The Giants Shoulder

Evan McGloughlin
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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.

  1. 3 DAYS AGO

    #104 GIANT'S DEBATE - Whats The SECRET to Engineering Artificial Consciousness? Cognition Vs Feeling

    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 Debate 00:46 Mark Solms: What Makes a System Conscious? 05:31 Ryan Smith: The Cognitive Case for Consciousness 13:02 Where Mark and Ryan Agree and Disagree 17:32 The Selection Problem: What Gets to Be Conscious? 27:07 Can We Scientifically Prove Something Is Conscious? 30:02 Blindsight: Behaviour Without Experience 34:20 The Fish on Cocaine Problem 41:25 Different Meanings of Consciousness 54:57 How the Free Energy Principle Explains Consciousness 01:03:02 Ryan Smith: Taking Consciousness Out of Biology 01:12:17 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 Consciousness 01:27:25 Why Current LLMs Have Zero Consciousness 01:30:36 Mark's Final Word: Goals Must Be Real 01:31:15 Rapid Fire with Ryan Smith 01:37:52 The Neuron Replacement Thought Experiment 01:42:10 Computation vs Architecture: A Middle Ground 01:44:06 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/

    1h 52m

  2. 6 DAYS AGO

    #103 Meet The Social Neuroscientist Proving We’re All Living In A Collective Consciousness

    Chris Frith is a pioneering neuroscientist who helped launch the field of cognitive neuroscience — and his work has completely changed how we understand reality, consciousness, and mental illness.In this episode, you’ll learn why perception is just a controlled hallucination, how our brains build reality through social connection, why people with schizophrenia see the world differently, how consciousness evolved to help us coordinate with others, and why your sense of self might be an illusion shared to stay sane. Support The Channel: Get 1 Month Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/we00d2cmjpqe Get Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder Timestamps: 02:12 What Is Consciousness? A Brain-Built Social Model 06:34 Predictive Processing and Why You Never Really See the World 11:29 Controlled Hallucinations: How the Brain Manufactures Reality 16:45 Optical Illusions, Schizophrenia, and Seeing Too Much 21:08 What Schizophrenia Teaches Us About the Nature of Belief 27:10 Social Models, Sanity, and the Idea of a Collective Mind 32:43 Consciousness as a Social Adaptation — Not a Solo Experience 38:50 Generative Models and the Brain’s Simulation Engine 45:02 Why Solitude Breaks the Mind and Social Sync Holds It Together 50:31 Can AI Be Conscious? What’s Missing From Machines 56:07 Free Will, Agency and the Brain’s Self-Narrative 01:00:45 The Myth of a Single Reality: Delusions, Politics and Group Models 01:06:58 Consciousness, Intelligence, and the AI Illusion 01:11:41 Why the Self Is Just a Useful Story 01:17:09 Do Octopuses Have Consciousness? 01:21:16 Where Does the Line Fall Between Conscious and Not?01:25:20 Frith’s Thoughts on the Future of Consciousness Research 01:30:03 AI, Prediction, and the Limits of Machine Minds 01:34:38 Final Reflections: Social Brains, Sanity, and Shared Reality ... 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/

