Thoughtforms Life Podcast By Michael Levin cover art

Thoughtforms Life
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About this listen

 A podcast by Professor Michael Levin exploring the frontiers of biology, cognition, and emergence. Engage in conversations about morphogenesis, bioelectricity, and synthetic life — and uncover how intelligence and agency emerge from the most fundamental levels of nature.© 2025 Michael Levin / Thoughtforms Life Science
Episodes
  • Ethics and the New Biology

    Ethics and the New Biology
    Apr 26 2025

    This is a ~30 minute talk to an Ethics class (undergraduates) about aspects of our work that have implications for ethics.


    CHAPTERS:

    (00:00) Intelligence All The Way Down
    (06:30) Scaling Up Cognition
    (13:40) Communicating With Cellular Intelligence
    (20:00) Freedom of Embodiment
    (27:40) Ethics of Future Beings


    CONNECT WITH ME:

    • Podcast Website
    • YouTube
    • Apple Podcasts
    • Spotify
    • Twitter
    • Blog
    • The Levin Lab
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    33 mins
  • Life, Mind, and Computing: A Diverse Intelligence Perspective

    Life, Mind, and Computing: A Diverse Intelligence Perspective
    Mar 13 2025
    This is a very fast (~33min) flyover of some ideas relevant to the relationship between biology, computation, cognition, consciousness, and related subjects. This was given at the amazing Progress and Visions in Consciousness Science series (https://amcs-community.org/events/progress-visions-series/) as the prologue to a discussion.

    CHAPTERS:

    (00:00) Talk Overview and Structure
    (01:30) Expanding Our View of Mind
    (04:30) Biology's Multi-Scale Architecture
    (09:00) Bioelectricity: Ancient Cognitive Glue
    (14:00) Biology Solves Novel Problems
    (22:00) Creative Interpretation, Intelligence Ratchet
    (29:30) Novel Goals, Platonic Space
    (36:00) Conclusion and Future Research

    CONNECT WITH ME:

    • Podcast Website
    • YouTube
    • Apple Podcasts
    • Spotify
    • Twitter
    • Blog
    • The Levin Lab
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    33 mins
  • Bioelectric Networks: An Interface to Engineering with the Agential Material of Life

    Bioelectric Networks: An Interface to Engineering with the Agential Material of Life
    Mar 1 2025
    This is a ~1 hour talk (given at the Departmental Seminar series at the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences) on the use of a cognitive approach to bioengineering and regenerative medicine, in which morphogenesis is the behavior (in anatomical space) of a collective intelligence of cellular swarms. I describe our work that takes advantage of the bioelectric interface to re-specify the targets of morphogenesis.

    CHAPTERS:

    (00:00) Agential Material for Bioengineering
    (02:00) The Anatomical Compiler Goal
    (04:00) Biology as Agential Material
    (06:00) Intelligence Below Cell Level
    (09:00) Anatomy Not Just DNA
    (12:00) Hardware vs Software Biology
    (14:00) Cellular Collective Intelligence Examples
    (18:00) Creative Problem-Solving in Cells
    (22:00) Cognitive Glue and Goal-Seeking
    (25:00) Bioelectricity: Ancient Communication
    (28:00) Reading and Writing Patterns
    (30:00) Rewriting Collective Cell Memory
    (33:00) Regenerating Limbs in Frogs
    (35:00) Planaria Pattern Memory
    (39:00) Plasticity Beyond Species
    (41:00) Novel Shapes and Galls
    (44:00) Computational Models for Repair
    (49:00) Cancer as Goal Failure
    (50:00) Bioelectric Cancer Suppression
    (53:00) Novel Anatomical Goals: Xenobots
    (01:00:00) Human Anthrobots from Cells
    (01:02:00) Autonomous Personalized Therapeutics
    (01:04:00) Top-Down Biomedical Approaches
    (01:06:00) Biorobotics and Bioprompting
    (01:07:00) Ethics of Diverse Beings

    CONNECT WITH ME:

    • Podcast Website
    • YouTube
    • Apple Podcasts
    • Spotify
    • Twitter
    • Blog
    • The Levin Lab
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 3 mins
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