How do the cells in a ridge on your fingertip know where they’re supposed to go? Or what tells the cells on the tip of your tongue what a tongue looks like? 

What determines the final contours of your body? And what governs whether, if those contours are disrupted — say, by the loss of a limb — they are regenerated or not?

Despite the conventional answer of “it’s all in our genes,” it turns out that this is not the case. Rather, the collective behavior of cells is governed by networks, and these networks, it seems, represent hierarchies of collective intelligence that allow biology to problem solve in quite remarkable and unexpected ways.

I recently had the privilege of talking with biologist Michael Levin about his pioneering research in this area. Over 40 minutes or so we touched on everything from the emerging science of endogenous bioelectrical networks to agental systems, embedded intelligence, and even the significance of his work to AI and the future of being human.

This is that conversation.

Check out the links below for more on Mike’s work. You can also watch the video of our conversation here.

And a reminder that if you just want the text, do use the Transcript tab above!

For more information, please check out:

* The Levin Lab: https://www.drmichaellevin.org/

* Forms of life, forms of mind: https://thoughtforms.life/

* Michael Levin on X (Twitter): drmichaellevin

Michael Levin

Michael Levin is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University, and associate faculty at Harvard’s Wyss Institute. He serves as the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms at Tufts/UVM.

His lab has pioneered approaches to organ regeneration, cancer reprogramming, non-genetic modification of the bodyplan, and the engineering of novel living proto-organisms. Using tools from behavioral and computer science, Dr. Levin seeks to understand the collective intelligence of cells and harness their problem-solving capacities for applications in birth defects, regeneration, cancer, and synthetic bioengineering.

Andrew Maynard

Andrew Maynard is a scientist, author, Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions, and founder of Arizona State University’s Future of Being Human community. He studies the future and how our actions influence it.

About the Future of Being Human … Unplugged

The Future of Being Human … Unplugged is a series of live streamed conversations that bring together experts and thinkers from very different backgrounds as they explore some of the more intriguing, complex, and profound implications of rapidly developing technological capabilities.

Unscripted, unpredictable, and threaded through with mischievously curiosity, Unplugged aims to push the bounds of how we think about the intersection between advanced technologies, cutting edge science, and the very essence of what it might mean to be human in the future.

And the “Unplugged” bit? We’re unplugging from the usual norms and expectations that so often make online discussions deadly tedious, so no interminable PowerPoint presentations, no long winded opening statements, and no impenetrable monologues – just compelling conversation that’ll make you think.

We’re also unplugging from conventional ideas and often-stifling disciplinary constraints as we explore futures that are anything but conventional.

In other words, expect conversations that engage, entertain, and shake up your world as we explore what it might mean to be human in a technologically complex future!

Recorded as part of The Future of Being Human … Unplugged on April 17, 2024, as part of the Arizona State University Future of being Human initiative.

Part of a series of intimate conversations between leading thinkers around the theme of “Chronodiversity, other minds, and the temporal dimensions of consciousness” and co-hosted with the ASU’s Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science).

This was the last in this series of conversations around chronodiversity with Jonathon Keats and others, and ended up being a particularly poignant place to finish.

Liz and Jonathon hadn’t met each other before the recording session, and weren’t familiar with each other’s work. Knowing them both, I intentionally set things up this way as I was interested in what the process of getting to know each other would produce.

I must confess that I was nervous, and at a few points in the conversation I wondered if I should intervene.

I’m glad I didn’t, as what unfolds is at times intimate, uncertain, revelatory, and deeply compelling.

At the end of the conversation I asked if they wanted to touch on any final topics, and to my surprise Liz brought up her deep concerns with the situation in Palestine, and her personal challenges in grappling with how to make sense of the situation.

Th resulting last few minutes are deeply moving in their uncertainty and vulnerability. Both Liz and Jonathon were very gracious in letting us into this very personal conversation — it’s something that should be listened to, respected, and pondered.

Liz Lerman

Liz Lerman is a choreographer, performer, writer, teacher, and speaker. She has spent the past four decades making her artistic research personal, funny, intellectually vivid, and up to the minute. A key aspect of her artistry is opening her process to everyone from shipbuilders to physicists, construction workers to ballerinas, resulting in both research and experiences that are participatory, relevant, urgent, and usable by others. 

More on Liz

Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist and experimental philosopher acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic. He is best known for his large-scale thought experiments.

