Giants Shoulder

Mike Long is a playwright, speechwriter, and co-author of Taming the Molecule of More — the practical sequel to the bestselling neuroscience book The Molecule of More.Dopamine doesn’t bring happiness — it brings anticipation. It’s the molecule that keeps us scrolling, swiping, craving, and chasing. But when understood and tamed, it can also drive purpose, focus, and deeply fulfilling lives.

Expect to learn why dopamine isn’t about pleasure at all, how it hijacks our relationships, sex lives, and attention spans, the true science behind dopamine fasting and cold plunges, how porn and dating apps rewire the brain’s reward system, the difference between craving and contentment, why “boosting dopamine” is a myth, how to inject novelty into long-term love, how GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic are changing the science of addiction, and how to finally align your brain’s pursuit system with long-term meaning

Timestamps:

00:01:55 – Understanding Dopamine: The Molecule of More

00:04:56 – The Misconceptions of Dopamine and Happiness

00:07:55 – Taming the Molecule of More: Motivations and Insights

00:10:56 – Dopamine's Role in Human Evolution and Modern Life

00:13:58 – Rewiring the Brain: Valuing the Present vs. Future

00:17:07 – The Impact of Technology on Dopamine Levels

00:19:49 – Finding Meaning in a Dopamine-Driven World

00:23:03 – The Importance of Self-Reflection and Belief Systems

00:25:50 – Dopamine Fasting: Myths and Realities

00:28:56 – Boosting Dopamine: Exercise and Lifestyle Choices

00:43:07 – The Power of Small Daily Actions

00:45:25 – Dopamine and Relationships

00:51:07 – Understanding Expectations in Relationships

00:52:13 – Mindfulness and Reaction to Stimulation

00:56:35 – Injecting Novelty into Relationships

01:02:26 – Navigating Attraction and Cravings

01:07:59 – The Importance of Meaning in Life

01:12:27 – Finding Meaning and Purpose

01:25:08 – Practical Steps to Manage Impulses.

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Follow My Neuroscience Podcast - The Giants Shoulder

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=b33232eae67b4126

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/brief-enquiry-to-the-brain/id1752486249

Neuroscience Products I Swear By (Supports the Channel)Manta Sleep Mask: Get the Comfiest Sleep Mask on the Planet (Use Code GIANTSMANTA10 https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL )Brain.FM: Music Entrainment for Focused Deep Work (30 Day Free Trial: https://www.brain.fm/giantsshoulderConsensus.AI: AI Powered Research (Use Code THEGIANTSSHOULDER for 1 Year Free Premium Sub)

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.

Expect to learn how intuition really works in the brain, the 5 science-based rules for trusting your gut, how to train intuition like a skill, the surprising link between interoception and unconscious decision-making, the neuroscience of flow and instinctive action, what aphantasia reveals about emotion and memory, how visual imagery amplifies anxiety, why some people are immune to mental pictures, how AI companions are already warping human psychology, and what happens when we start outsourcing love to machines.

Timestamps:

00:02:03 Exploring the Unconventional Lab of Dr. Joe Pearson

00:08:05 Understanding Intuition: Definitions and Mechanisms

00:13:50 The Role of Context in Intuition

00:17:00 The Neural Mechanisms of Intuition

00:19:59 Intuition in Decision Making

00:22:54 Practical Applications of Intuition

00:26:03 Intuition in Sports and Motor Skills

00:32:38 Intuition and Career Choices

00:34:47 The Role of Intuition in Decision Making

00:38:20 Agency and Mental Health

00:39:52 The Science of Intuition

00:41:31 Real-Life Applications of Intuition

00:45:30 Honing Intuition in Daily Life

00:48:39 Flow State and Intuition

00:54:13 Improving Intuition in the Lab

01:00:31 Measuring the Mind: Psychophysical Technologies

01:02:11 Intuition and Learning: Understanding Decision-Making

01:05:15 Aphantasia: The Inability to Visualize

01:09:34 The Journey into Mental Imagery Research

01:12:44 Personal Experiences with Aphantasia

01:21:26 Memory and Aphantasia: How Do They Interact?

