musical Processing Differs from Speech10:53 The Irresistible Urge to Dance16:18 Can Animals Keep a Beat? The Snowball Experiment23:42 Why Repetition Changes How You Feel About Music26:31 The Speech-to-Song Illusion32:05 Is Music Evolutionary? The Case for Social Bonding36:36 Psychedelics and Music: What's Really Driving the Healing?42:28 The Mozart Effect Myth47:42 How to Raise a Musical Prodigy49:25 Musical Daydreams: Why Strangers Imagine the Same Stories53:11 The China Experiment: Same Music, Different Stories1:06:57 Psychedelic Hallucinations and Musical Archetypes1:16:17 Can Music Teach Us About Consciousness?...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/

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.Expect to learn why no computer programme will ever be sufficient for consciousness, why large language models operate nothing like human brains, the critical difference between intelligence and consciousness that the AI industry keeps collapsing, why Penrose's arguments about consciousness are wrong, why quantum mechanics has nothing to do with the mind, why the mind-body problem may be the most intractable problem in all of science, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Why Consciousness Is Not Computable02:35 Maudlin's 1989 Paper: Computation and Consciousness06:01 The Thought Experiment: Beer Cans, Windmills and Conscious Machines08:11 Why Running a Programme Can't Be Enough for Consciousness10:36 Counterfactuals: What the Machine Would Have Done13:56 The Cog and Wheel Machine: Stripping It Down16:18 The Strange Anaesthesia: Jamming the Gears19:10 Why Computational Structure Is the Wrong Level20:08 Is This For or Against Computationalism?23:01 The 2026 AI Consciousness Debate25:06 Why the Turing Test Is Trivially Defeatable27:00 Neural Nets Are Nothing Like Brains29:12 Why the Brain Is Far More Than Neurons31:01 HAL 9000 and How Children Actually Learn33:27 The Car Wash Question That Breaks ChatGPT35:18 Defining Intelligence and Consciousness37:53 Twin Earth: Why Definitions Don't Work the Way You Think43:06 Locked-In Syndrome and the Lobster Problem47:08 Computation Can't Explain Pain Either48:01 Intelligence vs Consciousness: Why You Must Separate Them50:45 Can Anything Be Intelligent Without Being Conscious?53:09 Is the Turing Machine Argument About Intelligence Too?54:04 What Does Memory Actually Mean?57:00 Can Mathematics Capture the Structure of Qualia?01:00:02 Scott Aaronson's Demolition of Integrated Information Theory01:03:26 Why Formalising Consciousness Is a Fetishisation of Maths01:09:00 Why There Is No Simple State Space for Vision01:13:22 Does Quantum Mechanics Explain Consciousness?01:18:25 The Problem with Penrose and Hameroff's Microtubule Theory01:21:31 How Do We Actually Make Progress on Consciousness?01:24:45 Does the Body Matter or Is It All in the Brain?01:27:00 The Mysterian View: Why the Mind-Body Problem May Be Unsolvable01:29:47 Could Someone Invent a New Explanatory Framework?01:31:13 Why Pain Hurts: The Evolutionary Story01:33:12 What Newton Would Think of General Relativity...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [evan@thegiantsshoulder.com](mailto: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/

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 isn’t passive. Time and space aren’t sensed — they’re constructed. And the rhythms of our own bodies may be the hidden scaffolding behind everything we think, feel, and remember.Expect to learn why the brain doesn’t record the world but predicts it, how neural rhythms act like syntax to structure our thoughts, why time is not an input but a product of the brain’s internal cycles, how space and memory emerge from the same temporal code, why consciousness might just be a performance built from nested oscillations, what happens when brain–body rhythms fall out of sync, how we can think about memory as musical replay not archival storage, how rhythm breakdown may underlie mental disorders, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 Intro01:22 The Evolution of Neuroscience Techniques05:13 Understanding Feedforward Inhibition08:13 The Paradigm Shift in Brain Function12:07 The Role of Rhythms in Prediction14:28 Overcoming Technological Barriers in Research16:45 Mapping the Hippocampus and Microcircuitry25:30 The Complexity of Brain Connectivity26:24 The Future of Connectomics34:36 The Inside Out Brain: A New Framework42:28 The Brain's Survival Mechanism45:00 Local and Global Brain Interactions48:47 Evolution of Brain Complexity52:56 Inside-Out Thinking in Neuroscience59:32 The Importance of Body Rhythms01:17:42 The Interconnectedness of Mind and Body01:26:43 Understanding Brain Dynamics in Psychiatric Disorders01:29:04 The Future of Diagnosing Mental Health Conditions01:32:56 The Role of Technology in Neuroscience01:35:47 Exploring the Nature of Memory02:06:25 Consciousness and Its Complexities...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/