    1h 38m

  3. 12 MAR

    #102 Meet The Scientist Proving Cells Are Conscious and Intelligent

    William B. Miller Jr. is a Medical Doctor, Evolutionary Biologist, and author of Bioverse and co-author of The Sentient Cell — one of the most radical rethinks of biology published in decades.Every cell in your body is conscious, intelligent, and making decisions right now. Evolution is not random. Cancer is not a genetic accident — it's a highly intelligent system we've been fighting completely wrong. And the central dogma of molecular biology, the foundation of modern medicine, is broken.Expect to learn why biology begins with intelligence not chemistry, why every cell has preferences goals and experiences, why natural selection is only half the story, how cancer cells are intelligent agents and why that changes everything about treatment, why genes are tools not bosses, why consciousness can never exist in silicon alone, 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 Introduction & The Biology Revolution Nobody Is Talking About00:01:40 Biology Begins With the Intelligent Measuring Cell00:05:09 Cognition All the Way Down: Is Even mTOR a Smart Molecule?00:07:20 Are Viruses Intelligent? The Strange World of Social Virology00:09:39 Defining Intelligence, Cognition and Consciousness00:16:09 What Is True Biological Agency and Where Does It Begin?00:17:20 The Constructal Law and The Biogenic Principle00:21:09 What Separates a Biological Agent From a Machine00:24:51 Free Will, Doubt and Why Miller Would Refuse To Stop Believing In Agency00:28:20 The Stem Cell That Searches For Its Identity00:44:55 The Toxoplasmosis Moment: The Medical Observation That Changed Everything00:50:21 Slime Mould vs Water: How Do We Separate Agency From Gradient Descent?00:53:49 Why We Stopped Having Children: States of Preference Are Running Evolution00:56:06 Where Is Preference Encoded in a Cell?01:03:30 The Senome: The Sensory Organ That Replaces Gene-Centric Biology01:07:17 Why Crick's Central Dogma Was Wrong: Information Never Flows One Way01:10:23 The Six Cellular Principles That Should Govern Human Ethics01:14:47 How Single Cell Consciousness Becomes One Unified Experience01:18:16 Symbiogenesis, Mitochondria and The Birth of the Eukaryotic Cell01:20:36 Why It Took 1.4 Billion Years For Multicellular Life To Appear01:28:09 Cognitive Selection: The Real Driver of Evolution01:34:02 Michael Levin, Morphogenesis and Where the Body's Blueprint Actually Lives01:39:47 You Never Truly Die: Your Intelligence Flows Back Into the River of Life01:43:30 What Does All This Mean For Medicine, Biotech and Society?01:45:50 Why Cancer Is Intelligent and We Are Fighting It Wrong01:48:31 AI Cannot Be Conscious — And That Might Make It a Better Tool01:49:21 The Future: Marrying AI to Conscious Biological Cells...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/

    1h 58m

  4. 9 MAR

    #101 Meet The Physicist Who Believes Time Doesn’t Exist

    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/we00d2cmjpqe Get 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 Cambridge 00:12:23 Why Dirac Rejected Four-Dimensional Spacetime 00:15:28 Hamilton, Quaternions and the Dublin Bridge 00:19:36 The Straw Poll with Hawking That Made Spanish Headlines 00:22:08 The Titanic Analogy for the Problem of Time 00:27:26 What the Wheeler-DeWitt Equation Actually Says 00:31:00 Time Capsules: Why Your Memories Don't Prove Time Passed 00:35:03 Flow States and the Experience of Time 00:37:08 The Kingfisher in Flight: Consciousness Plays the Movie 00:40:47 Psychedelics, Pollan and Consciousness 00:44:13 Materialism vs Idealism: Where Does Barbour Stand?00:48:33 Complex Wavefunctions and the Born Density 00:53:16 The Three-Body Collision Problem 00:55:33 Leibniz, Monads and the Living Mirror of the Universe 00:58:10 "I Am the Universe Seen from My Point of View" 01:04:01 The Punchline: Gravity Equals Variety 01:08:43 Buzsáki and How the Brain Keeps Time 01:13:46 Did Science Take a Wrong Turn in 150 BC? 01:19:32 Barbour's Ontology: Points, Distances, Ratios — That's It 01:25:34 "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/4liP9zy The Janus Point: A New Theory of Time: https://amzn.to/4bw3ZPI 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/

    1h 40m

  5. 5 MAR

    #100 Meet The Scientist Who Wrote the Blueprint for Conscious Machines

    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 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/

    1h 20m

  6. 2 MAR

    #99 Matt Segall: Panexperientialism, God, Metaphysics and What Neuroscience Is Getting Wrong!

