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PODCAST

Giants Shoulder

Evan McGloughlin

A Biology & Consciousness podcast chronicling the bio-singularity. 3x times per week I speak with leading scientists at the bleeding edge of Neuroscience, Consciousness and Biology. 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.

science life sciences

All Episodes

01:32:30

#45 Meet the Scientist Who Brought Quantum Mechanics...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/01

Johnjoe McFadden is a molecular geneticist, consciousness theorist, and best-selling co-author of Life on the Edge — the book that brought quantum mechanics into biology and shattered how we think about life itself.He pioneered the first fully electronic rapid diagnostic test for deadly diseases like meningitis and COVID, and his groundbreaking work helped create the field of quantum biology — showing how enzymes, photosynthesis, even bird migration rely on quantum weirdness to function.His bold

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01:28:19

#44 Meet the Neuroscientist Using AI to Unlock the...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/07/29

Dr. Evelina Fedorenko is a cognitive neuroscientist at MIT and one of the world’s leading experts on how the brain processes language.She’s mapped the brain’s language system more precisely than anyone, proving it’s a specialized network — not shared with general thought — and that our inner monologue? It might be an illusion. Now, her lab is using large language models like GPT to predict and even control neural activity in human language regions, revealing uncanny parallels between artificial and

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02:30:49

#43 Nick Lane: Origin of Life, Aliens, Metabolism,...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/07/25

Nick Lane is a biochemist, Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London, and author of Transformer, The Vital Question, and Power, Sex, Suicide — books that have revolutionised how we think about the origin of life, complexity, and the deep chemistry powering consciousness.Life, Lane argues, didn’t begin in a soup but in the cracks of the seafloor — powered not by sunlight, but by geochemical gradients, ancient electricity, and the quiet inevitability of metabolism. And

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01:06:43

#42 Meet Dr Michael Levin The Scientist Creating New...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/07/23

Dr. Michael Levin is a biologist, computer scientist, and co-creator of the Xenobot — the world’s first living, programmable organism, built entirely from frog skin and heart cells. These tiny constructs can move, heal, and even replicate — making them the first-ever synthetic life forms capable of self-replication.But this is just the beginning.Dr. Levin’s research into bioelectricity is flipping biology on its head. He’s shown that cells use electrical signals — not just genes — to communicate,

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01:53:05

#41 No. 1 Reality Theorist: Consciousness, Quantum...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/07/07

James Glattfelder is a physicist and complexity theorist turned philosopher of mind and reality, and author of The Sapient Cosmos — a provocative attempt to rethink the universe as fundamentally conscious and informational.Forget what you think you know about space, time, matter, or even consciousness. Glattfelder believes that reality isn’t built from particles, but from information — and that consciousness might not emerge from brains, but be the very substrate of the cosmos itself.Expect to learn

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01:09:02

#40 Learning Expert: Hallucinated Reality, Rewiring...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/06/26

Dr. Mark Williams is a cognitive neuroscientist, author of The Connected Species, and one of the world’s leading experts on how we learn, connect, and perceive reality — and why modern life may be rewiring our brains in ways we don’t fully understand.Your brain is not showing you the world as it is — it’s hallucinating a version that helps you survive. And that illusion is breaking down. Especially for children.Expect to learn why reality itself is a convincing hallucination created by your brain,

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01:22:59

#39 Consciousness Expert: Alien Minds, Insane Biology...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/06/20

Peter Godfrey-Smith is a philosopher of biology, diver, and author of Other Minds and Metazoa — two of the most important works on animal consciousness ever written. His research explores the octopus not just as an animal, but as an alien intelligence that evolved a complex mind entirely separate from our own.Octopuses have distributed brains in their arms, no cultural learning, no social lives — and yet they solve problems, play, and even throw objects in rage. They live just 1 to 2 years, mate

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00:57:43

#38 Meet the Drug & Brain Expert Fired For Exposing...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/06/16

Professor David Nutt is the neuropsychopharmacologist who built the world’s first science-based drug-harm scale, led the pioneering LSD brain-scan, and lost his post as the UK government’s chief drug adviser after declaring that alcohol is deadlier than LSD. He’s the author of *Drugs Without the Hot Air, Drink?, Cannabis,* and *Psychedelics*, and he’s now engineering a hangover-free alternative to booze.Buy Nutt's Books Drink?: The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health:

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02:01:20

#37 Expert Palaeontologist: Direwolf De-Extinction,...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/06/12

Get Manta Sleep Mask. Use Code GIANTSMANTA10 - https://bit.ly/4ilzfBLDr. David Hone is a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and author of How Fast Did T. rex Run?, a myth-busting investigation into the surprising behavior, intelligence, and complexity of dinosaurs.Forget the lumbering monsters of Jurassic Park — dinosaurs were social, strategic, and sometimes even spectacularly weird. From display structures and pack hunting to nesting behaviour and brain evolution, Dr. Hone’s work reveals the

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00:57:01

#36 I Challenged the World’s #1 Child-Attachment...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/06/05

Get Manta Sleep Mask. Use Code GIANTSMANTA10 - https://bit.ly/4ilzfBLErica Komisar is a psychoanalyst, clinical social worker, and author of *Chicken Little, The Sky Isn’t Falling*, a fiercely debated book about raising resilient adolescents in an anxious world.Buy Erica's Book: https://amzn.to/4dvh8YXWith over three decades of clinical experience, Erica argues that the roots of childhood mental illness—depression, anxiety, even ADHD—can be traced back to emotional stress in the earliest years of

