This episode explores embodiment through examples of embryos, regeneration, and bioelectric networks, asking how cells coordinate as collective selves. It also considers bioelectric reprogramming in cancer and the implications of xenobots and anthrobots.
Michael Levin's talks
Watch Episode Here Listen to Episode Here Show Notes This is ~1 hour conversation with Daniel McShea (https://scholars.duke.
Episode
Daniel McShea and Gunnar Babcock join Michael Levin for a wide-ranging discussion of evolution, bioelectric aging, goal-directed behavior, death genes and multicellularity, and how machine metaphors and physicalism shape explanations in biology and mind.
Conversations and working meetings
Benjamin Lyons joins Michael Levin for a 50-minute conversation on prices as cognitive glue, linking economic theory with collective intelligence in biology, from minimal rational agents to information flow, learning, and pathological dynamics.
Conversations and working meetings
Stuart Kauffman and Katherine Peil Kauffman discuss evolution, bioelectric minds, machines, and how biology reinterprets itself, touching on xenobots, microbial communities, emotion, memory, and cosmology.
Conversations and working meetings
A 45-minute conversation with synthetic biologist Ricard Solé exploring morphospace, bioelectricity, synthetic collectives, limits of bottom-up engineering, major transitions in machines, and the evolution of language, communication, patterns, and memory.
Conversations and working meetings
Benjamin Lyons and David Bloomin join a 45-minute discussion on how economics, basal cognition, and deep learning intersect, covering markets and pluralistic institutions, collective intelligence, alignment, multi-agent learning, and neural agent architectures.
Conversations and working meetings
Aastha Jain Simes and Michael Levin talk with developmental bioelectricity pioneer Ken Robinson about electric fields in cell migration, electrogenic epithelia in embryogenesis, his career path, and his work in Lionel Jaffe's lab.
Conversations and working meetings
Joscha Bach, Chris Fields and Michael Levin discuss links between computation, cognition and consciousness, covering error-correcting codes, sense-making, memory, agency, time and minimal minds across species.
Conversations and working meetings
Watch Episode Here Listen to Episode Here Show Notes Don Hoffman, Richard Watson, and I discuss the nature of scientific
Episode
Donald Hoffman, Richard Watson, and Michael Levin discuss how scientific theories model reality, exploring virtual reality metaphors, time as a Markovian present, fractal structures, amplituhedra, limits of science, and the physics of cognition and agency.
Conversations and working meetings
A working meeting with Alexander Ororbia and Karl Friston examines their Mortal Computations paper, discussing morphology, gene networks as learners, dynamics and memory, and how these ideas bear on reprogramming biology and cognition.
Conversations and working meetings