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 memories are stored — it's the structure that builds your internal model of reality, imagines futures you've never lived, and may be the engine that constructs your sense of self.Expect to learn how place cells and grid cells map your world inside your skull, why people without a hippocampus can't imagine a tropical beach, how memories become models and models become selves, what the default mode network reveals about consciousness, how exercise physically grows new brain cells even into your 90s, why the boundary between memory and imagination is far blurrier than you think, and much more…Timestamps: 04:31 The Hippocampus: The Brain Structure That Makes You You07:01 Patient H.M.: The Most Famous Brain Surgery in History11:28 Place Cells, Grid Cells, and the Nobel Prize for Mapping Reality17:18 The Patients Who Can't Imagine a Tropical Beach20:41 Is Memory Just a Type of Imagination?24:44 Aphantasia: The People With No Mind's Eye28:55 The People Who Can't Forget Anything36:39 Reconsolidation: Why Remembering Makes Memories Vulnerable42:46 Marian Diamond and the Discovery of Brain Plasticity46:53 Autocatalytic Closure: How Memories Become Ideas51:44 Time Cells: How Your Brain Tracks "When"55:42 What the Hippocampus Does While You Sleep59:34 The All-Nighter Experiment: From A Grades to F Grades01:03:47 Does the Brain Replay Emotions During Sleep?01:07:01 The Amygdala, Fear Conditioning, and Joy Conditioning01:13:13 What Is Consciousness and Does the Hippocampus Create It?01:14:38 Clive Wearing: New Consciousness Every Seven Seconds01:19:30 The Dream Experiment and Optimizing Your Brain for Life...

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 is 81 years old, has published nearly 300 scientific papers, and there is no one alive who can replace him.Expect to learn how he made a kilogram of MDMA for $4,000 and changed the course of psychiatry, what his first LSD trip revealed about the function of the universe, why psilocybin may be the most effective depression treatment we have, how his research was stolen and turned into street drugs that killed people, why the DMT pineal gland theory is scientifically impossible, whether consciousness lives in the brain at all, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 The Greatest Living Psychedelic Chemist05:09 Making MDMA for $4,000 and Changing Psychiatry08:25 How Do You Explain a Kilo of MDMA to Your University?10:50 What Was Known About MDMA in the 1980s?12:06 The LSD Trip That Showed Him the Function of the Universe14:52 A Psychedelic Healed His Relationship With His Abusive Father19:26 MDMA, PTSD, and a New Paradigm in Healing21:17 Psilocybin for Alcohol Addiction: The Stories That Changed Everything24:30 Why Is Psychedelic Research Still So Painfully Slow?30:05 Big Alcohol, Big Pharma, and the Economics of Prohibition33:24 The Paradigm Shift Happening in Real Time39:35 What Psychedelics Actually Do to Your Perception of Life42:06 Music and Psychedelics: Why Lyrics Can Ruin a Trip44:56 Can You Separate Real Insight From Hallucination?46:19 Is Consciousness in the Brain at All? The Transducer Theory52:36 His Wife's Paranormal Prediction of Her Father's Death55:56 Eating Disorders, OCD, and the Untapped Frontier59:25 Why Psychedelics Work Like Rebooting Your Computer01:00:08 The Bureaucratic Nightmare of Studying Schedule I Drugs01:06:11 The MDMA Analogue Nobody Will Fund01:08:16 A Plea to Billionaires: Fund Psychedelic Research01:09:32 Structure Activity Relationships: Sculpting Molecules to Fit Receptors01:12:07 AlphaFold, AI, and the Future of Drug Discovery01:14:36 The Golden Question: What Happens After a Drug Binds?01:17:39 DMT and the Pineal Gland: Debunking the Myth01:21:21 Is There Any Evidence DMT Is Released at Death?01:22:33 DMT Transfusions and Machine Elves01:26:09 What Excites Him About the Future of Psychedelics01:28:19 The Legacy of the Greatest Psychedelic Chemist Alive...Email for sponsorship enquiries: [evan@thegiantsshoulder.com](mailto: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/

