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Paul Cisek is a control neuroscientist at the University of Montreal who records from single neurons in the brains of monkeys as they think, and who has spent decades reconstructing how the brain evolved across hundreds of millions of years. His verdict cuts against everything Silicon Valley believes: the brain was never a computer — it's a control system built to keep a body alive, and the most advanced AI on Earth understands nothing it says.
Expect to learn why Richard Dawkins is wrong that Claude could be conscious, why every era wrongly compares the brain to its fanciest technology, how a baseball outfielder reveals what the brain is really doing, why large language models are "Eliza on steroids" and 100% illusion, where meaning actually comes from and why LLMs can never have it, why the real danger isn't ChatGPT but the agentic systems that come next, whether a paramecium could be conscious, what Michael Levin's neuron-growing biobots tell us about minds, and much more…
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:33 Why Paul Rescheduled to Watch a Monkey Learn
0:06:13 Probing Electrodes Into a Living Brain
0:13:42 What a Single Neuron Actually Sounds Like
0:20:41 The Brain Is Not a Camera Plugged Into a Computer
0:24:55 How an Outfielder Catches a Ball Without Doing Physics
0:33:24 Why Federer "Lets the Cerebellum Run the Show"
0:38:09 Richard Dawkins Says Claude Might Be Conscious
0:39:11 Every Era Thinks the Brain Is Its Latest Gadget
0:42:36 Why AI Is "Eliza on Steroids" and 100% Illusion
0:45:38 The Mechanical Turk and the Stage Magician
0:48:09 The Mimicry Irony at the Heart of Dawkins' Mistake
0:52:32 The One Thing AlphaFold and ChatGPT Both Lack
0:53:30 Where Meaning Actually Comes From
0:57:55 Language Is Persuasion: The Crying Baby Problem
1:03:14 The Paper With Friston and Clark on What AI Misses
1:04:48 Could You Build a Machine That Wants Things?
1:10:23 Build a Mind, Build a Rival: Do We Even Want To?
1:13:32 Is a Paramecium Conscious?
1:18:11 Why There's No Line Between a Lump of Cells and You
1:23:18 Population Thinking: It's All Continuums
1:30:36 The Mad Scientist Won't Be Sam Altman — It'll Be Michael Levin
1:36:29 Does Synthetic Biology Deserve Its Own Doomsday?1:39:37 Why Real Intelligence Would Be a Competitor We Should Fear
1:43:20 Why the Real World Humbles Every Robot
...

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GS Episodes Mentioned
Paul Cisek Round 1: https://youtu.be/C6frE6nj1tY
Michael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM
Anil Seth — No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1o
Karl Friston — Meet The Neuroscientist Who Created The Best Universal Theory Of Brain Function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IZOFs4qmY
Mark Solms — Meet the Scientist Proving Dreams Hold the Key to Consciousness! Dr Mark Solms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMWaQ1U6dcc...
Guest Links
Paul Cisek — Faculty page, Université de Montréal: https://neurosciences.umontreal.ca/en/our-team/staff-directory/staff/cisek-paul/Cisek Lab: https://www.ciseklab.umontreal.ca/Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Bbk0DEcAAAAJX / Twitter: https://x.com/PaulCisek...