Over his career he has produced a library for extraterrestrial beings (to share resources to overcome common existential threats), made fountains with meteorite-doped water (to induce alien hybridity for shared otherness), made a living calendar with a 5,000 lifespan, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (selling 172 extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); and made an attempt to genetically engineer God (the attempt reveals God is most likely related to a cyanobacterium). These and other works have been at dozens of institutions worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO.

He is the author of six books on subjects ranging from science and technology to art and design – most recently You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future.

His bold experiments raise serious questions and put into practice his conviction that the world needs more “curious amateurs”, willing to explore publicly whatever intrigues them, in defiance of a culture that increasingly forecloses on wonder and siloes knowledge into narrowly defined areas of expertise.  

More on Jonathon

In Conversation With … is a series of intimate conversations between creative thinkers and leading experts as they explore the intersection of technology, the future, and what it means to be human.

Recorded on February 15, 2024 in ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative multipurpose space. Production: Sean Leahy.

Part of a series of intimate conversations between leading thinkers around the theme of “Chronodiversity, other minds, and the temporal dimensions of consciousness” and co-hosted with the ASU’s Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science).

This recording was my opportunity to be self-indulgent. Hosting Jonathon, I desperately wanted to find some time where we could talk about our thinking and work — and as it turned out, about the only time to do this was in front of the microphones.

I’m my own worst critic when it comes to media with me in it, and to my ears I feel really awkward as we kick off the conversation around longtermism. But listening back to it, I’m intrigued (as I always am with conversations like this) where that initial staring point led us.

And, of course, it was an absolute pleasure talking with Jonathon.

There’s some wonderfully and challengingly “interesting” stuff here — you have been warned!

Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist and experimental philosopher acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic. He is best known for his large-scale thought experiments.

Over his career he has produced a library for extraterrestrial beings (to share resources to overcome common existential threats), made fountains with meteorite-doped water (to induce alien hybridity for shared otherness), made a living calendar with a 5,000 lifespan, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (selling 172 extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); and made an attempt to genetically engineer God (the attempt reveals God is most likely related to a cyanobacterium). These and other works have been at dozens of institutions worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO.

He is the author of six books on subjects ranging from science and technology to art and design – most recently You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future.

His bold experiments raise serious questions and put into practice his conviction that the world needs more “curious amateurs”, willing to explore publicly whatever intrigues them, in defiance of a culture that increasingly forecloses on wonder and siloes knowledge into narrowly defined areas of expertise.  

More on Jonathon

Andrew Maynard

Andrew is a professor in Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Director of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative. Trained as a physicist, his work cuts across disciplinary boundaries as it focuses on advanced technology transitions and the ethical and socially beneficial development and use of transformative emerging technologies.

More on Andrew

In Conversation With … is a series of intimate conversations between creative thinkers and leading experts as they explore the intersection of technology, the future, and what it means to be human.

Recorded on February 15, 2024 in ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative multipurpose space. Production: Sean Leahy.

Part of a series of intimate conversations between leading thinkers around the theme of “Chronodiversity, other minds, and the temporal dimensions of consciousness” and co-hosted with the ASU’s Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science).

Mark and Jonathon had never met before this conversation. But they were familiar withe each others’ work.

Mark is a quite extraordinary photographer who, amongst other projects, has experimented with capturing time in various ways in his work. One example of this is the “Rephotographic Survey Project” that started with the idea of tracking down the uncertain locations of historical nineteenth-century survey photographs of the American West, and then creating new photographs at those sites that were meant to duplicate the original images.

Jonathon, in contrast, is known for his work in capturing the passage of time through long exposures — in the case of his millennial cameras, exposures of 1000 years!

The exquisite contrast of capturing a place at two discrete points in time, and capturing what happens between two points, led to a quite amazing conversation between Mark and Jonathon — one that spiralled off in exquisitely unexpected directions.

Listening to the conversation, I was struck by how I was listening to two artists creating art as they talked with each other — two artists with a complex relationship with time who, at this point in time, were very much in the moment.

Mark Klett

Mark Klett is a photographer interested in the intersection of places, history and time. His background includes working as a geologist before turning to photography. Klett has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Japan/US Friendship Commission. His work has been exhibited and published in the United States and internationally, and is held in over eighty museum collections worldwide. He is the author/co-author of nineteen books including Seeing Time, Forty Years of Photographs (University of Texas Press 2020). Klett is Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. 

More on Mark

Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist and experimental philosopher acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic. He is best known for his large-scale thought experiments.