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 has repeatedly rebooted life on Earth. Understanding it means rethinking everything from the origin of life to the future of civilization.Expect to learn how CO₂ helped spark the first cells at the bottom of ancient oceans, why hydrothermal vents may hold the key to alien life, how volcanoes rewrote evolution, the truth about the most catastrophic extinction in Earth’s history, how CO₂ shaped your metabolism, brain and the rise of humans, why mass extinctions can reboot evolution, why today’s climate experiment is unlike anything in the fossil record, why the planet has a natural thermostat — and how we’re breaking it, why life might be a universal process of energy dissipation, how the story of Earth challenges our ideas of uniqueness, and much more…Support The Channel:Get 1 Month Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeGet Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder Timestamps: 02:14 How CO₂ Became the Most Misunderstood Molecule on Earth07:31 Life as a Carbon-Fueled Energy Dissipation Machine12:45 The Origins of Life and the Vents That May Have Sparked It19:08 Why Mass Extinctions Keep Rewriting Life’s Blueprint26:27 CO₂ as Climate Stabilizer — Until It Isn’t35:40 What the Permian Extinction Tells Us About the Future42:55 Deep Time and the Psychology of Geological Thinking49:18 Why the Anthropocene Might Be a Cosmic Joke55:36 How Life Changes the Planet — And Gets Changed in Return01:04:02 The Story of CO₂ as the Story of Everything01:10:15 Is Earth’s Climate Crisis a Rehearsal of Past Catastrophes?01:15:49 Carbon, Consciousness, and Why We’re Here to Begin With01:22:06 What Would a Geologist See If They Dug Up 2024?01:27:31 Hope, Humility, and What Deep Time Teaches Us...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/

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 outperform standard deep learning. He recently published a paper arguing that AI will never be conscious, introducing a framework called Biological Idealism.Expect to learn why your brain lifts reality into a higher-dimensional space just to see a straight line, what autopoiesis is and why it might be the dividing line for consciousness, why psychedelics decreasing brain activity while increasing experience is a problem for materialism, why firing neurons are an appearance of experience not the cause of it, why AI leaders claiming machines might be conscious is dangerous, and much more...Support The Channel:Get 1 Month Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeGet Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulderTimestamps:00:00 Why Erik Wrote the Biological Idealism Paper02:00 The Materialist Bias in Society04:23 Does a Machine Have Consciousness?06:29 Can You Be a Materialist and Value Experience?08:24 The Map vs The Terrain: What is Matter Really?11:03 Bernardo Kastrup and the Path to Idealism14:11 Psychedelics: Less Brain Activity, More Experience?15:57 The Idealist Explanation of Neural Correlates19:54 What Primes Someone Towards Idealism or Materialism?24:17 Autopoiesis: The Self-Creation of Life27:32 How Autopoiesis Works in an Idealist Framework33:30 Where Physicalism and Idealism Actually Agree41:15 Finding Common Ground Across Metaphysics47:17 Why Are Some Creatures More Conscious Than Others?50:18 Donut-Shaped Geometry in Brain Activity54:46 Can Mathematics Ever Model Consciousness?59:33 The Geometry of Experiences Explained01:04:31 Continuity of Brain Structures Across the Animal Kingdom01:06:03 Can We Make a Machine Autopoietic?01:09:37 The Robot That Plugs Itself In: Is That Consciousness?01:14:00 What Would You Do With 100 Billion Dollars?01:20:20 Will We Ever See a Conscious Machine?01:24:11 AI Propaganda and Emotional Manipulation01:27:56 Hinton and Amodei: Is It Dangerous to Call AI Conscious?01:31:43 The Ethics of Machine Consciousness Research01:35:39 Animal Suffering, AI Spending and Asking the Right Questions01:38:10 Closing Thoughts and Anna Ciaunica's Influence...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/

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 question: what does it take for a system to become conscious — and can we engineer it?Expect to learn why consciousness might be raw feeling rather than complex cognition, why your cortex may not actually be conscious, what's architecturally missing from current AI that rules out consciousness, what a machine would need to genuinely feel something, where these two brilliant scientists agree and exactly where they clash, and much more…Timestamps:00:01 Introduction to the Giant's Debate00:46 Mark Solms: What Makes a System Conscious?05:31 Ryan Smith: The Cognitive Case for Consciousness13:02 Where Mark and Ryan Agree and Disagree17:32 The Selection Problem: What Gets to Be Conscious?27:07 Can We Scientifically Prove Something Is Conscious?30:02 Blindsight: Behaviour Without Experience34:20 The Fish on Cocaine Problem41:25 Different Meanings of Consciousness54:57 How the Free Energy Principle Explains Consciousness01:03:02 Ryan Smith: Taking Consciousness Out of Biology01:12:17 How Do You Give a Computer Survival Needs?01:18:20 The Brain in a Vat: Does the Body Actually Matter?01:19:59 What Would Prove AI Is Conscious?01:22:32 Mark Solms: Why He Believes We Can Build Consciousness01:27:25 Why Current LLMs Have Zero Consciousness01:30:36 Mark's Final Word: Goals Must Be Real01:31:15 Rapid Fire with Ryan Smith01:37:52 The Neuron Replacement Thought Experiment01:42:10 Computation vs Architecture: A Middle Ground01:44:06 Final Thoughts...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/