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01:04:18

#35 What People Who Taste Triangles Reveal About...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/06/03

Check out Brain.FM: Music Entrainment for Focused Deep Work (30 Day Free Trial: https://www.brain.fm/giantsshoulder)Dr. Anina Rich is a cognitive neuroscientist and one of the world’s foremost experts on synesthesia — the rare phenomenon where senses merge, allowing people to see music, taste shapes, or feel touch by sight alone.But synesthesia isn’t a neurological glitch — it’s a window into how all of our brains construct reality.In this conversation, we explore how synesthesia reveals the brain’s

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01:58:35

#34 Meet the Psychiatrist Redefining Mental Illness!...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/05/23

Get Manta Sleep Mask. Use Code GIANTSMANTA10 - https://bit.ly/4ilzfBLGet 1 Year FREE Consensus AI. Use Code GIANTSSHOULDER for 1 Year Free Premium Sub - [https://consensus.app](https://consensus.app/)Dr. Nicholas Fabiano is a psychiatrist, researcher, and rising star in the world of mental health who’s challenging the foundations of how we diagnose and treat mental illness.He believes depression isn’t just in your head — it’s in your whole body. From prescribing exercise as medicine to exploring the

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01:04:47

#33 Meet the Neuroscientist Unlocking the Hidden...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/05/09

Get 1 Year FREE Consensus AI: (Use Code GIANTSSHOULDER for 1 Year Free Premium Sub) https://consensus.appDr. Chris Summerfield is a neuroscientist, cognitive scientist, and author of These Strange New Minds — a groundbreaking exploration of whether machines like ChatGPT are starting to think, and what that reveals about human intelligence itself.Buy His Book (These Strange New Minds): https://amzn.to/4jKowBOSummerfield has spent his career studying how the brain perceives, predicts, abstracts, and

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01:19:12

#32 Meet the Man with ZERO Mental Imagery! Tom Ebeyor

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/05/07

Tom Ebeyer is the founder of the Aphantasia Network, the world’s largest organisation dedicated to understanding the invisible differences in how people experience mental imagery — or in some cases, don’t experience it at all.Aphantasia is the inability to visualise images in the mind’s eye — a condition that affects how we remember, dream, feel emotion, and even plan for the future. Most people who have it don’t even realise it.Expect to learn how Tom discovered he couldn’t picture anything in his

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00:22:47

Giant Moment #7 Your Emotions Are Not What you Think!...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/05/03

Check out the Full Podcast with leading consciousness researcher Dr Anil Seth here - https://youtu.be/lOSA06K0l1oAnil Seth is a neuroscientist, author, and one of the world's leading experts in consciousness research. His TED talk Your Brain Hallucinates Your Conscious Experience has captivated over 17 million viewers, and his groundbreaking book Being You explores the incredible mystery of perception and consciousness.Buy Being You (It's Genuinely Great) - https://amzn.to/4ccATngYour brain

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01:37:53

#31 Meet the Harvard Neuroscientist Who Watched Her...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/05/01

Get 1 Year of Premium Consensus.AI Completely Free (Use Code THEGIANTSSHOULDER) - https://consensus.app/Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is a Harvard-trained neuroanatomist and author of My Stroke of Insight, one of the most powerful and widely viewed neuroscience stories of all time.At 37, Dr. Taylor suffered a catastrophic hemorrhagic stroke that shut down the entire left hemisphere of her brain. As a brain scientist, she watched her mind unravel from the inside out—losing language, identity, memory, and

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01:47:27

#30 Dr Nick Enfield Language Expert: How Language...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/04/25

Dr. Nick Enfield is a linguistic anthropologist and author of Language vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists, a mind-bending exploration of how words shape — and distort — the world we live in.Buy Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists: https://amzn.to/4cHQImjLanguage isn’t just a tool for communication. It’s a tool for persuasion, manipulation, and coordination. It rewires our perception, memory, emotions, and beliefs — often without us even realizing

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01:18:14

#29 Dopamine Expert: How to Rewire your Brain for...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/04/18

Rules to Enter Competition to WIN Hardback Author Signed Copy of Taming the Molecule of More. 1) Subscribe to the Giant's Shoulder Youtube Channel 2) Like the Video 3) Comment Below Why you would like to Read the Book 4) BONUS ENTRY: Share on instagram or X and tag me. X: https://x.com/evan_mcglInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/giantsshoulder/Mike Long is a playwright, speechwriter, and co-author of Taming the Molecule of More — the practical sequel to the bestselling neuroscience book The

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01:55:37

#28 No. 1 Intuition Expert: Harnessing your...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/04/15

Dr. Joel Pearson is a psychologist, neuroscientist, and founder of Future Minds Lab at UNSW — a cutting-edge research group exploring consciousness, intuition, mental imagery, and the psychology of decision-making in the age of AI.He’s the world’s leading expert on aphantasia — the inability to visualize mental images — and author of The Intuition Toolkit, a science-backed guide to harnessing the power of the subconscious mind.Buy the Intuition Toolkit: https://amzn.to/3EjYupBExpect to learn how

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01:34:41

#27 Meet the Scientist Who Mathematically Proved that...

Giants Shoulder ·

2025/04/10

Dr. Robert Prentner is a philosopher of mind and consciousness researcher working alongside Donald Hoffman, co-authoring the *Conscious Agent Theory* — a radical scientific framework that challenges our deepest assumptions about reality.Buy The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes - https://amzn.to/42uSB11According to their work, we don’t perceive the world as it truly is. Our brains evolved not for truth, but for *useful illusion*. Space and time? Icons. Objects

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