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Haleh Fotowat is a neuroscientist who builds nervous systems from scratch — the scientist who gave neurons to Michael Levin's xenobots, the living robots made from frog cells. When those neurons self-organised into a working nervous system, they switched on genes for eyes, in a creature that has never had eyes and never existed in nature.
Expect to learn how a clump of frog skin cells becomes a moving biological robot, why these cells secretly default to becoming neurons unless their neighbours stop them, what happened when the neurons grew axons and reached out for the body, why every neurobot develops its own movement personality, how a brainless blob forces you to redefine agency and goals, why the neurons switched on genes for eyes despite having none, what a seizure drug revealed about which biobots truly have nervous systems, what might happen if you gave the neurobots DMT, and much more
…
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:05 What Is a Neurobot?
0:02:39 Building a Living Robot From Frog Cells
0:08:46 Why These Cells Secretly Want to Be Neurons
0:10:48 What's the Point of This Research?
0:16:26 Brain Cells in a Dish Playing Doom
0:18:16 A Warehouse Full of Human Neurons
0:19:16 What Happened When the Neurons Grew
0:21:36 The Neurons Reached Out for the Body
0:25:51 Why Each Neurobot Has Its Own Personality
0:28:51 Can a Blob of Neurons Have Goals?
0:39:42 Braitenberg's Vehicles: Complexity From Simplicity
0:42:25 Biology Is Cognition All the Way Down
0:49:12 The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist
0:54:18 Xenobots Grew Genes for Hearing
1:01:16 The Role of Bioelectricity
1:04:02 One Question for Michael Levin
1:06:53 What If You Gave the Neurobots DMT?
1:07:27 The Seizure Drug That Surprised Everyone...
...
Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
GS Episodes Mentioned
Michael Levin — Meet the Scientist Creating New Forms of Synthetic Life! Dr Michael Levin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM
Brett Kagan — Meet The Neuroscientist Creating New Forms of Sentient Biological Intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXlJc4tu1F8
Philip Ball — Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SseGx0R0fY
Josh Bongard — Meet The Scientist Who Created The First Living Robot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h908uoH6n4
Guest Links
Allen Discovery Center (Tufts) Profile: https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/haleh-fotowat-ph-d/Art Website: http://www.halehfotowat.com
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=W5KTeEMAAAAJLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/haleh-fotowat/
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Haleh-Fotowat-2245482149

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Michael Levin is a developmental biologist who builds living creatures that have never existed before, and Earl Miller is a neuroscientist who has spent thirty years arguing that your thoughts live in the brain's electric fields, not its wiring. In the same room together for the first time, they agree on something that sounds insane — that bioelectricity is the engine of mind at every scale of life, from a single cell deciding to grow an eye to a human deciding what to eat for lunch.
Expect to learn how cells use a bioelectric code you can read and rewrite to grow an eye on a tadpole's tail, why no single cell knows what an eye is but the collective does, how a flatworm regrows a whole new brain and keeps its old memories, why the brain is an orchestra of electric waves and not a telegraph of wires, how three different anaesthetics switch off consciousness through one mechanism reductionism can't explain, why consciousness may just be the story your brain tells about what it already did, whether memories can be transplanted between bodies, what the Platonic space of minds is and why Levin thinks physicalism died with Pythagoras, and much more
…
Timestamps:
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:46 The Vacuum Tubes That Started It All
0:08:36 How to Read and Rewrite the Bioelectric Code
0:12:36 Why No Single Cell Knows What an Eye Is
0:15:22 Your Brain Is Not a Telegraph System
0:19:30 Why They Called It Magic and Bullshit
0:24:56 Flatworm or Human Brain — Same Code?
0:30:00 Where Is Memory Actually Stored?
0:32:24 The Flatworm That Regrows Its Memories
0:34:34 People Living Without Most of Their Brain
0:40:32 Can Memories Live Outside the Brain?
0:43:26 Will a Rat Pop Down to the 7-Eleven for Smokes?
0:49:14 Consciousness Is Overrated (Says a Neuroscientist)
0:53:17 Hey Liver, Why Do I Feel Like Crap?
0:54:20 Nobody Knows Why Anaesthesia Works
0:57:21 Three Drugs, One Mystery, One Mechanism
0:58:50 Why Anaesthesia Is Dangerous When You're Old
1:02:12 What Is a Neurobot?
1:08:18 The Eyes That Shouldn't Exist
1:13:28 What Is the Platonic Space of Minds?
1:20:44 Devil's Advocate: Have We Just Not Figured It Out?
1:24:03 The Free Lunch: More Out Than You Put In
1:29:36 Why Physicalism Died With Pythagoras
1:32:52 How Bioelectricity Touches the Platonic Space
...