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 alive.Expect to learn why the Wheeler-DeWitt equation implies the universe is frozen and nothing evolves, what Shape Dynamics is and why only ratios and relations are real, why your brain is a "time capsule" containing the complete illusion of a past, how consciousness might add all the colour and motion to a bare mathematical skeleton, why Newton's gravity might secretly be a theory of variety, and why Barbour believes quantum mechanics itself could be replaceable, and much more…Support The Channel:Get 1 Month Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqeGet Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder Timestamps: 00:00:00 What Is Time? Julian Barbour's Life Question00:03:07 Weather Observer in the Canadian Arctic00:05:31 The Dirac Article That Changed Everything00:08:28 Phoning Paul Dirac at Cambridge00:12:23 Why Dirac Rejected Four-Dimensional Spacetime00:15:28 Hamilton, Quaternions and the Dublin Bridge00:19:36 The Straw Poll with Hawking That Made Spanish Headlines00:22:08 The Titanic Analogy for the Problem of Time00:27:26 What the Wheeler-DeWitt Equation Actually Says00:31:00 Time Capsules: Why Your Memories Don't Prove Time Passed00:35:03 Flow States and the Experience of Time00:37:08 The Kingfisher in Flight: Consciousness Plays the Movie00:40:47 Psychedelics, Pollan and Consciousness00:44:13 Materialism vs Idealism: Where Does Barbour Stand?00:48:33 Complex Wavefunctions and the Born Density00:53:16 The Three-Body Collision Problem00:55:33 Leibniz, Monads and the Living Mirror of the Universe00:58:10 "I Am the Universe Seen from My Point of View"01:04:01 The Punchline: Gravity Equals Variety01:08:43 Buzsáki and How the Brain Keeps Time01:13:46 Did Science Take a Wrong Turn in 150 BC?01:19:32 Barbour's Ontology: Points, Distances, Ratios — That's It01:25:34 "Invisible Time Is a Monumental Lie"01:28:08 What Was There Before the Universe?01:31:46 Newton's Gravity as a Theory of Recognisability...Buy Barbours Books The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Physics: https://amzn.to/4liP9zyThe Janus Point: A New Theory of Time: https://amzn.to/4bw3ZPIEmail 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/

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 hierarchy of selves, why a fly has experience but a slime mold does not, why current AI is fundamentally incapable of consciousness, how cancer is an alignment problem between cells, what building a conscious machine actually requires, and much more…Timestamps:00:00 Why Does Information Processing Feel Like Anything?01:05 The Cosmic Ord: How the Universe Deletes What Doesn't Work03:59 Where is the Line Between Non-Conscious and Conscious?05:53 Multi-Scale Competency: Cells, Organs, Organisms, Ecosystems07:43 The First Order Self: Phenomenal Consciousness Explained08:27 Access Consciousness: Predicting Your Prediction of Me13:04 When Do Enough Abstraction Layers Produce Experience?18:40 Liquid Brains vs Solid Brains: Ant Colonies and Human Networks21:03 Bioelectricity: How Cells Signal and Cooperate24:03 Human-AI Hybrids: Prosthetic, Cooperative and Integrated30:30 Is There a Bottom to the Abstraction Stack?37:07 Why a Single Thread CPU Will Never Feel Anything40:56 Feeling Pain vs Knowing You Feel Pain42:52 Do Dogs Model Your Mind?46:58 The Paper He Wrote as a Joke That Won Best Student Prize48:11 Cancer as a Breakdown in Cellular Cooperation53:22 Why Elephants Don't Get Cancer and What That Means for AI56:47 How Do You Actually Build a Conscious Machine?01:01:36 Does a Tesla Robot Have Grounding?01:04:17 Should We Build Conscious Machines?01:06:46 If You Design a Robot to Love Cleaning Your Toilet01:08:25 His Biggest Fears About the Future of AI01:13:09 The Rise of Anti-Natalism and Losing Hope01:14:34 The Library of Babel: Why Modern Life Feels Overwhelming...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/

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 French philosopher broke Western science in 1637 and we still haven't fixed it, why the brain is a condition for consciousness but not the producer of it, what panpsychism actually claims and why it's making a serious comeback, why the hard problem of consciousness and the origin of life might be the same problem, what it might feel like to be water or a photon, how psychedelics reveal something philosophy has been saying for centuries, and much more…Timestamps: 00:00 The Nature of Consciousness02:52 Evidence and Experience06:09 Consciousness and the Brain09:09 Emergence vs. Production of Consciousness12:11 Panpsychism and Process Philosophy15:08 Information and Consciousness17:47 Biopsychism and Early Consciousness21:11 The Hard Problem of Consciousness24:08 Subjectivity and Objectivity27:06 The Role of Information in Reality29:47 Consciousness and the Universe48:25 The Relational Nature of Truth51:10 Beyond Space and Time54:55 The Self in a Panpsychist View56:30 The Evidence for Panpsychism01:00:01 Sociological Influences on Worldviews01:03:34 Psychedelics and Consciousness01:10:56 Navigating Reality and Hallucination01:15:13 Falsification and Progress in Panpsychism01:19:57 The Ethical Implications of Panpsychism...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/

