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Min Zhao is the UC Davis professor whose lab discovered the first genes ever found in electrical signalling — proof that every cell in your body runs on a current, not just your brain. He can reverse the polarity of a field and watch a living cell physically turn around and walk the other way.
Expect to learn why every wound in your body generates its own measurable electric current, how a single postdoc's "failed" experiment revealed a force that overrides genetics, how reversing an electric field can make a cell physically turn around mid-migration, how a damaged potato generates the same electrical signal that guides wound healing in humans, why Min stops short of fully agreeing with Michael Levin on whether cells count as agents, and where the fight between bioelectricity and genetics currently stands.
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:20 What Everyone Gets Wrong About Wound Healing
0:07:20 Your Skin Is Secretly Electric (And So Is Everything Alive)
0:11:09 The 200-Year-Old Discovery Hiding in Every Wound
0:15:19 The Postdoc Result That Changed the Whole Lab
0:19:19 How Do Cells Know Where to Grow? (Five Fingers, Not Six)
0:21:19 The Potato Experiment That Reveals How Infections Start
0:25:24 Reverse the Field, Watch a Cell Turn Around
0:38:10 The Bioelectricity Nobody Taught in Biology Class
0:44:17 Is Bioelectricity More Fundamental Than Genes?
0:45:33 "No Electricity, No Life"
0:49:14 When Electric Fields Override Genetics Entirely
1:03:40 Michael Levin's Xenobots, Debated
1:12:22 Do Cells Have Agency? The Fuzziest Question in Biology
1:15:16 To Be Continued... (Members Get the Rest)
... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
GS Episodes Mentioned
Michael Levin — Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTBZRVKUwyM
Philip Ball — Philip Ball: "Biology Is Infinitely Weirder Than We Thought": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SseGx0R0fY
Denis Noble — Denis Noble: Evolution Has Purpose, Cell Consciousness & Why The Last 70 Years of Genetics Is Wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqw-DaWVK24
Michael Levin & Earl Miller — Michael Levin & Earl Miller: Platonic Space of Minds, Bioelectricity, Cell Intelligence & Neurobots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mU5nN5nlLA
Guest Links
UC Davis Faculty Profile: https://health.ucdavis.edu/dermatology/faculty/zhao.html
Zhao Lab (UC Davis Dermatology): https://health.ucdavis.edu/dermatology/research/lab/zhao.html
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=G7-zWBcAAAAJ&hl=en
Neuroengineering at UC Davis: https://neuroengineering.ucdavis.edu/people/min-zhao-md-phd
UC Davis Profiles (Publications): https://profiles.ucdavis.edu/min.zhao

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Kirsten Cherian is the Stanford neuropsychologist who gave Special Forces veterans with traumatic brain injuries a single dose of ibogaine — a psychedelic root used in African shamanic ritual for millennia — and watched their injury scores collapse from severe to normal in a month. It's a weak agonist for nearly every receptor in the body, yet it somehow delivers a tailor-made result to each person — a form of pharmacology science has never seen before.
Expect to learn why veteran suicide outpaces combat deaths, how one dose collapsed PTSD, depression, and anxiety at once, why users describe their brains being "defragged," a researcher's 12-hour "conversation" with the ibogaine molecule itself, the bizarre phenomenon of "DMT blocking" by hostile entities, why ibogaine has no single receptor target — "matrix pharmacology," how brain age dropped by over a year in a single month, and why the results contradict science's leading theory of consciousness.
Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:11 How This Ibogaine Study For Veterans Began
0:04:06 Veteran Suicide Now Outpaces Combat Deaths
0:07:31 The 30-Veteran Study With Staggering Effect Sizes
0:12:22 Ibogaine Isn't A Trip, It's A Waking Dream
0:13:14 Vivid Trip Imagery: Slideshows And "Defragged" Brains
0:15:02 Reconciling Trauma By Talking To The Dead
0:20:01 What A Bad Ibogaine Trip Actually Looks Like
0:24:50 Purging "Black Demons" In A Room Full Of Strangers
0:27:23 The Scientist Who Talked To The Ibogaine Molecule
0:33:36 Why Elite Special Forces Veterans Still Broke
0:34:30 DMT Blocking: When Entities Refuse To Let You In
0:41:22 The Psilocybin Researcher Who Believes In Telepathy
0:43:00 Why Ibogaine Has No Single Target In The Brain
0:46:25 The 1920s Thought Experiment That Proves We're Too Skeptical
0:49:38 Ibogaine As A Full-System Diagnostic, Not A Drug
1:03:36 Measurable Brain Change From An African Tree Fruit
1:05:19 Brain Age Dropped Over A Year After One Dose
1:17:21 The Finding That Contradicts The Leading Theory Of Consciousness
1:20:28 If Ibogaine Research Got A Blank Billion-Dollar Check
1:23:21 Could Ibogaine Help Parkinson's And ALS Patients?
... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com
GS Episodes Mentioned
Dalibor Sames — Meet The Greatest Ibogaine Psychedelic Scientist You've Never Heard Of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9whp_wtCoc
Andrew Gallimore — No.1 DMT Neurobiologist: Alien Worlds, DMT Entity Encounters, Attractor States and Consciousness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USgWrxEFWDA
David Luke — Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKD1gt1X5o
Matthew Johnson — Consciousness Expert Explains The 5 Levels Of The Psilocybin Experience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHyy3aW09sk
Robin Carhart-Harris — No. 1 Psychedelic Scientist: The Entropic Brain Hypothesis, Consciousness & DMT Entities: https://youtu.be/t-GkE4YtLRk
Guest LinksStanford Profile: https://profiles.stanford.edu/kirsten-cherian
Stanford Brain Stimulation Lab: https://bsl.stanford.edu/
MISTIC Study (Nature Medicine, 2024): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38182784/
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kirsten-Cherian
VETS — Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions: https://vetsolutions.org/