GS Episodes Mentioned
Anil Seth — No. 1 Consciousness Expert: Optical Illusions that Prove Reality is a Lie, Emotions, Books and AI!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSA06K0l1o
Guest Links
Michael Levin — Allen Discovery Center (Tufts): https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/michael-levin/
Michael Levin — Website: https://www.drmichaellevin.org
Earl Miller — The Miller Lab (MIT): https://ekmillerlab.mit.edu/
Earl Miller — X: https://x.com/MillerLabMIT

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Steven Barker is the world's longest-running DMT researcher and the analytical chemist who helped prove the molecule exists in the mammalian brain. He argues your brain manufactures its own psychedelic at the same concentration as serotonin — and floods your cortex with it under stress and as you die.Expect to learn why Steven believes your brain produces DMT at serotonin-level concentrations, how 29 years of drug-testing racehorses gave him the tools to find it, why he says David Nichols is wrong about endogenous DMT, why stress can make brain DMT spike tenfold, how a hidden receptor inside your neurons may explain how psychedelics rewire the brain, why the DMT trip might be neuroplasticity you can actually feel, what DMT entities really are, and much more…
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:40 The Recurring Dream That Started a 50-Year Obsession
0:06:53 Hunting For The Brain's Own Psychedelic In 1972
0:12:54 The Discovery That We ALL Make DMT
0:19:07 Were Psychedelics Ever Meant To Be Medicine?
0:22:17 How The War On Drugs Killed The Research
0:24:02 Funding Psychedelic Science With Racehorse Drug Tests
0:34:56 Why You Can't Patent A Psychedelic
0:36:31 The Psychedelic Trip Is Just An "Overdose"
0:41:58 Why David Nichols Is Wrong About DMT
0:50:16 The "Pineal Is Too Small" Argument Is Ludicrous
0:54:20 DMT Is In Your Brain At Serotonin Levels
1:01:00 Stress Floods Your Brain With DMT
1:02:32 Why Everyone Else Failed To Detect DMT
1:12:05 The Hidden Receptor Inside Your Neurons
1:19:54 Is The DMT Trip Just Neuroplasticity You Can Feel?
1:26:09 What DMT Entities Actually Are
1:32:15 Are We Building A New Psychedelic Religion?
1:42:11 50 Years of DMT and The Nature of Consciousness
1:44:26 Why He's Still A "Proud Reductionist"

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GS Episodes Mentioned
David Nichols — Meet The Greatest Living Psychedelic Scientist You've Never Heard Of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6umTgXsW1lQ
Bryan Roth — Meet The World's Greatest Psychedelic Receptor Scientist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEmmmMma8Qs
Andrew Gallimore — No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgWrxEFWDA
Guest Links
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven-Barker-8
Cottonwood Research Foundation: https://www.cottonwoodresearch.org

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David Luke is the world's first and only Professor of Exceptional Experience — a parapsychologist and psychedelic researcher at the University of Greenwich who has spent two decades running experiments on the phenomena mainstream science refuses to touch. His naturalistic DMT field study found that 90% of participants encountered autonomous entities, 85% believed they were real — and some were blocked from returning by the entities themselves.
Expect to learn why 90% of DMT users encounter entities and 85% say they're real, what happens when the entities refuse you entry, how your body responds to images before you've seen them, why someone with zero visual imagery can still meet elves on DMT, how entity encounters shift people's sense of purpose and meaning more than any other psychedelic effect, what the telepathy tapes are and why they show 100% success rates, why physics gets to be weird but consciousness doesn't, what a neo-pagan shamanically-informed lazy mystic actually believes about reality, and much more
…
0:00:00 Trailer
0:04:03 Double Career Suicide
0:07:32 The DMT Field Study
0:13:45 Your Body Predicts the Future
0:16:01 Huxley's Reducing Valve Theory
0:20:23 Chris Timmermann's DMT Research
0:23:20 90% Encounter Entities
0:24:48 Punched in the Head by God
0:27:17 The DMT Entity Taxonomy
0:29:03 Experiencing Entities Without Vision
0:48:28 The Aphantasia DMT Trip
0:53:47 Entities Leaking Into Other People's Trips
0:54:23 DMT Blocking
0:56:30 The Entities Said Bugger Off
0:59:57 Endogenous DMT and the Pineal Gland
1:02:55 David Nichols Dismantles the Pineal Theory
1:05:52 Giant Mantis Entities1:11:12 Purpose & Meaning: The #1 Wellbeing Shift
1:12:06 The Telepathy Tapes
1:19:54 The Ganzfeld Experiment
1:24:16 Physics Gets To Be Weird But We Can't
1:26:33 Why DMT Entities Are So Reliable
1:29:33 Pablo Amaringo's Ayahuasca Art
1:36:34 Do You Have a Stable Ontology?
1:38:12 The Lazy Mystic
1:39:34 In the Province of the Mind There Are No Limits...
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