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 what that means for AI, life after death, and the mystery of subjective experience.Expect to learn why microtubules inside neurons might be the real seat of consciousness, how anesthetics switch off awareness by dampening quantum vibrations, what happens to consciousness when the brain flatlines, why current AI models may never be truly conscious, how quantum coherence can persist in the warm, wet brain, what a "quantum soul" might actually mean, why critics have called this theory absurd — and how new research may finally be proving them wrong, how ultrasound could treat depression by targeting the roots of awareness, and much more...Timestamps: 00:00 The Misconception of the Brain as a Computer03:00 The Journey to Understanding Consciousness05:51 Microtubules: The Key to Consciousness09:00 Anesthesia and Its Role in Consciousness11:51 The Historical Context of Anesthesia15:06 The Mechanism of Anesthesia18:01 The Quantum Nature of Anesthesia21:06 The Role of Microtubules in Anesthesia24:00 The Unitary Mechanism of Anesthesia26:56 The Evidence Supporting Microtubules30:02 The Future of Anesthesia Research36:35 The Quest for Consciousness Evidence37:42 Microtubules and Information Processing39:15 AI, Neural Networks, and Consciousness41:09 Roger Penrose and the Heart Problem42:36 Gödel's Theorem and Quantum Physics44:03 Superposition and Spacetime Curvature46:54 Objective Reduction and Consciousness49:16 Microtubules as Quantum Devices51:30 Fibonacci Geometry and Consciousness54:49 Integrating Biology and Physics57:48 Criticism and Defense of the Theory01:01:26 The Impact of the 1995 Paper01:05:02 Decoherence in Biological Systems01:07:11 Experimental Evidence for Quantum Effects01:09:46 Conductance and Quantum Effects in Microtubules01:11:41 Experiments and Anesthesia's Impact on Consciousness01:14:06 The ORCH-OR Theory and Its Explanatory Power01:18:41 Integrating ORCH-OR with Other Consciousness Theories01:27:30 The Mechanism of Consciousness and Quantum Collapse01:36:11 Free Will, Quantum Mechanics, and Consciousness...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/

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 think. In his lab at the University of Vermont, he’s building AI-designed organisms that challenge our understanding of life, agency, intelligence, and what it means to be a self.Expect to learn how a pile of skin cells assembled itself into a replicating robot, why biology may be cognitive all the way down, how AI is learning to design living systems from scratch, why memory and learning might emerge in systems without brains, why the illusion of consciousness could be evolution’s greatest trick, how Xenobots are influencing the future of robotics and synthetic life, what moral standing these beings might eventually require, and why your high school biology textbook may have gotten almost everything wrong…Timestamps: 00:00 The Birth of Xenobots03:08 Understanding Xenobots: Science and Implications05:57 Cognition and Intelligence: A New Perspective08:53 Defining Consciousness and Self-Awareness12:09 Memory and Learning in Xenobots14:46 The Nature of Experience and Reality18:00 Exploring Agency and Adaptation20:52 The Future of Xenobots and Robotics28:10 The Evolution of Robotics: Learning from Biology30:21 Human-Like Adaptability in Robots33:10 Xenobots: The Future of Self-Replication37:38 Understanding Agency in Xenobots40:47 The Challenge of Defining Agency43:35 Ethical Considerations of Xenobots45:07 AI and the Future of Biological Robotics47:43 The Role of AI in Understanding Biology52:05 The Potential of AI in Biological Discoveries55:15 The Moral Implications of Synthetic Life01:00:01 Future of Food and Ethical Eating...Episodes Mentioned: Challenging a Famous Neuroscientist On When Consciousness First Emerged: https://youtu.be/ZnasmLpY5_8Meet the Scientist Who Mathematically Proved Reality is an Illusion! Round 2: https://youtu.be/kTKE8eLo8CUPhilip Ball: Why Quantum Mechanics is NOT What you think, Consciousness, Brain Organoids, AI & Life!: https://youtu.be/nNbG5lnp51E❤️ 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/

