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PODCAST

The Giants Shoulder

Evan McGloughlin

A Neuroscience podcast. Each week I talk with experts on a range of topics from consciousness and neuroplasticity to evolution and everything in between. I have a particular interest in consciousness and understanding our inner subjective conscious experience. Evan has a Neuroscience degree from Trinity College Dublin and is the co-founder of 2 (failed) edtech startups. He is a professional tennis coach and Triathlete enthusiast.

science life sciences

All Episodes

02:16:44

#64 Philip Ball: Why Quantum Mechanics is NOT What...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/10/01

Philip Ball is one of the world’s most brilliant science writers and the author of over 30 books, including How Life Works, The Book of Minds, and Beyond Weird — a radical rethinking of quantum mechanics that has become a modern classic.A former editor at Nature, Philip has spent decades translating the frontiers of biology, physics, and consciousness into ideas that challenge our deepest intuitions about life, mind, and reality.Expect to learn how quantum mechanics might shape the behavior of

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02:08:09

#60 The Slime Mold "Intelligence" Illusion,...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/09/29

Jon Perry is a science animator and educator, creator of Stated Clearly — the YouTube channel that turns messy biology into crisp, visual explanations, with more than fifty million views and a devoted audience of curious skeptics.StatedClearly Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@StatedClearlyJon’s mission is simple and radical: fix our definitions. When we call cells “intelligent,” or label xenobots “robots,” we smuggle minds into places they don’t belong. From a slime-mold maze rebuilt with

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02:05:20

#59 Meet the Neuroscientist Proving that...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/09/25

David Papineau is a philosopher of mind at King’s College London and author of Thinking About Consciousness and The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience, a leading voice who has shaped today’s mind–brain debate from the academy to the airwaves.He argues that consciousness isn’t something mystical added to the brain—it’s what the brain is doing—and that the “hard problem” is a conceptual trap that sneaks in dualism. In this episode, we put materialism on trial, stress-test it with neuroscience, and ask

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02:38:39

#58 Robert Plomin Round 2: Intelligence, Mental...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/09/23

Get 10% off your Genetics Test and screen for over 2000+ conditions (Use Code EVAN10): https://nucleusgenomics.sjv.io/LKE9EaDr. Robert Plomin is one of the world’s leading behavioural geneticists and the author of Blueprint, a game-changing book that argues your DNA isn’t just important — it’s the blueprint of who you are.Plomin’s groundbreaking twin studies revealed that nearly every psychological trait — from intelligence and personality to mental illness and addiction — is significantly

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01:33:24

#57 Meet the Neuroscientist Building the Internet of...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/09/16

Dr. Ryota Kanai is a neuroscientist, AI entrepreneur, and CEO of Araya—lead investigator in Japan’s Moonshot to free humans from the limits of body and brain by 2050. He’s a pioneer of non-invasive brain–machine interfaces, the Internet of Brains, and architectures aimed at conscious AI, and he’s the author of Will AI Become Conscious?.Consciousness, he argues, isn’t magic—it’s the brain’s internal simulation engine. Kanai is turning that insight into technology: thought-controlled cybernetic

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01:31:01

#55 The Blind Mind’s Eye: How Aphantasia Is Rewriting...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/09/08

Professor Adam Zeman is a Neurologist at the University of Exeter and the scientist who coined the term aphantasia — the “blind mind’s eye” — after a patient suddenly lost the ability to visualize following heart surgery.Since then, he has led the global investigation into why some minds picture nothing while others see in IMAX 8K, uncovering what this hidden spectrum of imagination reveals about memory, dreams, emotion, creativity, and even consciousness itself. He is also the author of

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02:05:42

#54 Alex Hutchinson: The Lie That Unlocked Human...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/09/04

Alex Hutchinson is a physicist, elite endurance athlete, and author of Endure — one of the most widely respected books on the science of human performance ever written.Fatigue isn’t a failure of the body — it’s a protective illusion cast by the brain. And Alex has spent the last decade exposing the hidden limits that shape our endurance, our suffering, and our potential.Expect to learn why the brain — not the muscles — is the true governor of performance, how pain, thirst, heat, and oxygen