01:29:28 Adaptive Advantages of Aphantasia: A New Perspective

01:30:33 Diverse Cognitive Approaches to Mathematics

01:31:32 The Emotional Impact of Imagery

01:32:57 Risk Perception and Empathy in Aphantasia

01:35:09 Understanding Aphantasia Prevalence

01:36:28 The Limits of Understanding Aphantasia

01:38:38 Exploring Multisensory Aphantasia

01:40:23 Future Directions in Aphantasia Research

01:43:55 The Psychological Impact of AI

01:49:00 The Future of Human-AI Relationships

01:51:41 Exciting Developments in Neuroscience..

Follow My Neuroscience Podcast - The Giants Shoulder

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=b33232eae67b4126

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/brief-enquiry-to-the-brain/id1752486249

Neuroscience Products I Swear By (Supports the Channel)Manta Sleep Mask: Get the Comfiest Sleep Mask on the Planet (Use Code GIANTSMANTA10 https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL )Brain.FM: Music Entrainment for Focused Deep Work (30 Day Free Trial: https://www.brain.fm/giantsshoulderConsensus.AI: AI Powered Research (Use Code THEGIANTSSHOULDER for 1 Year Free Premium Sub)

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/42uSB11

According 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? Interface elements. And what you think of as “reality” may be nothing more than a simplified desktop, hiding the chaotic code beneath.

Expect to learn why consciousness may be more fundamental than physics, how your brain isn’t conscious — but is simply a representation *within* consciousness, why evolution selected for perception that hides the truth, how AI may already be tapping into conscious patterns, the mind-bending evidence from game theory and mathematics that suggest reality is a constructed hallucination, the key differences between access and phenomenal consciousness, why psychedelics might tear open the interface, what it really means to say “space and time aren’t real,” how the Big Bang fits into this illusion — and much more…

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Timestamps:

02:08 Perception and Reality: An Introduction

05:05 The Interface Theory of Perception

07:59 Evidence for the Interface Theory

11:15 Complexity of Perception

14:01 Consciousness: Fundamental or Emergent?

17:07 Distinctions in Consciousness

20:05 Panpsychism and Consciousness

23:12 Icons and Their Meaning

25:58 Consciousness in the Animal Kingdom

29:16 Measuring Consciousness

32:10 Space and Time as Constructs

35:12 The Nature of Reality

38:03 Consciousness and the Big Bang

41:02 Experimental Paradigms in Consciousness Research

43:58 Consciousness and Biology

47:10 The Future of Consciousness Research

51:54 The Computability of Consciousness

54:28 Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness

58:25 Psychedelics and Consciousness

01:04:29 The Language of Consciousness

01:10:57 Living with Consciousness

01:17:22 AI and Consciousness

...

Follow My Neuroscience Podcast - The Giants Shoulder

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=b33232eae67b4126

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/brief-enquiry-to-the-brain/id1752486249

Get the Comfiest Sleep Mask on the Planet at https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL (use Code GIANTSMANTA10)

Dr. Paul Cisek is a professor of neuroscience at the University of Montreal, and focuses on understanding how the brain controls behaviour. Particularly through the lens of motor control and decision-making. His interdisciplinary approach combines neurophysiological recordings, computational modelling, and evolutionary biology to explore how the brain mediates interactions with the world. This type of knowledge makes for an incredibly interesting conversation!