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 stimulation, virtual reality training, and the science of flow and resilience.Expect to learn what separates F1 drivers from the rest of us, why most brain training is a scam (and what actually works), the surprising role of virtual reality in cognitive development, why recovery and adaptation are more important than optimization, how elite performers manipulate arousal to access clutch states, why Sudoku doesn’t make you smarter, how executive function and decision-making can be trained like a muscle, the truth about brain stimulation (tDCS, TMS, vagus nerve) and what’s still pseudoscience, how dancing and martial arts might save your brain, and why cognitive decline is far from inevitable—and what to do to slow or even reverse it.Timestamps:00:00:00 Meet the Neuroscientist Training Formula 1 Drivers00:03:42 The Science Behind Split-Second Decision-Making at 200mph00:05:15 What Sets F1 Brains Apart From the Rest of Us?00:06:20 Is High Performance Born or Built?00:10:13 Why Obsession With Outcomes Can Hurt Your Brain00:11:26 Cognitive Optimization: What’s Real, What’s a Scam?00:13:12 Near vs Far Transfer: How Real Is Brain Training?00:17:01 The Best Activities for Boosting Brain Plasticity00:18:21 Why Complex Skill Learning Is the New Brain Hack00:19:20 How F1 Drivers Train Executive Function Without Driving00:22:09 Optimizing Recovery to Enhance Mental Performance00:23:21 Virtual Reality as the Future of Cognitive Training00:27:14 Why Real-World Complexity Trumps Gamified Drills00:30:00 Can VR Really Make You a Better Athlete?00:33:03 The Secret Behind Federer’s “Average” Reflexes00:34:11 Brain Stimulation in High Performance: Where Are We Now?00:39:41 Flow vs Clutch: What Actually Drives Performance?00:42:00 What Flow Feels Like in a Formula 1 Car00:45:03 Flow Is Overrated for Learning: Here’s Why00:46:34 The “Rule of Thirds” of Human Performance00:47:08 Understanding How and Why the Brain Declines With Age00:48:05 Allostasis: How the Brain Balances Change Over Time00:49:02 Does Routine Shrink the Brain?00:50:04 Can We Reverse Cognitive Aging?00:51:04 Tau, Amyloid and the Story of Dementia00:51:57 Resilience and Reserve: Your Brain’s Emergency Buffer00:53:16 What Triathlons Can Teach Us About Brain Longevity00:53:49 Aerobic vs Resistance Training for Brain Health00:54:54 White Matter and Why Lifting Weights Builds Intelligence00:55:22 The Surprising Brain Benefits of Dance, Martial Arts and Sport00:56:32 The Future of Brain Health: Stimulate or Decline00:57:13 Why Your Cognitive Destiny Is More Controllable Than You Think00:57:59 You Don’t Need Gadgets to Save Your Brain00:58:27 TMS, VR, Movement: The Future of Neurostimulation00:58:43 Final Reflections From the Brain Coach of Formula 1...❤️ 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/id1752486249Sponsors:Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Get 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)Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

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 that know they exist.Expect to learn how emotions are compressed value functions for simulated agents, how brains create recursive world models to predict and control experience, why the self might just be a stabilizing hallucination, how synthetic minds could surpass biological ones, why Joscha sees spirits as information processes, and how consciousness might emerge anywhere complex systems learn to model themselves.We also explore the implications of Michael Levin’s work, the ethics of synthetic selves, why nature is already computational, and what’s truly at the bedrock of reality. This conversation is strange, deep, and unforgettable.Timestamps:00:00 Journey into Consciousness and AI02:59 The Intersection of Neuroscience and AI05:52 Understanding Consciousness: A Second Order Perception08:53 Consciousness: An Evolved Property or Fundamental Reality?12:03 The Concept of Spirit in Consciousness14:56 Exploring Consciousness in Non-Brain Systems18:00 The Nature of Consciousness in Organisms21:12 The Role of Software in Consciousness23:52 The Potential of Xenobots and Consciousness37:06 Emergence of Artificial Life40:12 The Nature of Consciousness43:56 Comparing Consciousness Across Species46:58 The Role of Social Structures in Consciousness54:39 Biological Ingredients for Consciousness01:10:55 Building Conscious AI01:16:38 Exploring Ethical Constraints in AI Experiments01:18:11 The Nature of Consciousness in AI01:22:18 Comparing Consciousness: LLMs vs. Xenobots01:24:19 The Binary Nature of Consciousness01:27:01 Agency vs. Consciousness: A Complex Relationship01:32:34 The Horrors of Conscious Existence01:37:41 Concerns About AI and Society01:40:14 The Role of AI in Society's Future01:46:57 The Urgency of AI Development01:51:03 The Future of AI and Society......❤️ 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/