Over his career he has produced a library for extraterrestrial beings (to share resources to overcome common existential threats), made fountains with meteorite-doped water (to induce alien hybridity for shared otherness), made a living calendar with a 5,000 lifespan, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (selling 172 extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); and made an attempt to genetically engineer God (the attempt reveals God is most likely related to a cyanobacterium). These and other works have been at dozens of institutions worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO.

He is the author of six books on subjects ranging from science and technology to art and design – most recently You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future.

His bold experiments raise serious questions and put into practice his conviction that the world needs more “curious amateurs”, willing to explore publicly whatever intrigues them, in defiance of a culture that increasingly forecloses on wonder and siloes knowledge into narrowly defined areas of expertise.  

More on Jonathon

In Conversation With … is a series of intimate conversations between creative thinkers and leading experts as they explore the intersection of technology, the future, and what it means to be human.

Recorded on February 15, 2024 in ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative multipurpose space. Production: Sean Leahy.

Part of a series of intimate conversations between leading thinkers around the theme of “Chronodiversity, other minds, and the temporal dimensions of consciousness” and co-hosted with the ASU’s Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science).

Jonathon and Ron had met previously and were familiar with each others’ work, but hadn’t had the chance to sit down are deeply explore their ideas together before. As a result, this was a unique chance for them to get to know each other and their thoughts and ideas better.

The result is a quite compelling and unexpected conversation that reveals deep synergies between their ideas and work. Listening to it, I was riveted by how they connected the concepts of biodiversity and “chronodiversity” and how this led to an incredibly generative conversation.

Jonathon Keats

Jonathon Keats is a conceptual artist and experimental philosopher acclaimed as a “poet of ideas” by The New Yorker and a “multimedia philosopher-prophet” by The Atlantic. He is best known for his large-scale thought experiments.

Over his career he has produced a library for extraterrestrial beings (to share resources to overcome common existential threats), made fountains with meteorite-doped water (to induce alien hybridity for shared otherness), made a living calendar with a 5,000 lifespan, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (selling 172 extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day); and made an attempt to genetically engineer God (the attempt reveals God is most likely related to a cyanobacterium). These and other works have been at dozens of institutions worldwide, from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to Stanford University to the Triennale di Milano, and from SXSW to CERN to UNESCO.

He is the author of six books on subjects ranging from science and technology to art and design – most recently You Belong to the Universe: Buckminster Fuller and the Future.

His bold experiments raise serious questions and put into practice his conviction that the world needs more “curious amateurs”, willing to explore publicly whatever intrigues them, in defiance of a culture that increasingly forecloses on wonder and siloes knowledge into narrowly defined areas of expertise.  

More on Jonathon

Ron Broglio

Ron's research focuses on how philosophy, art, and literature can help us rethink our relationship to the environment. The goal is to explore nonhuman comportment and thought through physical and representational engagement with animals and the landscape. Ron is best known for nonhuman phenomenology and animal revolution. 

More on Ron

In Conversation With … is a series of intimate conversations between creative thinkers and leading experts as they explore the intersection of technology, the future, and what it means to be human.

Recorded on February 15, 2024 in ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative multipurpose space. Production: Sean Leahy.

Part of a series of intimate conversations between leading thinkers around the theme of “Chronodiversity, other minds, and the temporal dimensions of consciousness” and co-hosted with the ASU’s Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science).

This conversation was an absolute treat to listen to as we recorded. Paul is a giant of a thinker and physicist, and internationally known for his scholarship and science communication. Sara is equally impressive as a physicist and creative thinker who is pushing the bounds of how we think about life beyond Earth.

Despite their hat comes across loud and clear in the conversation though is that these are two quite wonderful, generous and humble individuals. Plus, what you get to hear is two of the foremost theoretical physicists around talking about things that are on their mind.

As I said, it was an absolute treat for me, and I hope it will be for you.

Paul Davies

Paul is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, cancer researcher and best-selling science author. He has published about 30 books, hundreds of research papers and review articles across many scientific fields  

Paul co-leads the Beyond Center at Arizona State University.

More on Paul

Sara Walker

Sara is a theoretical physicist and astrobiologist who has made major contributions to astrobiology, developing new approaches to the problem of understanding universal features of life.

Along with Paul, Sara co-leads the Beyond Center at Arizona State University.

More on Sara

In Conversation With … is a series of intimate conversations between creative thinkers and leading experts as they explore the intersection of technology, the future, and what it means to be human.

Recorded on February 15, 2024 in ASU’s Future of Being Human initiative multipurpose space. Production: Sean Leahy.