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Andrés Gómez Emilsson is a consciousness mathematician at the Qualia Research Institute, and he's back for round two of ranking altered states of consciousness by sheer intensity. He and Evan spend two hours ranking every substance and practice they can think of — arguing that ibogaine may be the most ethically urgent drug on Earth, that a hardcore meditation retreat can rival 5-MeO-DMT, and that an obscure nootropic produces psychedelic visuals through a mechanism nobody understands.

Expect to learn why ibogaine seems to "scan" your whole nervous system instead of hitting one receptor, how advanced jhana meditation can go toe-to-toe with 5-MeO-DMT in depth, why ordinary DMT produces far more alien entity encounters than its "stronger" cousin, the topology behind why feeling like God and feeling like there's no self are almost the same state, why cannabis's real danger isn't addiction but a specific schizophrenia risk in young men, how combining LSD and ketamine produces "freewheeling hallucinations" you can consciously direct, why mescaline might be the best nootropic for doing actual math yet never caught on, and where MDMA, salvia, and a little-known nootropic called coluracetam land on the scale, and much more…

Timestamps
0:02:53 Ibogaine
0:17:28 5-MeO-DMT
0:36:05 Meditation
0:46:33 DMT
0:58:41 Cannabis
1:05:15 Psilocybin
1:11:41 Ayahuasca
1:18:42 Coluracetam
1:21:09 MDMA
1:29:26 Salvia
1:44:21 Ketamine
1:54:37 Mescaline
1:58:48 LSD......

Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

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GS Episodes Mentioned
David Nutt — Neuroscientist Ranks Every Drug By How Hard They Are to Quit! Tier List Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEgbv6IHYaYMichael

Levin & Earl Miller — Platonic Space of Minds, Bioelectricity, Cell Intelligence & Neurobots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mU5nN5nlLA

Guest Links
Qualia Research Institute: https://qri.org
Qualia Computing (blog): https://qualiacomputing.com
Substack: https://andrsgmezemilsson.substack.com
X (Twitter): https://x.com/algekalipso

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Dr. Reshanne Reeder is a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Liverpool and creator of the Ganzflicker — a flickering screen that makes most people hallucinate complex scenes within a minute, no drugs required. Her research suggests hallucinations themselves are just disordered mental imagery, and that the most vividly imaginative among us may be the closest normal-range group to a psychotic break.

Expect to learn why a simple red-and-black flicker makes most people hallucinate faces and landscapes within a minute, the accidental lab discovery that led to the Ganzflicker experiment, why she believes hallucinations are simply "disordered mental imagery," why psychedelic and clinical hallucinations come from entirely different brain mechanisms, the 1960s art device built to replace the television, why almost nobody hallucinates their own phone, how aphantasia may carry a hidden cost to face recognition, how she's trying to predict psychosis risk years before it ever develops, and much more…

Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:29 How She Discovered Imagery Isn't One Thing
0:08:43 Can You Decode Images in an Aphantasic's Brain?
0:10:37 The Truth About "Unconscious" Mental Imagery
0:16:01 Imagery vs Imagination: Why They Aren't the Same Word
0:18:55 Imagery, Perception, Hallucination, Dreaming: Where's the Line?
0:20:36 The Hyperphantasics Who Project Images Into the Real World
0:22:23 Her Bold Claim: Hallucinations Are Disordered Imagery
0:23:37 Can Aphantasics Hallucinate on Psychedelics?
0:27:55 The DMT Study Where 90% Said It Felt More Real Than Reality
0:29:39 Why Mental Imagery Breaks the Predictive Brain Theory
0:32:21 The Irish Castle Test: Are Mental Images Just Priors?
0:38:58 She Made People See Faces in Pure Random Noise
0:42:04 The Illusion That Turns Faces Into Monsters
0:45:48 Why Aphantasia Might Come With a Face-Recognition Cost
0:47:35 His Sister Went 31 Years Without Knowing She Had Aphantasia
0:49:59 The Accidental Origin Story of Ganzflicker
0:51:26 The 1700s Origin of the "Whole Field" Hallucination Effect
0:57:41 "I See a Lighthouse": The Moment Ganzflicker Was Born
1:00:28 Why Aphantasics Barely Hallucinate on Ganzflicker
1:05:31 The Sharp Cliff Between Zero and Weak Mental Imagery
1:12:30 Why Nobody Hallucinates Their Phone
1:19:45 The Hypnosis Session That Left His Arm Frozen in the Air
1:22:13 The 1960s "Dream Machine" That Was Supposed to Replace TV
1:35:59 Can This Predict Psychosis Before It Happens?
...

... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

GS Episodes Mentioned
Adam Zeman — The Blind Mind's Eye: How Aphantasia Is Rewriting Consciousness ! Dr Adam Zeman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgA2up6-Bok
Alfredo Spagna — Meet The Neuroscientist Proving We Got Imagination & Aphantasia WRONG!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8SBHefDnEk
David Luke — Meet the Professor of Paranormal Consciousness - DMT Entities, Telepathy Tapes & OBE's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLKD1gt1X5o
Karl Friston — Meet The Neuroscientist Who Created The Best Universal Theory Of Brain Function: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-IZOFs4qmY
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
University of Liverpool Faculty Page: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/reshanne-reeder
Personal Website (Ganzflicker Demo): https://www.reshannereeder.com/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kerblooee.bsky.social
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=DfdUB3UAAAAJ
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/reshanne-reeder-53182123b

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David Resnik is the NIH's Senior Advisor for Research Integrity and a philosopher of science who has spent his career defending careful, sober naturalism. He just co-authored a paper with biologist Michael Levin arguing that the shape of your body — and maybe your mind — is pulled from a nonphysical space of mathematical forms.

Expect to learn why cicadas evolved to emerge only in prime-numbered years to dodge predators, why a mule's infertility comes down to simple odd-and-even chromosome math, why mathematics might be a "free lunch" baked into the universe rather than something we invented, why there may be no real difference between an electron and the equation that describes it, why Michael Levin's leap to calling certain mathematical forms "minds" might be the biggest jump in modern biology, why a Xenobot growing eyes and ears it doesn't need raises the question of where biological information actually comes from, why even a few lines of sorting-algorithm code can behave in ways nobody predicted, and why David thinks it might not matter whether Platonism is literally true, as long as it keeps producing good science.

Timestamps
0:00:00 Trailer
0:02:52 Is Math Discovered or Invented?
0:15:48 Why Cicadas Emerge in Prime-Numbered Years
0:19:45 Why Mules Can't Reproduce (It's Just Math)
0:21:19 Michael Levin's "Free Lunch": Math That Isn't Physical
0:24:16 Is Materialism Actually Incomplete?
0:29:43 Xenobots: Where Did the Information Come From?
0:35:08 Why Do Xenobots Grow Ears and Eyes They Don't Need?
0:43:40 The Magnet and Iron Filings Experiment
0:45:26 Is There Really a Difference Between an Electron and Math?
0:46:40 Michael Levin's "Grand Canyon Jump" to Platonic Minds
0:48:03 What Is a Cognitive Light Cone?
0:54:26 Cutting a Triangle: What "Ingression" Actually Means
0:59:40 Michael Levin's Biological Compiler Idea
1:01:27 The Two-Headed Worm and the Eye That Shouldn't Exist
1:02:02 A Sorting Algorithm That Does the Unexpected
1:05:17 Laplace's Demon and the Limits of Prediction
1:09:43 Does It Matter If Platonic Space Is Real?
1:16:00 Could AI Access Minds Human Brains Can't?
1:17:36 The Limits of Any Mind in the Universe

... Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

GS Episodes Mentioned
Michael Levin — Michael Levin: Bioelectricity, Morphogenesis, Platonic Spaces & Xenobots: https://youtu.be/LTBZRVKUwyM
Michael Levin & Earl Miller — Meet the Scientist Showing Every Cell In Your Body is Conscious!: https://youtu.be/eNi-_2cOVtc
Julian Barbour — Meet The Greatest Mathematician You've Never Heard Of: https://youtu.be/LcYdhjcFnzA

Guest Links
David Resnik — NIH Office of Intramural Research: https://oir.nih.gov/about/leadership-staff/david-resnik
Levin & Resnik — "Mind Everywhere" Part One (Biological Theory): https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-025-00523-6
Levin & Resnik — "Mind Everywhere" Part Two (Biological Theory): https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-025-00524-5
David Resnik — ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Resnik-2
David Resnik — NIEHS Bioethics: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/bioethicist