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 reveal deeper truths about reality, the philosophical roots of mystical experience, and why matter itself might be sentient. Expect to rethink everything you thought was solid...Timestamps:00:00 Understanding Panpsychism02:49 The Nature of Consciousness05:56 Defining Mind and Its Ambiguities09:01 Historical Perspectives on Mind11:49 The Evolution of Consciousness14:57 Philosophical Positions on Consciousness17:41 The Intersection of Consciousness and Biology20:33 The Influence of Historical Context on Consciousness23:53 Exploring the Continuum of Consciousness26:41 The Debate on Consciousness Cutoff Points32:22 Exploring the Nature of Electrons and Consciousness34:26 The Interconnection of Consciousness and Physics36:24 Diverse Perspectives on Panpsychism40:13 Historical Context of Panpsychism and Its Reception43:40 Psychedelics: Insights into Consciousness51:52 The Challenge of Describing Psychedelic Experiences01:00:23 The Debate of Universalism vs Contextualism01:01:43 Psychedelics and Consciousness: Fact vs Fiction01:03:46 Hallucinations: Delusions or Deeper Reality?01:05:13 Mental Causation: The Connection Between Mind and Body01:08:55 The Therapeutic Mechanism of Psychedelics01:12:49 Exploring Panpsychism: Consciousness Beyond the Brain01:16:22 The Future of Consciousness Studies01:25:03 Metaphysical Possibilities in ScienceSponsors:Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Get 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)❤️ 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/

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 understand child development and reshaping clinical treatment for ADHD and PKU worldwide. She’s also led the charge in redefining education, proving that joy, movement, play, and emotional connection aren’t luxuries — they’re neuroscience-backed necessities.Expect to learn what executive functions really are and why they matter for everything from school performance to lifelong happiness, the overlooked role of the prefrontal cortex in ADHD, how dopamine operates very differently in this brain region, the crucial (and often missed) distinction between types of ADHD, why some kids are misdiagnosed when they’re actually suffering from trauma, why psychostimulants can backfire and how we might be overprescribing the wrong doses, why martial arts might outperform cognitive training, how childhood stress reshapes brain wiring, the profound importance of early encouragement and self-concept, how AI and smartphones are degrading our cognitive systems, why social-emotional connection is a prerequisite for learning, and what Adele believes schools are still getting tragically wrong — even today.This is an episode about rewiring how we think about attention, emotion, learning, and what it means to help human beings thrive.Timestamps: 00:00 Understanding Executive Functions and Their Importance04:48 The Journey to Discovering the Prefrontal Cortex11:04 Behavioral Paradigms: Linking Cognition and Brain Function18:05 ADHD: Understanding the Disorder and Its Nuances25:56 Dopamine, Focus, and Executive Function32:58 The Role of Psychostimulants and Long-Term Effects35:21 Improving Executive Function Beyond Medication38:00 Brain Plasticity: Can We Train Executive Function at Any Age?41:26 Self-Identity and Its Impact on Learning and Growth42:52 The Future of Executive Function in the Age of AI44:03 AI in Education: Opportunities and Challenges45:58 Balancing AI Use in Learning48:04 The Role of Technology in Early Childhood Development51:57 Attention Span and Distraction in the Digital Age53:57 Social Interaction and Mental Health56:03 The Dangers of Over-Reliance on Technology59:12 The Importance of Social-Emotional Learning01:03:05 Integrating Emotional Intelligence in Education01:05:58 The Need for Teacher Training in Child Development01:09:48 Addressing Childhood Trauma and Mental Health01:14:03 The Role of Psychedelics in Healing01:17:08 Conclusion and Future Directions...Sponsors:Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Get 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)❤️ 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/

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/giantsshoulder1Mind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3De-extinction isn’t science fiction anymore — it’s a toolkit for saving what’s left of the natural world. From woolly mammoths to dodos to genetically edited quolls, Andrew’s work sits at the crossroads of synthetic biology, ecological restoration, and moral philosophy.Expect to learn why de-extinction might be the only way to preserve biodiversity, how CRISPR and ancient DNA are being used to rebuild lost genomes, what species we can and should bring back, the cultural myths and ethical fears surrounding “playing God,” the truth about the dire wolf announcement, why apex predators matter more than you think, how genetically reprogrammed animals might rescue ecosystems, what Jurassic Park got right — and what it absolutely didn’t, and much more...Timestamps:00:00 The Mission of De-Extinction03:03 Genomic Advances in De-Extinction05:52 The Process of Rebuilding Extinct Species08:53 Conservation and Genetic Diversity12:04 Targeting Endangered Species14:48 Rewilding the Tasmanian Tiger18:06 Monitoring and Managing Ecosystems29:23 The Complexity of Ecosystems and Species Interactions32:01 Genetic Diversity and Its Importance38:12 The Role of Genetic Diversity in Climate Resilience40:51 The Urgency of De-Extinction Technology43:19 The Future of Tasmanian Tigers and Rewilding45:39 Woolly Mammoths: Ecosystem Engineers50:09 Funding and Ethical Considerations in De-Extinction53:42 The Moral Obligation of De-Extinction56:42 Navigating the Controversy of Species Classification01:01:04 The Role of Marketing in Conservation01:04:38 Defining Ethical Boundaries in Genetic Engineering01:10:30 Policy Challenges in Genetic Conservation01:14:06 Future Projects in De-Extinction...❤️ 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/