Check out the Full Podcast with the amazing Dr Paul Cisek - https://youtu.be/C6frE6nj1tY

This Giant Moment was taken from #10 Behavioural Geneticist Dr Robert Plomin - How DNA impacts Personality and the Future of Genetic Testing and Manipulation

Check out the full episode here - https://open.spotify.com/episode/0vIhY07qFBNms01I1yJvc2?si=InaapK9iTWKHJJU4me8TJQ

Anil 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 is constantly hallucinating your reality—it's predicting, guessing, and making mistakes every moment of your life. Understanding these hallucinations can radically alter your view of what’s real, what’s illusion, and how your emotions are truly made.Expect to learn why the famous ‘dress illusion’ broke the internet, how your brain invents colours that don't objectively exist, why emotions aren't reliable signals but brain-generated best guesses, whether your kitchen exists when no one’s observing it, why AI might never experience true consciousness, how optical illusions reveal the brain’s hidden mechanisms, and much more...00:00 Why Your Brain Hallucinates Your Reality02:30 The Dress Illusion That Broke the Internet Explained07:15 Your Brain Lies About Color (and You Believe It)12:40 Messi-Shaped People: How Peripheral Vision Fools You17:35 The Shocking Truth About Optical Illusions23:10 Why Your Emotions Are Just Guesses from Your Brain29:02 The Rickety Bridge Experiment: Misunderstood Arousal34:00 Cold Showers, Pain, and How Your Brain Tricks You38:15 Does Your Kitchen Exist When Nobody Looks?43:50 Panpsychism, Conscious Agents, and Reality as an Illusion49:30 Why Consciousness Might Require Life54:05 Could AI Ever Become Truly Conscious?58:40 How to Know When Your Brain Is Lying to You1:02:30 The Strange World of Synesthesia: Letters Coming Out of Mouths1:06:10 Why Meditation Helps You Decode Your Brain’s Lies1:10:25 Anil Seth’s Biggest Insight from Studying Consciousness...Follow My Neuroscience Podcast - The Giants Shoulder Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=b33232eae67b4126Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/brief-enquiry-to-the-brain/id1752486249Get the Comfiest Sleep Mask on the Planet at https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL (use Code GIANTSMANTA10)

Dr. Will Ratcliff is an evolutionary biologist, professor, and researcher pioneering groundbreaking experiments in evolutionary biology and synthetic biology.

Understanding how complex life evolved from single-celled organisms is one of biology's greatest mysteries. By evolving yeast from simple single cells into increasingly complex multicellular forms in his laboratory, Dr. Ratcliff is unlocking the fundamental rules that govern evolution itself. So how does life go from microscopic simplicity to stunning complexity, and what secrets are hidden within evolutionary leaps?

Expect to learn how scientists forced yeast to evolve multicellularity, why evolution doesn't always mean increasing complexity, how yeast astonishingly evolved from fragile clusters into structures as strong as wood, why synthetic biology can create solar-powered yeast using whale DNA, how evolution can surprisingly move backward from multicellular to unicellular, why group selection is a misunderstood and vital concept, how the evolution of cooperation and altruism actually works, what myths about evolution we should abandon, and much more…...

00:00 Meet the Scientist Evolving Life in a Lab

01:01 How Single Cells Became Complex Life

02:35 The 50,000-Generation Evolution Experiment

05:12 Why Evolution Is Shockingly Unpredictable

08:33 Could Yeast Evolve into Something Unrecognizable?

11:25 Why Evolution Keeps Creating Similar Species

14:03 What Most People Get Wrong About Evolution

17:31 Ordering DNA Online Like an Amazon Package

20:20 How Whale DNA Created Solar-Powered Yeast

23:18 Why Most Genetic Mutations Fail

27:52 The Strange Truth About Human Uniqueness

31:15 How Multicellularity Evolved Over and Over

34:10 Why Cells Sacrifice Themselves for the Group

37:45 Does Evolution Ever Go Backwards?

41:17 Defining Life: What Really Makes an Individual?

45:09 Cancer: When Cells Rebel Against the Body

49:34 Group Selection: Evolution’s Misunderstood Concept

53:22 Why Evolution Doesn't Always Mean Progress

57:30 How Complex Organisms Can Lose Complexity

1:01:07 Why Animals Don't Return to Single-Cell Life (But Fungi Do)

1:05:14 Mycelium Networks: Intelligence Underground

1:08:26 LUCA: Searching for Life’s Universal Ancestor

1:12:50 Could Complex Life Exist on Other Planets?

