Giants Shoulder

#152 - Meet The Biophysicist Who Accidentally Discovered Telepathy

September 3, 2026·1h 38m
Episode Description from the Publisher

JOIN THE GIANT'S SHOULDER FAMILYBecome a YouTube Member for exclusive episodes, early access + ad-free viewing👇 https://www.youtube.com/@thegiantsshoulder/joinLuca Turin is a biophysicist who has spent thirty years arguing that the nose reads a molecule's vibrations rather than its shape, published in Nature at twenty-three, and co-wrote the definitive critical guide to perfume with his wife Tania Sanchez. The vibrational theory of olfaction was declared dead twice before he revived it, and he is still waiting for the one experiment that would settle it. His newest result has nothing to do with smell: fruit flies sealed in separate opaque wells, with no sight, sound or scent between them, coordinate their movement anyway — and the coordination vanishes the moment the plate is made of metal. This is a scientist who went looking for anaesthesia and found something that looks like insect telepathy.Expect to learn why creating a smell stimulus is nothing like creating a colour, how a startup elicited smell sensations with ultrasound for the first time in history, why the only two chemical groups in the universe that share one vibration are also the only two that smell of rotten eggs, how a receptor could read vibrations with no lenses or prisms anywhere in your nose, why the famous "trillion smells" figure was a mathematical error, why nobody in pharmacology can predict what a drug will do once it binds, how Google Quantum AI's xenon question led to fruit flies, what happened when the plates were swapped for aluminium, why radio frequency would be the perfect brain-wide reward signal, and much more…SPONSORSDownload the most scientifically rigorous nutrition app MacroFactor! Use code GIANTS for a 2 week FREE trial - https://app.macrofactor.com/mfgiantsGS EPISODES MENTIONEDEarl K Miller - Meet the MIT Neuroscientist Showing Brain Waves Are the Secret Engine Behind Consciousness: https://youtu.be/7OFb-NG3jIwMarjorie Woollacott - Neuroscientist: "Your Brain Doesn't Create Consciousness" — NDEs, Telepathy and Terminal Lucidity: https://youtu.be/mDWtmfmIUHAGUEST LINKSGoogle Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=fgXXdQYAAAAJWi-Fly Project: https://wi-fly.eu/X: https://x.com/LucaTurinSubstack: https://lucaturin.substack.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lucaturinSKOOLWant a full breakdown of your own conscious inner experience? Join the Giant's Shoulder community: https://www.skool.com/the-giants-shoulder-6526/aboutFOLLOW EVANhttps://x.com/evan_mcglTIMESTAMPS0:00:00 Trailer0:02:20 Biophysicists Are Dreamers, Biologists Are Doomed0:07:07 The Startup That Triggered Smells With Ultrasound0:12:22 The Rotten-Egg Coincidence That Convinced Him0:18:34 What The Receptor Is Actually Reading0:19:54 Electron Tunnelling, Explained Simply0:23:33 The Trillion-Smells Figure Was A Maths Error0:28:21 What Perfumers Perceive That You Don't0:32:14 Why Every Drug Receptor Might Be Electrical0:33:12 The Mystery Nobody Admits: Drug Efficacy0:39:28 "Cascade" Is A Word That Masks Ignorance0:44:04 The Receptor As A Transistor0:48:40 Google Quantum AI And The Xenon Puzzle0:52:24 Two Years Of Work, A Definite Maybe0:53:55 30 Flies Freeze Like The Guards At Buckingham Palace0:55:28 One Fly Per Well, No Way To Communicate0:56:17 To My Total Astonishment, They Coordinate0:58:45 Metal Plates Kill The Signal0:59:36 The Wi-Fly: A Radio Network For Flies1:11:26 Radical Pairs: How A Fly Could Listen1:16:34 What Is The Brain's Reward Signal?1:19:59 Standing Waves And The Binding Problem1:23:58 Could Humans Ever Do This?1:27:46 Ramanujan And Latent Abilities1:36:16 Giving Fruit Flies DMT.....Email for sponsorship enquiries: evan@thegiantsshoulder.com

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