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=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3The brain is not a passive receiver of information. It is an active prediction machine, constantly generating expectations about the world and the body, updating those beliefs when they fail, and acting to make its predictions come true. Under this framework, perception is inference, action is prediction fulfilment, emotion is bodily forecasting, and the self is a model the brain uses to explain its own persistence.Expect to learn what the Free Energy Principle actually is, why living systems must minimise surprise, how predictive coding and active inference work, why perception is a controlled hallucination, how attention and precision shape experience, what interoceptive inference reveals about emotion and the self, how psychedelics relax beliefs, where consciousness might fit in a predictive hierarchy, and why this theory may be one of the deepest explanations of mind we currently have.Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to the Free Energy Principle02:54 Deflationary Nature of the Free Energy Principle05:48 Explaining the Free Energy Principle: High Road vs. Low Road09:02 Predictive Processing and Perception11:49 Active Inference and Its Implications15:07 Interoception and Emotional Inference18:02 Generative Models and Selfhood20:54 The Role of Emotions in Predictive Coding23:55 Transformative Experiences and Learning26:44 Conclusion: The Practical Applications of the Free Energy Principle48:58 Understanding the Role of Psychedelics in Therapy52:48 Mechanisms of False Inference and Precision in the Brain57:24 Relaxing Priors: The Impact of Psychedelics on Sense-Making01:01:03 Generative Models: Individual Differences and Shared Structures01:06:49 Cognitively Impenetrable Illusions and Prior Beliefs01:15:15 Sensory Attenuation and the Role of Attention01:19:03 The Free Energy Principle: Implications for Psychiatry01:25:48 The Future of Neuroscience Education and Research...❤️ 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/

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 you think you’re a “you” at all.Expect to learn why consciousness is a useful illusion, how awareness emerges from neural models, what happens when these models break down in brain damage or stroke, why future AIs might think they’re conscious (and what that means for us), whether subjective experience can be explained without magic, why attention is the gateway to control, how consciousness helps us navigate the social world, what ventriloquism reveals about the mind, and how understanding this theory might shift everything we believe about thought, selfhood, and machine intelligence.SPONSORS:Try Sentia Spirits this Dry January (10% Off with Giant10): https://sentiaspirits.com/giantsshoulderMind Labs Pro Scientifically Rigorous Supplements: https://www.mindlabpro.com/?a_aid=67fd1cb8d9ad3&a_bid=6d45f5c3Timestamps: 00:00 Michael Graziano on Consciousness and the Brain03:47 Can Simple Creatures Be Aware?06:56 Where Selfhood Begins: Models in the Brain10:13 Why Awareness Is Useful for Control14:09 The Phantom Limb Illusion and Consciousness17:56 Consciousness as a Model, Not a Magic Spark21:32 What the Brain Tells Itself About Experience24:40 What Are You Actually Conscious Of?27:18 Graziano's Critique of the Hard Problem30:01 How Illusions Like the Body Schema Help Us Understand33:00 Phantom Limbs, Puppets, and Ghost Awareness35:08 What Is Attention, Really?39:02 The Brain’s Internal Sketch of Focus43:00 Attention Schema Theory Explained47:09 How Brains Build the Feeling of Mind50:25 Can Machines Ever Be Truly Conscious?54:18 AI That Says “I’m Aware” — Should We Believe It?58:10 When a Chatbot Starts to Suffer01:02:45 Society’s Slow Acceptance of Machine Awareness01:07:40 What Makes Human Selfhood So Stable?01:12:10 Training AI to Build a Model of Us01:16:05 Does AI Need a Theory of Mind?01:20:00 Graziano on Theory of Mind and Early Development01:24:25 Why Modeling Consciousness Matters in AI01:28:52 Can Language-Free Minds Still Model Others?01:30:28 ChatGPT and the Hinting Task — Reading Minds?01:34:12 Storytelling, Semantics, and Machine Intentions01:38:40 Could an AI Learn a Stable Personality?01:41:01 What the Next Decade of Neuroscience Might Reveal01:43:16 Final Thoughts: The Real Importance of Consciousness...❤️ 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/