    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/

    1h 32m

  7. 26 FEB

    #98 Chris Fields: Whats Wrong With Quantum Mechanics, Cellular Intelligence and Consciousness

    Support The Channel: Get 1 Week Free of ConsensusAi: https://get.consensus.app/giantsshoulder1 Get Professional High Quality Talk Therapy at BetterHelp. 10% off your first month of therapy with this link - https://betterhelp.com/giantsshoulder Dr. Chris Fields is an independent researcher with one of the most extraordinary careers in modern science — from nuclear physics to decoding the first complete genome to quantum information theory — now collaborating with Michael Levin and Karl Friston to rewrite how we understand life and consciousness.His central claim: nothing in the universe has a real boundary. Every object you see — including yourself — is a decision, not a discovery. Expect to learn how quantum theory became a theory of communication, why cells might be goal-directed agents, whether bacteria can experience space, and much more... Timestamps: 00:00 The Evolution of a Scientific Career 02:06 Understanding Boundaries in Science 09:59 Quantum Information Theory Explained 14:55 Neurons and Quantum Communication 40:07 Collaboration and Implications in Biology 40:17 Exploring Biological Systems as Information Processors 43:44 Agentive Thinking in Biology 48:40 Understanding 3D Space Representation in Cells 56:14 Conscious Agent Theory and Information Exchange 01:15:02 Future Directions in Biological Communication Research ... 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/id1752486249 Download my FREE EBook 26 Neuroscience Books for 2026 HERE: https://thegiantsshoulder.com/

    1h 22m

  8. 23 FEB

    #97 Matt Ridley: COVID Lab Leak, Jeffrey Epstein and Failures In Science

    Matt Ridley is an evolutionary biologist, bestselling science writer and author of eleven books including The Red Queen, Genome, The Rational Optimist and Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19.He co-investigated the origin of SARS-CoV-2 with molecular biologist Alina Chan — and what they found may be the biggest cover-up in the history of science. A secret Pentagon proposal describing the exact genetic manipulation that may have created the pandemic. Private messages showing virologists publicly denying a lab leak while privately admitting they thought it was likely. And an establishment that chose silence while millions died.Expect to learn what a furin cleavage site is and why it stunned virologists worldwide, what the secret DEFUSE proposal reveals about the experiments happening in Wuhan, why the virus was suspiciously well-adapted to human lungs from day one, what the recently released Epstein files reveal about how a convicted sex offender directed research at Harvard and compromised elite science, why no major funding body has investigated the lab leak despite 25 million deaths, and much more…Timestamps:Covid Lab Leak00:00 The Origins of COVID-19: A Lab Leak Theory03:11 Investigating the Wuhan Institute of Virology06:00 The Role of Genetic Engineering in Virus Research09:08 The Furin Cleavage Site: A Key to Infectivity11:58 The Defuse Proposal: A Shocking Revelation14:51 The Pangolin Narrative: A Red Herring?18:10 The Call for Transparency in Science33:16 Controversies in Virus Origins35:35 Evaluating Zoonotic Narratives37:30 The Role of Markets in Virus Transmission40:22 Lab Leaks vs. Natural Origins42:05 Genetic Manipulation and Furin Cleavage44:42 Passaging Theory and Virus Evolution49:10 Implications of High Infectivity51:22 Suspicion of Early Vaccine Development54:48 The Need for Transparency56:24 The Future of Gain of Function Research01:00:57 The Lab Leak Hypothesis: Recklessness in Research01:10:01 Trust in Science: The Impact of COVID-19 on Public PerceptionEpstein01:20:20 Epstein's Influence: Compromising Science and Ethics01:23:32 Reforming Science Funding: Addressing Systemic Issues...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/

    1h 38m
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About

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.

Information

  • Creator
    Evan McGloughlin
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    110
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Evan McGloughlin
  • Show Website
    The Giants Shoulder

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