1:16:03 Synthetic Biology: Redesigning Life from Scratch

1:19:45 What Evolution Teaches Us About Cooperation

1:23:20 Why Some Organisms Are Evolutionary Dead Ends

1:27:05 Could Humans Engineer Entirely New Forms of Life?1:31:33 The Future of Lab-Grown Evolution

1:36:10 Could Lab Evolution Create Consciousness?

1:40:02 The Most Surprising Results from Evolution Experiments

1:45:15 Why Predicting Evolution is Almost Impossible

1:50:06 How Synthetic Organisms Could Solve Global Problems

1:54:20 The Philosophical Implications of Creating Life...

Follow My Neuroscience Podcast - The Giants Shoulder Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=b33232eae67b4126Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/brief-enquiry-to-the-brain/id1752486249

Dr. Daniel Z. Lieberman is a clinical professor of psychiatry and author of *The Molecule of More*, one of the most influential neuroscience books of the last decade.Dopamine drives our ambition, creativity, addictions, obsessions, and even our experience of love — but it’s not the pleasure molecule you think it is. It’s the molecule of *desire*. And understanding how it works could change your life.

Expect to learn why wanting and liking are completely different systems in the brain, how dopamine tricks us into chasing goals that never satisfy, the difference between desire and control dopamine circuits, how these circuits shape addiction, success, relationships and motivation, why social media and porn hijack our brains, how to rewire your dopamine system for self-control and meaning, why falling in love doesn’t last — and what real long-term love looks like, how to cultivate contentment, and much more…

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00:00 Why Dopamine Is the Most Misunderstood Molecule in Neuroscience

02:00 How One Neurotransmitter Controls Love, Ambition, Creativity & Addiction

06:04 The Secret Role of Dopamine in Mental Time Travel

08:46 Crows, Pebbles, and the Origins of Imagination

11:26 The Two Dopamine Circuits Controlling Your Life

13:39 The Dopamine Trap: Wanting vs Liking

16:52 Why Mick Jagger Slept With 4,000 Women (and Wasn’t Happy)

19:43 Buzz Aldrin and the Dopamine Crash After the Moon

22:11 Elon Musk’s Mind: Obsession, Achievement, and the Dopamine Storm

25:05 Why Love Feels So Good (and Why It Fades)

27:06 The Projection Illusion: You Don’t Fall in Love With People

30:00 The Real Reason You Want the Donut (and Hate Yourself After)

33:04 The War Between Impulse and Identity in the Brain

36:13 Why People Self-Sabotage: The Conflict Inside the Desire Circuit

39:07 How to Rewire Your Brain with Meaning, Not Just Happiness

41:30 Dopamine Detoxing: Science or Scam?

44:45 How Long It *Really* Takes to Break Dopamine Addictions

47:39 What Most People Get Totally Wrong About Dopamine

49:46 Two Kinds of Pleasure: Why You're Missing One of Them

52:18 Is It Possible to Work Hard *and* Be Present?

55:05 The Hard Truth: Growth Isn’t Easy and Life Hacks Don’t Work

57:45 The Neuroscience of Doing Hard Things Daily

1:01:00 Can Cold Showers Boost Dopamine? Separating Myth from Science

1:03:15 Supplements, Biohacking & Dopamine: What Actually Works?

1:05:34 The Final Takeaway: Know Thyself — or Dopamine Will Know You Better

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Follow My Neuroscience Podcast - The Giants Shoulder Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/5m3Gta5MtIYdk59pb2GJ7M?si=b33232eae67b4126Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/brief-enquiry-to-the-brain/id1752486249Get the Comfiest Sleep Mask on the Planet at https://bit.ly/4ilzfBL (use Code GIANTSMANTA10)

Giant Moment taken from Dr Christof Koch - Consciousness, Psychedelics and Mental Health

Giants Shoulder 3

Kevin Mitchell is an associate professor of Genetics and Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin. His research is aimed at understanding the genetic program specifying the wiring of the brain and its relevance to variation in human faculties, especially to psychiatric and neurological disease and to perceptual conditions like synaesthesia.