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01:49:19

#53 Philosopher of Mind: Consciousness, Out-Of-Body...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/28

Thomas Metzinger is a professor of theoretical philosophy, consciousness researcher, and author of The Ego Tunnel, Being No One and The Elephant and the Blind — some of the most radical books on the nature of the self and reality ever written.Download a FREE copy of The Elephant And The Blind HERE: https://thomasmetzinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Metzinger_MIT_Press_2024-1.pdfHe’s spent decades exploring the hardest questions in neuroscience and philosophy: What is consciousness? Is the self

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01:31:41

#52 Meet The Scientist Who Trains Navy Seals To Enter...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/25

Steven Kotler is a peak performance expert, flow state researcher, and New York Times bestselling author of The Rise of Superman, Stealing Fire, and The Art of Impossible — books that have transformed how we understand human potential.Flow isn’t just a feeling — it’s a measurable, trainable state of consciousness that radically enhances performance, learning, and even our sense of self. In fact, it may be one of the most addictive — and transformative — states the brain can enter.Expect to learn

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01:43:10

#51 Meet the Scientist Proving Dreams Hold the Key to...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/21

Mark Solms is a neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, and author of The Hidden Spring, one of the most influential books on consciousness in recent years.He revolutionised sleep science by proving that dreaming isn’t confined to REM sleep, and he founded the field of neuropsychoanalysis — bridging Freud with modern neuroscience. Today, his radical claim is that consciousness begins not with thoughts in the cortex, but with feelings deep in the ancient brainstem.Expect to learn why dreams are inseparable

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01:27:25

#50 Meet the Neuroscientist With No Mental Imagery!...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/18

Dr. Merlin Monzel is a neuroscientist and one of the world’s foremost researchers on aphantasia — the condition where individuals live without the ability to visualize mental images.For decades, millions of people didn’t know they were missing anything — until science caught up. Dr. Monzel’s groundbreaking work is revealing what happens when the mind’s eye goes dark, and how it changes memory, emotion, identity, imagination, trauma, and even consciousness itself.Expect to learn what mental imagery

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01:41:25

#49 Emotion Neuroscientist: Psychedelics,...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/14

Dr. Nicole Rust is an emotion neuroscientist and author of Elusive Cures, a bold new book exploring why neuroscience still hasn’t solved brain disorders — and how we can change that.Despite decades of research and billions of dollars spent, conditions like depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia remain without true cures. Rust argues that part of the problem is how we think about the brain — not as a simple domino chain of causes and effects, but as a self-looping, complex system more like a

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00:54:00

#48 Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/11

Check out Sentia Spirits the future of drinking (Use Code GIANT10 for 10% discount off your first purchase: https://sentiaspirits.com/mcgloughlin4209355084Professor 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” with GABA science.Drug policy often punishes the

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01:41:24

#47 Meet the Neuroscientist Dissecting the Brains of...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/08

Dr. Dean Haycock is a neuroscientist and author of Murderous Minds and Tyrannical Minds, two of the most compelling books ever written on psychopathy and the biology of evil.From serial killers to world leaders, Dean has spent his career uncovering how the brains of psychopaths differ from the rest of us — and what that means for free will, justice, and the future of society.Expect to learn what brain scans reveal about the minds of psychopaths, why fear and empathy circuits often go silent in their

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01:30:23

#46 Meet the Psychiatrist Debunking The Chemical...

The Giants Shoulder ·

2025/08/05

Dr. Joanna Moncrieff is a psychiatrist, researcher, and author of The Myth of the Chemical Cure and Chemically Imbalanced, whose work has radically challenged one of the most powerful ideas in modern psychiatry — that depression is caused by a serotonin imbalance. Her landmark 2022 review in Molecular Psychiatry dismantled the serotonin hypothesis, exposing how Big Pharma turned a shaky theory into a multi‑billion‑dollar industry.Read the review:

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01:32:30

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

The 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...

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,...

The 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...

The 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...

The 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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106 results

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