Thoughtforms Life

By Michael LevinScience Education

Thoughtforms Life episodes

March 14, 2025Interview with Azra Raza on a New Theory and Practice of Cancer
This is a ~1 hour conversation of Aastha Jain Simes (https://www.livelongerworld.com/, https://www.linkedin.com/in/aasthajs) and Azra Raza on her unique and passionate journey in oncology and her ideas for cancer therapy.
Azra is an amazing person, clinician, and scientist; see more of her work at:
Columbia web page: https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/profile/azra-raza-md
Personal site with poetry and much more: https://azraraza.com/video-category/poetry-and-ghalib/
Her youtube channel: https://...
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1 hr
March 13, 2025Life, Mind, and Computing: A Diverse Intelligence Perspective
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
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34 min
March 11, 2025Cellular Automata and Models of Health and Disease
This is a ~35 minute discussion with Willem Nielsen (https://community.wolfram.com/web/wrn2001, https://medium.com/@wnielsen) from the Wolfram Institute about their cellular automata models of disease and our approach to this problem.
Papers to which I referred:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00018-023-04790-z
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/25/1/131
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/7/532
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0303264722001435
https://journals.sagepub....
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36 min
March 04, 2025Conversation of Michael Levin with Iain McGilchrist
This is an ~1 hour 10 minute conversation with Iain McGilchrist (https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/), on the topic of my recent paper on the Platonic Space (https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5g2xj_v3) - forms ingressing into the physical world in biology, causation, evolution, and mind.
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1 hr 12 min
March 01, 2025Bioelectric Networks: An Interface to Engineering with the Agential Material of Life
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
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1 hr 3 min
February 25, 2025Aastha Jain Simes and I Interview Pamela Lyon
This a ~1 hour 20 minute conversation between Aastha Jain Simes (https://www.livelongerworld.com/), Pamela Lyon (https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=1oY1J5kAAAAJ&hl=en), and I. Pamela is a key figure in the development of a biogenic approach to mind, and we talked about her journey to understanding cognition. A few of her papers:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-study-of-the-mind-needs-a-copernican-shift-in-perspective
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1059712319871360
https://...
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1 hr 20 min
February 24, 2025Discussion with Mayli Mertens on Molecular Placebos and Bioelectricity
This is a ~30 minute conversation with Mayli Mertens (Marie Curie Postdoctoral fellow at University of Antwerp, https://philpeople.org/profiles/mayli-mertens) and I on the topic of molecular placebos, bioelectricity, and self-fulfilling prophecies in medicine (the latter being the title of her recent paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11017-024-09677-z )
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30 min
February 21, 2025Biological and Technological Information Processing: Commonalities, Differences and Implications
This is a ~1 hr talk on what is similar and what is different between biological and (current) technological information-processing systems, and the implications for biomedicine, AI, and ethics. A version of this talk with Q&A at the TPC consortium at Argonne National Lab is at https://tpc.dev/tpc-seminar-series/
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1 hr 1 min
February 21, 2025Biological and Technological Information Processing: Commonalities, Differences, and Implications
This is a ~1 hr talk on what is similar and what is different between biological and (current) technological information-processing systems, and the implications for biomedicine, AI, and ethics. A version of this talk with Q&A at the TPC consortium at Argonne National Lab is at https://tpc.dev/tpc-seminar-series/

CHAPTERS:
(00:00) Introduction and Overview
(03:30) Unconventional Biology Examples
(09:45) Morphological Control and Plasticity
(15:30) Self-Construction and Collective Intelligence
(21:00) Multi-Scale Competency Architecture
(25:45) Bioelectric Communication Interface
(31:15) Rewriting Bioelectric Patterns
(38:00) Memory in Biological Systems
(44:30) Paradox of Change
(49:15) Problem-Solving in Biology
(54:00) Interoperability and Future Beings
(58:30) Anthrobots and Xenobots
(01:04:00) Platonic Space and Minds

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1 hr 1 min
February 17, 2025Conversation 2 Between Gunnar Babcock, Daniel McShea, Mark Solms, and Michael Levin
This is a ~1 hour conversation on topics of consciousness, affect, evolution, and philosophy between Gunnar Babcock (https://cals.cornell.edu/gunnar-babcock), Daniel McShea (https://scholars.duke.edu/person/dmcshea), Mark Solms (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vD4p8rQAAAAJ&hl=en), and I.
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1 hr

About Thoughtforms Life

From the publisher's feed

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…